Breast Cancer Recovery 3

Hi, my name is Kathy Corey and I'm presenting a reformer program for breast cancer recovery patients. Today, exercise is a vital tool for recovery for breast cancer patients and Polonius exercise addresses many of the issues for a full and healthy recovery. Joseph [inaudible] designed a program for master teacher Eve Jan tree in the 1950s who underwent a radical mastectomy. This program today is based upon those exercises. I'm being joined by Hayley. Today. We're going to be start on the reformer. Have a seat.

We're going to have you lie down and place your feet on the bar for this part of the program. I'm going to place your head rest up. Okay. We're going to use a fairly light spring so that the idea here is we want to improve the circulation, particularly through the legs or feet and ankles because with a breast cancer recovery we have found that it is more likely to have a blood clots seven times more likely to have blood clots form a than for normal patients. So we really want to get the circulation moving so we have a lighter spring there, place to ball the foot on the bar and we're going to relax the toes over and just a nice long inhalation to go out and exhale to come in for this part of it. We're going to have you stabilize your ankle.

So we're really working from the hip to the knee and all the way through the center of the foot. We want to get that at the circulation all the way down to the toes with nice deep breathing as well and brand to come in. Again, we keep a light spring on and of course we want to make sure that um, all of these programs that are done for breast cancer recovery are also John with doctor's permission and with the protocols that the doctor would like us to follow last one and come back in. Now let's go ahead and bring the feet up just a little higher and lifting ankles high. Press out from there. Beautiful. Now stay in that position.

Roll the heels under the bar and roll to come up. Now once again, we're increasing that circulation in the ankles coming up, keeping the legs long and straight, relaxing through the shoulders. If you feel any discomfort through the shoulders, we reduce the spring. Um, or you can also put a small pillow or towel on the shoulders as well. But the reason that we don't want to push with the shoulders is we're drawing down into the scapula through the movement. Two more times. Use your breath. Exhale up. Inhale down. Exhale up.

Now this time hold the heels down. Keep the heels reaching to me and go ahead and bend your knees in. Bend them n and n to calm down. How are you feeling? You set? Good. That's great. Let's go ahead now and stretch the legs back out.

This time what we want to do is bring the arms wide to the side and then place the fingers lightly on the shoulder. Rest. Take an inhalation. And as you actually [inaudible], you're going to really stretch across the shoulder blades open all the way through the chest muscles. This may be hard if there's any scarring, um, or just a tightness across the chest. But we want to really increase range of motion and we want to work with the affected arm. The effected arm would be the side of the body that on where the cancer was. And of course if we um, had cancer on both sides, we're going to work both sides. But to start now, we'll just use the effected arm. Haley is going to, we're going to say that it is your right arm for now and let's go ahead.

The right arm is going to then just curl up, elbow to the ceiling and open to come down and bring the arm high to the ceiling. Beautiful and open to come down. And really his Jorez all the way through. It's all right if you feel a little bit of discomfort. We just don't want to work to pain and we never want to work the body to fatigue and come up. Now let's alternate sides with that. So that rotation comes up and we really open stir retching across the shoulder girdle and open. Very nice. Use your breath.

Inhale to come up and exhale as we open and hail up and exhale open both arms. We'll come together and we're going to see, we used to gather open across the back of the butt of the shoulder blades and oh, open it, take it down. And if you can go even higher. Beautiful. And now open and stretch. So it's nice and long. All the way down. Yeah, and we're engaging the Scapula as well. And come down one more time.

Inhale and exhale. Let's leave the arms where they are and we're going to work. Now we'll use the same leg on the effected side of the body. So on Haley, we're gonna use her right leg and the leg is going to bend and extend high to the ceiling. Bend again. And now this time again, increased flexibility and range of motion. We're going to take the hip over, but we're going to keep that show.

They're stretching down. So of course now we're stretching underneath the Scapula, getting that long, long reach. Take an inhalation as you exhale, extend that leg out. And then to come back in once again. Well anchoring under the shoulder blades and take it over and extended out bend and rules through the spines. You're getting that nice circulation all the way through the core of the body.

And this time we can stay out and get along. Stretch, stretch the toes up toward the shoulder. Stretch three breaths for me, one and exhale and two and exhale and three and exhale, bend in and roll through. Extended like high to the ceiling and lower it onto the bar. Let's go ahead and bend the knees in, get a little break and that break on that shoulder as well. Bring the arms down and around. And now inhale, take the arms back, bend them in and stretch back out as well. We're working the other side. We're going to bend the leg in an extent app.

Now we're still concentrating on that. Effected our side of the body. So as we're going over, we're really reaching down and stretching under the Scapula awnings that did Xyz and we extend the leg out, we banned it in and we roll the torso back and all the way through. Let's do it again. Take it over, extend it long and Ben back in and roll to come back. And now this time we're going to add that additional stretch. So we're going to go out and extend the leg.

We're going to bring the toes toward that shoulder, really reaching and stretching underneath the body, getting that long stretch on the body for three full breaths and we bend rollback into the center. Extend that like high to the ceiling, reach it long and reach onto the bar, bend the knees and come all the way in. Very, very nice. Good stretch as well. We're now going to work on strengthening the arms. We need to add muscle strengths as well as flexibility and range of motion. So we'll, I'm going to reduce the spring just a little bit. We want to light spring on this to build muscle strength, so we're going to take that down and for Haley's, since we started with two AEDs, I'm going to one red. If you started with one red, you would go into a half spring or just to blue.

Now we're going to take the heat arms and hold onto the handles and I'm going to place the head rest down for this as well. Okay, there we go. Now I liked the arms directly over the shoulders and the first thing we're going to do is you're going to take an inhale and then we're going to exhale and relax the shoulders and press down and now resist the movement as you come up using the muscles in activating under the Scapula, under the shoulder blade. And again, take a breath. Let's exhale as we come down. Now resisted resistant an inhale from the back of the arm and the back of the Scapula and come down and resist the movement as you come up.

Let's do two more of those and press down. Now if this position is difficult on the legs, you may just cross the legs as well and relax them over the chest and press it down and reach. Let's work into an arm circle. Now once again for flexibility, range of motion and to help prevent any building of the scar tissue. The arms open, straight out to the sides of the body and we bring, I was down all the way toward the toes and they lift to happen and now once again dropped through the shoulder blades, bring the arms down and keep them low so that they're really going right at the side seam of the body and we should, we still do that resistance on the way up. Two more times, open it out and exhale to come down and reach nice and long and one more time.

We're going to really make sure that we're building that strength not just in the arm but through the back and chest muscles as well. Let's reverse the circle, pressing down and open to the sides and lift. We're looking for symmetry here. Said that both arms are going to open, see the same place and want to lift and now initiate and even more from that affected arm. So we're really working evenly through the movement and just the last one and open and come up. Now we're going to place the straps on the feet for leg walks and leg circles. Extend the legs up nice and long. We can keep that again on a light spring.

What we're looking for here is increased circulation. Once again, we want to help to avoid any blood clots and we also want to help to prevent or manage a lymphedema and as well. So we don't want any of that. The swelling from the uh, effectiveness of lymph nodes. From here we take one leg down straight, beautiful and straight to come back up and the other leg we're gonna walk to come down and reach to come back up and exhale to come down. Beautiful and reach to come back up and exhale down. Long inhalation.

Remember the breath to increase lung capacity is very important in this program. Breathing deeply to activate the muscles from in the rib cage and really get full oxygenation through the system and come back up. And now let's go into a leg circle. From here we're going to open the legs to the sides and circle the legs around and down, close it and come back up. Turn out from the hips.

And yet we're getting that nice rotation through the hip joint. So that we really want the whole body to be working. We want you to remember with Palazzos we want to work the entire body the entire time, not just concentrating on one area for rehabilitation, but we want to think about the whole body working the whole time. One more time and now let's reverse that circle and take the movement down. Circle o open around and come back up and take it down around open and lift up and press. Use your breath.

Remember it's important to increase the circulation and the lung capacity through the movement and very nice movement if you need to. The knees can be soft in this movement and band last time and around and come up. Very nice. Once again, we want to remember that we do not want to work the body to fatigue so that when we're doing the work, we use only about five repetitions for each movement and we move into different parts of the body for oxygenation and circulation as well as the breath work. Now I'm going to have you sit up. The next exercise is the mermaid. So we're going to sit to the side. Again, side bending exercises are recommended.

We really want to get that nice stretch of the body, maintain our flexibility and our range of motion. So from this position I have the arm right out in at the side of the body. Um, I have one spring and for Haley I'm going to add a blue as well. So we have one and a half. You may want to stay on a lighter spring for this as well.

Now the idea here is to maintain the drop of the hip so that the hip is not lifting with the movement as we get aside stretch. Now what we are doing here is we're working, we're at placing the effected arm on the bar for the first side, but on this exercise we will be doing both sides of the body. From here we're going to get that side stretch, but I want you to think about lifting and stretching all the way over, keeping that hip down and coming back. I want your breath to come inhaling up, up, up. Very nice.

And then exhale on the return and one more of these. Inhale, reach and stretch all the way over and come back on the exhale. This time we go up and over rotate. So the chest goes down to the body to down to the floor, move the hand out and we maintain this alignment through the body so that the hip remains reaching onto the carriage. And now from here the arm stretch out and the head is a little bit lower.

Very nice. And now we're going to bend both arms and as you press out, I want you to think about working from the effected arm and come in. Your exhale is going to really bring that ribcage around to the front. Beautiful on in and caress out. We have two more. So we'll be doing five long repetitions, really working the entire body all the way through the movement. Last one. Now we're going to take the other arm off and we're gonna place it behind the back, around in the shoulders, in the back. And now, once again, we have five more if we need to. At this point we can reduce the spring.

Is that okay or you want a little little lighter for ya? It's kind of heavy at the moment and come back in and three beautiful and exhale as you go out. Inhale an XL and come back in [inaudible] let's come up. I know we are going to work on the opposite side of the body as well. She we're going to turn the torso around and the idea of what we want to see here is once again we're looking at this nice stretch of the hip. The leg is against the shoulder, rest for support and the other leg in front. If this is too difficult, you sit in a comfortable position with your knees band. Let's work on that side stretch now pressing out, keeping that hip down and now remember this is opening that we want to get on that side of the body and then come back in and up and again laying thin, get a long side stretch and reach to come back up and up and over and once again we're looking at that opening from the hip to the rib cage.

All the way through. And we have one more of these before we go in to our strengthening exercise for the upper arms and chest and back. Here we go. Let's go Haley. Up and over, rotate face the hand on the bar, move the other hand. So we have the hands directly out from the shoulders, head down, chest a little bit more and let's began stretching, pushing in and reaching to come out. Now once again, what we are looking for is to really be working with the inhale and the axial so that we really have the breath feeling the back and we have more movements through the ribs and through the chest. We have five movements here coming around. Good. And one more time keeping the hip down and now the single arm.

So here what we are concentrating on is that nice opening dressing out and this is, this is our stronger arm or unaffected arm. So on this, we're thinking about emphasizing this stretch across the upper back and a movement through the ribs, through our deep breathing exercises and once again, and for us to come out can en and length in the spine and sit up nice and tall. Great. We have one more exercise to do and that's going to be the song we're gonna keep the same spring on. I'm gonna place the feet on the sides of the bar is heating up nice and tall. Now from here we're going to work the neck f the neck muscles as well. Neck exercises are also a very, very important part of the program and are recommended by the American Cancer Association again to help improve that circulation all the way through the body.

So from here we bring the arms out and we're going to get a twist of the torso, Gerrit and reach. Now the front arm is going to reach the little toe while the back arm reaches towards that shoulder so that we're getting an opening across the chest and inhale, exhale and reach past your toe. Inhale when reaching an opposition past your toe. And inhale and pass the toe and come up and Terran. Take a nice deep breath in the opposite side and stretch and the little finger goes past that little toe. And once again, exhale as you stretch it long exhale.

As you stretch long, we're concentrating in reaching an opposition on both sides to really get that back working. To get all those muscles working is well and we come up and turn and lower the [inaudible] arms. Let's go ahead and then the news and come back and place your feet on the bar and slide up. Place the hands in the front. Okay, do one last stretch. So we're rounding the back. We have the pelvis rounded as well and we're going to Flores out and straighten the legs. And now from here, bring the heels under. So once again, we're improving that circulation at this time. As you pull your heels up, also pull in on those abdominals around the back and get a deep breath and bend into Kenyon and press out and lower the heels. And now exhale and inhale to come in.

And one more time. Come out, heels down, lift up, get that long, long stretch. And now let go of the, the um, carriage. Come up, get a stretch and open. Thank you very much. Beautiful work. Thanks.