How Iyengar yoga helped a breast cancer survivor stay focused on the present and bolster her immune system during and after treatment
- During Breast Cancer Awareness month, Petra Winkler-Hirter describes how Iyengar yoga alerted her to cancer and gave her tools to help beat it – twice
- One of the quotes from Iyengar yoga’s founder gave her strength: ‘Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured’
Yoga teacher Petra Winkler-Hirter credits yoga with teaching her to live in the present moment – and to accept her mortality.
Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016, and discovering it had spread to her brain two years later, Winkler-Hirter says a vital cornerstone of her cancer journey has been her regular yoga practice.
It enabled her to accept the diagnosis, care for herself during the treatment, and rebuild her immunity.
Winkler-Hirter, who was a massage therapist and personal trainer, took to Iyengar yoga (named after the late yoga master BKS Iyengar) in 2004 after attending classes in a studio in her neighbourhood in Sydney, Australia, where she lived at the time. She trained to become a teacher and began teaching Iyengar yoga in 2014.
Not only did yoga become her vocation, it also saved her life, she says.
“While attending a yoga workshop at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, India, as I stood in mountain pose [tadasana], I felt that there was no space in my armpits. I knew instantly that something was wrong,” says the Swiss 45-year-old, who now lives in Munich, Germany.
