Publication:

Knowledge of yoga among cancer patients and their attendants: a survey in a tertiary cancer centre in North East India

Yoga is an ancient Indian science that has evolved over thousands of years. Yoga deals with the physical, mental, moral and spiritual well-being of an individual.1 We have conducted an electronic survey amongst the cancer patients and attendants of our hospital about their knowledge of yoga. It’s a survey of 62 participants from 15/06/2021 to 18/06/2021 (before international yoga day on 21/06/21), 46.8% of the participants are male and 53.2% are female in the survey. The age of the participants ranges from 9 to 69 years. We have designed a set of ten questions, first six questions are designed to know their knowledge about the beneficial effects of the yoga, next two questions are about the misconceptions, cautions and guidance needs while performing yoga and the last two questions about the possibility of the practical application of it in their life. In our survey, we find that 93.5% of the participants think yoga reduces stress, 96.8% think yoga reduces fatigue, 95.2% opine yoga improves sleep, 93.5% feel yoga improves posture-related dysfunctions in cancer patients. Regarding chances of recurrence in cancer patients, 75.8% of patients think it has a negative impact on recurrence, 40.3% of participants have an opinion that yoga can cure cancer (no study till now proves that yoga cures cancer), and 90.3% feels that unguided yoga can cause injuries. At last, 93.5% patients feel yoga improve quality of life in cancer patients and 93.5% want to implement yoga in their daily life. From our survey, it seems participants have a fair idea of the benefits of yoga in cancer.