What My Clients Taught Me About Breast Cancer Recovery

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I want to use it to acknowledge the breast cancer survivors I've had the privilege of working with.

Teaching Pilates puts me in close proximity to a lot of different people. Everyone who walks into a session brings their own history, their own experiences, and their own body. Over the course of my career, I've been lucky to work with several clients who were recovering from breast cancer treatment. This isn't a post about why every survivor should do Pilates. It's about what those clients have taught me, and how working with them has changed the way I teach.

What I thought I knew

I came to this work with a lot of training. I understand anatomy, I understand how to modify an exercise, and I understand how to build a progression over time. None of that was wrong, but it wasn't the whole picture.

After surgery, chemo, radiation, or reconstruction, the body often works in a new way. Range of motion changes. Sensation changes. Muscles that used to fire without a second thought need to be asked, sometimes more than once. What I learned early on is that the goal isn't to get someone back to who they were "before." The goal is to help them understand how their body works now, and to build from there.

That sounds like a small distinction. In practice, it changed a lot. It meant adapting my expectations, not just the exercises.

What they taught me

Recovery doesn't end when treatment does. There's a common assumption that once the last appointment is over, you're done. My clients showed me that the end of active treatment is often where a different kind of work begins: rebuilding strength, trust in your body, and a sense of routine that isn't organized around medical appointments.

Recovery isn't linear. Some days are better than others. A client might move with ease one week and struggle the next, for reasons that have nothing to do with effort. I've learned to read those days without judgment, and to treat a harder session as information rather than a setback. My clients were usually more patient with this than I expected, and that patience taught me something too.

The right team matters. Every client I've worked with had a group of people around them: surgeons, oncologists, physical therapists, family, friends. Being invited onto that team, even in a small role, is a responsibility. It means communicating clearly, knowing the limits of my scope, and respecting the guidance of their medical providers.

Asking for help is a skill. Many of the people I've worked with are used to being the ones who take care of everyone else. Watching them learn to let other people carry some of the weight, and seeing how much that helped, has stayed with me. It's a lesson that applies well outside the studio.

Where movement fits

I don't want to overstate what Pilates can do. It isn't a treatment, and it doesn't replace medical care. But within the right context, and with clearance from a client's care team, it can play a meaningful role.

For many of my clients, a regular movement practice brought back a sense of normalcy: something on the calendar that was theirs, chosen rather than prescribed. They noticed the familiar benefits of exercise, like more energy, a better mood, and a clearer head. More specifically, we worked on things like shoulder mobility, circulation, and gradually rebuilding the strength and flexibility that treatment had taken a toll on.

The part I've come to value most is harder to measure. After months of attention focused on one area of the body, Pilates gives people a chance to zoom back out and work the body as a whole. The work asks you to pay attention to how everything connects. For someone who has spent a long time thinking about one part of themselves as a problem, that shift can matter.

Thank you

Working with breast cancer survivors has made me a more attentive teacher, a better listener, and a lot more comfortable with the idea that progress doesn't have to look a certain way to be real.

To the clients who have trusted me with part of their recovery: thank you. You taught me more than I taught you.

If you're in recovery and curious about whether movement might help, start by talking with your care team. And if you have questions about Pilates along the way, I'm always happy to answer them.