Yoga gains ground in cancer care, awareness remains the barrier

Yoga got prominent billing at the 51st Annual Oncology Nursing Society Congress in San Antonio, with abstracts, posters and a Zen Den where attendees could try chair yoga and guided meditation between sessions. The odd part was how ordinary it all sounded inside oncology: yoga was being treated as a practical tool, not a fringe add-on, even as many clinics still struggled to get patients into the room.

That gap showed up in Leah R. Yeager’s poster, abstract 590, from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and UK Markey Cancer Center. Her project, Utilizating Integrative Medicine Services for Yoga to Reduce Cancer-Related Fatigue, focused on a yoga program that was fully funded, free to all patients and located on the third floor of the main clinic building. Yet it remained underused because patients and staff did not know it existed. Yeager said, “better internal marketing and branding across the institution is needed to get referrals flowing.” In other words, the barrier was not whether yoga could be paid for or physically reached. It was whether the clinic actually told people it was there.

The study itself followed patients receiving active treatment. A total of 23 patients were initially enrolled, nine completed both the pre- and post-intervention surveys, and one more completed the pre-intervention survey before dying prior to follow-up. Using the FACIT-F fatigue scale, the mean score moved from 22.9 before yoga to 26.2 afterward. The change was not statistically significant, with a P value of .42, but the project still reinforced why oncology teams keep coming back to the same symptom: cancer-related fatigue is not ordinary tiredness. It can linger for months or years, and ASCO says 30% to 60% of patients experience moderate to severe fatigue during treatment, while 20% to 30% still have elevated fatigue months or years later.

That is why the evidence discussion has already moved past “does yoga belong here?” The 2024 ASCO-Society for Integrative Oncology update reviewed 113 randomized controlled trials from 2013 to 2023 and concluded yoga helped manage cancer-related fatigue after completion of treatment. NCCN’s patient fatigue guidance is also based on its Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology, Version 2.2024. The practical lesson for cancer centers is clear: yoga is no longer waiting for proof of concept, it is waiting for referral pathways that actually work. For patients in treatment, the next question to ask is simple: does this center offer a yoga referral, where is it held, and how do I get scheduled before fatigue keeps me on the sidelines?