OT, Breast Cancer, and Pilates

    Pilates has often been overlooked as an exercise itself until just recently. Now you see pilates being glamorized for being a low-intensity workout that gives excellent results when done consistently. But how does pilates correlate with occupational therapy and breast cancer? On a podcast by OT Flourish (OT, Breast Cancer, & Pilates), Naomi Aaronson OT, CHT, details her experience with teaching pilates to elderly women who had/ have breast cancer and how pilates benefits them in the long run regarding occupational therapy. Naomi Aaronson OT, CHT is an occupational therapist and a certified hand therapist who had the opportunity to work in a variety of locations such as nursing homes, city hospitals, and school systems. During her experience of working in city hospitals, she met a lot of clients with breast cancer, which made her want to specialize in helping with that specific diagnosis. Within the podcast, Aaronson goes into detail about her journey of opening her own private practice and being able to help women with breast cancer become stronger and more confident within themselves. 

    Pilates has a few main principles that Aaronson describes within the podcast: breathing, concentration, posture, and control of the abdominal area. With pilates, she uses this type of exercise to help clients with their movements, within hand therapy, and helping with proprioceptive awareness of how normal vs injured extremities work. One of Aaronson's main points about pilates helping with breast cancer is the ability to strengthen scapula stability and to be able to return to having some range of motion. With this, she goes into detail about how pilates breathing is very different than what we considered normal breathing. With pilates breathing, your rib cage moves as you breathe, which is something Aaronson wants for breast cancer clients who had surgery to feel as the breast extends from the scapula to ribs 5-6 and from the sternum to the midaxillary line. To execute pilates breathing, one must inhale through the nose, which helps the rib cage expand, and exhale through the mouth like a straw. The motions of pilates breathing really emphasize the movements of elevation and depression and protraction and retraction. Aaronson mentioned that a lot of women find motivation in pilates as this helps with their posture. Aaronson was also asked about her certification in pilates and being able to cooperate it in occupational therapy. She mentioned that there is a test to take that goes over the pilates equipment that you must pass in order to be certified. Since Aaronson mostly works with the geriatric population, there was one thing she mentioned in the podcast that really stuck out to me. She talked about how geriatrics could be viewed the same as pediatrics as equipment and ideas can be used with both populations, which will help make you a creative and fun therapist. I thought this takeaway point was important because a lot of people overlook the idea of working with either population for certain reasons, but never realize occupational therapy is a universal language as the therapists help all populations get back to doing what they love. 

    Even though being able to work with breast cancer survivors through occupational therapy and pilates has its advantages, there are also a lot of consequences to be aware of so the exercises do not deter the client's health. Aaronson mentions that she has to be aware if clients are on certain medications, doing chemotherapy, certain surgeries they have had, their current blood levels, currently have active cancer cells, and so much more as all of these can be affected by specific pilates exercises. Aaronson has her own book called Pilates for Breast Cancer Survivors: A Guide to Recovery, Healing, and Wellness that goes into more detail about how pilates can help within the breast cancer journey. 

    As we talk about emerging practices in class, this podcast was very interesting to me as I am so curious about how versatile this field really is. I have always loved pilates and how this low-intensity workout can be good for women in many ways. I found this podcast to be helpful in ways as I can work with different clientele and how I could help them in the future as a future practitioner.