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Healing Hands

Nyack's Birchwood Center offers hope and health to victims of chronic illness

by Suzy Vitello

Rivertown, Nyack, NY (December, 2004) When local resident Lee Hancock practices yoga at Birchwood Center in Nyack, she is informed by 25 years of experience - with both yoga and illness. Hancock's chronic auto-immune disease and her recent bout with breast cancer might sound insurmountable to some, but she doesn't view it that way.

"One of the things I've learned as a person with a chronic illness," she says, "is that support therapies do more to help maintain my sense of wellness than do any allopathic medicines."

At the heart of Hancock's belief is that when the body is hit by disease, crucial to recovery is an ability to normalize and integrate the experience. To slow the body down, through deep breathing, while incorporating the mindfulness associated with yoga, meditation and massage, provides an opening through which healing can occur.

According to Jason Langheier, a Phd/MD student at Duke University, and founder of Fitness Forward, a business that promotes healthy lifestyles, "We are really starting to see the science behind the role of massage and yoga in disease recovery and sustained health."

As a student of medicine, and a yoga devotee himself, Langheier believes in a growing partnership between allopathic medicine and alternative therapies. Hancock agrees with this proposition. She credits much of her well-being to her yoga practice and, in particular, the inviting atmosphere at Birchwood Center.

The directors of the center, Charlene Bradin & Betsy Ceva, have created an environment guided by client-centered principles. "Sometimes yoga can move into a sort of demonstration of perfection," says Hancock, who has practiced yoga since 1980. "But this is not the case at Birchwood. Betsy's classes stress practice, strength and wholeness."

Ceva and Bradin started Birchwood Center and the Wonder of Touch Massage in their home in September of 1996. In 1998, they moved the business to its current location on the 2nd floor of 85 South Broadway in Nyack. From the beginning, it was important that the studio be a sacred place where Ceva and Bradin could embrace the needs of each student and client.

Although the center does not have a cancer recovery class per se, patients with chronic diseases or cancer issues have found solace, grace and healing through gentle and restorative yoga classes, as well as through the massage therapies offered at Birchwood.

"It is so profound when a client gives feedback with the body. The transformation in energy is palpable," says Bradin, a licensed massage therapist since 1992. Bradin has worked on many people in various stages of cancer recovery. Most heartening is when she detects a decrease in a client's level of fear.

Fear and anxiety are major players when confronted with a diagnosis. The natural impulse is to lock up, which causes subsequent imbalances at the muscular, bone and glandular levels. Years ago, the advice given a person suffering from inflammation associated with auto-immune diseases or cancer surgeries was to avoid massage.  That thinking has changed. Wisdom now dictates that massage provides a crucial boost to the circulatory and lymph systems, which is imperative in both recovery from illness and health maintenance.

"The invitation to relax during massage is instrumental in healing," Bradin says. The benefits of massage during cancer recovery include increased circulation, lymph flow and range of motion.

Improved range of motion is also a key benefit gained by those who practice gentle and restorative yoga. Betsy Ceva has practiced and taught yoga for 20 years; her classes have grown to include more and more people diagnosed with breast and other cancers, as well as chronic illnesses.

In restorative yoga, props such as bolsters, sandbags and blocks are used to allow the body to assume certain positions. The body is passive and relaxed, but held in position allowing muscles, bones and glands to experience opening and stretching.

"It's completely addictive," Ceva explains. "You tell yourself, 'My job is to lie around and relax.' Who wouldn't love to have that permission?"

"The clients are asked not to push or use force.  They are invited to stay in the now, in the moment, which is not something our culture invites us to do," Ceva adds.

Jonathan George, a student of integrative medicine who has researched quality-of-life-issues among bone marrow transplant patients at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, thinks that the pursuit of self-knowledge is a top priority in health maintenance.

"When faced with the diagnosis of a serious illness, you inevitably see that your life will some day end," he says. George believes, however, that the personal practice of integrative approaches to healthy lifestyles, especially those that invite peace and inward exploration, are key to not only individual healing, but healing on a global scale.

Betsy Ceva and Charlene Bradin offer exactly the prescription George speaks of. Birchwood Center is committed to promoting awareness of regular yoga practice and massage as tools for healthful living. Their center includes a wide variety of yoga classes and massage therapy options offered by dedicated professionals: healers and passionate teachers all. For more information, check out their web site: www.birchwoodcenter.com.

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