“It Was A Life Raft For Me”
When Angelina Whitaker celebrated her 50th birthday earlier this year, the smiling faces of her family reminded her how lucky she is. Not all her birthdays have been so happy. Looking back on the photos of her 34th birthday, for instance, it is the bandage she notices.
“I have a butterfly bandage on my chest because I had just had the test done,” Angelina says. The test, which followed her discovery of a lump at the top of her left breast, revealed that Angelina had atypical medullary carcinoma HER2, a rare form of breast cancer.
What came next wasn’t pleasant: a lumpectomy and the removal of her lymph nodes, followed by six months of chemotherapy and three months of radiation therapy. What got Angelina through it was her daily yoga practice, a routine she began a decade earlier.
“Yoga gives you an opportunity to find stillness,” Angelina says. “And in that stillness you find a lot of solace because you have to sit with yourself and what’s going on at that time with your body.
“When I had breast cancer, yoga was a lifeline. That daily class – and the practice of meditation which I had also learnt earlier – was a life raft. It gave me a sense of normalcy, a sense of routine.” The experience inspired Angelina to become a yoga teacher and share the benefits of her practice with other women.
She didn’t realise that a decade later she would again call on yoga to help her manage troubled times. At the age of 44, she began to experience symptoms of early menopause and, once again, yoga helped her come out the other side.
“Doctors were very reluctant to give women who had had breast cancer any hormone treatments for menopause back then. I didn't want to do that anyway, I just wanted to get through it naturally,” Angelina says.
“Not only did yoga help keep my body fit and light and strong, it gave me a sense of intuitively knowing what was happening to my body, especially the reproductive system and the changes in the hormones. It helped me deal with the mood swings. It kept me sane.”
Six years on, Angelina teaches daily classes. In addition to the many documented health benefits of yoga – studies have shown it can help with everything from high blood pressure and rheumatoid arthritis to anxiety – she says that one of yoga’s greatest benefits is the safe space that classes can offer to women who are struggling.
“I recently had a student who had cancer. It was crazy how sick she was and she was still coming to class as much as she could, fitting it around medical treatments.
“Yoga classes gave her a place to go that felt safe, it gave her a sense of community. She felt good to come to class at her best and at her worst.”
Angelina’s classes incorporate meditation which, like yoga, can boost wellbeing – and not just for the time you are attending. “It has a residual effect,” says Angelina. “You can come back to that place each time and tap into that calm consciousness.
“My students who are going through menopause say that when they don’t come to class they feel a little bit off. Others say that the yoga and meditation improves their ability to sleep and their control over their emotions.”
Angelina says that yoga classes also harness the power of the collective. “The community is very supportive. I have seen very shy women come in who were very quiet, sat up the back, and now they chat to everyone and sit in the front row.
“It makes me very happy to see them grow like that. Transforming confidence is definitely one of the benefits of yoga.”
P.S. Those who read Dolly magazine in 1989 may recall Angelina’s face as the model in a health and beauty story about breakfast. “I remember having a go-see and coming to the offices in Park Street,” she said. “I was with Ursulas Model Management. I was very excited because one of my jobs when I went to New York for the first time was at Seventeen magazine. Dolly was reminiscent of that vibe.”
Angelina teaches classes at My Asana in Sydney and also takes private classes.
Contact yoginiegirl@yahoo.com
Words_ Marina Go
Photos_ Carlotta Moye