I Spent Years Teaching Yoga Students About Being Present. Then I Was Diagnosed With Cancer.

Updated November 24, 2025 08:07AM

Yoga teachers are endlessly reminding students to focus on the present moment and navigate life as best they can from that perspective. That means we’re also constantly doing the same for ourselves. And, just like our students, we sometimes struggle with that. The following thoughts, insights, and emotions are excerpted from the journal that longtime yoga teacher Nancy Ferraro kept throughout her cancer diagnosis and treatment.

I just finished leading a wellness retreat in Sedona. Six months earlier, I had lost my mother. Two weeks before, I had ended an eight-year relationship. Finally, I was beginning to feel like a phoenix rising from the ashes. I felt as though I was on top of the world and standing in Love when I posted the following photos on Instagram with the words, “Watch me rise!”

My intuition whispered, “Not quite yet.” I quickly squelched that feeling. I recall thinking, “How much worse can things get?”

The day after returning from my retreat, I went to an appointment for further imaging following a recent mammogram. This had happened to me before and it had been nothing. I wasn’t worried.

Before I had even made it home from the appointment, the imaging center called. They wanted me to come back for biopsies. A few days later, remaining optimistic, I returned for the procedure.

While I was on the table, the tech and doctor appeared more concerned by something they detected in my lymph nodes. Trying to keep things light, I said, “Tell me there’s hope, doc.” He sighed and said, “Oh, there’s always hope.”

A few days after the appointment, I checked my online patient portal. That’s how I learned that I had breast cancer. I felt gut punched and suddenly so very alone. I called a close friend who is also a nurse and asked her to sit with me, read the report, and tell me that she would remain with me throughout whatever was to come.

Comforting as it was to have her alongside me, I couldn’t help but feel that I had crossed a threshold into another world. Alone. The cancer was in me. It had invaded my sacred space. Knowing that shook me to my core.

That night, I had a visitor in my dreams. Ram Dass came by and reminded me, in his matter-of-fact way, that my suffering was best viewed in the light of eternity, standing in Love.

When I woke, I felt like I had a Google Earth view of my situation. The dream was visceral, in the sense that I experienced the feeling of becoming the observer of my circumstances, the drop held in the ocean rather than the drop languishing in the bottom of an empty glass alone. I felt part of the whole. The dream afforded me a sense of the macro—a timeless glimpse that I was part of the greater consciousness.

Of course my feelings would vacillate wildly throughout the weeks and months to come, but the gift of this perspective stayed with me and gave me space to breathe—allowing me to practice identifying as the observer and not just someone with a sick body.

The next few weeks were a flurry of scans, biopsies, procedures, and many, many appointments. If you know, you know.

Terrified, I felt like I was in a long, dark tunnel with no light in sight. Yet I found my family and friends rushing in with their lanterns held high enough so I could see that I was standing in Love. I was buoyed by the outpouring of love and genuine care from family, friends, students, and my online community.

The Tao Te Ching is a book I often used in my morning ritual of reading and journaling. During those first weeks of acceptance of my diagnosis, I opened to this passage:

The reality I found myself living in didn’t make any sense to me. I was healthy and strong. I was careful about what I ate. I had been a hiker and yogi for nearly two decades. I was also a reiki master, sound therapist, and yoga, meditation, and wellness teacher for more than 15 years. I have no family history of cancer.

The upside to being in strong shape was my oncologist said that he and my team could aggressively treat my aggressive cancer. He said my body could handle it.

Long before my cancer diagnosis, we had planned to hold my daughter’s wedding in my backyard and I was going to officiate. With a raised eyebrow and a stern look, my doctor strongly advised against attempting this while undergoing such an aggressive treatment.

We eventually reached a compromise in which I would take a break from chemo two weeks before the wedding to elevate my immunity and strength so that I could officiate, although the wedding would be held somewhere else.

I knew needing to find an alternate venue was a disappointment to my daughter, although she didn’t bat an eye at this news. My job was to rest and write a ceremony. It felt nice to have a goal on my calendar that was celebratory.

My diagnosis and treatment didn’t happen in a vacuum. I had to place the wellness business I spent the previous 15 years building on indefinite hold. At the same time I was coping with my reality, my brother was also diagnosed with cancer and passed away within weeks. His wife, my sister-in-law, died shortly after him.

Despite the presence of death, I still had my kids and grandson, my family and community, and my extended online community. There were many precious moments, even in the deepest despair.

When I had no control over my outward circumstances, really the only thing I had was a choice in where to place my mind, my energy, and my intention. It was not easy. It was a battle that I had to fight day by day, moment by moment, breath by breath. I failed and flailed often.

In my mind, I could often hear my own “yoga teacher voice” schooling myself. “Practice and you can remain centered when all the things come your way…sometimes all at once.”

People have told me that I am strong, and maybe I am. But after my diagnosis, I was sustained by a network of Love that held me up when all I could do was just be. I could not have made this journey without the support of family, friends, students, and community.

Ritual and ceremony are familiar tools I’d employed throughout my years of yoga practice and teaching. If I was going to lose my hair from chemo, then I would create a hair-shaving ceremony.

My children were eager to support and participate. My youngest son shaved his head with me and my oldest shaved my head in this outward expression of a deeper trust in Love. That was the focus we chose.

August 18, 2021

There were many times I wrestled with, “Why me? Why now? Why this?”

Eventually, I always came back to surrender. Surrender to what is. Surrender to the moment. Surrender to let go into the unknown. I wasn’t lost in toxic positivity or denial. Instead I held both struggle and surrender at the same time.

I had placed my body under the care of my medical team, although my soul and spirit needed constant tending, too. That was one of the only things I had a say in—how to respond to the constant barrage of new, alarming, and often terrifying experiences.

I’ve always been pretty independent and capable. I’m usually the one who helps others. But this treatment was kicking my asana in ways I had never fathomed.

The “big red,” as they called the type of chemo I was on, made me feel like my battery was, at best, seven percent. I moved slowly, thought slowly, even talked slowly. I had difficulty finding my words. Daily tasks became lengthy and often didn’t get done due to lack of energy. I had to alter my expectations and reframe my thoughts from thinking that I was being lazy to understanding that I was fighting for my life.

As time went by and I became even weaker, friends and students offered to bring meals, walk my dog, clean my house, and get groceries for me. My kids helped out as much as their busy lives would allow, with my daughter always taking me to chemo. Everyone showed up in their own way to support and cheer me on.

I remember the day I had to ask for help bringing my groceries into the house. I called my neighbor and asked if she was available. She thanked me for asking her and shared that she had wanted to help but didn’t know what to do.

The help came, because I was learning how to answer people when they asked me, “How can I help?”

Getting dressed…matching mother-daughter earrings…feeling well enough to go out to lunch…taking one son out to celebrate his birthday…my middle son visiting from out of state and celebrating the good news that my tumors had shrunk!

I still had a long road of treatment to go, but every win, every opportunity to celebrate, was vital. This diagnosis taught me that ALL of living is holy business. All the moments.

A friend asked me, “Are you in love with any of it?” It took me by surprise. He was referring to my cancer treatment. But then I asked myself, could I love any of this?

So I did a little free writing, tilting my kaleidoscope as I viewed my experience. I found my expression through poetry. And I found that yes, there was a love story here.

The side effects of chemo had ravaged my body— I’d lost my hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows—but it could not take away my spirit or the joyousness of the upcoming wedding. And boy, did we celebrate!

A lifelong friend flew out to be my plus one for the wedding and she helped me apply false eyelashes, draw on eyebrows, and accompany me to the venue.

I walked down the aisle on the arms of two of my sons and took my place on stage, in a chair that had been set up for me. When my daughter walked down the aisle on her dad’s arm, with a room full of family and friends and all the people we love, I was reminded why I was fighting to stick around. I only cried a little when officiating. No one seemed to notice.

Later, I danced my booty off, knowing full well I’d have plenty of time to rest later. There would be more chemo, surgery, and radiation ahead, but for that night, there was celebration and joy amid destruction and heartache. The dance of life.

In my Instagram post the night before my surgery, I asked for support.

“Hello Lovers…

Tomorrow I go under & under the knife—two firsts for me! My first anesthesia & surgery!

As it goes, there are some unknowns that will remain unknown until they get in there and have a look.

I had a mini meltdown considering the “what if’s” and the fact that I wouldn’t know until I woke up what the score was.

Fear was hovering outside the door of my heart and I tried to ignore it and remain “positive.” That doesn’t work! The more I suppressed and tried to ignore it, the more I could feel fear seeping through the cracks of the door, like a monster coming to get me.

I remembered something I had read from Thich Nhat Hanh about not running from fear, but instead taking time to recognize it, embrace it, and study it. So I sat on my meditation blanket and cracked the door to my heart open.

There was fear. I recognized it right away. Strangely, the simple act of looking at it disarmed it and me! I welcomed and embraced it like the scared-child part of me that it was. I sat there and cried with it, no longer trying to push it away. There I was, sitting on the floor with fear in my lap and it was not so scary anymore. The truth is, there’s nothing I can do to change what I have to go through…the fear of the unknown is part of it. It is part of life. To recognize mortality and all the unknowns that come with being alive and embrace it, strangely alchemized the fear from something I was trying to ignore, into a companion who truly ‘gets me.’

My request is prayer, reiki, good intentions and thoughts for the highest good to prevail, come what may…

One of the comments on the post read, “Arms outstretched from Brooklyn.” I was being held by so many people—even those I didn’t know. I could feel it.

Like my chemo treatment, surgery and radiation were definitely a means to an end—me, cancer free. They were harsh and left me with permanent scars, excruciating burns, exhaustion, pain, and disabilities that still persist. I experienced deep disappointment and unexpected outcomes.

The wonderful part is that I am still here four years later, cancer free, strong, and healthy. I am so grateful for this.

My journey through cancer treatment has changed me—body, soul, and spirit. Each day I have the choice of how I am going to approach this life that has been spared. We’re never done until we are.