Yoga events
Inner Dance Yoga Center, 2600 Far Hills Ave., Oakwood, is planning a free "Pink in the Park" yoga class from 10 to 11:15 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 10, at the Paw Paw Shelter in Five Rivers MetroParks' Hills and Dales Park. Donations will be accepted for the American Cancer Society's campaign "Making Strides Against Breast Cancer." More information is available at (937) 609-9642 or www.innerdanceyoga.com.
Practice Yoga, 504 E. Fifth St., will offer a mixed-level class in Vinyasa yoga, "Karma Yoga for Breast Cancer Awareness," from 5:45 to 7:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15. Donations will benefit Making Strides Against Breast Cancer / American Cancer Society.
At Practice Yoga, 504 E. Fifth St., Dayton, Kim Carter teaches classes on Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings, and Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights. More information is available at (937) 321-7676 or www.practiceyogadayton.com.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This article is part of our month-long focus on breast cancer. To learn more or find ways to help, go to our Pink Edition Page.
DAYTON — Kim Carter said she never wondered “Why me?” or lamented “Woe is me” after being diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2009.
Her repeated thought was this: “I don’t have time to be sick right now.”
Besides a full-time job in sales for IKON Office Solutions, she is co-owner of Practice Yoga, which she and Kathi Kizirnis opened in June 2008 and were still establishing when she received her life-altering news.
Slowed but not stopped, she has stayed busy through a mastectomy, range of other medical procedures and the debilitation of chemotherapy, which ended in mid-September.
“I’m on my way to becoming a normal person again,” she said during a talk in the window seats of the studio at 504 E. Fifth St. in the Oregon District before she had to dash out on a sales call.
Next will come reconstructive surgery, once her blood count returns to normal.
A former ballet dancer, Carter, 47, of Kettering, has practiced yoga for 15 years and teaches ashtanga, a notably vigorous variation of it.
She strives to be in tune with her body, which has provided her with sensations and experiences the past seven months she wouldn’t want to repeat for the most part.
She “noticed that something didn’t feel right” late last winter and found the lump in her right breast. “My body jar was broken. The vessel was no longer intact. All of a sudden, I had something inside of me that I wasn’t born with,” she said.
Following a mammogram, ultrasound procedure and a biopsy, “I wasn’t afraid of death. I felt like I was too busy to be sick,” she said. “The hardest part was always the sitting and waiting for the next step.”
Chemotherapy was the toughest.
“It shatters everything you know about your body. I wondered whether this is what it feels like when the body dies,” said Carter, who is a wife, mother of one and grandmother of two. Her daughter teaches yoga in Florida.
Like many former dancers, she doesn’t feel right if she doesn’t feel fit. “Physically and mentally, yoga seemed a natural progression from dancing. I try to live a yogic lifestyle,” which includes “truthfulness, spirituality, codes of behavior and ethics,” but also has a nutritional component. She has been a not quite strict vegetarian for 10 years.
Her body changed due to chemotherapy.
“It’s hard to accept. I have a middle-aged waist for the first time. The drugs kicked me into ovarian failure. My hormones are all over the place.”
She has heard the comments — taking all of that trouble with your health and fitness didn’t protect you.
“It’s like the runner who dies of a heart attack. The truth is that no system of fitness or diet is going to keep you from getting cancer. It’s just as true that my skills and the lifestyle I have developed have helped me cope with the emotional and physical trauma.”
Comments don’t bother her, she said.
What does is “having people look at me like they are feeling sorry for me,” she said. “I’ve been maintaining my full-time job. I’ve been doing my best to keep it as normal as possible. I have two very large closings this week. Those are things that keep you getting up in the morning.”
She wears a cap or a wig to cover her hair loss.
She has continued to do her yoga, but because of her loss of strength and energy, not yet with the dedication she exhibited before.
“Some days, all you can do is meditate in a seated posture, staying on the floor; nothing vigorous. I have saved my strength for my students,” she said.
She wonders if the cancer will return or show up in a different part of her body.
“What if I’m not here next year? Will I be thought of as a genuine person?” Carter asked.
“I want to discover what the second half of my life is going to be about. I may have another 30, 40 or 50 years. I want to be doing something that will make a difference. Everything else really is just small stuff.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or tmorris@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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