two very different ways through treatment and what they found helpful:

This was brought to you by


Samantha May

Head of Patient Support Services



The Hepatitis C Trust

27 Crosby Row,

London SE1 3YD

Telephone: 020 7089 6220

Fax: 020 7089 6201



Helpline: 0845 223 4424

(from 10.30 - 16.30pm Monday to Friday, all calls are confidential)

Web: www.hepctrust.org.uk

Doing treatment for hep C is not as
simple as just “taking the medicine”.
The long process and commitment
involved, the physical and
psychological side effects the drugs
cause and the adaptations we have
to make to our lives with no
guarantee of a “cure” at the end can
often draw out both strengths and
vulnerabilities we may not have been
previously in touch with. Many of us
find we go through personal changes
on a deep level that we might not
have expected and which we might
not be prepared for – especially if we
don’t have different forms of support
available to us.
Two of our Patient Association
members kindly took the time to write
in to share their two very different ways
through treatment and what they found
helpful:
The first describes how he had found yoga
beneficial to supporting him through treatment
“In writing this account of my experiences of
going through interferon treatment I wondered
whether I should refrain from revealing myself as
a yoga teacher (at the time of writing I am taking
a break from teaching). There were several
reasons why I might not reveal this. I do not
want to set myself up as an ‘expert’. I am a
fellow sufferer in the broadest sense of the word
and do not think myself in any way an expert on
the subject of either yoga or hepatitis C.
However, teaching yoga was central to my
journey and helped me face the challenges of
interferon treatment. As such I share my
experience with the benefit of training in a
discipline that supported me through a process
that was often challenging. What I do have is
some experience of bringing yoga into my life in
periods of distress. Periods of difficulty recur in
my life for various different reasons postinterferon
treatment. I am not beyond suffering
in its myriad forms. What yoga practice brings is
what I might call a ‘holding vessel’ for my
experiences of life. To discover this one might
simply chuck out all conceptions of yoga and
plough in.
Around 7 years ago I discovered that I had
hepatitis C, genotype 1a. My positive
diagnosis came as no surprise to me, since I had
been an injecting drug user during my teenage
years and into my early twenties, in which time I
regularly shared needles. Although I wasn’t
surprised by my diagnosis I was bewildered as to
how it might affect my future, and how I should
deal with it in the meantime.
Since then I have been a practicing yoga teacher
for over five years. I first discovered yoga in my
late teens, although it took time to embed in my
life. The practice helped me emerge from chronic
drug addiction, and around five years ago
supported me through a one year course of
treatment. At the same time as I was going
through the harsh regime of treatment I had
started to teach yoga, and had completed my
professional teacher training course. The course
itself was a great support as it gave me
something to focus on, a community of support
and a way of interpreting my experiences. This
positive experience did not though detract from
the daily grind of being on treatment and finding
new ways to deal effectively with the side effects.
Here I can only give an outline of my experiences
with yoga, hep C and interferon treatment. What
I wish to convey is some sense of how yoga can
be applied to others with hepatitis C, and in
particular those on treatment. My outline of the
practice is based on personal experience,
although as a teacher I have seen many people
in a variety of circumstances benefit from yoga,
including those with other chronic disorders.
The yoga tradition encompasses a variety of
practices, including: meditation, chanting,
physical exercise, work and study. There is one
common thread through all these diverse
practices - they all ask us to be attentive to what
shows up in our life in the here and now, and
drop into the very heart of our lives. Many of us,
including myself, have wished we were
elsewhere, doing something else, having a
different experience or wondering why this or
that is happening to me. The practice of yoga
guides us into the very fabric of our life here and
now so that we can respond to our situation,
even one of illness, with creativity and
openness. In my experience this is not a linear
experience from illness to perfect well-being, but
an unfolding dynamic process that always throws
up new challenges.
My experience of being on treatment was
something I really had to work with on a daily
basis. There was no way round that for me as I
experienced a variety of physiological changes to
my ordinary bodily rhythms. I often felt anxious,
breathless, suffered from fatigue and
experienced flu like symptoms, insomnia, and
perhaps worst of all a feeling of being rather
u s e l e s s ,
b e c a u s e
everything was such
an effort. In these
times of stress the mind
can play all sorts of
tricks, making it very difficult to retain a positive
outlook. Yoga, you may be glad to hear, doesn’t
so much ask us to try and be positive, as ask us
to observe, to be aware in a non-judgmental way
of our actual lived experience, while cultivating a
kindness to the suffering body/mind. This is a
radical approach because we are not trying to
initiate change through willed effort but rather by
allowing change and transformation to occur
through the practice of letting-go and letting
things be.
This is not easy for anyone, and in particular this
is not easy for someone who might be worried
about their long-term health. That is why yoga
has a range of practices that we can engage in
over time, enabling us to deepen into the lettinggo
process. It is worth bearing in mind that this
is truly a process, and requires the person
suffering to reframe their illness. In practice
this might mean understanding how we can have
a chronic diagnosis that is long-term and have an
experience of wellness within that. This might
seem like a contradiction, but if we look closely
at the way we frame illness it may be noticeable
how a sense of well-being can arise out of the
non-identification with that frame of reference.
This practice does not negate the illness story,
or the often difficult facts of being unwell. What
it enables a person to do is experience another
aspect of illness, its other face, if you like.
During treatment I developed a restorative
practice based on the needs of my body/mind at
that time. I found that treatment made me
breathe in gasps, my joints and muscles often
ached, I was anxious (probably because my
breathing pattern had been disrupted), my body
temperature fluctuated wildly, and I often
couldn’t sleep for nights on end. Yoga became
my daily companion, and with hindsight
deepened my understanding of body/mind and
the practice of yoga itself.
In my own process of coming to terms with longterm
chronic liver disease I steered away from
the medical profession after the intense period
of inter feron treatment. I wanted to recontextualise
my experience and discover new
ways of relating to body/mind. The journey thus
far has been rewarding, and is far from over and
does not mean that I will not re-engage with the
medical profession at some time. What I
realised for myself is that illness is very much
part and parcel of everyday life. The
challenge has been to maintain a
sense of continuity, to manage the
disruptions that illness can bring and
continue to re-discover forms of
practice that are helpful to the life
process. Hatha yoga is not a
panacea for all ills, and it functions
best as a long-term practice that
deepens over time alongside
other forms of ‘therapeutic work’.
Nor is it a substitute for medical
intervention, good nutrition or
being a member of a social body
that can support our process. It is
only by engaging with yoga as a
practice with wisdom that
wisdom is cultivated. I have also found
that the study of philosophy and psychotherapy is
a great vehicle towards insight. These forms of
practice are another facet to my story and part of
a continuous process into healing