There’s a yoga program at a major cancer center in Kentucky. It’s free. It’s fully funded. It’s located on the third floor of the main clinic building — right where most patients receive their treatment.
And many of the patients who need it most have no idea it exists.
At the 51st Annual Oncology Nursing Society Congress in 2026, advanced practice provider Leah R. Yeager, DNP, APRN, FNP-C, described exactly this situation at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Her observation was pointed and important: the barrier wasn’t cost, wasn’t location, wasn’t availability. The barrier was knowledge.
The solution she identified was equally direct: improved internal marketing and awareness resources across the entire institution, ensuring patients can access supportive care with no added financial burden.
This Is Not an Isolated Story
If you work in oncology yoga — or if you’re a cancer patient or survivor who has ever had to find your own way to a supportive care resource — Yeager’s account will feel familiar.
Across the yoga4cancer network of more than 3,000 certified Oncology Yoga teachers in 39 countries, this is one of the most consistent experiences our teachers report: programs exist, space is available, teachers are trained and ready — and still, patients don’t come. Not because they don’t want to. Because no one told them it was there.
The knowledge gap in oncology supportive care is one of the most underaddressed problems in cancer treatment today. And it has real consequences.
What the Gap Actually Costs
When a patient doesn’t know that Oncology Yoga is available to them — whether through their cancer center, a community program, or a certified teacher nearby — they miss something that the evidence increasingly shows matters.
Research supports yoga for cancer patients and survivors across multiple outcomes: reduced fatigue, improved sleep, decreased anxiety and depression, better immune function, and improved quality of life. Leading organizations including the American Cancer Society, the American College of Sports Medicine, and the Society for Integrative Oncology now recommend regular, appropriate movement — including yoga — as a clinical component of cancer recovery. Not as optional. Not as complementary in the peripheral sense. As a standard of care.
The guideline is 150 minutes of moderate movement per week. Most cancer patients and survivors are not meeting it. And one of the primary reasons is that they don’t know where to start — or that specialized, safe support exists at all.
This is not a new observation. yoga4cancer identified institutional barriers to access as one of the central challenges facing the field in its 2018 white paper — Yoga Interventions for Cancer Patients and Survivors, endorsed by oncologists. Eight years later, the problem remains largely unsolved. What has changed is the weight of evidence behind it.
What the Research Now Confirms
Yeager’s clinical observation is now supported by a growing body of peer-reviewed literature.
A 2024 editorial in Cureus — “Overcoming Barriers to Yoga Implementation in Cancer Care” — identified the same barriers systemically across oncology care: limited access and availability, skepticism among healthcare providers, and a lack of standardized protocols. The authors called explicitly for yoga to move from an adjunctive therapy to a core component of comprehensive cancer care. That shift requires more than better signage on the third floor. It requires a change in referral culture.
A 2025 systematic review published in Healthcare added another dimension: fatigue, pain, and transportation are also documented barriers to in-person yoga access — which is why online delivery has become an increasingly important part of the solution. Certified teachers offering virtual sessions, and on-demand class libraries, are not just conveniences. They are access points that in-person programs alone cannot provide.
And a 2025 editorial on yoga and chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy noted that clinician skepticism, access challenges, and inconsistent research protocols continue to limit adoption — confirming that the problem Yeager described at the bedside level is consistent across specialties and settings.
The picture that emerges from this research is clear: the knowledge gap is systemic, documented, and solvable — but solving it requires deliberate action at multiple levels.
The Referral Gap
At the center of this problem is a referral gap.
Oncology teams are focused — necessarily and appropriately — on treatment. Getting patients through chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, and the complex management of side effects is demanding work. Supportive care services, even when they exist within the same institution, often don’t make it into the conversation.
This isn’t negligence. It’s bandwidth. And it’s a structural problem that requires a structural solution.
There is also a trust dimension. Clinicians who are unfamiliar with Oncology Yoga as a specialized field — distinct from general yoga — may hesitate to refer because they don’t know what they’re referring to, or whether it’s safe. This is precisely why teacher training and credentialing matters not just for patient safety, but for building the clinical confidence that generates referrals in the first place. A physician who understands that a yoga4cancer certified teacher has completed 75 hours of cancer-specific training — covering contraindications, side effect management, and clinical scope — is far more likely to make that referral than one who thinks of yoga as a generic wellness activity.
What Yeager identified at ONS 2026 is what yoga4cancer teachers encounter in practice every day: the connection between an available resource and the patient who needs it depends almost entirely on whether someone in the clinical team mentions it. When that mention doesn’t happen — and it often doesn’t — the program sits empty and the patient goes without.
What Needs to Change
A more systematic approach to integrating Oncology Yoga into the referral culture of cancer care requires action at three levels:
- Clinicians knowing what’s available. Oncology nurses, navigators, social workers, and physicians need to know that certified Oncology Yoga programs exist — in their institution, in their community, and online — and feel confident recommending them. Clinician skepticism is a documented barrier. Addressing it requires credible outreach, relationship-building, and materials that speak the language of evidence-based medicine.
- Patients knowing to ask. Cancer patients and survivors should know they are entitled to ask their care team: “Is there an Oncology Yoga program here? Can you refer me to a certified teacher?” Awareness is the first step to access. Many people don’t ask because they don’t know the question is worth asking.
- Teachers being equipped to advocate. Certified Oncology Yoga teachers working in or alongside clinical settings need the tools to communicate their value to medical teams — not just to patients. That means understanding how to speak the language of integrative oncology, how to position yoga within a clinical framework, and how to build the relationships that generate referrals over time.
What yoga4cancer Is Building
This is a problem yoga4cancer is committed to addressing directly.
Our global network of certified teachers is uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between clinical teams and the patients who need specialized movement support. But positioning requires preparation — and we are developing resources to help our teachers do exactly that: build referral relationships with oncologists, nurses, and navigators; communicate their qualifications credibly in clinical settings; and ensure that when a patient asks their care team about movement support, a yoga4cancer certified teacher is the answer they receive.
In the meantime, if you are a cancer patient or survivor: ask. Ask your oncologist. Ask your nurse. Ask your navigator. The program may already exist — and the only thing standing between you and it may be a single conversation.
And if you are a clinician reading this: your patients are looking for ways to actively support their own recovery. The evidence is there. The teachers are trained. The programs exist. The referral is the bridge.
The Bottom Line
A free, funded, fully accessible yoga program — invisible to the patients it was built to serve. That’s not a resource problem. That’s a knowledge problem.
And knowledge problems have solutions.
yoga4cancer has trained more than 3,000 certified Oncology Yoga teachers across 39 countries. To find a certified teacher near you — or to learn more about bringing Oncology Yoga into your institution — visit yoga4cancer.com/find-a-teacher.
