Madison's Yoga legend battling cancer

MADISON – An alternative treatment fund opened last week for Theresa Rowland, the 60-year-old grand dame of Studio Yoga who is battling ovarian cancer that has metastasized to her colon and liver.

After surgery last year at St. Barnabas Medical Center, Rowland endured six months of chemo treatments that ended in February, during which she lost her trademark thick, long gray braid of hair.

Even as she faces resuming chemo on Oct. 23, the soft-spoken teacher has not lost her serene nature or unswerving devotion to yoga that has, since the mid-1980s, drawn thousands of students up the long staircase of the James Building on Green Village Road to her school.

SEE PHOTOS:

"People have been so great, from my students who do healing work to the guy who cuts my hair," said Rowland, who was widowed in 2012 and has no children. "A student even cooks for me every Wednesday and it's enough for a couple of days. Still, I'm scared."

Her next chemo cocktail will include Gemcitabine, an anti-angiogenic, and Avastin. The potential side effects of the latter, which include bowel perforation, concern her most.

"There's also the prospect of being on chemo for life. That was upsetting," Rowland said. "I made it through the first six months of chemo with my own blood vessels. But for life, I think I'd have to have a port. How can your veins hold up? It would be nice to be living, but a port?"

Meanwhile, at Studio Yoga, Rowland has turned over her classes to other teachers and said she's found it satisfying to watch them all grow with the opportunity. The school specializes in Iyengar Yoga, a system of yoga that emphasizes alignment and precision in the practice of both postures and breathing, the latter known as pranayama.

Rowland has been active recently, though, in Studio Yoga's Back Care Clinic, a program for no more than six or seven students, each with some body issue, including but not limited to back, shoulder, and knee problems.

"I'm one of the teachers who volunteer to help her in working with these students," said Mike MacDonald, a Bridgewater yoga teacher who devotes his Friday nights to the clinic, which meets three times a week. "It's an amazing experience for everyone, including us teachers. We get to help others as well as a chance to work with a teacher as experienced as Theresa."

Rowland, who was introduced to yoga by her mother, has traveled seven times to the Iyengar Institute in Pune, India, to study yoga therapeutics. She has studied both with B.K.S. Iyengar, who died at age 95 in August, and his daughter, Geeta Iyengar.

According to MacDonald, Rowland always brings back what she learns to the whole Studio Yoga community.

"Theresa spends an hour assessing each student in the clinic and working up a specialized program," he added. "Then the teachers implement the program. It's an approach to healing that the students can't get anywhere else. She is always looking for ways to help students."

According to MacDonald, even during her own treatments, Rowland would say, "I thought of an idea to help this student. I know what would be good for that one."

"It's inspirational to all of us to watch her even now," MacDonald said. "Here's somebody who is suffering and still giving to everybody. This is not a hot yoga studio where healthy students come, work out, sweat, and feel good. Few people offer what Studio Yoga does."

Another teacher in the clinic, Alaka Palsole, said that recently one student had trouble holding a pose.

"We were giving all kinds of directions to improve the student's pose," Palsole said. "Then Theresa came in and took a look with her experienced eye. She said the problem was the sequence the student used to get into the pose. We had our correction! She is somebody who understands body mechanics as well as a body's readiness to achieve a pose."

These days, Rowland continues to apply the principles of Iyengar yoga in her own life. She described this type of yoga as perfect for baby boomers because it allows them to simultaneously challenge and take care of themselves.

"In Iyengar, you hold the poses longer and see what's going on in your body, mind, and emotions," she explained. "Hopefully, that leads to an appreciation for taking time and care in all you do, to live slower. In the end, yoga works with the mind."

Sandy Petkanics of New York City, a student at Studio Yoga for 12 years starting in 1999, said Rowland's classes had just that effect on her life.

"I'm Type A, never in the present, always on emotional ups and downs," Petkanics said, "but Theresa always brought a joyful disposition to her classes, where I found that space of peacefulness and quiet I needed. There's that space where the mind stops thinking, worrying, and obsessing, and I accessed the stillness in me that I never get to access. Using the tools she taught me, I can still go there."

Studio Yoga's traditional yoga class that takes place the day after Thanksgiving was always a favorite, said Petkanics, who added that, if such were possible, she'd nominate Rowland for a MacArthur Genius Grant.

"She is a genius in her art," Petkanics said, "because every hour of her day is dedicated to the study of yoga and the people she can help with it."

While recovering from her first chemo regimen, Rowland said, she followed the restorative cancer poses in "The Iyengar Yoga Cancer Book" by Lois Steinberg, who teaches at Studio Yoga every February. During her next bout with chemo, she will do so again.

"For sleeping, I did various yoga things," she said, "whereas maybe other people would have to take a pill. I can do pranayama or a certain asana (pose). There's also just knowing what to do for different symptoms, but, in the end, with chemo, you can't do anything about a lot of them. Half the time, I couldn't even get it together to pull out my sticky mat."

Some effects of chemo make it difficult for Rowland to work: Her mind won't be clear. Her gastrointestinal system will become upset. Neuropathy in her hands and feet can make some poses difficult to hold.

To start with, Iyengar yoga studios are lucky to break even, she said, and depend heavily on their directors giving out-of-town workshops, which Rowland always did. But now she doesn't have the strength to do that.

"So the studio is struggling even more than usual," she said. "We put my salary down as low as you're allowed to do if you own a business. That pays my mortgage and that's it. It doesn't pay anything else."

Also, the Affordable Care Act does not yet help her, as a small business owner, to get the kind of health coverage she needs to keep up with her medical bills. Lastly, the complexity of her situation has her looking at alternative treatments as well—from the CyberKnife, which are targeted radiation treatments, to Chinese medicine. They, too, are costly, and all of this comes at a time when her strength is failing her.

Throughout her life, Rowland said, she thought she'd be free from cancer because her lifestyle was so healthy. But she tested positive on genetic tests that indicate a predisposition to some cancers.

"My father's family—the whole side of the family—had cancer," Rowland said. "I got cancer much older than everybody else in my family. I have a lot of cousins who died awhile ago.

"I turned out to be BRCA2 positive," she added. "So I'm thinking genetic testing is a really good idea for people, especially when it's so obvious as it is with my family. It's so obvious. I wonder if some things might have been approached differently."

Looking back, she said, she displayed only two symptoms of ovarian cancer. First, the food she usually ate made her feel bad. Then came the pain, following a gynecological ultrasound, that started the cancer treatment journey.

Throughout the years, Studio Yoga has attracted many authentic teachers, including Swami Tadatmananda, a Sanskrit scholar who now heads the Arsha Bodha Center in Somerset.

"I am extremely sad to learn of Theresa' illness," he said. "She has been a tireless, steadfast source of yogic instruction to many students over the years who consider her a mentor, guide, guru, and friend. I pray that she recovers fully so she can continue to serve the yoga community for many years to come."

Lorraine Ash: 973-428-6660; lash@njpressmedia.com

Learn more

To give to Theresa's Alternative Treatment Fund, visit https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/2626/theresa-s-alternative-treatment-fund?utm_source=facebook