Can Mindfulness and Tai Chi Improve Cancer Recovery?
A University of Calgary study finds measurable benefits for fatigue, sleep and pain during cancer recovery.
Source: CBC News (Calgary) · by Bradley van Paridon · published September 26, 2026
In a world where there is a pill for everything, a Calgary-based researcher and psychologist is prescribing mindfulness and tai chi to tackle the persistent symptoms that linger long after cancer treatment ends.
Research shows benefits of a 'mind-body' approach
Research from the University of Calgary has found that mindfulness and tai chi can improve pain, fatigue and sleep during cancer recovery.
Linda Carlson is a professor in the department of oncology at the University of Calgary. Her work suggests that mindfulness techniques, together with the ancient practices of tai chi and qigong, help cancer patients manage pain and fatigue and improve their sleep quality.
Cancer and its treatments are varied — surgery, chemotherapy, radiation or hormone therapies, and often combinations of these. Despite that wide range of disease and treatment, several symptoms are common among patients in recovery.
"Some of the most common things that can persist months or even years post-treatment are things like fatigue, difficulty sleeping, pain, anxiety, depression," Carlson said. Those symptoms, she added, can be notoriously difficult to treat.
When a pill won't do
"The traditional approach is, there's a pill for that," Carlson said.
But for many people who are going through — or have just completed — cancer treatment, more medication is either not an option or unappealing.
"They've had enough medications. They don't want to take more," she said. "Sometimes the [medications] can interfere with treatments they might be having."
Some drugs for pain and sleep can also become addictive, and there is a psychological and social dimension that medication cannot address.
"A person is not just a body that you feed treatments and medication to," Carlson said.
There is an established connection between mind and body in cancer recovery, she said, because cancer is not just a "physical disease."
"It affects the family. It affects a person emotionally, psychologically, socially."
Add the anxiety and fear of recurrence and of death, and a person's mental state can directly affect their physical well-being.
A whole-body approach
Tackling cancer along emotional, social, psychological and physical dimensions is known as psychosocial oncology — an approach that has been around for decades, Carlson said. Mind-body practices are central to it.
Both mindfulness and tai chi combine breathing techniques with gentle movement. Mindfulness leans toward more analytical techniques such as self-reflection and group discussion, while tai chi focuses more on physical movement. Both, however, have physical and psychological effects.
Both affect the nervous system by down-regulating heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormones. Both relieve tension in muscles that may be exacerbating pain. And both help patients deal with anxiety by being more present in their lives, rather than letting dread or worry dominate them.
"Both have elements of mindfulness because you're focusing in on the breathing and the movement and that mind-body connection and not really dwelling on all the worries," Carlson said.
There are subtle differences, though. Using data from a large comparison study — mindfulness versus tai chi versus qigong versus patients doing neither — Carlson is teasing them apart.
"We thought that perhaps the mindfulness program would be more focused on stress reduction and those psychological outcomes, and the tai chi program might be better for some of the physical functioning, like balance and strength," she said. "What we're finding is that there's a little of that nuance, but generally they're both effective for most symptoms."
Pain intensity vs. pain interference
For the three specific symptoms of pain, fatigue and sleep, both approaches were effective, and both produced clinically meaningful improvements in fatigue — meaning the reported effects were not just statistically significant, but likely to translate into improvements in daily life.
Tai chi also improved sleep, and both approaches improved an aspect of pain known as interference.
"We know that the total amount of suffering that a person experiences from pain is the physical sensation, but it's multiplied by our resistance to it," Carlson said.
That resistance can be physical, such as tension, or psychological — the toll of living with chronic pain. Both reduce quality of life. Carlson examined pain intensity and how much pain interferes with day-to-day activities.
"We saw a small effect on pain intensity, but a larger effect on pain interference," she said. "So the way people approach their pain made it less of a problem for them."
10 years of positive reviews
Niki Fehr, program director with the non-profit cancer support foundation Wellspring Alberta, has seen the benefits first-hand. She said the organization has offered mindfulness-based cancer recovery and tai chi for years.
"Our programs have very high ratings," Fehr said, adding that the mindfulness program is regularly full. "It's a program that's consistently filled up over 10 years now, and it's not unusual for people to take it multiple times."
Having gone through cancer treatment herself, Fehr credits mindfulness breathing techniques with getting her through difficult moments such as radiation therapy.
"I took my visualization techniques into the radiation machines. When you're lying there and you can't have your phone with you, there's nothing else you can do. You have to be completely still and hold your breath for long periods of time," she said. "Those visualization techniques are what got me through."
Fehr is glad to see more research, because it can encourage new participants to give it a try.
"It's about getting people into the programs, people who historically may never have considered mindfulness as an option," she said.
Not a replacement for conventional care
Carlson also wants to encourage people to try these techniques, and stresses that they are not replacements for conventional medical approaches — they are designed to work in combination with them.
"It's integrating all these psychosocial and complementary therapies with your conventional care, and that can lead to the best outcomes," she said.
Because both show benefits, patients have the option to choose the methods that suit them best.
"Find a program, try it for yourself. If it works, great. If it doesn't, not much lost, right?" Carlson said.
Mindfulness programs have been offered since 1998, Carlson said, and are now available at the Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre.
Attribution: This page is a summary and adaptation of reporting by Bradley van Paridon, "Can mindfulness and tai chi improve cancer recovery? U of C study finds benefits," CBC News (Calgary), published September 26, 2026. All quotations are attributed to their original speakers. Read the original article on cbc.ca →