Jonna Kjellberg is a physiotherapist and yoga teacher who leads mediyoga courses as rehabilitation for cancer patients in Region Östergötland with the help of stimulus funding from RCC. Patients can participate either in person at RCC Sydöst's premises in Linköping, or participate digitally via a link.
Media yoga is a gentle and therapeutic form of yoga, designed for the healthcare sector. It focuses on practising mindfulness and slowing down the stress system. Media yoga can be practised on a chair or on a mat and all exercises can be adapted to your own ability.
On Tuesday 18 October, Jonna Kjellberg and Frida Forsberg, who is a process manager in cancer rehabilitation at Region Östergötland, participated in a national webinar where they talked about their experiences of offering yoga digitally in Region Östergötland.
- The advantages of being able to participate digitally are several. Firstly, patients can participate regardless of where they live, and secondly, patients with low immune systems, or others who are just having a bad day, can participate," says Jonna Kjellberg.
Each patient can participate 10 times, once a week. The groups are mixed with patients who have different cancer diagnoses. The patients who have participated so far are from oncology, haematology and urology. There are plans to include patients from pulmonary medicine as well.
For some patient groups, digital presence is the only option
Jonna also runs a separate mediyoga course for patients in the haematology department who need to be completely isolated. Because of this, that course is only performed digitally, and it is fully adapted to be performed sitting down.
One difficulty with the digital yoga has been to find a digital platform that fulfils IT security and confidentiality requirements and works well enough technically, so that participants do not risk being 'kicked out' of the session in the middle of the session. Work is still ongoing to find the best solution.
- "It's a little harder to keep track of whether participants are doing the right thing when they participate digitally, and there's not quite the same sense of community. But it is an important complement," says Jonna Kjellberg.
Yoga activities for cancer patients in Region Österghötland are run as a project and will now be evaluated. The ambition is to be able to expand the concept to the entire south-eastern healthcare region in some form.
