Meditation During Chemo. It’s Not What You Think.
- ceallaigh1
- Mar 3
- 5 min read
Recently while in a session with a new client, she told me that her friend suggested she try meditation for her anxiety. She laughed a little when she said it. “I can barely sit through an infusion without crawling out of my skin,” she said. “Now someone wants me to sit still on purpose?”
I hear some version of this a lot when it comes to cancer and meditation, and every time, I say the same thing; meditation in general, but especially during chemo, does not look like what you think it looks like.
Most people think it is sitting cross-legged in a quiet room for an hour. But it is not that. It is also not clearing your mind. It is not even about being calm. Meditation looks many different ways, and can serve many purposes. During active cancer treatment, it is about giving your nervous system a short, deliberate break, even for two minutes, in the middle of a very challenging experience.
Why Meditation Can Help During Treatment
Chemotherapy puts your body in a sustained state of physiological stress. Your nervous system stays activated, sometimes for weeks at a time. That shows up as anxiety, sleeplessness, nausea, brain fog, and a general feeling of being disconnected from your own body. You are not imagining it. These are well-documented treatment effects.
Meditation, even very brief meditation (think 1–2 minutes), is one of the most studied non-pharmacological tools for addressing exactly this cluster of symptoms.
Mindfulness-based interventions have been studied in breast cancer populations for over two decades, and the evidence is strongest for short-term improvements in anxiety, stress, and depressive symptoms. A 2024 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials also found that mindfulness-based stress reduction may help reduce cancer-related fatigue in breast cancer patients undergoing treatment.
The benefits are often short-term. The effects on long-term outcomes like immune function are still being investigated. But here is the thing: during active treatment, short-term relief is not a small thing. It can be the difference between getting through a day and not.
How to Start Meditating During Chemo
During treatment, I start off by teaching meditation in tiny doses. One minute, sometimes two is a very accessible and safe feeling way to train your body and mind. The first goal I give patients with heightened alert states is to notice that they are breathing and let one exhale be a little longer than usual.
Here is what I recommend to patients who have never meditated before:
Start with noticing your hands. Place both palms flat on your thighs. Without changing anything, feel the warmth and texture of your hands, next notice the weight of your hands on your legs. You can close your eyes, or keep them open with a soft focus. Whatever feels best. I suggest trying both and approach everything with curiosity.
Next, just notice your breath. Continue to breathe normally for three breaths. Do not try to change anything. Just count them. One, two, three.
On the fourth breath, let the exhale extend, for just a beat longer than the inhale. Do this for five breaths.
Then stop. That is it. That is enough to create change in your nervous system, and a great way to start exercising the skill of meditation.
If your mind wanders (and it will, I promise. It does for everyone, including me) the moment you notice your mind wandered, just say the word “thinking” and bring your attention back to your hands or breath. Guess what? That act of noticing is the whole practice. Each attempt to come back is what creates the change.
When and Where to Practice
I tell patients to pick one consistent time or place rather than trying to meditate whenever they remember. In the end it really helps. I often refer to Pavlov’s Dog when it comes to time and place. It doesn’t matter when or where you choose, it’s just the consistency of it that makes a difference over time.
Some options that work well during treatment:
1. Right after an infusion starts. Once the nurse is finished setting up and has left the room, you have a bunch of time. Using it to practice a skill like meditation instead of doom scrolling can create massive change. I’ve seen it happen over and over. Believe it or not, I have some women who actually look forward to that time!
2. Before bed, even if insomnia has got you in its grip. I want you to remember that practicing meditation is not about effecting an outcome, like sleep, but rather it is about practicing letting your attention focus on the present moment. That in turn signals safety to the nervous system, and when your nervous system gets practice relaxing, sleep tends to be easier over time.
3. Now this one might seem counter intuitive, but it can help the nervous system once you’ve been practicing for a little while. During a wave of nausea or anxiety, one intentional breath and a long exhale gives your nervous system a brief signal that you are safe and can help mitigate symptoms. Research on brief breathwork interventions supports this. Even a single extended exhale activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the “rest and digest” system. It’s the counterbalance to the fight-or-flight response that chemotherapy keeps switched on. When you lengthen that exhale, you are literally tapping the brakes on your stress response, even if just for a moment.
Again, the key is frequency and consistency. Two minutes five times a week will do more for you than one twenty-minute session you never get around to.
What If I Cannot Focus During Meditation?
Good news: you do not need to! “Chemobrain” is a real thing, and if your concentration is compromised, that’s ok. Most people have a hard time concentrating when they aren’t dealing with cancer and all that comes with it. The simple attempt to settle the mind is the goal. Just the attempt of it. Meditation during chemo is meant to be a sensory reset. If counting breaths is too much, try this instead: hold something cold (an ice cube, a chilled water bottle) and notice the sensation. That is a one-sense meditation.
Temperature, attention, 10 seconds. Done.
The Bigger Picture
In the research we are conducting at Jersey City Medical Center with RWJ Barnabas Health, we are studying how combining patient education with hands-on wellness practices affects quality of life during and after breast cancer treatment. Meditation is one treatment we are studying during active chemotherapy treatments. I hope that this helps you have an accessible, no-cost, portable piece of that research that you can start using, today. You just need to be willing to try two minutes and see what happens.
That is where it starts.
— Ceallaigh
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