I made peace with death to stop being at war with life
Vázquez endured four surgeries and nearly a year of chemotherapy for metastatic colon cancer, facing severe physical and emotional challenges while raising three young children. She discovered that conventional yoga classes didn't address the specific needs of cancer patients, prompting her to train in oncology-informed yoga with adapted modifications.
- Diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer with lung metastasis at age 38
- Underwent four surgeries and nearly one year of chemotherapy between 2016 and 2021
- Mother of three young children at time of diagnosis
- Founded Tu Yoga Oncológico to teach cancer-adapted yoga to patients and survivors
Stage 4 colon cancer survivor Tristana Vázquez developed oncology-informed yoga after her own recovery, now leading a program to help other cancer patients integrate complementary wellness practices with medical treatment.
Tristana Vázquez was 38 years old when her body stopped answering her. For months, she moved through a fog of exhaustion, unexplained weight loss, and digestive pain that no doctor could quite name. She saw more than twenty specialists before the answer came: colon cancer, already advanced enough to have spread to her lungs. Stage 4. The kind of diagnosis that rewrites everything.
The path to that moment had been long and disorienting. She knew something was wrong—her body was telling her so, loudly—but the medical system moved slowly, and answers were scarce. When she finally ended up in the hospital with severe abdominal pain, the imaging revealed a tumor in her colon. Surgery removed it. Two months later, a PET scan showed the cancer had already traveled to her lungs. She was a mother of three young children. The fear that arrived with that second diagnosis was immediate and primal: her children might grow up without her.
What followed was five years of treatment that tested every part of her. Between 2016 and 2021, she underwent four surgeries. She endured nearly a year of chemotherapy, the kind that breaks you down in ways that are hard to describe to someone who hasn't lived it. There were days when the pain was so severe she found herself curled on the bathroom floor, unable to move, wondering whether the cancer or the cure would be what finally took her. She had moments of respite, but mostly she had moments of survival.
Vázquez was fortunate in one crucial way: she had medical coverage and the ability to choose her specialists. This meant she could participate in decisions about her own care, could ask questions, could push back. She knew this was not everyone's reality. A decade earlier, when she was diagnosed, the digital tools and support networks that exist now were barely there. Many people facing what she faced had far fewer resources, far less information, far less agency.
During treatment, she returned to something she had practiced before: yoga. But she quickly realized that standard yoga classes were not built for bodies like hers—bodies recovering from surgery, bodies moving through chemotherapy, bodies that needed gentleness and modification. She trained in oncology-informed yoga, a practice designed specifically for cancer patients. The difference was immediate. She felt physically stronger. She felt emotionally held. She felt understood in a way that mattered.
What began as a personal tool for survival became a calling. She founded Tu Yoga Oncológico, a program dedicated to bringing this adapted practice to other cancer patients and survivors. The work is rooted in a simple belief: that complementary wellness practices can work alongside medical treatment, that people can rebuild their relationship with their own bodies even after those bodies have betrayed them.
The deepest shift in Vázquez came not from the yoga itself, but from what the cancer forced her to reckon with. She made peace with death, she says, and in doing so, stopped being at war with life. She lives now in a state of gratitude, conscious of time, careful not to leave important things undone. To others receiving a cancer diagnosis, she offers this: your body is not your enemy. It is working for you, with you, doing everything it can to hold you up. Treat it with compassion. Treat it with strength. Treat it with love.
Notable Quotes
I felt like I was literally dying. My body wasn't responding to me.— Tristana Vázquez, describing her symptoms before diagnosis
The body works for, with, and through us. Rather than thinking we're at war, we should treat ourselves with compassion, strength, and love.— Tristana Vázquez, in her message to newly diagnosed cancer patients
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When you say you saw more than twenty specialists before getting a diagnosis, what were they actually looking for? What did they miss?
They were looking at symptoms in isolation—fatigue, weight loss, digestive problems—but not seeing them as a pattern pointing to something systemic. The body was speaking clearly, but the system wasn't listening in the right way. It took acute pain, the kind that sends you to an emergency room, to finally get imaging that showed what was actually happening.
You mention making peace with death. That's a phrase people use, but what does it actually mean in your daily life now?
It means I stopped living as if I had infinite time to figure things out. I stopped postponing conversations, experiences, decisions. It means I'm not constantly braced for catastrophe. There's a paradox in it—accepting that death is real made me more alive, not less.
The yoga you discovered wasn't just stretching and breathing. What made oncology-informed yoga different from what you'd done before?
Standard yoga assumes a certain baseline of physical capacity and doesn't account for surgical scars, for the way chemotherapy affects your nervous system, for the fact that some days your body simply won't do what it did yesterday. Oncology yoga meets you where you actually are, not where you're supposed to be.
You had three young children while going through this. How did you hold that together?
Honestly, some days I didn't. But I had to. That was the non-negotiable part. The fear of leaving them was sometimes the only thing that kept me moving forward, even when moving forward felt impossible.
Now you're teaching this practice to others. What do you see in them that reminds you of yourself?
The moment when they realize their body isn't the enemy. When they stop fighting it and start listening to it. That shift changes everything.