Mindfulness and Tai Chi Help Improve Fatigue and Pain After Cancer Treatment

Cancer survivors experiencing fatigue, pain and sleep problems after treatment may benefit from mindfulness or Tai Chi/Qigong programs, according to findings from the MATCH trial published in Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The study included 587 people who had completed primary cancer treatment and were experiencing at least moderate distress. Researchers evaluated two mind-body approaches: mindfulness-based cancer recovery (MBCR) and Tai Chi/Qigong (TCQ).

Compared with people placed on a waitlist, both programs improved fatigue and reduced how much pain interfered with participants' daily lives. TCQ also significantly improved sleep quality. The researchers did not find significant differences between MBCR and TCQ across the outcomes studied, meaning one approach was not shown to be better overall than the other.

How were mindfulness and Tai Chi studied in cancer survivors?

Participants were an average of 60.7 years old, and 75% were women. The study included people with several types and stages of cancer. Breast cancer was the most common previous diagnosis, accounting for approximately 41% of participants, followed by prostate and gastrointestinal cancers. About half of participants had stage 0 to 2 cancer.

Unlike a traditional clinical trial in which everyone is randomly assigned to an intervention, MATCH allowed participants to have a say in what they received. Of the 587 participants, 376 chose either MBCR or TCQ, while 211 agreed to be randomly assigned to one of the programs.

Participants were then randomly assigned to begin their program immediately or join a waitlist.

MBCR was a nine-week program adapted from mindfulness-based stress reduction for people with cancer. Participants attended weekly group sessions and were assigned 45 minutes of daily practice, including yoga and meditation.

TCQ incorporated slow, flowing movements with breathing, focused attention, body awareness and imagery. The program lasted 11 weeks and included weekly group sessions and home practice.

How did mindfulness and Tai Chi affect fatigue after cancer treatment?

Both programs significantly improved fatigue compared with the waitlist after researchers accounted for factors including age, sex, cancer stage and whether participants chose their intervention.

Fatigue scores improved by 3.66 points with MBCR and 3.42 points with TCQ.

The researchers noted that a change of three to four points on the fatigue scale used in the study is considered the minimum amount likely to make a meaningful difference for patients. Participants in both groups experienced improvements around that range, suggesting the changes could make a difference in day-to-day functioning.

Did the programs help with pain?

Researchers found an important difference between how severe participants' pain felt and how much that pain interfered with their everyday lives.

Neither intervention significantly reduced pain severity. However, both significantly reduced pain interference compared with the waitlist.

Pain interference improved by approximately 1.1 points with MBCR and 1.5 points with TCQ after researchers accounted for other factors.

A one-point change on the pain measure used in the trial is considered clinically meaningful. The researchers described the improvements in pain interference as small to moderate but clinically meaningful.

In other words, participants did not necessarily experience a major reduction in how intense their pain felt. Instead, the programs appeared to reduce how much pain affected their activities and daily lives.

What did the study find about sleep?

TCQ was also associated with significantly better sleep quality.

Compared with the waitlist, TCQ improved sleep scores by approximately 1.9 points after researchers adjusted for age, sex, cancer stage and whether participants chose their intervention. MBCR also showed improvement in sleep scores, but the difference compared with the waitlist was not statistically significant.

The researchers noted that a change of approximately 2.5 to three points on the sleep scale used in the study is generally considered clinically meaningful. Participants in the study also began with only mildly poor sleep and were not specifically enrolled because they had insomnia or severe sleep problems, which may have limited how much improvement could be seen.

Does it matter which program patients choose?

One question researchers wanted to answer was whether people might benefit more if they were able to choose the mind-body program they preferred.

The study did not find that choosing a program led to better outcomes.

Whether participants chose MBCR or TCQ or were randomly assigned to one did not significantly affect changes in sleep, fatigue or pain. Instead, receiving one of the interventions rather than remaining on the waitlist was the factor consistently associated with improvement.

Researchers also found that improvements in sleep, fatigue and pain interference were related to one another. The associations were mild to moderate, suggesting these symptoms may be interconnected.

The findings support further research into whether addressing several symptoms together could help cancer survivors rather than approaching sleep problems, fatigue and pain separately.

The researchers cautioned that sleep, fatigue and pain were secondary outcomes of the MATCH trial and that the analysis involved multiple statistical comparisons. This increases the possibility that some statistically significant findings could have occurred by chance. The authors noted that the findings should therefore be interpreted based on the overall pattern of results, effect sizes and confidence intervals.

References

1. Ma Y, Carlson LE, Jones JM, et al. Mindfulness and Tai Chi for sleep, fatigue, and pain in distressed people after cancer treatment: a partially randomized patient-preference comparative effectiveness trial. Journal of Clinical Oncology. Published September 16, 2026. doi:10.1200/JCO-25-01967.

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don't forget to subscribe to CURE®'s newsletters here.