As cancer warriors give back to their bodies, there’s one word that comes to Lena Milam’s mind — beautiful.

Milam is their leader. She is a volunteer yoga instructor at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge.

“I feel my inner warrior coming out, and that’s what I hope they feel too,” she said.

Milam knows firsthand what these patients and caretakers are going through. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017.

Her fight against cancer included four lumpectomies and three intensive weeks of radiation. She was a newly divorced mother to twins, who never took a break from work for treatment.

“It was, needless to say, pretty rough,” Milam said.

The Brooklynite credits her kids and her weekly yoga practice with pushing her through.

“It gave me this sense of peace and calm I couldn’t find anywhere else in my life,” Milam said.

A couple of years later, Milam became a yoga instructor herself. Her goal was to use that training to volunteer to help people still in the fight.

“I wanted to give the patients, cancer patients or their caregivers the same thing that yoga gave to me when I had cancer,” she said.

Now, Milam holds free classes every week for cancer patients and their caretakers. She modifies the moves if necessary.

“I really want to be sensitive to someone who is in pain if they’re trying downward facing dog and they’re struggling,” Milam said. “And I want them to know it’s really okay not to do the downward facing dog.”

“It relaxes everything,” Michelle Lowell, a colon cancer patient who was staying at the Hope Lodge, said. “If you can focus on stretching and calming the mind, it allows me to escape.”

It’s Milam’s way of giving back to people whose fight she remembers too well.

“I want to remind them that they are stronger than they think they are because that’s what got me through when I had cancer,” she said.

For giving cancer warriors a moment’s peace amidst their personal battles, Lena Milam is our New Yorker of the Week.