An analysis of thoracic and abdominal tumour motion for stereotactic body radiotherapy patients was performed using more than 70 h of tumour motion estimated from the correlation between the external and internal motion for 143 treatment fractions in 42 patients. The tumour sites included lungs (30 patients) and retroperitoneum (12 patients). The overall mean respiratory-induced peak-to-trough distance was 0.48 cm, with individual treatment fraction means ranging from 0.02 to 1.44 cm. The overall mean respiratory period was 3.8 s, with individual treatment fraction means ranging from 2.2 to 6.4 s. In 57 treatment fractions (40%), the mean respiratory-induced peak-to-trough distance was greater than 0.5 cm. In general, tumour motion was predominantly superior-inferior (60% of all the treatment fractions), while anterior-posterior and left-right motion were 22% and 18%, respectively. The motion was predominantly linear, and the overall mean of the first principal component was 94%. However, for motion magnitude, direction and linearity, large variations were observed from patient to patient, fraction to fraction and cycle to cycle.