Kelly Inselmann

Kelly Inselmann has worked as a Psychotherapist and Yoga Teacher integrating the practices of therapy and yoga through her clinical work for 15 years. She has extensive training in individual and group psychotherapy. Prior to beginning her private practice in 1998, she worked with trauma victims through a variety of non-profit and local government agencies. As a yoga teacher she holds both a 500 Hour Yoga Teacher Certification and an International 200 Hour Kundalini Yoga Teacher Certification, and she has been a Yoga Alliance member since 2002. In addition, she is a registered Yoga Therapist (500 level). She is the founder of the Yoga and Talk™ therapy model and has offered group programs since 2002 to a variety of demographic groups including adolescent girls, adult women, children in the schools, people in recovery, and cancer survivors. Kelly lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and daughter.

Do you AVOID or do you OBSESS?

December 9, 2024November 29, 2024 by Kelly Inselmann

This is a trick question. Both have real benefits and both can lead you into dark places of isolation or overwhelm.

Even when the immediate danger is over, you can get stuck in what helped you survive a trauma or challenge.

How to get unstuck?

This is where my 6 Steps for Emotional Healing after Cancer (and any trauma) come in.

Avoiding and obsessing are psychological defense mechanisms used in difficult emotional experiences.

To keep reading, consider being a JoyBoots subscriber.

Joy Boots for Cancer Survivors

Encouragement, companionship, community and support for cancer survivors.

Finding Resilience in Uncertain Times

December 9, 2024November 24, 2024 by Kelly Inselmann

If you are a cancer survivor, you are used to living with uncertainty. But I’ve been hearing from so many people that the last few months have been even more difficult because of societal strife, stress, and fears about the future.

It’s the truth that things feel and are less predictable.

I don’t know how to fix it, but I do know I’m continuing to turn to my 6 Principles for Emotional Healing and Resilience.

They are not linear, but you do always have to start with getting real about what you are facing if you want to heal. (Scroll to the end for an exerpt from Step One in Healing Well).

Whether it’s contending with cancer or fearing for democracy (or any of the many other challenges of modern life), resilience lies in community, connection, and self expression (as well as the 3 Ms you learn in yoga-Movement, Mindful Awareness, and Meditation).

With things in our society seeming so disorganized, I’m making it my goal to contribute in the small ways that I can.

To keep reading, consider being a JoyBoots subscriber.

Joy Boots for Cancer Survivors

Encouragement, companionship, community and support for cancer survivors.

Ten Ways The Recent Election Is Like Being Diagnosed with Cancer

December 9, 2024November 14, 2024 by Kelly Inselmann

The biopsy came back and the news is not good.

Here are 10 things the election and a cancer diagnosis have in common:

You hope for the best, fear the worst, can’t actually imagine it happening, and then it’s even worse that you thought.
So much is beyond your control and you feel powerless to fix it.
You keep forgetting, like when you are asleep. Then you wake up and there are a few moments before you remember. And then it’s like waking up into a nightmare.
People don’t respond how you might have expected. Some will disappoint or hurt you in their failure to empathize. Some will surprise you with their kindness by reaching out.
You will need social support and connection.
After the shock, when it sinks in, you will need to express your thoughts and feelings, not keep them inside to fester.
Grief is natural and inevitable. So is anger. Let it out.
You may get caught in anticipatory grief or fear. Do not dwell there. Find ways to appreciate and feel safe in the present moment.
While you cannot fix the entire problem alone (I mean, only a crazy person would suggest that you can), there will be many things you can do to strengthen yourself and help others. Be proactive.
Put your JoyBoots on. We have work to do and fun to have!

To keep reading, consider being a JoyBoots subscriber.

Joy Boots for Cancer Survivors

Encouragement, companionship, community and support for cancer survivors.

Jumping out of your skin?

December 9, 2024October 27, 2024 by Kelly Inselmann

This week, I came across a talk I gave to the International Association of Yoga Therapists on the subject of Discomfort. There’s ALOT of discomfort in the cancer experience that normal coping strategies simply do not address. And I’ve been hearing from JoyBooters that the election season has people more stressed than ever.

Listen to my Talk from 2018 about Discomfort and the ways that Getting Grounded, Becoming the Observer/Witness to your Experience, and Allowing Things to BE just as they are can help you contend with it. Even learn to Befriend it.

I feel even more strongly that this is what I need to focus on for my own mental and physical health at the moment.

I do a simple yoga and breath work practice to discharge tension and anxiety, as well as to build back energy and courage. These also help me access my neutral mind where I can rest and become the observer which helps put things into perspective so I CAN enjoy the present moment.

Being in the NOW is easier with practice, designated spaces, and community. You have to be willing to show up for yourself and others.

To keep reading, consider being a JoyBoots subscriber.

Joy Boots for Cancer Survivors

Encouragement, companionship, community and support for cancer survivors.

Election Season? Back to Basics Yoga

October 25, 2024October 20, 2024 by Kelly Inselmann

About 10 days ago, something happened to a loved one that scared and shocked me. It was a life or death situation and I was far away.

The good news is they are perfectly fine, but I didn’t know that for about seven hours, one of which I was driving in the dark to the hospital.

I’m not sharing the details for this person’s privacy. But I will talk about how it affected me! It took me right back to some of my worst moments and memories.

You know those times when you are in fight or flight mode and can’t even articulate a thought?

Once it was over, and I knew they were safe, I found myself frozen. I couldn’t talk about it for several days and I mostly felt numb.

In a short period of time, it really mirrored every other experience I’d had with great fear and loss (or the possibility of it).

Moving my body helped. I forced myself to take some short walks, stretch, and even made it to swim laps.

I tracked how out-of-my-body-and-mind I felt.

What pulls us away from being present?

Fear of loss, fear of what’s around the corner.

Now that things have evened out in my life for the moment, I’m back to recognizing other ways and reasons I abandon myself in the present moment.

I have fear about the election. Along with a host of other feelings: sadness, anger, hope.

And in addition to the election, I know JoyBooters who are contending with cancer or with loved one’s illnesses, or any of life’s other curveballs, are managing some sort of fear.

To keep reading, consider being a JoyBoots subscriber.

Joy Boots for Cancer Survivors

Encouragement, companionship, community and support for cancer survivors.

Step One: Dealing with Reality

October 25, 2024September 30, 2024 by Kelly Inselmann

Or for Gen Xers like me: Reality Bites

Reality is always getting in the way of my plans. The most common example I struggle with is being on time for things. Having a child definitely has made me late alot but her desire to arrive a few minutes early everywhere is teaching me that time can be managed and lateness avoided.

Reality is always there waiting for you to be ready to see it.

“You have to deal with reality or reality will deal with you at the LCM”, said Dr. Robert Svoboda, Ayurvedic Physician and Author, to a group of 80 students at a yoga training in Austin in 2010.

There was silence in the room as people listened and pondered for a few moments.

Finally someone asked, “What’s the LCM?”

“Least Convenient Moment,” he said.

I cracked up along with others in the group. Touche.

Or as my 16-year-old daughter would say: #facts.

Being diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer when my daughter was 2-months-old was definitely the least convenient moment for me.

But is any moment convenient to learn you have a life threatening illness or that your loved one does?

To keep reading, consider being a JoyBoots subscriber.

Joy Boots for Cancer Survivors

Encouragement, companionship, community and support for cancer survivors.

Feeling Moody?

October 25, 2024September 27, 2024 by Kelly Inselmann

Mental health is an essential aspect of overall well-being. The experience of a cancer diagnosis and its treatment can lead to various emotional and psychological challenges.

Here are some key points to consider:

1. Emotional Impact

– Diagnosis Shock: Receiving a cancer diagnosis can lead to shock, fear, and anxiety. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed.

– Mood Changes: Patients may experience sadness, anger, or frustration throughout their journey.

2. Common Mental Health Issues

– Depression: Feelings of hopelessness or persistent sadness can arise due to the stress of the illness and its treatment.

– Anxiety: Worry about treatment outcomes, finances, and the future can cause significant anxiety.

– PTSD: You may develop post-traumatic stress disorder, especially if you experience a traumatic diagnosis or treatment process.

How to Cope?

Engage with family, friends, and support groups. Look into counseling, therapy, or support groups specific to cancer.

Practices such as meditation, yoga, and deep-breathing exercises can help manage stress.

To keep reading, consider being a JoyBoots subscriber.

Joy Boots for Cancer Survivors

Encouragement, companionship, community and support for cancer survivors.

Step One: Being Honest with Yourself about Cancer’s Impact

October 25, 2024September 16, 2024 by Kelly Inselmann

Before you can heal, you have to get real with yourself about what’s wrong.

Seventeen years later, my life is still affected by the experience of cancer. This may not be true for a small portion of people diagnosed, those who are fortunate enough to recover quickly with little medical intervention, but in my experience as a survivor, caregiver/spouse, psychotherapist and yoga therapist who has worked with cancer survivors professionally, most people face an intense reckoning with themselves and with everything they know to be true.

First of all, your body has revealed its essential vulnerability. I was a vegetarian, yoga practitioner, meditator and therapist. And if I say I was shocked by my diagnosis, that would be a huge understatement. Honestly, I didn’t even know what cancer was. It was that far off my radar. I had to Google “what is cancer” to find out it’s rogue cells trying to make you sick, getting together to form tumors.

In my case, my brain was immediately hijacked and I was in a state of fight/flight. Having a 2 month old baby and being a first time mother made me even less emotionally stable with hormones surging and sleep deprivation already in play, along with my heightened terror of leaving my baby without her mother.

One year later, I was finished with active treatment that had included chemotherapy, a clinical trial, surgery and radiation.

And a new phase of emotional recovery was going to be necessary.

To keep reading, consider being a JoyBoots subscriber.

Joy Boots for Cancer Survivors

Encouragement, companionship, community and support for cancer survivors.

Are you fighting to quickly put yourself back in the same environment you were in when you got sick?

October 25, 2024May 6, 2024 by Kelly Inselmann

Should you be fighting to quickly put yourself back in the same environment you were in when you got sick?

Talaya Dendy, Cancer Doula and Podcaster, posed this question in our recent conversation about helping people move forward after cancer.

We talked about how traumatic the cancer experience is and how so many people are not getting the support they need.

It’s important to slow down and reflect and use the opportunity of diagnosis to think more deeply about what you want from the rest of your life.

But this can be hard to do when you are stuck in a trauma response! Why?

Because in trauma, your nervous system gets stuck in fight/flight/freeze.

When you were first diagnosed, how did you react? Did you get angry at doctors who didn’t catch the cancer and write them multiple letters, as I did (fight)? Did you miss appointments, avoid discussing the diagnosis and refuse to share with anyone (flight). Did your response change as time went on?

When you get stuck in fight/flight/freeze is when the problems can start including symptoms like:

Rumination (thinking about the same thing over and over)
Avoidance (of activities, people, feelings)
Feeling numb (inability to feel much of anything- anger, love, hope)
Difficulty thinking clearly or making decisions
Depression
Anxiety
Insomnia
Irritability

Talaya and I also talked about how trauma from earlier in your life prior to cancer impacts people in treatment. As cancer therapists, we are not solely focused on the immediate cancer experience, but the WHOLE person and the experiences that have brought them to where they are today.

To keep reading, consider being a JoyBoots subscriber.

Joy Boots for Cancer Survivors

Encouragement, companionship, community and support for cancer survivors.

How does yoga help the healing process?

April 2, 2024March 11, 2024 by Kelly Inselmann

When you step into a yoga practice that is really attuned to your physical and emotional needs, you feel safe, you can deeply relax, and the mind can go into a neutral space to interrupt usual patterns of worried thinking or self judgment.

In order to heal there has to be a moment of neutrality, an opportunity to become the observer of your experience instead of thinking you can control everything.

Yoga allows people to observe how much pressure they put on themselves and experiment with letting it go, even if just for the duration of the class. It helps them move their bodies to discharge anger, fear and pain.

Kundalini Yoga is known as the yoga of awareness and uses movement, breath work, mantra, and meditation to help you connect to your body, mind, energy and true Self.

“For some people in class, this is the first time they have tried yoga, but they are with a tribe of others who have walked through fire. To be in that environment and to know your teacher and fellow students know what it’s like and are still doing the practices together and rejoicing is powerful.”

~ Judy, Program Participant