Rest can be so under valued in our culture, but it’s crucial for both emotional and physical healing.
Look for opportunities to seek a place of rest in your everyday life, a concept from The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach us about Living Fully.
1. Cutting edge research on survivorship if you have been treated for breast cancer in the past 5 years, are over 21 years of age, live in the U.S., and use a smartphone (you may be eligible to participate).
Contact my colleague, Ashley Hennegan, PhD, RN, FAAN, here.
2. Rakefet Laviolette, LPC Associate, is offering a new Group for Caregivers. Details can be found here.
The heat has been oppressive and sometimes it feels like it’s all you can do just to make it through the day. And if you or your loved one is in treatment for cancer, the stress and fatigue can magnify.
Recently, I listened to a podcast about the comparison trap and how we often measure our success, happiness, or status by seeing how we compare to others.
Is she still working through treatment and I’m not? Should I be on a vegan diet like certain influencers? Am I living my best life and enjoying every moment like the people I follow on social media who also have cancer?
Comparison isn’t always bad. It can be a tool for growth where you get new ideas, learn new skills, or access resources.
But it can also create misery, depending on whether you can hold onto your own worthiness no matter what it looks like others are doing and enjoying.
One takeaway for me was how as humans we have always needed one another to survive, but also how painful it can be when you don’t feel like you belong somewhere.
The amygdala, the primitive brain of fight/flight/freeze in response to perceived threat, gets so activated that you can end up in a state of constant anxiety and stress, even during the phases or moments in life where there is a break from difficulty.
A cancer diagnosis creates a fight/flight/freeze response in everyone it affects, from the patient to loved ones, doctors, or acquaintances.
The fight/flight/freeze response is automatic but you don’t want to get stuck there.
Last weekend, my JoyBoots Inner Circle Group, that has been meeting for years, got together for our first in person retreat. Talk about having so many activities that helped us relax out of fight/flight, stress, and anxiety!
We enjoyed the first bit of beautiful weather for practicing yoga and meditation outside, swimming, and looking at the stars. Our view was bucolic country farms and we breathed in the peaceful natural beauty and sounds. Our delicious, healthy meals were beautifully prepared and served.
We shared our feelings and goals, tears and memories. We acknowledged our weariness. We left with greater tenderness for one another and for ourselves.
We felt safe and nurtured and, I believe, a sense of belonging and understanding.
These are the rare antidotes to chronic stress, especially among cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers.
What are the ways you are showing tenderness this week, especially towards yourself? Can you reach out for more support if needed?
Over the years, I’ve received many messages from people who heard an interview I did with Dr. Ann Kelly (shared below) at Therapist Uncensored about how hard it is to heal after the trauma of having cancer. And I explain the six keys to unlocking the healing process.
In September, 2023, new classes, therapy groups, and an online course will begin to help you learn and practice skills based on these principles.
Be sure you are on the JoyBoots community mailing list so you know when they open up!
Cancer sucks, no way around it. If you have it, had it or are supporting someone who does, this episode will be nourishment for you by bringing your mind and body into the healing and recovery process for cancer and trauma is so important.
Fighting cancer is often traumatic physically, emotionally and relationally. Podcast host Dr. Ann Kelley joins therapist and Yoga Instructor Kelly Inselmann (LCSW, C-IAYT,CGP) as she shares her personal journey through cancer recovery and describes her passion and process in supporting others to find hope and healing while in this compromised state.
They discuss how modifying the six principles of emotional recovery into the basic principles of yoga can have an immense impact on well-being and recovery.
Each of us in the room resonates with a desire to feel free, spacious, and connected to a deeper pulse of life through our breathing and dancing. More than most, we know how fast time goes.
Check out “Melinda’s” update 8 years after her diagnosis for stage 3 breast cancer.
There is so much post traumatic growth in her life.
My first blog, Liberation Dance, describes how Melinda began trying new activities and moving her body in new, less inhibited ways to experience moments of joy.
After treatment, “Melinda” had the life goal of retiring and building a cottage on her good friend’s beautiful property out in the country.
She spent a year preparing her house for sale. To free herself up to live in a new world of her own making, she had to go through generations worth of memories, keepsakes and clutter. It was not easy.
But she did it!
A few years later, she lives in a custom built little casita. She shares that her mind is free to prioritize her own physical health, and connection to nature and gardens. The design of her home is all clean lines and consciously chosen pops of color and art.
What makes you feel free?
On my trip, I have felt free walking along the shore in Menorca, stopping where my intuition leads me to swim in the clear Mediterranean, even though I have to walk past people not feeling great about how I look in my bathing suit.
I am not deterred! The blue waters beckon.
My strength to walk alone in an unfamiliar place makes me feel free. My confidence of not worrying what other people think of me makes me feel free (and yes, I agree they aren’t paying attention anyway)
Being willing to take up space and share my experience makes me feel free.
When I was learning to meditate, after each session, I felt so much more mental clarity. That’s what has kept me going all these years later.
Even if my mind is full of (not so zen) thoughts, by the end I feel grounded and able to think through and organize my day.
The layers of distraction, memories, and anxiety are sliced through and I feel myself alive in the present moment.
In 2002, my close friend Anita Stoll and I began collaborating to create Yoga and Talk Therapy® groups, as yogis and psychotherapists. Before meeting to discuss creating and publicizing the groups, we would often meditate.
Afterward, as we went through our lists of “to do’s” we encouraged each other, especially if it was something that had been put off, to “Do it Now.” So that our goals and dreams could take form and not just fantasy.
We understood that the mental clarity gifted us a (time limited) opportunity to take action, unrestrained by distractions, self doubt, or a desire to procrastinate.
Could having cancer, facing great loss, or a life threatening illness or injury be clarifying? Can it help you ask for what you want and need more directly and be open to receive when your community or the universe gives to you?
I have found that facing the nearness of my own mortality, or a loved one’s, can have much the same effect of cutting through the day to dayness of my busy life. And the exclamation Do It Now rings in my ears.
Of course,there are plenty of times you feel foggy, from medical treatments, chemo, insomnia, fear, worry about family, grief (including anticipatory) at losing beloveds.
These feelings of anger, terror, grief, and loneliness are aspects of the cancer experience that my JoyBoots therapy groups attempt to acknowledge and address honestly. We have the belief and experience that speaking the truth about what you feel is powerful and allows for connection, meaning, and transformation.
The reality of fighting cancer, both as a patient and a loved one, is that it really sucks. It destoys your illusion of things “working out for the best”
And yet, most of us also find moments of insight, meaning, and even joy along the way. Through connection with who we love and care about and our own relationship (even if it’s a questioning) with God or the Infinite, however you may imagine this to Be.
With the Summer Solstice passing last week, comes the reminder that life is flowing and that everything is impermanent.
This can and will sadden us. And it doesn’t always have to.
Recently, as happens, I’ve faced the deaths of people I loved. One was a dear friend and another was a JoyBooter client. I learned and benefitted so much from my relationship with each of them.
And their loss changed my perspective.
Right now,
It’s a clarity that tells me to “Do it Now” and it cuts through my normal hesitations-both physical “Can i handle this?” And mental/emotional-“Can I really do this/have this/offer this?”
And right now I’m listening to the Do It Now and moving forward with it.
This includes today! This Monday my 15 year old daughter and I are traveling to Spain for a trip we dreamed up in the Spring. We are very excited and not allowing worry to hold us back.
“The reality is things may never be exactly the same. Be honest with yourself about what you are feeling and find community who allow you to show up just as you are” from the Healing Well Course.
This Wednesday on June 21, 2023 we have the last JoyBoots Yoga class of the summer. It’s been such a pleasure to reconnect with so many old friends and to meet new ones as well.
I will be away June 26-July 24, 2023. After the summer break, that’s when you can count on our weekly class continuing…
JoyBoots Yoga is unique in that we address, experientially through our practices, some of the more challenging aspects of living with cancer or after treatment. These are:
feeling gripped by fear (of recurrence, physical pain, our own mortality)
negative circular thinking that can’t be easily stopped
tension and stress you hold in your body
anger you pretend not to have (that comes out inadvertently)
desire to understand yourself and your precious path forward so you can make meaning of life
chance to deeply breathe and strengthen your relaxation response
feel more grounded and emotionally balanced
Being able to show up just as you are to find a seat for you at the table helps heal loneliness and isolation.
It’s hard to heal emotionally when you feel alone.
I’m excited to bring a variety of JoyBoots programs forward beginning the end of August.
My online therapeutic course, Healing Well: Reconnect to your Life After Cancer starts in September 2023 and will be available to take at your own pace.
By request, we will also have some In Person Workshop and Meet Up Opportunities beginning in the fall as well.
Please join the JoyBoots Community (free) or email me at kellyinselmanntherapy@gmail.com for more information or for an individual session.
As humans, we all face physical limitations related to being mortal and facing our own mortality is a realization that brings all kinds of feelings – fear, grief, anger, denial, acceptance. But just as we must face certain limitations related to our human existence, there is also the potential for limitless possibility.
How do we move through the world and keep taking action once we are so aware of our limitations, vulnerabilities and imperfections?
“We’re all so incredibly limited and yet there are ways that we string together and are almost unlimited as groups of people. It’s magic when that happens- when you all start pulling together and then you eradicate polio from the world, which we’re almost on the verge of doing.”
I love this wisdom from Dr. Atul Gawande where he describes how connection and community create a synergistic effect that gives us the feeling of growth and possibility, where creativity and new ideas emerge, and where we keep each other motivated and accountable to our missions in life. This is when the seemingly impossible can happen. As humans, we are all indeed imperfect, limited and uncertain of the future. When we lack connection we feel alone and more limited, but among a healthy community, we can help each other grow, expand, and heal.
If you’re not already a member of the Joy Boots for Cancer Survivors Facebook group, I hope you’ll join us right now. And if you know someone who could benefit from the healing powers of community, I hope you’ll share this post and ask them to subscribe.
Carmen expresses gratitude and appreciation so readily, for her friends, for our Wednesday yoga class, for each day. She can be found taking the bus around town and sharing her spiritual depth and wisdom with others.
Share a little bit about yourself: I was born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. I arrived in Austin, shortly before I turned 29. My hobbies are reading, writing, listening to music and taking walks in the park.
Share a little bit about your cancer experience. It was overwhelming! Until now I can’t explain how I could get ahead of such experience. I have no doubt that there is a Superior Force that watches over all of us! Cancer was a life teacher for me. My perspective of the things has changed for good, and also brought me many blessings. One of them, is that it has given me the opportunity to meet wonderful people who I otherwise would never have dreamed of knowing. From that time, I only remember the love I received!!
How has it benefited you to be part of the Joyboots community? A lot! The first yoga class in my whole life was the first class I had with Kelly, one week after I finished the medical treatments; and for me it was like an oasis after the storm.
What is your meditation practice like? I meditate in silence at least 10 minutes a day, 5 days a week. One day I do guided meditation for 25 minutes and on Sundays I do one hour of silence meditation.
How has yoga and meditation benefited you? To live in the Here & Now, focus on conscious breathing, calm anxiety & stress and above all, to understand that the health of my body depends on my emotional & spiritual balance.
What practices have benefited you the most? Yoga, meditation, Pilates, weights and walking. They complement one another.
What are you still struggling to cope with? My emotions!
What brings you moments of joy? Learning something new every day, watching the sunrise every morning, hearing my favorite song, meeting new people and counting my blessings.
What is something you’d like to share with the community to help them along their healing journey? Nobody is alone. We are all in this together.
WILD CARD:What is your favorite saying, quote or personal motto?
Gratitude!
If you wish to connect with Carmen, you may connect with her through email at carmen_cm@live.com.
“Everyone experiences fragmentation. But not everyone knows how to re-integrate and heal.”
Dr. Gurucharan Singh Khalsa
In the midst of treatment for cancer, I looked in the mirror and felt shocked at how changed I was on the outside. “This is me?” I had no hair, no eyebrows, pain and fatigue. Deep lines had appeared out of nowhere and there were dark circles under my eyes. I hadn’t spent much time in front of the mirror before, barely wearing makeup and not interested in the latest fashions. But now I did and I could see my soul.
When trauma occurs, you feel fragmented. Feelings get pushed aside in favor of survival. Parts of your experience are forgotten, the changes in your body create unfamiliar and unwelcome sensations. Your identity shifts as well as your sense of who you are.
As uncomfortable as it is, this fragmentation is a normal response to a traumatic, life threatening experience. The problem is that you don’t always get to re-integrate and integration is vital to healing.
In order to integrate, you have to acknowledge all aspects of your experience – changes in your body, relationships, undesirable memories, big feelings, and find ways to integrate them. When you’re integrated, you no longer feel numb, and have access to your emotions. You are more in charge of how you act and react and you can talk about your experience in a coherent way. What creates a feeling of integration when you’re fragmented?
Feeling truly seen, heard and witnessed by another person is one way. And personal reflection through meditation invites your inner witness. When you include others, they are your witness. When you are meditating and/or being the observer of your own experience, you are your own witness.
Movement that gets your circulation moving, balances your energy and the hemispheres of the brain is another way. Yoga practice can also balance and integrate the functions of the brain stem (which controls survival) and the frontal lobe (which manages emotions and executive functioning).
In my upcoming workshop, we’ll explore the concept of fragmentation vs. integration and how integration helps you center and heal.
Registration now open for the workshop on February 27 and I hope you’ll join me.
Open to all! Cancer survivors, oncology professionals, mental health professionals, yoga teachers-anyone who is interested in experiencing the Kundalini Yoga approach to integration and healing.
What if doing it together beats doing it alone? For deeper healing to happen,
I believe community is needed!
You are cordially invited to a daily meditation to take you through the Holiday season and beyond.
Yesterday, I was thinking about WHY I’m so attracted to group work even though I’m a MAJOR introvert. It’s because being part of an ongoing group means you get to cut through the small talk and get down to what you are really thinking and feeling. You can give and receive energy and support.
I was also thinking about my life and how off balance I have felt in 2019. I came to the same conclusion I always do: daily meditation practice is essential. It enhances my daily life, mental health and physical wellbeing.
With the topics of community and daily meditation on my mind, I taught my Wednesday Wellness Yoga class today where one woman shared how hard it is to do the practices on her own.
Practice IS hard to do on your own. There are SO many distractions. Creating space for yourself can be hard.
Someone else said she was setting an intention to “let the universe in” to a difficult situation that she knows she can’t control. As cancer survivors, we are all familiar with feeling like things are beyond our personal control.
And so as the class was lying in sivasana, I decided to initiate a 40 day community meditation. The class had a very positive response! And we’d love you to join in.
We are going to challenge each other to participate in a 40 day meditation. This is a challenge by CHOICE and INSPIRATION, NOT obligation. You can participate as much or as little as you like and start anytime. It’s completely free.
How will it work?
1.Each day, STARTING TODAY (or whenever you open this email), you are invited to begin and continue during the 40 day period as often as you can. Daily if possible!
If you decide to participate even for one day, reply to thisemail so I know to include you in the Facebook group (email and Facebook name) or in a group text if you don’t like Facebook (phone number and name)
2.We are going to be using the RA MA DA SA Sa Say So HUNG Meditation from the Kundalini Yoga tradition. This meditation is for healing through compassion and being open to miracles to work in your life – in other words, allowing the Universe in! The meditation is simple and melodic.
3.Suggested times for meditation: 3,7, or 11 minutes up to 31 minutes. You can set a timer.
4.You could also simply have the mantra playing as you work, drive or sleep.
Sit for a few moments/minutes afterward and practice inviting the Universe in. Be open to healing and offer yourself compassion.
Step Four
Say “Sat Nam” to honor your True Self.
Step Five
If you wish, share in the facebook group or text that you completed your practice for the day. You can write up to a sentence or more or simply say “did it!” When you share that you have done your practice, you will inspire and remind others.
Step Six
Be kind to yourself. If you forget, just start again. If it’s not right for you, that’s ok!
Step Seven
Invite your friends. Anyone can join. The more the merrier!
This mantra taps into the energies of the sun, moon, earth, and the Infinite Spirit to bring deep healing. It is important to pull the navel point powerfully on the first Sa and on Hung. Note that the word Hung is not long and drawn out. Rather, it is clipped off forcefully as you pull in the navel. Chant one complete cycle of the entire mantra with each breath. Then deeply inhale and repeat. Remember to move the mouth precisely with each sound. Try to feel the resonance in the mouth and in the sinus area.
Mental Focus: Healing for yourself or someone else. Letting go of your need to control. Allowing the Infinite in.
Time: Continue chanting for 3, 7, 11 or 31 minutes.
To End: To end the meditation, inhale deeply and hold the breath, as you offer a healing prayer. Visualize the person you wish to heal as being totally healthy, radiant, and strong. See the person completely engulfed in a healing white light and completely healed. Then exhale and inhale deeply again, hold the breath, and offer the same prayer again. Exhale.
To complete, inhale deeply, stretch your arms up high, and vigorously shake out your hands and fingers for several seconds. Keep the arms up and hands shaking as you exhale. Repeat two more times and relax.
