Tag: Body Sensations

I Saw My Oncologist…and Left Ridiculously Happy

(Title image: Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash)

Yep, this is another installment of “I had another oncologist appointment today”. This time I’m marking seven years since completing my chemo treatment, which I can assure you at the time was a very happy event…

…marred only by that little nail infection a few weeks later. But don’t go there unless you have a strong stomach.

Regardless, I had a great meeting with my oncologist. The concern now is about whether I’m experiencing anything cancer-related, either long-term side effects or—perish the thought—a recurrence. Today the answer was neither.

We talked about the recent death of my father…and that’s pretty much the way the appointment went–catching up on the last six months. Naturally, I forgot to tell him about a bunch of the other concerns I had, little weird things in my body. But really, they’re not unusual given what I’ve gone through.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I need to slow down when interpreting body sensations as health problems. Usually they’re not. (Even though once they were cancer.)
(Photo by LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR on Unsplash)

We did, however, discuss how it takes a little while to get used to all those sensations in your body. After cancer, I was on high alert. My medical team was asking detailed questions about what I was feeling, and as a result, I was laser-focused on every twitch and twinge…and maybe some that I just imagined. At one point, I was sent for a brain MRI because of what I feared were serious cognitive issues. But in reality it was anxiety, not a tumor.

Seven years out, however, you kinda get expect all those funny sensations and don’t interpret them as being dangerous anymore. Even the heart palpitations that I would get from time to time…yeah, I still get those, maybe once a week, maybe a couple of times a month. But they only last a handful of seconds and I no longer think that my heart is failing (especially not when I can turn around and do a HIIT workout). I haven’t been back to the cardiologist and my oncologist agrees that it’s not necessary.

He asked if I wanted to come back in six months. Sure, I like being back in the Cancer Center as *NOT* a cancer patient. It’s nice being there and remembering doing jigsaw puzzles in the radiation oncology waiting room, or even feeling well-taken-care of after my treatments were done. There ARE positive memories in a place that you’d think would only be negative.

That can change very quickly, of course. But for the time being, I’m feeling happy.

In the Midst of “Breast Cancer Pink”, Finding Stillness: A Meditation

As you’re probably aware by now, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. For breast cancer patients and recent survivors, seeing all that pink around can be a little stressful.

Yes, it’s important to maintain awareness that 1 out of 8 women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives. Those of us who have already been…well, it would be nice to forget about it once in a while.

One out of 8 is a lot of pink!
(Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash)

So for this post, I want to offer you a very simple meditation. No prep needed.

Pause where you are right now and become still. Right where you are.

Notice how your body feels in the space that you’re inhabiting. What sensations do you feel most strongly?

The expansion and contraction of your ribcage with your breath?

The contact points of your body on the surface where it rests?

Perhaps a pesky little ache somewhere, in your joints, muscles or around an incision?

Tingling in your fingers or toes?

Are you gripping anywhere? If you notice tension somewhere in your body, very very slowly see if you can soften it. It’s okay if it doesn’t release completely – imagine that part becoming heavy and pliable.

And then see what other physical sensations make themselves known to you.

Stay with your body. There might be a lot going on in your mind right now, but that’s “up there” in your head.

Here. Stay down here.
(Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash)

We are down here in your physical being. Feel the stillness that exists here, not agitated by your thoughts. It’s okay if there’s noise in your mind, like if you lived on the floor below a bustling office. All those workers up there, getting their stuff done.

You can hear them, moving about, speaking in muffled tones, keeping busy. That’s all okay. They can be there.

But we’re all hanging out in stillness down below, with distance between what’s going on here and what’s happening elsewhere. We have space.

How does it feel knowing that you have permission to be still? That you don’t need to drop everything and dash upstairs? The thoughts can wait. They’re not going anywhere. You have time.

Eventually, you’ll return to the hustle and bustle up there. But know that you can always take a break, come down into your body and sit in the stillness that is here.

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This October in particular is very busy for me. A big project at work, the holidays around the corner, prepping for guests while our apartment STILL awaits repairs. And then strange guilt that I’m not doing more yoga teaching. It’s a lot to manage in my head, all this piling on of responsibilities.

So that meditation up ^^^ there? Yeah, I needed that. ❤

Quitting This Stupid Job…and Going Back to Training

For a number of months now, my meditations have been “sub-par”.

I know I’m not supposed to judge, but objectively I’m aware that I’ve veered off course somewhere. In the past, I’d have good days and bad days, transcendent meditation sessions and really distracted, “no-way-I’m-gonna-focus” ones. But that was okay, because a large part of mindfulness meditation is coming back to the breath AFTER losing focus.

Rabbit holes are very enticing places to disappear into.

This has been a little different.

It started with a few weeks of distractibility as I was navigating stressors in the early months of this year. But gradually, things went downhill until I seemed to make it my job to use meditation time to go down rabbit holes.

Maybe I was too tired, meditating in the evening before bed or when I woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t sleep, so I didn’t check my wandering mind because I was dozing off.

If I had music in the background, my mind would dance off in a tangent and I wasn’t meditating anymore, forgetting that this was a time for calm and presence.

I’d get lost during my meditation with little hope of finding my way back on the path that I was on.

So I’d start a guided meditation — listening to someone’s voice would keep me on track, right? Nope. My ability to allow that voice to fade into the background was nothing short of impressive.

Day after day, I had dutifully taken on the task of wandering way off my meditation path until I realized that I was going nowhere and it was time to quit the restlessness and stay still for a while.

Even after years of daily meditations, I had to re-learn the habit of staying… because over the past few months, I’ve established a new habit of not coming back to my center regularly enough. And this new habit of spending my session mindlessly had managed to supplant my previous meditation flow.

So here we go again: setting aside some quiet time when I’m not particularly sleepy, finding an anchor like the breath to focus on in a patient, non-gripping manner, maintaining a gentle awareness of where my mind is, and when it inevitably wanders away from my point of focus (which it always will), calmly guiding it back.

Going back and consciously setting an anchor again. And enjoying that comfortable feeling of being present and aware of this very second.

When the breath seems like a boring place to drop my anchor, I turn to the sensations in my hands and feet (particulary useful when I’m stressed) or the sounds of automobile traffic outside ebbing and flowing or opening my awareness to all my senses and accepting whatever shows up. My focus is on the present and that’s where I aim to keep it.

So it’s true, that old “muscle memory” is bringing back my meditation practice and strengthening it as it does so. This serves as a good reminder to not get complacent, calling myself a “meditator” and throwing around stats like how many days in a row I’ve been meditating. In the end, the important thing is not my meditation streak, it’s the fact that today I will choose to meditate again.