Take a Deep Breath In and Hold...
Healing Through Breath: Mindfulness and Resilience Amid Cancer Recovery
Thank you for holding space with me here. Food for Thought is my love, to share all the bits and pieces of life that are worth sharing! Mostly we hang out in the yoga and nutrition space, but I have also the desire to share deeper experiences too!
The good, the bad, and every single thing inbetween! I offer both a complimentary posts and also a subscription option that will give you access to more 1:1 live sessions, yoga sessions, and deeper content. Share with your friends and loved ones and enjoy this space! I know I do!
Enjoy!
“OK, Darcy, are you ready? Take a deep breath and hold…” I fill the space in my lungs, intentionally more on the left side of my chest. I close my eyes, and I hold…1-2-3-4…all the way to 25 seconds. The pressure builds, my chest feels tight and I am growing with anxiety that I won't make it. I do. I made it that time. And, it begins again…
“Take a deep breath in and hold…” the air goes in. My eyes close, my lungs fill, my heart is aching, my mind is racing….1-2-3-4…-24-25. “Ok, Darcy, let go.”
I am terrified every single time I breathe, every time I lay on this radiation table I am simply terrified. I wish I was not here. My mind races and my heart just continues to hurt. I remind myself that I am human.
How human of me to be in this experience.
—Switch—
Sitting quietly on my zafu. Quietly settling in and hoping my nervous system will work with me today and I will be able to sit for maybe even just 10 minutes before my monkey mind sets in and I lose the ability to sit.
My eyes settle closed and I take a deep breath in. I start with a counted breath, it's my go-to these days, it is my way of allowing my brain to settle into my meditation without huge expectations. Taking a deep breath in for 4, 1-2-3-4, and hold for 1-2-3-4, and exhale for 1-2-3-4.
And again.
The breath goes into my lungs and it feels healing and powerful. The hold is wrapping around my heart and I am sitting in that pause, and the sweet exhale softens the whole body and I am thrilled to begin again. Again. Again. I feel peace. I start to notice a softening, and I want more for my heart. I want more for my left breast to be able to heal from the continued radiation. I feel love.
I feel safe…at least for right now in this very moment. I feel safe.
I made it 9 minutes in total. I feel good about that, not great but good. I will do what I can right now. I remind myself that I am human.
How human of me to be in this experience.
Isn’t it strange how one phrase can hold such different space and meaning? I have been practicing yoga in one way or another for 20 years! 20 freakin years. I have used the phrase “take deep breath in and hold” for God knows how long. Whether I was saying to myself in my head during a meditation or guiding my students. It held love and support. It was a guiding light toward settling the mind and the heart to heal.
When I began my radiation treatments last October I can remember like it was yesterday learning about how I would move through each treatment, how my body would be positioned, where to look, and how to breathe. I was so terrified. The room was ginormous and the machine was just as huge sitting smack in the middle of the room. The nurses were some of the most incredible human beings! They were kind, supportive, and actually really funny. That made me feel slightly better. My nerves settled, but my heart was beating and I was not ready for what was ahead.
I climbed up on the table, laid my head and shoulder down on a mold that had been created specifically for me. They cover me with warm blankets and the nurse tells me to turn my head to the right and hold completely still.
Then they leave. I lay on this table all alone in this big huge room….I can not move. Don’t move.
It was really only for about 1 minute but it felt like a lifetime! The loudspeaker comes on and the nurses talk to me from another room. And they say the phrase…
“OK, Darcy, are you ready? Take a deep breath and hold…”
I am instructed that the session will last about 23 minutes, I will need to lie very still, not to move and follow the instructions of holding my breath for several rounds until the 23 minutes are complete. Without a doubt those 23 minutes were the longest minutes of my life that I will never get back.
23 minutes for 25 days. That is 575 minutes, 9.5 hours, 34, 500 seconds of my life being radiated.
I heard the phrase and to be honest, I wanted to laugh. Isn’t that ironic, this is one of the absolute scariest things I have ever experienced in my life and that is the phrase? One would think that it would ground me, right? I have used this phrase in my meditation practice for over 20 years so I tell myself to use it. Use it to your benefit. Well, easier said than done. I wish I could say that my stellar yoga skills and years of practice made it all easier and a piece of cake.
It didn’t.
It was scary, I did have days where I could get my breath to feel like it was a meditative practice. But, to be honest, it was just terrifying to be on that table. Feeling that machine move around, and to know that every single time I held my breath radiation was being placed inside my body. Yes, it was being done to kill cancer cells, and on a very literal level I could understand that, but on a more somatic and deeper level my heart was breaking that I was doing this to my body every single day for 25 days.
I really didn’t like that phrase anymore, it felt like the radiation process tainted it, and destroyed the loving connection that I had held so deeply for so long. Words matter, how we interpret them matters. I had always held this loving connection with the phrase and now it had shifted into a new meaning that brought on sadness.
This sadness was palpable and real, and I won’t lie, I was in it hard for a couple of months. To some degree, I am still in it. This experience with radiation was life altering for me. At that time, I was not willing to really look at it in any way positive. It was a horribly scary experience…..AND….at the time it was what I needed to do to feel safe on my healing journey to know that I would not have the cancer show up anywhere else in my body.
A dual truth really. Pain in the experience is helping access the joy of what will be possible for me in the future.
Radical Acceptance. This is what Tara Brach writes about in her book Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of Buddha. I had this book for a while, and had not begun reading it. When I completed my radiation and had started to work through the recovery I began reading it. You know when you are reading, and you throw the book down and are like, what in the world…this book was written for me, in the time of my life that I needed it most. This was that book for me!
An excerpt:
“Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha
I believe this experience brought me closer to my heart, and my ability to compassionately accept who I am right now. Accepting it does not mean that I am always happy about it. In fact, where I am at right now is loaded with hard stuff, physical and emotional healing.
And, it is also loaded with good stuff. My family, my friends, this incredible Lake we live on, travels, teaching yoga, and just being present with the fact that I am alive is slowly bringing my joy and compassion to the front seat and putting the pain, fear, and struggle to the back seat.
We all can be ok with the dual truths of our life journeys. We are offered joy and sadness, and we can be in both. It doesn't have to be one or the other. One may rear its ugly or beautiful head a bit more than other at times. That is ok.
I am working to find that Radical Acceptance that if I package up my whole experience with Radiation and continue to hate the phrase “OK, Darcy, are you ready? Take a deep breath and hold…” then I am shutting out my heart from the whole experience and I am continuing to fuel my fears that do leave me in a “trance of unworthiness”, as Tara Brach would say.
I continue to sit on my zafu or place my hand at my heart and return to my breath, sometimes I count and sometimes I sit and I just simply feel my heart and hope that with each breath I take I can get closer and closer to my own whole hearted compassionate self with the reminder that I am only human.
How human of me to be in this life experience.
Namaste!
HOW TO CONNECT WITH ME?
YOGA CLASSES:
Washburn Meditation Center: Fridays at 8:00 am - Subtle to Strong Yoga
Moss and Stone Yoga: Saturdays at 9:00 am - Subtle to Strong Yoga
HOLISIC FACIALS:
Superior Body and Spa - Book yourself an incredible facial experience with me!