#358 Listening to Your Body After Breast Cancer - Finding Your Unique Path to Recovery

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In this episode, we explore the transformative journey of healing after breast cancer by allowing ourselves the space to think differently, connect deeply with our bodies, and understand our unique needs.

Healing is about physical recovery and aligning our lives with our inner selves, rather than forcing our bodies to meet predetermined expectations.

Breast cancer survivors often find themselves overwhelmed by societal pressures and rigid recovery timelines. These external expectations can lead to frustration and failure when our bodies do not conform to these standards. In this podcast, we delve into the importance of breaking free from these constraints and embracing a more intuitive and personalized approach to healing.

We discuss how listening to our bodies and recognizing their signals can lead to a more profound and sustainable recovery. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent and capable of guiding us towards what they need to heal. We can make choices that support our well-being by paying attention to our physical sensations, emotions, and energy levels.

Join me as we redefine what it means to heal after breast cancer, moving beyond rigid expectations to a place of self-compassion, awareness, and true alignment with our bodies.

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The Four Pillars of Breast Cancer Recovery Coaching Experience

 

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0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hey there, welcome to episode 358 have better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And today we're going to talk you know, on Fridays, I kind of like to talk more about something mindset focused on our Tuesday terrain talk. We talk a lot about things we can do specifically tangibles to support our metabolic health. And in this episode, there's something that comes up a lot that I've talked about here on the show, which is the difference between fighting and healing, right. And I want to talk kind of around those lines, not just specifically fighting and healing, but the way we perceive things differently in this very physical, tangible world, the way we've been conditioned to think. And lately how it comes up for me as I work and dive into more and more, creating the life I want manifesting the things I want. And that includes health, right, that includes healing, and includes believing in the things that I can create in my life. So recently, I was at a spectacular wedding. A lot of people that I known hadn't seen in many, many years, I had some great conversations, and there was someone there. And he was talking to me, and had heard that I had a stage four cancer diagnosis didn't really know the whole story, but was asking me questions about it. And so I shared I answered the questions. I told him what I was going through, and he said, Wow, you are really in the fight, aren't you? And even then I thought that just that doesn't sit with me. That's not how I think about myself. And I said to him Well, you know, I think one of the most powerful things I've learned over these past few years, is that I'm not only not in the fight, I'm not even interested in the fight. I'm not here to fight, because I completely understand that fighting is a whole different energy than healing. And I'm only in this for the healing. I'm only interested in learning about how do I help myself heal. So I was thinking about that in terms of other things, things that we say we struggle with in life, you know, we're very conditioned to believe life has to work a certain way. Meaning that you've got to be this great students. And if you get these good grades, you'll get into this good school, if you get into that good school, you'll get this good job. And we're very task oriented in the way we train people to think life works. So when it comes to something like realizing life isn't the way you want it to be, and you want to create something new. And maybe you want to create something that you're not even sure what it is. But you know that what you're doing now in life isn't working for you, and you want something more. It's really hard for us to allow our mind space, we want to force things. We want to force things to happen in a certain timeframe. We want to force things to happen by the doing. And I gotta tell you something very powerful. I've learned it's not that there's no doing action is always involved, we've got to take action, when we're working to heal when we're working to get healthy when we're working to create a business when we're working to improve a relationship. We always have to take action. But I really strongly believe and it has been my experience. And I've witnessed this as an experience of others I work with, we have to let ourselves believe things can be different. We have to kind of let go of this idea that whatever it is you're working on must work by a step by step method in a specific timeframe. And if it doesn't work in that timeframe, then it's broken, something's wrong, something's wrong with you. You're a failure. It's no good. And we attach so many labels to these physical expectations of the steps and the processes that life should take. I really think that has a detrimental impact on our ability to feel free, to feel powerful, and to allow ourselves to explore right to explore life so There was in my lesson recently in the membership, one of the lessons we focused on in one week was, are you ready to stop the struggle? Like, are you ready to stop struggling and struggling? I really see as a function of these very tangible beliefs. It's got to work like this this fast. And if it doesn't, something's wrong. I'm not doing it right. And then we start to struggle, we start to fight, we start to think, why isn't this working? Why isn't this happening? Why isn't this changing. But just like that energy of healing, one of the things that I've found is, I've got to allow my body to you have got to believe it can, I've got to allow it to do its work, I've got to listen to it, really pick up on the cues my body sends me and do the things it needs. So that I can support its ability to heal, to feel strong, to have good energy to be healthy. Those are the actions I have to take. But in the beginning, the first breast cancer diagnosis, oh, I was all about forcing my body. Right, I was trained in as being a personal trainer, a yoga teacher, I was trained in results, right? Measurements, metrics, results. And maybe yoga was a little looser than that not so much. But still, you can take on yoga in a very

6:30
goal oriented kind of practice. And that's what I did initially, right? I didn't go into yoga to go Oh, and, and be open and understand my body's energy, I went into yoga, to get to do those handstands and do those headstands and have a stronger body and go to the level three advanced class is like I brought competition into the yoga room. Whereas now when I sometimes accidentally step into a class that I don't realize is one of those kinds of classes. That's an intense class, and it's bringing in weightlifting, and everything in the yoga room out. For me now, that space is for me to connect to my breath, and the energy of my body and listen to myself. And it's a very important part of my healing. Now, there's a lot of things I like about intense exercise, but I seek out those classes for those purposes. And when I'm going to a yoga class, I want it to be yoga, and not competition, right. So when I was in my after that first diagnosis, and I was in that what I believe to be a healing period, I was forcing it, right, I had all the body monitors on me, if I burn this many calories that taken that many calories and lift this much weight, I should gain this much muscle if I eat this much protein. And it was just this intensity. And this focus. And this body has to work like this, because this is what design says it's supposed to do. And it didn't, it was not on board with my plan. And then that led to a tremendous amount of frustration and anger at my own body, which was super stressful. And I didn't realize it at the time, I didn't realize how much stress I was bringing on myself by judging and forcing myself then fast forward after this diagnosis, a whole different mindset. Right now it became okay, what am I missing? What am I not understanding about what my body needs? And it's kind of like I turn to my body first, and say, What do you need and kind of listen in for those answers? Rather than, say, a body, you're going to work like this, and here's the rules, and you're going to follow them. I think that one of the really limiting behaviors that comes out of this way of thinking too, is this clinging really strongly to this idea of normalcy and going back to normal? I think that's a part of this thought process. Because we perceive like normal is good and normal is non existent. So I don't know why we perceive it's good. There's no normal anywhere. And I think what I would offer is the beauty of allowing yourself to play allowing yourself to explore like, what if nothing needs to be fixed? What if no one is broken? What if everything is exactly the way it was supposed to be right now? Which it is because it is the way it is right now. So that is what it's supposed to be? And what if we could just give ourselves more space to explore, and less pressure to fix? Because fixing means that you already have an idea that something's supposed to work this way. And then we go right into forcing, right if it's supposed to work that way, then it's got to follow these steps and it's got to meet this criteria. So we push but what if we don't know how it's supposed to work? What if we don't know how it's supposed to be? What if we just need to be open to listening and understanding a lot of this comes in, I really believe by listening to ourselves, this is such a hard thing to get people to understand. But again, from my own personal experience, I would say that moving to I guess what I call the softer science, moving to this ability to create space and hold space for yourself, to allow yourself time for meditation, to allow yourself time for breath work, to allow yourself like when I say yourself, I mean more like your consciousness, to really connect to your body, and see how it feels, and stop doing things that create the feeling of intenseness and anxiety and overwhelm in the body, which is typically when we're forcing ourselves to do something that we really don't love, or we really don't want, or we really just believe we have to, because we're being judged by somebody else if we don't. And so I know it's, it feels like it's so much easier, especially after you've had a breast cancer diagnosis, or you're you've moved into menopause, or you're just feeling achy or tired or energy is wrong. And we want to always go to the fix, right. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's, I think, the approach to the fix, the forcing the fix, the intensity of wanting the fix, versus the openness to just acknowledging not that something's wrong, necessarily. Let's say you have a body that is achy and bloated all the time, and heartburn and indigestion all the time and you're tired all the time. You know what your body isn't broken, your body is trying to stay healthy, by sending signals that are saying, The what you're doing right now isn't supporting my ability to be healthy. And so I'm bloating, I'm letting you know, please stop eating that because that food doesn't work for this body. But in this life, and we look at it, especially after cancer and people start telling you don't eat sugar, stay away from white flour, practice intermittent fasting, and we're going well, I should be able to do all those things. I should be able to drink the margaritas and eat the chips and salsa and have all the fun. There's another force, right? Why should we be able to do that? Why do we think that's the way it's supposed to be? Because we see it or because it's fun, and it tastes good. But if our body is saying, This isn't working for me, it's not that our bodies broken. It's that we're focused on forcing, we're focused on fixing to make it work the way you want it to work instead of learning. And being open to being playful, open understanding and exploring how it actually does work. What it actually does need. And maybe that's how we are in relationships to maybe that's how we are in work or in business or in friendships, we've got an idea of how it's supposed to be. And we want to force everything into fitting.

13:17
I think that this is a really powerful lesson for me as a parent that I wish I would have learned a lot earlier in life. But we think kids are all supposed to follow this pathway, right. And as an adult, I can think back on the pathway my parents determined for me, that did not fit me at all. And how hard does that make life as a human being? When you know that the pathway someone else says you should fit in? Doesn't work? Let's talk about childhood trauma. I mean, what is that? Right? It's childhood trauma. It's like, but I don't feel that I'm supposed to do that. Well, you got to do it anyway, that's where you're supposed to do to be. And I think it's the same in relationships, when we're so focused on fixing relationship, meaning making it be a certain way, instead of allowing a relationship and saying, Oh, this is this is the relationship and this is how it flows. And this is how it works. And can I show up and be fully me and fully present in this relationship? To be fully open in whatever capacity it is whatever relationship we're talking about, in accepting this other person fully as well. And then saying, Now, what does this look like if we don't have to force it to be something we're picturing, and we can just be open to allowing it to be what it is right now. How does it feel? What do you have to let go of right? Because that's really where our work comes in. We have to work through our own stuff of everything we need to drop. But in doing that, we let a lot of pressure off of ourselves, because we no longer have to force we don't have to force anything. So I think that It's just a really powerful kind of shift in opening yourself to allowing yourself to think a new way, like, is there a possibility? You could think differently? Is there a possibility that what you've been thinking about this area in your life or struggling in whether it's your health or something else? You've been thinking is supposed to work like that. And it's not working like that? Is there a possibility that it could work some other way? You know, I use a couple of tools in my coaching, practice, thought downloads, and the model, the self coaching model. And then the thought downloads and the self coaching model, it's really, these are two tools to help us see what our brain is thinking, what our brain is telling us, and so that we don't let the brain run the show. So we see what is the brain offering? And then we decide consciously and intentionally, what do I want to choose from that? What serves me what works for me what works with me from that, and I'm always careful to remind my clients that when we're using a thought download, or they're using a self coaching model, that it isn't to fix something, it's only to be curious about something, is to understand what are these thoughts, creating? What results Am I living with, because this thought is leading me to take these actions, and these actions are creating this result? Right, so the thought that I originally had, that my body is supposed to work this way, it's calories in calories out protein intake, and specific overload on the muscles. And if I do these things, I'm gonna be leaner, I'm going to be strong, and those thoughts drove the actions of forcing everything and created the result of really nothing moving and may end up being very frustrated with my life. So it wasn't until I was willing to accept that, and really stop and look at things differently. And accept this idea of being more gentle on myself, instead of being harder on myself as a possibility. You know, it was a shift of, maybe it's possible, that being kinder to myself is going to be more effective than being harder on myself. So I want to offer that to you. Because in my work to support other women going through this, going through a breast cancer diagnosis, recreating their lives, healing their bodies, following their passions, just looking for the joy. I see way too much of forcing, fixing, fighting. And I just want to offer that if you've been down that road, or maybe you even think that's the road you have to go down and it doesn't sound good. So you don't know what other direction there is. Allow yourself some just space to play and explore and ask, maybe there is another way, maybe the way I was taught to think or the way I was told things had to work. Maybe there is another possibility. And you can explore that for yourself and figure out like, what's your way, just like our bodies are so bio individual physically, like, what's your way through this life? Can you explore that, and find a way to just feel really good and comfortable and joyful as yourself doing life your way. I think that's an amazing way to live. And it's pretty incredible how much effort it takes to allow yourself to do it, and to hold that space and let go of the fixing and the fighting and the forcing. And if you need help with that, there's no better time to start down that path of supporting yourself than right now. You can come and find me and get help with that in the better than before breast cancer membership, or through one on one coaching. And there's a great offer right now at the time this podcast comes out it's going to come out. Just as this will actually be the last episode of June and July is my 13 year anniversary we'll be celebrating 13 years as my first breast cancer diagnosis. And one of the gifts I want to put out in the world to pay it forward for that is a really great discount on my signature coaching program the four pillars of breast cancer recovery. So you can get $130 off of the four pillars of breast cancer recovery. Now through July 11. It's already open, you can go and do that. You can get into that program anytime. And it's a self paced program, you have life access to it. And you can get $130 off with the code 13 years and you'll find all that information on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com Check it out. Do something good for yourself and open your mind to the possibility that there might be an even better way to do this life. Take care, I'll talk to you soon.

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