Between managing breast cancer, families, work, doctor appointments, household needs, social engagements, and all the other obligations that come with life, when do you have time to check in with yourself?

What does your energy feel like?

What is happening with the energy in your body?

How does the energy of food, water, thoughts, emotions, and therapies affect you?

Supporting your body’s ability to heal and be well goes deep into the practice of knowing yourself.

In this episode, I’ll share some insights on the role energy plays in all functions of the human body, and I’ll let you in on the meditative thought process that I use when it comes to doing the mental and energetic work of supporting my body.

This is an episode that you want to make time for.

Referred to in this episode:

Work with Laura

Isabel Friend

Born To Heal Podcast

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 Read the full transcript below:

Laura Lummer 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.

Laura Lummer 0:33
Hey, friends, welcome to episode 331. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm so happy to be here with you today. Thank you for tuning into this show. We're going to talk about something I'm really excited about because I was just inspired by a podcast I listened to just yesterday. And this podcast was sent to me by a client of mine. She told me about it in a coaching call. It sounded really fascinating. So I asked her to forward me the link and it was fascinating. Or they're just some shows that you listen to. And you hear this person's perspective. And you just get I always think of as the glow worm effect like your chest, my chest is close. It's like I'm feeling warm and glowy. This is just speaking to me. And this woman, Elizabeth Isabel, Nan Elizabeth Isabel friend is being interviewed on the podcast, and it's called Born to heal. I'll link to it in the show notes for this episode. But she is an expert on water. And it is fascinating to listen to her talk about water. I am kind of committed to get her to talk on this show because her insights are incredible. But she brings up a story as she's talking about water. She's talking about the energetics of water, her studies in water different ways that water delivery systems affect water, for instance, like tap water, municipal water, filtered water, electrified water, all these things. So she's talking about the structure of water. And she tells the story. And she likens the story to cancer. And when she does that, it blows my mind. Because what she says is exactly a concept that I work on all the time. So let me explain several months ago, sitting out on the beach, and that's kind of where my meditative spot where I'm really thinking about my body what I need to do to heal. And it's like a story just kind of unraveled in my head. And I've shared this with some clients. But I think it's important to talk about it now. When we go through a cancer diagnosis, and we want to heal, we want to support our body's ability to heal. I know we go first to thoughts of food and exercise, which is fine and great. And there's nothing wrong with that. But through my experience, especially over the last three and a half years, supporting my body's ability to heal from widespread stage four cancer, there's no question in my mind about the power of the emotional work that you have to do. The power and the depth of dealing with your emotions, allowing your emotions, looking at your thoughts, and deciding consciously and intentionally, to love yourself fully. And I mean fully. I mean to love yourself and forgive yourself for things from the past for things from to two hours ago, right for things that you think for things that you've said, and your body for the stories you've told yourself about it as well. But to find that deepest connection, Mind, Body Spirit, everything comes together and says see yourself as a whole person. I'm sitting out on the beach, and this concept is coming to me. And I'm thinking about it and I'm thinking, okay, cancer cells, you know, we're conditioned to fight against cancer. We're, we think about cancer as something that happened to us, you know, as if I don't know like, I don't know something through rocket you or something, right. But cancer is something that happens in us. It is a part of us. It is our own cells. And I was thinking about the energetic being that a human being is that a human body is and the energetics of health versus the energetics of cancer. And I started to think about how these cancer cells didn't act like normal cells. How if my body is a community of cells, these cancer cells have ostracized themselves from the community. They're not following the rules. They're not playing by the rulebook, they're not following the manual. And in addition to not being part of the fully functioning, healthy community, these cells are experiencing some kind of an imbalance. They've got an energetic imbalance stemming from the broken mitochondria in them as a result of that they have all kinds of other effects on the body. But one of those effects is that cancer cells send out these toxic signals, right, other kids chemicals that go out into the body. And they kind of push away these normal healthy cells. And as I was thinking about the whole energetic dynamic of this, I was asking myself, How am I doing that? How am I not completely connected to all aspects of me? Where am I disconnected from? Maybe some of my thoughts on my emotions, some of my authentic self. And where have I done that throughout my life that I need to heal from? Where have I compartmentalize shut down parts of me refuse to deal with certain things that I don't want to feel? Or I don't want to see? And on an energetic level, how can I heal that for myself? Now, this is all speculation, right? This is just I'm sharing my story with you, and my thought process with you, and how I work with myself. We are energetic beings. And so in this podcast, Isabel's friend starts to talk about water. And she talks about how we do different things to water, put it through different processes, and how in doing that process, we undermine the structure of water, and break down the community of the molecules in the water have this these components, these energetic components in the water. And as she said it, she related it directly to cancer and directly just like the story I just shared with you. And she said, it's just like people who have cancer in those cancer cells are no longer a part of the community. And I thought, Whoa, right, it just blew me away. I just think that you know, there, I believe there are some things that come to us that were led to that we need to know we need to hear at that moment. And I just loved everything she had to say. But it totally resonated with me. And it's interesting, because one of the reasons why I was drawn to that podcast is I've really struggled with hydration lately. Meaning that I don't know if it's the chemotherapy I'm on or what but I'm going through a lot of dehydration. And so getting some more IV hydration more regularly, of course, focusing on water, focusing on electrolytes, but really noticing this deep dehydration and the fatigue that it's been causing in me and trying to work with that and improve that. So the whole podcast has kind of resonated when she brought in that story. That to me is like my story of me and my body and what is happening in my body. And what I'm focusing on to bring my body back together is that whole healed community and thinking about the normal cells embracing the cells that have imbalances, right instead of shying away from them and making more room for these imbalanced cells to spread. And thinking about that on an energetic level. I want to share this with you just because I believe that this introspection is a very important part of healing in your introspective story, you may not end up anything like the one I just shared with you. But do you know what it is? Are you connected to that? And are you connect it to the energy of your body? So I started thinking about how do you really talk about the energetics of a body on a podcast? You know, how do you talk about it from the perspective of being real and being important and being something that can help other people think this is not just some hippy woowoo stuff, like we are energetic beings. And you know, when I go to acupuncture, acupuncture once a week, I can feel the energy when they put those needles in me, I can feel the movement, it feels like these little electric pulses, sometimes it feels like little electric shocks moving between the needles. And it's fascinating for me to send that energy. But that is what our human bodies are. So let me give you a little scientific perspective, a little western perspective into what I mean, when I'm talking about our energetic body and why it's so important that we allow our mind to really connect to that and understand that the balance of energy, and the movement of energy is everything. Right water is the transference of energy, h2o, hydrogen and oxygen molecules. Those have an energetic charge to them. Food different foods have energetic charges on are full of water as well. Think about fruits and vegetables, very watery substances and we exchange that energy with the cells and the energetics of our body. And getting that energy imbalance, I think is something that's really important to look into to observe for yourself to think about for yourself. So when we talk about metabolism, cellular metabolism, every single cell in our human body uses energy in the form of ATP. ATP are little energy molecules and that's what helps our body perform functions and muscle contractions and nerve impulses. And this energy can comes to us the energy to make ATP from the food we eat. And then our body has all kinds of processes that it goes through to transfer that energy in that food. And that water into energy we can use in our body, we have bio electrical signals. So our human nervous system operates through electrical signals, neurons inside of our nervous system transfer information, electrical impulses. And this process relies on the movement of ions, electrically charged elements to move across our nerve cell membranes, and to create charges in our nervous system charges electricity, right, we have biomechanical energy, which is the human movement, we have biomechanical energy, that means we use energy to walk to run, we convert chemical energy, from ATP into mechanical energy to move our body, we have thermal energy in our body, our human body has to have the stable temperature right throughout. And a temperature can vary a little bit from person to person. But for you specifically, in your bio individuality, your body wants to maintain a stable temperature for that temperature that's right for you. And so our body is holding and releasing heat on a regular basis based on our movement or lack of movement, and all of the other things we do in our life, to regulate this thermal energy in our body. And this is essential for proper functioning of all the reactions that happen inside of us. And to keep our body to maintain this level of homeostasis, right homeostasis, like staying the same. And so when we think about it in that way, and we think about all of the energy that's moving through a body, think about energy getting clogged up, right, or a kink in the umbilical cord, right? I think of like a hose just came to mind, like when the hoses kicked in, the water doesn't move through it properly. And that's kind of the idea behind acupuncture, too, right? You're opening energetic meridians in your body, so allowing energy to move and opening places where energy may be blocked. And why would it be blocked, something like a muscle that's tightened fascia that wraps around all your muscle that doesn't have enough hydration between it starts sticking to the muscle, and we call that a knot, right? Where like, Oh, I'm not in that muscle, it's like tissue is stuck together, we need to open things up. And all this energy moves through our body through water, extracellular and intracellular water in our body. So when I think about this concept of water, and the transference of energy from water in the way that is about friend describes it so beautifully on that podcast, and how finding those pure, beautiful sources of water transfers such a powerful energy into our body. And then I think about it in terms of my own body and its cells and the cells that are experiencing an energetic imbalance, again, going back to the Warburg theory, the metabolic theory of cancer and the broken mitochondria that are making energy in that cell. How do we heal that? How do we balance the energy in our body from a physical, emotional, spiritual state, so that the body is strong enough and has the ability to move energy around in a way that can support our healing? You know, in traditional Chinese medicine, there's a concept called Qi you know, we talked about Qi Gong moving Qi through the body, and she is the vital force that flows through the body. And so again, practices like acupuncture, Tai Chi, Chi Gong, those are all concepts of balancing, enhancing the flow of chi through the body. In Ayurveda, that energy is referred to as prana. And prana is the lifeforce the vital energy that is through everything it permeates the universe and every living thing. And pranayama if you've done yoga classes, you've heard of pranayama is breath control. And these breath control practices are designed to regulate and enhance the flow of prana of lifeforce within the body. And that is used to improve our health and to improve our consciousness as well. There's a beautiful pranayama practice that is called nadi showed enough or alternate nostril breathing, as we hear it talked about in the Western world. And it's so fascinating. Because Nadi showed in one of the the visuals that you use when you're doing this alternate nostril breathing, is thinking of the energy pathways in your body, the spinal column being what's called the shoe nut, Nadi. And the nadi is like a channel just like a meridian would be an acupuncture, and then you have the EDA and Pingala noddy's That kind of wrap around that center. And those the EDA and Pingala represent the masculine and the feminine energies. So when you're doing alternate nostril breathing, the idea behind I find it is that you're balancing that masculine and feminine energy in the body. And that you're opening up channels of energy through that whole spinal column, which we know, in the Western world, in our bodies, that spinal column is the transference of energy. I mean, that is our central nervous system. And that's all about electricity. Right? When we have spinal cord damage, we're no longer to transfer that those electrical signals to different parts of the body and people have paralysis. So it's a really interesting concept to think about the movement of energy in the body, and how different practices are used to open up flow of energy and support the healing of the body. If you've heard of chakras, chakras are a big part of that. Chakras are the energy centers that are in what's called the subtle body that's looked at it in many spiritual practices, but especially in Yoga and Ayurveda. And each chakra represents different energetics of human life and human consciousness, fascinating stuff that's used a lot in healing. So there are practices like acupuncture, there are practices like Qigong, there's meditation, there's pranayama, or breathwork, all of these things can be used to connect to that energy in your body, and to work through opening that energy and opening the flow of that energy in your body. But I wanted to share that story with you today. Because I think way too often we discount this stuff to hippie dippie, or woowoo stuff. And yet, there's so much science that's based in it. There's so much science that aligns with what I hear, and I've talked about this on the show, before I hear science come up with these new discoveries. And I think they've known that in our VEDA for 5000 years, you know, so a lot of Western science is just validating spiritual healing practices that have been around for 1000s of years. So when you think about the things you can do to support your body, what I would ask you to do and encourage you to do is tune into your own energy, and to notice, do you feel a sense of calmness and peace? Do you feel a sense of heightened energy and anxiety, maybe a sense of very dull energy and depression and low energy? And how do you think about cancer in your body? How do you think about the energetics when you think about it was interesting, because I'm referring to it now as cancer but I have a friend who is a mind body oncology coach. And during my first diagnosis, I went to her, she was one of the first coaches I worked with, and she never uses the word cancer, she always says cellular imbalance, she says you are working with a cellular imbalance. And when I first heard that, at first, I thought, well, that's really interesting. You know, is she kind of shying away Is she afraid of the word cancer. But then the more I've spent time, on delving into healing practices for myself and supporting my body, the more I realize how accurate that is, that this is a cellular imbalance in so taking that time for yourself to check in, and looking at how you feel when we adopt that fight energy that we're so conditioned to adopt when we have a cancer diagnosis, the fight warrior, the battle, and I talk about that a lot that fight energy and healing energy are very different energies. And I would invite you to explore that in your own self, I would invite you to explore like your thoughts about when you really think about your body in the processes that are happening in it. If you're in the cancer in process now or if you're healing and working on supporting your body to heal from it. What does that mean to you? What is the energetic of cancer? Because I asked this of people all the time, and I don't ask this question. With any judgment, any shame, any blame, I asked this just for purposes of introspection. Because cancer is a complicated disease. And it involves many, many things. But I asked people to tell me why they think they got cancer. And of course, there's, you know, genetics and things like that. But beyond the physical, here's why science as we get cancer, I asked them to tune into their own intuition to ask themselves and to share with me, what do you think you got cancer, because other people may be exposed to some of the things same things we're exposed to? I mean, it's crazy. There's is a total randomness, right? I can look around it. So many people that I know and say, if we're going to look at lifestyle, and compare my lifestyle to that person's lifestyle, it makes no sense that I'm the one that has cancer and that person doesn't. So it's not just all the risk factors aren't always the full equation. And I think that inside of us, we have a knowing, because there's never been a woman that hasn't been able to share something with me when I asked that question. In the knowing that she has goes beyond just Well, I had a crappy diet, and I was eating a lot of processed food. And nine times out of 10, that knowing goes somewhere, too. I didn't speak up for myself, I allowed people to walk all over me, I was super stressed out, I went through a terrible time or a lot of grief. And there's an energetic process, to their own understanding of what was happening inside their body that manifested into this cellular imbalance. And again, I'm going to stress because it's super important. That does not mean we're blaming ourselves for giving ourselves cancer. It's the exploration, and it's the understanding and the curiosity about, okay, I had this terrain, this body that got sick, and I can't really heal with that same train. So what was different than what do I think was happening that maybe created a vulnerability so that we can work on it, and change it and make the body healthier and stronger. So it's a curiosity to support our healing, not a judgment, or blame or a shame kind of thing. So please be really careful with that, as we look inside ourselves and ask ourselves these questions. But it's important to think about what was going on before your cancer diagnosis. And I know for me both times, both Diagnosis The couple of years, and for the first diagnosis many years before, that was very, very stressful. And there were a lot of issues that I needed to fix and work on.

Laura Lummer 21:38
But looking at that, and being able to be honest with yourself, when it comes to that I think helps to bring together the energy of your body. So just like the book that I refer to all the time, the Body Keeps the Score. When we compartmentalize or recall it compartmentalizing or silo off emotions inside of our body. We're not really doing anything with them, we're stuffing them. We're not processing them, we're understanding them. We're stuffing that energy. So think about an emotion when you feel an emotion. What does that mean to you? If you could describe it to me? What is an emotion? It's an energetic experience, right? Think about where you feel it in your body. Describe to yourself where you feel it, and what it feels like, and what it feels like in detail, like the color, the temperature, the density, all of those things, the temperature of it, like, what does it feel like to have an emotion? And then when you make the choice to shut that off? And stuff that shut down? Where do you stuff it at? Some people hold it in their chest, some people hold on their shoulders, in their neck, some people in their gut, you feel it right? It's an energetic, because everything inside of us is based in energy, everything inside of us and outside of us. So we can open that flow of energy and have a transference of it constantly. Or we can block that flow of energy and stuff emotions inside of us. And what happens when we do that? What happens? What do you think happens? Isn't the question I'm proposing for you to explore? What do you think happens? When you stop that emotion down into your body and you tell yourself, I just shut it off? Right? I'm done with that I'm just moving on without ever really having processed it. So this topic just kind of spoke to me today. And I just offer it to you to do your own exploration and ask yourself, what do you notice what that energetic in your body? What does healing energy mean to you, inside of you? And how do you feel it? And how do you see it? And how do you think that you can go about understanding how to infuse more love energy into your own body into your own self. And that means really deep, authentic acceptance of yourself. It doesn't mean just saying I love you, I love me. We're beautiful. We're good people, but really tuning into yourself, how you feel where you feel it when you feel it, why you feel it and noticing the impact that energy has on your body. So I hope as soon as you're done listening to the show, you will go and listen to the podcast I linked to from Elizabeth friend about this, the water and the energy of the water we're putting into our bodies and the energy of the water in our bodies because our body is almost all water. Right? We are like these water creatures. So after listening to this, listen to the one on water and kind of love to know what you think about it. So you can DM me you can find me on Instagram and Facebook. As the breast cancer recovery coach. You can join my free Facebook group, the breast cancer recovery group, and you can always work with me. I do private coaching and group coaching in my life coaching membership better than before breast cancer the life coaching membership, and we work on everything you know when When we're talking about a life that's better than before breast cancer, I really mean it. It means really examining every aspect of your life and ask yourself, What do I love? And what do I want to keep? What's working for me and isn't working for me? And then how do you do that? How do you process those things? How do you take care of yourself and learn to take care of yourself? Learn to know yourself, learn to love and honor yourself for maybe the first time in your life. You can find all the details on how to work with me on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com And I look forward to hearing some feedback from you. I'll talk to you soon.
voices in your head you've heard your courage to the tears laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your hardest phone wanting more your futures Give it all you know you've been waiting on