In 2001, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I lost both of my breasts and spent the next year undergoing cancer treatments. Two years later I had uterine bleeding and, because of the risk of uterine cancer from the cancer treatments, I opted for a salpingo-oophorectomy (lost uterus, fallopian tubes, and cervix).
I tried to have breast reconstructions, and the pain from the expanders and the subsequent implants was so intense (felt like I was having a heart attack every time I breathed), that I went to my plastic surgeon one day and said "take them out".
So.... today I have nothing that in the past has defined me as a woman. It's been a VERY VERY long 8 years, and god knows I've suffered from every possible ailment since then, I believe because of the cancer treatments -- depression, ulcers, diverticulitis, arthritis, diabetes, terrible hot flashes, back pain that was so severe my back refused to hold my body up.... If you were to see me naked, you'd see how terribly deformed my body is. The mastectomies left my chest not just flat, but hollow, all the way through my armpits. I can put my hand over my heart and actually feel my heart through my ribs.
I'm telling you this not because I want sympathy, but because I want you to know that whatever happens to you and your body, you'll find that it's all ok. I could lose an arm or a leg today and I know that, other than the pain-in-the-butt it would cause my life, as far as my image of myself, it would not be a big deal. It would never make me feel any less about myself or embarrassed or ashamed. Anyone who makes me feel that way, it's their problem not mine. It took a LONG time for me to get to this place, so it didn't come for free.
One of the things that I've learned throughout this entire process of redefining who I am as a woman and as a human being is that the "strength" that it takes to accept yourself is there. You don't think it is, because you never had to tap into it before. And you can look at other people and think "they have what it takes, but I don't". But it's not true at all. To get what it takes to gain this acceptance of who you really are, search. Your answers will be different from my answers, the means whereby are not important. What's important is that you find your answers. Someone or some group or some web site or some book -- even a store clerk somewhere -- is there with your answers. You just need to be there paying attention and listening. And once you find someone whose message speaks to you, then you can keep investigating until you come to a deadend. Then backup, and keep searching until you find someone else. All of these things that you learn will help you build a toolkit to live by that's customized just for you.
Yoga is one of the things that I've put into my toolkit. I started doing yoga about 8 months ago. My husband John was doing Richard Hittleman's "Yoga in 28 Days" book for his back. That book has a statement to the effect that "if you do these 28 days of yoga religiously, you'll find that you can never go a day without yoga again". Getting through those 28 days was tough -- I couldn't even do a cobra pose when I started. But I found that Hittleman was right. I began to expect my yoga workouts every day. It was more than the flexibility and strengthening, it was also the amazing calm that it presented in my mind when I did my meditations.
After continuing with Hittleman's maintenance routines for a couple of months I decided to graduate to something more intermediate. I graduated to "Moving Toward Balance, 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee". Again, it was a challenge for me. 1/4 of the poses in the book I couldn't even begin to complete. The rest of them were just plain hard. After I finished "Moving Toward Balance" once or twice, I bought a DvD called "Power Yoga with Rodney Yee". At first I could only do 15 minutes of that DvD. I did my 15 minutes of the DvD in the mornings, and continued with the "Moving Toward Balance" book in the evening. I kept with the DvD, and added a pose at a time as my body learned to do the poses, until I could do the entire 65 minute routine.
Now, 8 months later, I do anywhere from 1 to 2 hours of yoga every day. I either do the DvD or I do one of the routines in "Moving Toward Balance" chapter 8 -- and occasionally, if I have time, I'll do both.
I always thought of yoga as just a stretching thing and wondered why I would want to make my workouts just stretching with no aerobics or strengthening. I never saw the need for something like yoga -- maybe a little stretching, but the full yoga seemed like overkill, and for people who had more patience for that sort of thing than me. The amazing thing that I've learned is that by some incredible miracle yoga provides me with everything. I live in a town whose streets are mainly hills, so bicycling around town requires lots of hill training. Before my yoga, if I wasn't hill trained, it would take me months before I could comfortably bicycle the hills around town. After yoga I discovered I can get on my bike with no conditioning and tackle the hills with no problems whatsoever -- standing on my pedals up the long hills even.
I recently climbed a mountain that in the past left me out of breath when I peaked. This time, before I knew it I had made the round trip, and I felt like I could easily have done it again. There's no end to the discoveries I'm making in what my body can do now.
When I scuba dive, my tank lasts forever. My yoga makes my underwater experience completely meditative and calming. The breathing that I do in my yoga seems to give me such a huge aerobic capacity that it feels like my body is optimizing every single breath and I don't need to strain at all to get oxygen.
After my cancer treatments, I was told I could never lift anything more than 5 pounds again for the rest of my life, because of the risk of lymphedema from loss of lymph nodes in my armpits. For 7 years I babied my arms with paranoia, and they became flaccid from lack of use and lost all of their strength. After 8 months of daily yoga routines, I can now do the 20 or so full pushups from the Power Yoga DvD. I can do the two 30-second handstands from my Chapter 8 routines.
At the time of my cancer diagnosis, as I was recovering from surgery, I found that I had also developed a frozen shoulder. I went through many months of fairly painful physical therapy and finally got my arm to the point where it was about 85% of its full range of motion. I recently discovered that my right side had been starting to get the same frozen shoulder issue. I don't think I ever would have noticed the problem creaping up on my right side if I hadn't been involved in the intense self-awareness that yoga gives me. I've been working on that for the past month or so, and that arm is recovering. At this point, both of my arms are at 100% range of motion (as far as I can tell).
I can go on and on about the things that work for me in my life -- The Body Ecology diet (www.bodyecology.com) which has been the foundation of the rules that I live by for nurturing my body through paying attention to the foods that I put in it; my spirituality which has allowed me to define how I will live the rest of my life so that when my time comes to die, I will know that I fulfilled my life's purpose.
So, yoga is not EVERYTHING to me, it's just one of many things in my life that has been critical to helping me lead a healthy and happy life.
I have love in me to bestow on my family and friends. I get up every morning and look forward to my day with eagerness and energy. I can catch myself the very minute I start getting overstressed and recognize "ok, that was the pizza I had for lunch", or "such-and-such a situation is stressing me out", or "I'm overworked", and instead of letting it fester out of control, I can reach into my toolkit and do something about it to nip it in the bud.
Even though I've always abhored the phrase "cancer has made me a better person", deep down inside, because my cancer has given me the challenge to step up to the plate, I have to admit that it has provided me with the motivation I needed to straighten up my life and make my life worth living. Yoga has been one of the products of that challenge. Instead of being 10 years older, yoga has made me 10 years younger. I didn't start off by wanting to be younger or wanting to be skinnier. I don't think you ever get these things by seeking youth or weight loss as a goal. I got these things by just wanting my life to have meaning and purpose and joy.
