Making Friends with a Body That Has Betrayed You
The scariest movie I've ever seen is Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Ordinary, unsuspecting people go to sleep, and while they're unconscious, their bodies are taken and replaced by aliens. In the early weeks after I was diagnosed, that's what getting breast cancer felt like: my body had become a hostile alien.
Before I got cancer, my body was familiar, reliable and trustworthy. Then suddenly, evil slipped in and everything changed. I felt betrayed. That sense of betrayal was the most shocking part of getting sick: not the knowledge that I could die, or the loss of my breasts, or the nauseating chemicals pumped into my jugular, but the feeling that I was trapped in a body that was colluding with an enemy force.
It took time for me to return to my old innocent trust in my body, to the faith that "we" were on the same side, allies against alien invaders like cancer. I'm sure there are many paths to regaining the feeling of being at home in your body, but for me the route was complementary, so-called mind-body techniques – particularly yoga.
Through yoga, I'm getting to know my body again and learning to work with it. For instance, my breath quickens and becomes shallow when I'm anxious. So I can calm myself down by slowing my breath and moving it into my belly. When I'm having trouble sleeping, I can often relieve my insomnia by mentally examining each part of my body and systematically releasing tension. And the yoga poses themselves -- the gentle twists and squeezes, the firming and stretching of muscles, the aligning and balancing of bones -- have brought back a sense of well-being to my battered self.
It took surgery and chemo and radiation to free my body of cancer, but it took yoga to free my mind.
What techniques have worked for you?
Posted January 26, 2011.
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