yogawithleona

Just a reminder

Happy Friday beautiful people! I’m just thrilled at how we are growing, with new members and followers each week! Keep up the awesome work with developing your yoga practice, and feel free to contact us if you have questions or need anything.

But also remember to be gentle with yourself. If you need days to just snuggle up with a great book and a cup of tea, don’t be hard on yourself for doing so. Listen to your inner wisdom and give yourself whatever you need. Sadhguru said “Discipline does not mean control. Discipline means having the sense to do exactly what is needed”. This is such an important lesson in yoga AND in cancer recovery. This is one of the ways to interpret brahmacharya, one of the yamas from Patanjali’s 8 Limbs of Yoga, here translated as right use of energy. Right use of energy means learning to listen to your body, to listen to your soul, and to really understand what you need to do, and act accordingly, to do exactly what is needed, as Sadhguru described. Learn to push when you have the energy for it, and to rest when your body needs that. Learn to be around people when that helps and raises your energy, but to have quiet solitude when that feeds your spirit better. This will teach you to remain in a perfect state of balance despite all of life’s ups and downs.

So I hope you are enjoying your friday, whatever that looks like for you. Maybe a super vigorous yoga practice, or maybe a quiet relaxing evening at home, or whatever it is you need today. Just make sure your soul is getting as much exercise as your abs.

Namaste

Flash sale!

Tomorrow is my official 4 year cancerversary! To say I am grateful to be alive and healthy is the understatement of the year. It has been quite an amazing 4 years with lots of changes, challenges, scares, and obstacles. But also lots of joy, blessings, gratitude, and growth. And the realization that (as a good friend and former patient used to say) there IS life after cancer! I’m so blessed to be physically well, to be surrounded by beautiful family and friends, to live in a gorgeous place with a healthy vibe, to feel emotionally strong and resilient, and to be able to pursue my passion – which is sharing the profound benefits of yoga with cancer survivors everywhere!
So let’s celebrate with a FLASH SALE! If you’ve been thinking about joining our unlimited video membership, and you want to learn how yoga can help you recover from cancer with more grace and ease, now is a great time! Starting NOW through tomorrow night, get 50% off the price of your membership by using the discount code “4yearswoot” at checkout! Look forward to practicing with you.
🧘🏽‍♀️💖🌸💖🧘🏽‍♀️

http://www.yogawithleona.com/product/yoga-with-leona-unlimited-membership/

Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?

Everybody loves a little Bob Marley, right? His music is so beautiful, soulful, fun, and relaxing. And some of his lyrics are really provocative. I love this one: “Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?”. In today’s culture, I think we often allow ourselves to stay so busy that we never even give ourselves time to ask these sorts of questions. To really look within and think about where we are, whether we are happy, whether there are changes we would like to make, and how to go about doing that. Instead we just mindlessly run from one engagement to the next, accepting this as our life, and not really thinking any more about it.

I know, because I used to be that way big time. About 8 years ago or so, I went to an all day yoga workshop with my step-daughter, who is actually the one who got me started in yoga in the first place (thank you, Erika!). It was a really great workshop with an amazing international teacher who was visiting Arizona. During one of the breaks, Erika and I were working on some of the things we had just learned, and I was watching her do a posture and trying to help with the new alignment tips. The leader of the workshop saw us, and came over, saying “Are you a yoga teacher? You should be a yoga teacher”, to which I sort of scoffed and said “Yeah right, I wish!”. He looked puzzled, and said “Why not?”. And I said “I’d have to quit my real job”. “Being a yoga teacher IS a real job”, he replied. I felt like such a dick. I didn’t mean to suggest that it wasn’t, but rather just that it wasn’t my real job. But that moment transformed me. I thought “well why can’t it be my real job?”. Just because I trained for 10 years in medicine and had then been building my practice for some years too, did that mean that I had no choice in the matter? That I had to do that forever, and couldn’t change gears and have a second, different career? I mean, why not? And that was the moment that opened my eyes to the possibility of truly changing my life to whatever I wanted it to be. To whatever would really make me happy and fulfilled.

Yoga encourages us to really look within. People often say yoga isn’t a “work-out”, it is a “work-in”, and this is a perfect description! Yoga encourages us to take the time to really feel our inner bodies AND to really listen to our inner wisdom, or intuition. This is sort of the opposite of mindlessly running around like chickens with our heads cut off. If we take the time to really listen and feel, we can then learn what we need to do next. Maybe nothing needs changed. Maybe we are perfectly happy and healthy and we are doing everything right. Then we just keep on as we are. But probably, for most of us, there are at least a few areas in which we could improve, or where we could develop better habits to make us healthier in body and/or mind. So give yourself some time to really think about what is most important. What really brings you joy? What fulfills you and makes you feel most content at the end of the day. What makes you feel your best? Maybe it is super simple, like watching your kids play football in the backyard. Maybe it is your work. Maybe it is having a quiet glass of wine at the end of a busy week with your partner and sharing your deepest thoughts. Maybe it is growing a garden, or learning to cook healthier foods. Maybe it is preparing for a 5k, or some other fitness outlet, or taking some classes on-line or at your local community college. As strange as it sounds, use your cancer as an opportunity to take a time-out and really look and listen to what you want and need, and then make the effort to prioritize accordingly. If you are really busy, maybe you need to cut some things out of your life to make time for the things you want to do? Stop watching tv, or looking at social media? Set better boundaries at work and stop staying late? Stop reading Leona’s blog (No! LOL). And you don’t have to do it all in one day. Little by little, work toward the things you want. Even if takes months or years. Your mental and physical health is in your hands. Empower yourself to take control.

So find some time this week, whether it is on your mat or somewhere else. Open your eyes, and look within. Are you satisfied, with the life you’re living?

Namaste

Navigating re-entry after cancer as a graceful dance

I listened to a TED talk the other day from a young leukemia survivor, who described the challenges of “re-entry”, or coming back to normal life after surviving a grueling 4 year cancer journey that included tons of inpatient chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. This re-entry phenomenon is the time after active treatment, when we are “done”, and cancer-free, and ready to get back to our lives. Although, as this young cancer survivor described, it is never really quite that simple, and can be very challenging in ways different than active treatment. We don’t just flip and switch and go back to who we were before cancer. We are changed. There are physical changes, mental/emotional changes, changes in our values, changes in how we perceive the world around us, and perhaps even deeply spiritual changes. This young woman was graceful and beautiful, and described the process with honesty and vulnerability.

But as I was listening, I found myself a little perturbed. I am quite a stubborn person (as my poor husband well knows). And there are certain things that I just refused to believe, or accept, during and into my re-entry. So I was thinking to myself, “I don’t buy that. We don’t have to just accept weakness, or limitation, or that there are things we cannot do now because of our cancer history”. But as I was sitting there with my stubbornness, sometimes disguised as strength or resilience…. this quote came to me from BKS Iyengar:

“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured, and to endure what cannot be cured”.

And along with the quote, the realization that the re-entry dance lies somewhere in between. In fact, as much as I don’t like to admit it, there may be consequences of cancer treatment that we cannot cure, no matter how stubborn and strong we are. I have a few. But there are certainly also things that we can overcome with a little persistence and effort. So it takes really listening to ourselves and our bodies to learn which are which. And to learn how to slowly and safely overcome the ones that we can (to cure what need not be endured), and to gracefully accept and learn to work with, instead of against, the ones that we can’t (to endure what cannot be cured).

And THIS is some of the magic of yoga. Yoga isn’t just stretching and strengthening our bodies. It does that of course, but it also helps us to dig deeper, diving inward to really get to know and understand ourselves on a deeper level, where we can really find that balance between effort and ease, between the strength to overcome and the equanimity to accept. We are each unique and different in where we lie on that spectrum, and in what we need to achieve that healthy balance. Yoga helps us to really see ourselves and what we truly need, and to then develop those healthier mental and physical habits, that will bring us peace, health, and clarity, to help our re-entry transform us for the better.

So step onto your mat, and let yoga teach you, as Iyengar said, to cure what need not be endured, and to endure what cannot be cured. Use what you learn to find that “new normal” that is better, healthier, and happier than you were before.

Namaste

(cute cameo in the photo from Howie, our latest rescue)

Learning patience

I have said before that research has shown that one of the qualities common to people who cope best with a cancer experience is being able to look at the experience as an opportunity; an opportunity to learn something, for personal growth, or to change one’s lifestyle for the better. So I have tried to embody this in my own cancer experience, seeing all of the ways that I have grown and become better as a result of my breast cancer, rather than focusing on any of the perceived “negatives”. In fact, if we really think about it, many of those “negatives” might actually be turned into positives if we can just train ourselves to see the things that we have learned from them.

One of the biggest lessons that I continue to learn from my cancer journey is patience. Anyone who knows me knows I have historically been one of the most impatient people alive. It makes me a terrible cook! LOL I am always watching the proverbial pot that then never boils! But I have finally realized that my impatience also makes me suffer unnecessarily. If I can just learn to be more patient, to trust that things happen when they are supposed to, to release my desire to control everything and my need to have things happen on MY timeline… then I can have so much more peace in my mind, and thus truly feel better all the time. I mean, why obsess over something when that will NOT make it happen any faster, right? So this really was a lesson that I needed to learn. And man, did having breast cancer give me a big serving of it! I always imagine a big spoonful of whatever I needed to learn being shoved right into my mouth. Mmmmmmm patience.

From the very first week of my diagnosis, waiting on my biopsy results and special stains, I just could not get the information fast enough. Then during chemotherapy, a couple of times my treatment got delayed because the meds didn’t arrive at the clinic, or there was some snafu with the insurance. And waiting that week (that seems like a year) for PET scan results to arrive! All of these things drove me really crazy, and challenged me to come back to my breath, to realize that my stress would not make things happen any faster, but instead just make me feel physically ill and miserable for however long I wound up having to wait. I learned (very slowly, admittedly) to just breathe deeply, release my impatience, accept whatever timeline the universe had in mind, and recognize that there was plenty of beauty in my life at that very moment that I could enjoy while I waited. In fact, I read some advice from Eckhart Tolle that said (paraphrasing) that we should learn to release the idea that we are waiting, that next time we are made to wait in the doctor’s office or in line at the post office, and when it is finally our turn and the person says “sorry to have kept you waiting”, we respond “oh, no problem, I wasn’t waiting, I was just enjoying the view” (or watching the kids, or enjoying a magazine, or whatever thing we find around us that can be interesting or enjoyable, rather than boiling up with irritation that we have been made to wait). Isn’t that great advice? So I try to use that. Full disclosure, I still get pretty impatient when waiting for those PET scan results or something sortof scary like that. But I am dramatically better than I used to be. And I thank my cancer experience for that. I am a much happier, more patient, less irritable person, thanks to breast cancer.

Interestingly yoga is a great teacher of patience as well. As you know, if you have practiced any yoga at all, our bodies aren’t often able to do certain things right away. It can take months and years to build the flexibility and strength that it takes to get into certain asanas. And so it is a key teaching in yoga to learn to NOT be so attached to the end result (yoga postures aren’t like prizes or badges that we collect or perfect), and to be content with just working on ourselves wherever we are on any given day. To recognize that all of the good stuff, the growth and the transformation, lies in the journey, not in the destination. So we must cultivate patience every single day on our mats, and recognize that wherever we are today, is right where we are supposed to be. We must open our eyes to whatever we are experiencing right now, rather than rushing off to a future time when we might reach some distant goal.

So whether you struggling with waiting on important steps in your cancer journey, or you are on your mat and working on a new asana, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience”. And if you find it difficult, you’re not the only one, so be patient with yourself 😉

Namaste

Find your inner joyfulness

Deepak Chopra said “Health is not just the absence of disease. It’s an inner joyfulness that should be ours all the time; a state of positive well-being”. As breast cancer survivors, we focus so much on the cancer-related stuff- labs, scans, medicine and side effects, follow up appointments- that sometimes it is easy to forget that we must continue to cultivate that state of positive well-being in our whole selves. Yes, of course it is wonderful and we feel immense relief and celebrate each time we get good test results, and we say “I’m cancer free!”. But we must learn to also place importance and attention on the rest of our being. We must remember to cultivate that sense of inner joyfulness, so that it can remain with us in the good times and the bad, when things are going great and when things occasionally get rough. This way we can learn to navigate all of those different situations with equanimity, with grace, and with ease. We are unf*ckwithable, as I like to say!

So what does it mean to you? What helps you to increase that sense of inner joyfulness? For some of us, it is as simple as spending time with those we love. For others, it might be time alone in nature. Maybe it is some type of spiritual practice, prayer, or meditation. Maybe it is exerecise, yoga, reading great books, petting your cat, or quietly sipping a great cup of coffee on a rainy morning. Spend a little time and really think about what things in your life increase your sense of inner joyfulness. What makes you feel truly good inside? And then figure out how to prioritize those, and spend more time doing them! Life can get busy and we often place importance on all of the other things we need to do. But remember that these little things are just as important to our true wellness as is taking our medication or doing certain medical treatments. And this is a part of our wellness that we CAN control. So give a try to letting go of your worry and thoughts about the cancer, and focus on cultivating your inner joyfulness. I think you will like how you feel.

Namaste

Using yoga to navigate the intersection of heart and mind

Paulo Coehlo said “The spiritual path can only be traveled through the daily experience of love”, and I couldn’t love this quote more. Of course he doesn’t mean only romantic love, but rather love as a state of being, love as a way of living, of going through life with a completely open heart, full of compassion and understanding for those around us and for ourselves, fully in tune with our intuitive heart, really feeling each experience deeply (not just thinking about it and judging it), and an eager openness to finding bliss in whatever life brings us.

Interestingly, I am traditionally much more of a cerebral, or thinking-mind- dominant person. I was always science and math oriented, and wasn’t good at believing or feeling anything that couldn’t be proven to me by documented facts. Then of course, living in the medical field for much of my life, that mindset was just solidified. Everything had to be proven in well designed, solid, scientific studies for me to give it much credence. I did, however, in caring for individual patients, have many moments of pure love, where the mind and the facts melt away, and true human connection just lays your heart wide open. Those moments were some of the best moments of my practice, although of course I also loved discussing the science behind cancer treatment and remain fascinated by developments in the field and new treatments that can cure many people of cancers that would have been lethal just a few years ago.

My yoga practice, over the years, has really helped me to be much more in touch with my intuitive heart, and to recognize and understand the intersection between mind and heart. In yoga we often say things like “Feel how your body is in the pose, don’t think about it”, to help us stop over-thinking and practice dropping into ourselves, into that space that is deeper than the mind, into our true selves, what some might call our soul. Yoga allows us to use our bodies as the doorway to that space. Most of the time, we run around controlled by our thoughts: what am I doing next, what do I think about that, what might go wrong, how I wish something were different, etc. Yoga trains us to be able to suspend those thoughts, even if just for a few moments, and just BE. To allow things like fear, anxiety, and judgement (which all come from too much thinking mind) to drop away, leaving peaceful freedom and open-heartedness, that state of being pure love. Of course the thinking mind often comes back into action, but the more we practice moving into BE-ing, the easier it will be and the longer we can stay in that blissful state.

Now this isn’t to say that our thinking mind isn’t a valuable tool! Of course it is. The thinking mind does amazing things for us. For example, the thinking mind can interpret the scientific research supporting yoga in cancer survivors! And you know I love science. While I do think it is of prime importance for us each to focus on how yoga works for us individually, how we truly feel on the inside when we keep up our practice, it also helps to know that there is sound science supporting those benefits as well.

The medical community has finally embraced mind body practices like yoga and meditation because the benefits have now been proven in scientific studies in many different conditions. There is extensive literature on the effects of yoga in cancer survivors. In fact, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) endorsed recommendations originally made by the Society of Integrative Oncology (SIO), that include recommending yoga and meditation for: overall quality of life, fatigue, depression/mood disturbance, and sleep. These recommendations were published by Lyman et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), the premiere cancer publication, in 2018. Similarly, in a Cochrane Review (which analyzes multiple scientific studies together to come to an overall conclusion on the evidence), it was concluded that there was evidence to support the use of yoga in breast cancer survivors in improving health-related quality of life, reducing fatigue and sleep disturbance, and reducing depression and anxiety (Cramer et al Cochrane Database 2017). Further studies on other specific symptoms like lymphedema, chemo induced neuropathy, hot flashes, etc are ongoing. The science behind how yoga results in these benefits is fascinating, and includes deep effects on our nervous systems, immune systems, musculoskeletal systems and more! We are beginning to have a much better understanding of just how yoga works to make us feel and function so much better.

Navigating the line between mind and heart is something that we, as breast cancer survivors, have to do continuously. We must pay attention to details and understand scan and lab results, our medications and side effects, and new information that our doctors share with us at each appointment. But we must also learn to let go of too much thinking mind, which can exacerbate fear and anxiety, and prevent us from feeling our true open intuitive hearts. We must learn to live in a state of love and joy, despite the stressors and difficulties that might arise. I submit to you that yoga will help you do that. But don’t just rely on the science that states it is so. Do your practice, and really feel, in your body and in your heart, if it is true for you too!

Namaste

“You are the universe in ecstatic motion”

Rumi said “Stop acting so small; you are the universe in ecstatic motion!”. I love this quote because it just makes me feel my inner strength and resilience, my true self, my divinity, even. I think that a breast cancer experience (or any other difficult life experience, for that matter) can sometimes make us feel helpless, weak, small, and defeated. We can feel like we have no power to weather the storm, to turn the sails, and to come out the other side healthy and not damaged. And of course it is ok to have flashes of that mindset. It is only natural. But we must recognize that sort of thought pattern when it begins to arise, and change that inner discourse to something healthier and more empowering. Because in reality, we truly do have that power.

In the quiet moments of our yoga practice, when we can truly turn our awareness inward and allow the outer world to melt away, we can get in touch with that place inside of ourselves, where we have this power. And by power, I don’t mean like brute force power, or power we might use to control others. I mean that quiet, peaceful, imperturbable power and fortitude to withstand anything our life throws at us. I mean that dynamic flexibility and deep faith that allow us to gracefully roll with the punches, and not get disheartened when things get tough. Because they do get tough. That is just real life. We, as cancer survivors, have had to dig deep and find this inner strength and resilience over and over again, from the first diagnosis, through telling our loved ones, through different types of trying treatments, and through long follow ups and recurrence scares. But the truth is that we have infinite ability inside of us to handle life’s difficulties, if we can just learn to see it and to tap into it.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (the original written text on yoga), he says “Study thyself. Discover the divine”. Whatever our spiritual beliefs are, yoga can help us look deeply inside of ourselves and find that place of true power, that place of divinity, of the universe in ecstatic motion. Don’t let yourself walk around being anything less.

Namaste

Finding beauty in the clouds

Ever notice how the cloudy skies produce the prettiest and richest sunsets? So too, in life, sometimes things that seem negative or undesirable on the surface can wind up, unexpectedly, resulting in great opportunity and our biggest growth.

Yoga philosophy (in Patanjali’s 8 Limbs of Yoga) teaches us to train ourselves in non-attachment (aparigraha) and contentment (santosha), among other things. If we can learn to be less attached to how we think things should be, and instead learn to find contentment in whatever our circumstances happen to be, we can eliminate much of our suffering, opening ourselves up to discovering those unexpected beauties and those opportunities we never thought existed before we opened our minds.

Having cancer seems like pretty much a negative thing on the surface. BUT, as many cancer survivors relate, it can actually turn into some very positive outcomes, if we just re-frame our minds, using guides like non-attachment and contentment. We can learn to appreciate more, to prioritize better, to not let trivialities disturb our peace, to love more, to spend more time cultivating joy, to be more compassionate with ourselves and others, and to take better care of ourselves – in body, mind, and spirit.

With this mindset, each and every moment carries with it its own beauty, richness, and blessings. And therefore each and every moment nourishes us and supports us in our growth and transformation on this journey of life. So soak up those clouds, my beautiful friends, and all the color they bring.

Namaste

Finding stillness in the breast cancer storm

Lao tzu said “To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders”. Before I found yoga, I don’t think I ever even knew what the word stillness meant. There wasn’t much time for stillness in my life, or so I thought. Between long busy hours in the office and the hospital, driving to and from work, meetings after work, trying to get some exercise, drinking enough water, running errands, spending time with my hubs and rarely my girlfriends, there just really wasn’t much time for anything else but sleep. I literally cut my own hair for years because I didn’t want to take the time to go to a salon! LOL, it wasn’t pretty. Imagine a hamster on a wheel. And I actually thought that if I was being still, I was wasting time that could be spent actually accomplishing something “important”. I’m pretty sure I am not the only one who felt this way. It is common in our culture to always be doing, running, achieving. And if we aren’t constantly doing something, then we either feel lazy or like we are missing out on something fun. Then throw cancer into the mix, with the appointments and treatments and everything else that is required of us, and wow, there is even less time for stillness. Or so I thought.

Yoga and yoga philosophy (and actually my cancer experience too, now that I think about it!) opened my eyes to the fact that when we allow ourselves to run, run, run, in this epidemic of busy-ness as it is sometimes called, we are cutting ourselves off from so much. We are actually missing much of the richness of life, the beautiful texture of the little moments, the simple joys hidden in each experience, the glory of nature or the smile of a loved one, the true bliss of just being ourselves. If we are constantly thinking about and/or running off to the next moment, the next accomplishment, or the next thing to mark off of our list, all of these beautiful little still moments of presence are lost. Talk about a waste!

Importantly, it is in the stillness, in these moments of just being, that our bodies and minds can rest, relax, heal, and regain balance from whatever challenges our lives have brought. Without that stillness, we remain in that vicious cycle of stress, tension, and disequilibrium that is SO unhealthy. And we, as breast cancer survivors, need to heal and restore harmony and balance as much as anyone! Having cancer sort of forced me to be still at times, because I just really didn’t feel well enough to do anything else. And I consider this such an important gift from my cancer experience; learning that it is not just ok, but tremendously important, to put down my desire to run and do, and instead just be. So now, I make stillness a priority. I always begin my yoga practice with settling in to find that place of stillness. And I try to revisit that place throughout my days, as often as I can.

What I eventually learned is that we can learn to choose. Once we recognize the profound importance of stillness, and of really relishing those moments of just being, we can actually choose NOT to let ourselves get swept up in constantly running and doing. We can change our commitments, our schedules, and our priorities to make the time for stillness and present moment awareness. We can make time for yoga, or meditation, or walking in nature, or just spending time with loved ones really being together and soaking up all of those beautiful little moments. For many of us, we will still have busy lives with work and family and responsibilities. But if we can just take a few minutes for stillness here and there, I think we’ll find we really love how it makes us feel. Just take a few minutes and look away from your computer screen and out the window at a beautiful tree or a blue sky, listen to the birds, and just feel your breath. Breaking up a busy work day with just a few short interludes of stillness will help tremendously, and give your body and mind a break to enter into that relaxation response where deep healing can take place. And as we learn to practice stillness, we will be better and better able to shift into that place with ease whenever we want to. As with everything, it just takes practice.

I’ll meet you on the mat to practice finding our stillness.

Namaste