reflexology and cancer

there are tons of studies going on about reflexology and how it helps those undergoing cancer treatments. one of my dearest friends and clients is having a mastectomy today and i felt the need to share a few thoughts on my reflexology is so helpful when dealing with cancer.

these are my thoughts and experiences only as reported by other clients during and post treatments for various forms of cancer, please do not take these thoughts as evidence.

Post Cancer and surgery clients are best served by reflexology because :

• Assists in Detox. Removal of harsh chemo drugs from system, these drugs settle in tissues and digestive system and can eventually lead to complications.
  
• Nurturing pain free touch. This gets clients back in their body after traumatic life experiences and months of feeling like crap. Assists in clients well-being and relief of nausea, pain, stress and surgical trauma. Re-integration to their body.
• Assists in circulation and lymph drainage. Reflexology allows the body to relax which opens the circulatory system allowing fluids to flow, pick up and distribute waste and nutrition to cells and facilitates increase health through potential stimulation of white blood cell creation.
• Body and Self love. reflexology allows time for deep healing relaxation, this stimulates the expression of deep emotions that have been pushed aside. Allowing fear, grief and pain to surface and leave the body opens the client to deep self love, calm and a sense of connection to all--allowing profound healing and shortened recovery time.

may we find a way to alter the harsh experiences cancer makes us experience. may we find a kinder, gentler healing process.

when in doubt

keep moving forward

there are no guarantees that this will work

especially if the way ahead is all cloudy and mist filled

you might fall down a hole

then again you might find treasure

but really plodding along is a very good way to just keep things going, it is much harder to stop-loose momentum and then have to start rolling again.

just thought i'd say this seeing as all this stuckness has been hovering around me making my life difficult as of late. still not unstuck but am enjoying the process and the view a lot more from this place.

stuck... i'm stuck

when you have entered the land of stuck it is very hard to move.

like any movement has the potential to get you stuck-er.

like stuck to the point where you can't use your hands or legs.

any movements are now getting the stuck up around your neck and like very soon you are going to be eating the stuck and it will drown you.

i hate the stuck. hate. HATE. HATE the stuck. and I don't like to use words like hate.

but what i hate more than the stuck is the feelings surrounding stuck. of hopeless and defeat and immobility and ARGHHH. like you want to move and make things alright, but you also just want to stay and process, but fuck it sucks and it's hard and it's ugly and ARGHHHH!

so yeah life's good here... what's it like in your neck of the woods?

most of me knows this is a cycle and it will be soon be over. but there's the part that knows, like in the image above, that once the cycle is over i will become compost for some other adventurer.

meta-physical death/change is often twice as excruciating as literal death. mostly because it keeps happening over and over as we grow. literal death only happens once. usually.

what i can do? ... go pull some more weeds. maybe it will ground me. maybe it will just piss me off, but no matter what it will create a little bit of beauty that i can glom on to and stare at in this time of stuck-ness.

ahhh the paradox

excerpt from marc lesser's blog

"A paradox is something that appears to be contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd but may in fact be true. Do less. Accomplish more. These statements present a paradox. Acknowledging, owning, and embracing the paradoxical nature of our lives, the lives of others, and the world can lessen our resistance to change and increase our effectiveness. At its most basic it makes us less tense and more open to happiness....

Sometimes we get caught up trying to resolve internal contradictions, thinking that if we can, we will solve our busyness. Instead, this effort can itself become the cause of our busyness and our scrambled bewilderment. Our complex minds, emotions, and personality traits are simply a rather wonderful fact of human existence. Accepting that can lighten and expand our self-image, making it more fluid. In a strange way it is a more accurate view of life. Embrace paradox and you increase self-acceptance, tolerance of others, and your own possibilities.

How would you describe yourself as a paradox?
How would you describe your life or work as a paradox?"

• i am shy and yet i thrive in public speaking
• i believe in the abundance of the universe and yet i cling to things and money
• i nurture people for a living and have a hard time receiving when others nurture me
• i am very intelligent and yet often mumble and don't answer simple questions
• i love being around people i hate being in groups larger than 4
  
• i dance with abandon with people under 5 yrs old around, i don't dance with adults
• my work is an evolution of who and where i am and yet i have to "define it" for marketing

nearing the end...

of my writing retreat. i have started to look back over all i have done. i am not sure i accomplished much in the "real world" but i cannot help but think i have done amazing things in my physical and emotional body.

i have been dreaming vivid, huge, impactful dreams. i cannot remember most of them upon awakening but i somehow feel different. like my entire body is somehow regrowing, regenerating and transforming into something much more able to live in a constant state of love, peace and flexibility.

kayaking yesterday i had a blissful experience of pushing my body too hard and relaxing it completely into the boat and the water and the world around me. i have never been able to easily do this. i have great fears come up when thinking of myself in this tiny boat sitting a top a vast deep body of cold salt water. i have great respect for the water and i know at any moment it can snap my life clean away. but yesterday my goal was not how to fastest get back to land but how to experience my body, in this boat, the wind, the waves the creatures and the deep teal and ever changing rich blue shades of water and land.

this is the dance i am striving to bring back as i prepare to re-enter the normal daily life. the beauty of the dance, the surrender to trust, the ability to look around and take it all in. to love, to see, to play, to push, and surrender.

see you on the flip side.

you know when life presents you magic sometimes it's all you can do to not run away.

it's terribly hard to stand in the beauty and majesty of the world.

it makes you feel small...

but if you can embrace this infancy you can begin to feel your bigger connection to the entire universe.