Reflection Entry Five

Yoga Through Cancer: A Sacred Return to Self – A companion series by Leora
Reflections released in rhythm with recovery

Dear Reader,

Yoga is often spoken of as the union of body, mind, and breath, but no one warns you that this union can unravel during a crisis. Over the last 6 months during cancer treatment, not only did I lose my hair, a couple finger nails, and the ability to eat, I lost my ability to trust myself, to trust my nervous system, and to ground myself in the body that once felt familiar, like home. As the medications started to fade and healing began, I expected clarity, peace. and a quick return to my “normal self”. What I’m encountering is something different.. a quiet aftermath. This is a reflection from that place, part prayer, part reckoning, All breath… in the quiet morning hours of a steady inhale and exhale.

If you are somewhere in the in-between, post-surgery, mid-treatment, or walking the uncertain path of healing, I offer this reflection. It is not a prescription. Tho’ sincere, it’s not even tidy. It’s simply a self reflection piece that I recently wrote when there was finally room to breathe again.

I share it now as part of my yoga through cancer series, because yoga isn’t always movement. Sometimes it’s stillness. Sometimes getting through the heartache of it all is the practice and sometimes it’s sitting with yourself, hand over heart, waiting for the best of you to return.

BBs in a Box Car: Notes from the Quiet Aftermath
by Leora Sanchez

Inhale, exhale…

There is no evidence of cancer in my body.

In gratitude, I whisper these words to myself slowly, like a new language. The words taste surreal in my mouth, beautiful, hard-earned, and strange. Just a few months ago, and many a nights, I laid curled up in bed, I can still hear my own soft moaning as I rocked gently back and forth, soothing myself like a child.

The inability to eat, the muscles that forgot how to hold me, a nervous system frayed and my body pleading for mercy. Those memories already dimming, almost unbelievable moments in time.

And yet, the echoes remain.

There’s the physical fallout, a slow return to strength, tingling hands and burning feet, the strange sensations of neuropathy reminding me that healing isn’t linear. This morning, what comes up for me more than the physical is the emotional terrain I’ve wandered through. The mental fog and forgetfulness, the jagged self-doubt, the agitated, irritable and impatient voice in my head and the wreckage of trying to hold myself together while watching the storm wear away at the bridge between myself and someone I love.

Cancer didn’t kill me, even the relentless chemotherapy didn’t kill me (lol, there for a minute, I wasn’t so sure) but it did crack open fault lines I can’t ignore. I wasn’t always my best self. While I tried to be kind, thoughtful, and communicative, I was more often distant, annoyed, sharp and dismissive. Now, in this quiet aftermath, I sit with a tender regret that neither I and a significant friendship couldn’t hold under the pressure.

I sit in the early morning hours of a quiet that comes after a storm, Not triumphant. Not broken. Simply, here. Present. Breathing deeply in a inner room that is finally still, with the BBs of my mind bouncing around a little slower now, but still gently rattling in the corners.

There is a ”something” here, hiding beneath the relief. There is sadness folded into the joy. My inner balance is returning, but it’s cautious, like the first steps of a baby deer. It seems that my body and soul are still catching up to the news that I’ve survived the storm.

And I wonder… who was I in the storm? And will I ever be the same?

These days, my inner weather continues its shift without warning. One day it’s warm and expansive, full of possibility. The next it’s overcast, heavy with the fog of “What now?” I can’t always tell what’s mine and what belongs to my former lover, or to the larger world, the collective grief, the political unraveling, the long goodbye to my parents. But as I sit, breathing, and writing this piece, I can feel all of it pressing against my ribs.

It is said that our true self emerges in times of crisis. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe the truest self is also the most exhausted, the most worn down.

I do know this… I am not just the sharp edges, I am also the soft, padded corners of protection. I am thunder and the soft light of the sun, I bend and I break, I break and I soothe, I fall apart and I also gather the pieces. I’m dismissive and in tuned, focused and present. I love deeply. I’m wise and tender.

I do miss that part of me who smiles without effort. Who warms a room without trying. She’s still in here. Somewhere.

I stand on the horizon looking intently for this steady part of myself to return…and she will, I can feel her in the quiet stillness of early morning peace. I’m listening for the steadiness of her breath in my own. I’m listening for the small, sacred sound of my souls return.

There is a yogic verse in the Bhagavad Gita that has come up for me multiple times in the last few months. This morning it sits on my meditative heart as a gentle reminder.

Sidhya, Asidhya, Samo Bhuta => In success, in lack of success, same be.

In dreary weather or a glorious sun soaked day be the same.

In the joys of healing and the pain of heartache be the same.

Steady and present

~ In peace, Samo bhuta