After having several days off, now I’m having an “off” day.
My husband and I have just returned from a few days away – we were in Aspen, Colorado, which has to be one of the most gorgeous spots on earth, as evidenced by the photo I’ve posted today.
So good to get away – to breathe in different air, to view the world from another angle, to hear the silence of nature.
We did some hiking – one trail took us up to around 10,000 ft above sea level. It was so peaceful up there, and I find that sort of peace to be a balm to my soul.
You cannot experience that kind of peace anywhere else because it exudes from the earth, the rocks and the trees, and engulfs you in a peaceful embrace.
I highly recommend it for anyone who is going through breast cancer right now – get yourself into a beautiful location for a little while. Breathe in that peace. Your immune system will love you for it.
Now here I am sitting in my office and wishing I was back there. I wasn’t quite ready to leave it.
To make matters worse, at lunchtime today I was cutting up some basil and managed to chop the tip off one of my fingers. That makes typing hard, hence the brevity of this post.
I really should have stayed in the forest.
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I feel better already just doing the research and finding the videos. Hope it helps you too!
Remember to breathe. And smile. Everyone will wonder what you’re up to.
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While writing my blog articles, I do a lot of Internet surfing and I see a lot of different sites. My favorite blog lately is http://thesilverpen.com so I thought I’d share it with you today, especially since my latest blogs have been pretty heavy going.
Written by Hollye Jacobs, a fellow breast cancer survivor, Hollye describes her blog as being “a way for me to document the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and oftentimes hilarious journey through, with, over and around breast cancer. One year later I’m still in recovery but now on a journey to find Silver Linings in all aspects of life.”
I love that – Silver Linings. A wonderful way to look at life.
Every time I head over to Hollye’s site, I’m in awe. It has an elegant feel to it – you might read an inspirational thought from Seneca, or a discussion of a book that she liked, or there could be something about gardening or stillness.
Today’s post is about Oscar de la Renta’s gardens in the Dominican Republic and there are some gorgeous photographs – the kind you can lose yourself in.
Head over there and take a look (you can use the link at the top of this page). Thank you, Hollye. Love your work and your words of wisdom. I even love the occasional “f bomb”.
If you’d like to stay connected, sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com) and I’ll do my utmost to keep you informed and empowered on your healing journey… and beyond.
One thing I found to be exceptionally helpful to me was to begin writing a journal when I was first diagnosed with breast cancer. I didn’t know how to journal, I just knew that I needed to get some things down on paper and FAST.
I’ve always kept a diary ever since our son was born, so I didn’t find it difficult to begin.
I believe perhaps that others have some problems in that regard, so I found you a lovely resource in a website called “Journaling Saves!” written by Kristin Donovan.
Here’s how journaling helped me. When I was going through breast cancer, I was reading a pile of information on breast cancer (sometimes several books at a time), a stack of natural healing books and heaps of inspirational info. When I would find a passage that made sense to me or that I particularly wanted to remember, I wrote it in my healing journal. Here’s one of my favorites:
“Think of cancer as a message from God to repair the delicate pattern of your soul and internal bodily health through love, nurturing, understanding and acceptance, and as a way to bring those aspects of your life that are out of balance back into balance.” (Katrina Ellis, from Shattering the Cancer Myth).
Journaling was amazingly helpful to me, I found it essential to be able to refer to those passages I wrote and recall the information quickly. To see it in my own handwriting also seemed to lend it credence. I still thumb through the pages of my healing journal once in awhile.
Why Journaling Might Help You
The reason you might want to journal? Think of it as a container for self reflection, self-expression and self exploration. It can be a very healing thing to do.
It gets things out of your head and into the light of day – makes them more real.
You might discover some things that need healing – issues, negative beliefs, relationships – things will bubble up from your subconscious mind.
Researchers have found that people who write their deepest thoughts and feelings about upsetting events in their lives have stronger immunity and visit their doctors half as often. Journaling reduces stress, it even helps your organizational skills.
Journaling can help move you towards wholeness and growth – to who you really are.
If you’d like to stay connected, sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com) and I’ll do my utmost to keep you informed and empowered on your healing journey… and beyond.
I have just finished re-reading “The Biology of Belief” by Dr Bruce Lipton, who was just in Loveland, Colorado last month at a speaking engagement. Alas, too far away for me to get there.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr Lipton for this book and I’ll tell you why.
When I was going through breast cancer in 2004, the thing I struggled with the most (my elephant in the room) was my inherited genes from my mother and grandmother, who both died from breast cancer.
There were times when I thought, “What’s the use of doing chemotherapy if I am just going to die from this anyway?”
Being a natural therapist, I was aware of how powerful the mind is and I knew what a self-limiting belief this was and that it wasn’t doing me ANY good at all.
A Friend to the Rescue
About that time, I shared that worry with a new friend of mine, another woman going through breast cancer. She invited me to her house to collect a video tape she’d received from somewhere, so on one rainy day I drove over and met her and she gave me the video to watch.
It was Dr Bruce Lipton giving a talk entitled “The Biology of Belief” about how OUR GENES ARE NOT OUR DESTINY.
That video is now available on You Tube and you can access it here . It’s an hour long so be patient but please do watch it – it’s very powerful and will change the way you think about genes.
I felt totally liberated when I watched that video, and I began to change my thoughts to more positive, nurturing beliefs.
There Is More In The Book
Once you’ve watched the video, you still owe it to yourself to read the book. Dr Lipton mentions lots of interesting things in the book that the video doesn’t cover.
I especially loved the section where he discusses the genes that supposedly cause breast cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2. Dr Lipton says that 95% of breast cancers are NOT due to inherited genes, but to malignancies derived from environmentally induced “epigenetic alterations” (not due to genes).
I really enjoyed the section on prescription drugs, “Buying the Pharm”. Dr Lipton tells us that pharmaceutical drugs are responsible for more than 300,000 deaths per year. Did you know that? Definitely read that section of the book. It should be required reading for all medical students.
Dr Lipton states “Using prescription drugs to silence a body’s symptoms enables us to ignore personal involvement we may have with the onset of those symptoms. The overuse of prescription drugs provides a vacation from personal responsibility.” Confronting, I know.
Another eye opener – did you know that drug companies are studying patients who respond to sugar pills (placebos) with the goal of eliminating them from early clinical trials? It apparently disturbs pharmaceutical companies that in most of their clinical trials the placebos (the “fake” drugs) prove to be as effective as their “engineered chemical cocktails.”
Which just demonstrates to me that we as humans are susceptible to the healing power of “something” you feel is going to help you. Makes me think of leeches, blood-letting, rattlesnake oil…
Placebo vs Nocebo Effect
In the book, Dr Lipton discusses the interesting difference between the placebo effect, when the mind, through positive suggestions improves something injured or diseased in the body, and the nocebo effect, when the same mind is engaged in negative suggestions that can damage health.
How many of us have heard of the patient who walked into his doctor’s office, is told that he only has 8 weeks to live and 8 weeks later he promptly gives up the ghost? That’s the nocebo effect in action.
I was telling you just the other day of a friend of mine who was told he only had a few months to live, to go home and get his affairs in order, but he chose not to accept that. He went in search of holistic medicine and he’s still here with us 16 years later. That’s the placebo effect working (along with a whole bunch of other things!).
Finally, I have found Dr David Hamilton’s wonderful YouTube video called How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body. And he has a wonderful Scottish accent. Enjoy (it’s only 6 minutes long).
I think I’m in love…
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