Meditation
The Goal: Change Your Body Chemistry
I am a skeptic. However, as someone who is supposed to be ‘beneath the grass,” I can write this: Along with prescribed medications, diet and lifestyle changes, meditation has played a transformative role in extending my life.
Given a two-year prognosis, I knew I could either 'go down the rabbit hole” of suffering mentally over the prospects of a debilitating and painful death OR, I could keep my act together and seek an answer to "How me" rather than "Why me." I leaned into my situation and tried my best to be as objective as possible. While constantly feeling vulnerable in ways I had never imagined, and experiencing emotional reactions to discomfort and pain, I could not go down a road of self-pity. I learned to become comfortable with being uncomfortable by staying in the moment; a singular focus that's one of the benefits of meditation. Then I found this bonus: Your thoughts affect your brain which in turn affect your health -- and that's one of the ways you change your body's chemistry.
KEY POINT: You can not underestimate the impact your mind has on your health. Your body responds on a cellular level to both negative and positive thoughts through the process known as epigenetics - more on that below!
It is my firm belief that my negative thinking led, in part, to my cancer. (Think Thoreau's "quiet desperation" where someone's exterior doesn't match their internal thoughts.) Meditation has given me a way to break the habit of ruminating over past events, altering my brain's default mode and enabling me to change my body chemistry for the better, making it as inhospitable as possible to cancer.
Epigenetics
ACCORDING TO THE CDC: Epigenetics refers to how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes (mutations), epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change the sequence of DNA bases, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence. In fact, epigenetics turns genes "on" or "off."
(So yeah, I was interested in that.)
Specifically, I was interested in the connection between meditation and epigenetics because -- as we all know -- a body under the duress of stress doesn't heal well. And, as you can imagine, specialists telling you you only have twenty-four months to live can create quite a bit of stress -- which makes their prognosis much more likely. I wanted to get around that, and the epigenetics associated with meditation helped me get there.
One of the founding doctors of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center once said he was convinced that of all the thousands of cancer patients he treated, every one of those cancers had an emotional component to it; negative thoughts and feelings brought on by a significant loss, like the death of a loved one; a business/financial failure; a horrible divorce; or a life goal that hadn't come to fruition. When those grave things happen, negative emotions can play a key role in changing your body chemistry -- think epigenetics -- and make it an attractive environment for cancer cells to possibly thrive and multiply. It is my firm belief that negative thinking -- the feeling of loss and despair -- led in part to my cancer. This concept was introduced to me through my PCP who upon hearing of my diagnosis spoke to me about the dangers of negative thinking. Meditation has given me a way to break the habit of ruminating over past events, enabling me to forgive myself, create space for self love and alter my body’s chemistry for better health.
Anyone can meditate. I’m good at it. And I also suck at it. My experience changes every time — and so will your’s. The important thing is to to do it nearly everyday. As little as 10 minutes a day can change your life for the better. (Even people who don’t have cancer — people like Jerry Seinfeld — swear by it.) If you miss a couple of days, don’t beat yourself up. Jump back in.
Actively practicing meditation has profound effects and is quite different from not doing it. As someone -- probably Sam Harris, the creator of the Waking Up app and the one who's influenced me the most -- put it, we have 1,440 minutes in our day. Meditating for just 10 minutes makes all the other minutes so much better. In terms of your personal outlook and contentment, it is truly a revolutionary thing to do. You’ll find in doing it, that you don’t always have to be “taken in” by moments, or situations and/or events that used to upset you; events that as a cancer patient, CAN BE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH.
What Meditation Isn't...
Of the many disciplines of meditation, these are the ones I gravitated toward and still practice
1) Positive Imagery; Lifeforce Meditation
2) Guided, Mindfulness Meditation
Creating a meditation practice...
that will impact your thinking may take a few days or a few weeks. Everyone is different. The important thing is that you start and give yourself a daily gift of ten minutes or more that may possibly change your view of your internal world and extend your life.
Apps For Starting
QUICK HELP:
WHEN you find yourself in circumstances that are raising your level of anxiety, in addition to meditation, breath work will help quickly calm your nerves. Here’s a breath exercise led by Dr Richard Brown from Columbia University that I find great when dealing with anxiety: https://youtu.be/ZyPHWARoa1A
DISTANCE STRESS REDUCTION: Not only cancer patients suffer from stress, their caregivers do too! Duke University’s Integrative Medicine program offers Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Learning. It costs more than an app but you might find this kind of program more attractive: https://dukeintegrativemedicine.org/programs-training/public/mindfulness-based-stressed-reduction-distance-learning/
Cancer's Silver Lining...
SUGGESTED RESOURCES
BOOKS
Joy On Demand by Chade-Meng Tan. Given its title, one would hope this bestseller would be fun to read -- and It doesn't disappoint! Free of common trappings, Meng's pragmatic and light-hearted approach explains how you can find the equanimity, calm and joy that a meditation practice can bring. If you have cancer -- and especially if you are facing a terminal prognosis -- this book provides an intellectual and emotional nourishment that helps you reduce stress and enable your body's ability to heal.
VIDEOS (BELOW)
If you're still skeptical: Science has proven — and continues to prove — the mental and physical benefits of meditation. The First video below quickly covers the science and benefits of meditation through simple line drawing and voice over. It goes by so fast, you may want to watch it twice. (N/A: I have No Affiliation with ASAPscience.)
The Second video, Should You Meditate, features one of my favorite influencers, the neuroscientist Sam Harris, creator of the Waking Up app. This brief (5:36min) video is an illuminating conversation with Harris and Joseph Goldstein, co-founder of Insight Meditation Society (https://www.dharma.org/teacher/joseph-goldstein/).
Don’t Try to be Mindful - Presented by Daron Larson) at TEDx Columbus — The meaning of the word mindful (or mindfulness) is a tricky one but here’s the thought that this video brought up for me: As you deal with having cancer, that awareness — that mindfulness — is how you learn to live with your circumstances; that you should try to do everything you can to extend your life but you do it from moment to moment. Don’t think 3 months or 6 months down the road or worry about how you got here. Be aware of the now. Larson says, “Noticing that you’re alive is a taste that adults have to reacquire.” I think that when you're sick -- especially if you have cancer -- noticing you're alive is more important than ever.
