Cancer Wellness & Recovery Blog

Around Every Dark Cloud There is a Silver Lining

April 10, 2011/0 Comments/in Alternative cancer treatment, Boston and Brookline Massachusetts, cancer Blog, Complimentary Alternative Medicine for Cancer, Happiness During Illness, hypnotherapy for cancer /by Avinoam Lerner

This old proverb means that in every situation, no matter how unpleasant, difficult or even painful it might seem, there is always something to take away, something of meaningful, something positive which help us and sometime force us to grow. Have you ever wondered how some people are more resourceful than others? Especially when facing a difficult situation such as illness. What do they do differently that allows them to navigate the rough sea’s of the unknown successfully? Here are some thoughts: Seek knowledge – as the saying goes, knowledge is power. If your concern isn’t addressed by your doctor for whatever reason, ask a nurse, or another practitioner. Find the resources that help you learn about your options in a constructive and positive manner so you can make educated decisions. Shift your focus – Probably the most effective way to divert fear and worry which naturally arise when being diagnosed, is to shift your mind’s focus from you to someone else or something else. A great way to do that is to offer support for other cancer patients or find something that resonant with you like an organization with a meaningful cause and join in. Develop Resilience -in Wikipedia “Resilience” means “the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and adversity”. Developing the skill of resilience may take time and practice but you can take the following shortcut: 1. Accept that change is a part of living. Change can be viewed as an opportunity to grow in new directions. Letting go of what cannot be changed helps you focus on you can actually do. 2. Craft an action plan to negate your stress. Taking care of you is your number one priority, do what you enjoy most, feed your body, relax your mind and get plenty of rest. 3. Nurture a positive view of yourself. Prime your body and mind with positive self-talk, be kind and supportive of you, trust that you have appropriate resources to cope and remember that you are much more than just your body. 4. Set healthy personal boundaries. When you need space, ask for it. Those who love you may not know how to demonstrate their love and affection for you. Those who care for you do not know what treatment feels like, they do not know what it’s like to feel or be you. Help them by letting them know what is right for you. If you have some great resources, please share with us. Continue Reading Around Every Dark Cloud There is a Silver Lining

A Practical Strategy for coping with Fear of Cancer

April 9, 2011/0 Comments/in cancer Blog, Courage to Heal /by Avinoam Lerner

The notion of a life threatening illness is debilitating. Tough we all have different personalities and coping mechanism, fear seems to color every aspect of our lives with gloom. Recently a client said she felt that her field of vision narrowed from wide and bright, to narrow and dark when she found out she had cancer. It’s felt like “walking in a corridor with different doors, each door lead to another piece of her life” she said. This client is not alone. Her vivid description shed light on the common effects of fear and the need for a practical, realistic and effective way to deal with it. She asked me to share her experience with the hope it will be of use to others as they come face to face with it and so I do. F.E.A.R stands for False Evidence Appear Real. See the big picture – Though many of us think of cancer as an incurable disease, this is not necessarily the case anymore. With the advancement of medicine, treatment and technology more and more people these days survive their cancer. Remember the Truth of Statistics – Statistics are just numbers. I am not making light of medical data, but at the end of the day we are all unique. We have different DNA, different resilience levels and different belief systems and therefore cope with treatment differently. If we were all alike in every sense, there would be just one treatment or cure for cancer and it would work for everyone every time. It may be tempting to see yourself as part of this study or that body of data but if you are doing so, you must consider all those who survived and lived much longer than expected or predicted. In light of this view, the fragile nature of this form of evaluation comes to light. Search for the lesson – Being diagnosed with cancer does not mean you are helpless or hopeless. There are many things you can do take back control of your life, your body and your mind. From a holistic perspective a state of illness is a state where your body serves as a messenger from your inner self, that spiritual part of you that is at the core of your being. This part forever communicates with us and there is always a lesson to be learned. Figuring out what it is we need to hear or learn brings not only peace of mind and comfort but it also permits the body to utilize its healing potential. It dissolve the inhibiting factors which lessen the effectiveness of medicine or the body’s ability to embrace it. It is worth noting that Immersive Healing which is the practice I could offer this client, may not be right for you. There are different ways to reach the top of the mountain and hypnosis for cancer is not the only one or the only effective one. How do you cope your fearful moments? Can you give others some advice? Continue Reading A Practical Strategy for coping with Fear of Cancer

Mary’s Time to Look Inside

April 8, 2011/0 Comments/in Alternative cancer treatment, Boston and Brookline Massachusetts, cancer Blog, Complimentary Alternative Medicine for Cancer, Courage to Heal /by Avinoam Lerner

A client of mine, let’s call her Mary, was diagnosed with a very aggressive stage four anal cancer. This was not her first battle with the disease as she has already survived breast cancer. Knowing what lies ahead of her, she felt her back was to the wall and that she must take ownership and responsibility in someway for what she is going through. She decided it was time to do what she feared the most, to look inside. Mary has served a wonderful reminder to me why so many of us decide to not look inside, into our own mind, thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Looking inside is frightening. In fact it was so frightening to her that when she was given the option to have a colostomy, which is a life altering surgery with significant consequences, she still chose to shy away from healing her pain. To treat not only her physical part but also the part of her that does not feel she is worthy of healing. It was hard for me to understand why despite of what’s at stake, she was hesitant to do the work. Mary was a client of mine working on issues not directly related to her cancer, which put me in a unique position to witness her journey and finally accepting the daunting task of looking inward. Further discussion revealed why Mary would have preferred to have altered her body and pay such high cost to her quality of life. She was afraid. Afraid of looking at that part of her she kept locked deep within, that part she believed to be broken, lack of worth, distorted… a part which later she found wasn’t based on her truth but rather on other people’s view. This was completely natural. It is natural of course for us to fear any serious medical condition or procedure. But what I could not understand at that time was that her fear of her upcoming medical treatments was less frightening than the “non-evasive” work of healing her mind. Anthony Robbins once said that as people “we tend to move away from pain toward pleasure.” There are no lengthy recoveries; no pain medications, no physical hardships involved in Immersive Healing and Hypnosis for Cancer, yet the pain inside is scarier than the pain of surgery. Mary’s cancer spread beyond the anus and surgery was no longer a viable option as it will not serve to isolate the tumor. She had little options available from a medical perspective and that is when her courage kicked in. She interpret this dire news as a call to action, a call for her to heal from the inside out. She felt ready to face what she feared the most, herself. Would you have chosen surgery before healing as well? Continue Reading Mary’s Time to Look Inside

How to Overcome Your Fear of Cancer Diagnosis When Fear is the Natural Response?

April 7, 2011/0 Comments/in Alternative cancer treatment, Boston and Brookline Massachusetts, cancer Blog, Complimentary Alternative Medicine for Cancer, hypnotherapy for cancer /by Avinoam Lerner

Every healing journey starts with the onset of bad news. Those few words “you have cancer” challenge even the most optimistic mind. It forces us to think of the unthinkable, our families and our lives in a way we did not expect. The nature of bad news is often aggressive, debilitating and many of my client’s described it as a “defining moment after which nothing stayed the same”. Generally speaking, we fear cancer more than other ailments because of our perception of it. Our societal view of cancer is for the most part dire, like a death sentence. Most literature focuses on statistics of those who lost their battle with the disease, not with those who survived although more and more people do. Are we expected to face these three life changing words with grace and equanimity? Some may be able to do so but they are the exception and not the rule. Shock and fear, and even denial are common responses along side with anger and even shame. One of my clients recently stated “I feel so angry – not with anyone in particular, just with the situation and what it means for me and my loved ones. I keep thinking, why me?” Facing or acknowledging what we fear lays ahead is essential. It shortens the wait-and-recovery time between delivery of the bad news and setting forth on the path toward healing. The shorter this period of time the better it is. The danger we want to avoid here is the common mind-traps of hopelessness and helplessness. Respect Your Feelings One way to avoid these traps is to learn to respect these feelings. Unpleasant as they may be, they are valuable and necessary, and here is why: think of your external senses, touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste, one is not more important than the other or better than the other; they all have their use and play part in the way we make sense of the world. So, too, are our emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, debilitating or exciting, our emotions can be seen as the inner senses of our mind that provide us with the report of how we are doing inside. Tuning in or listening to your emotions, giving yourself time to process what you learn and summoning the courage to proceed is the first step toward a transformative journey, a journey back to health. This is what Immersive Healing and Hypnosis for Cancer allow you to do. No one can guarantee healing. No one can guarantee cure. These are desired destinations we fight for, we shoot for the stars but we must remember that until we get there it is the journey that counts. It may help to study what Rumi has said, “And don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.” ~Rumi I would like to hear from you about your defining moment and how you coped? Continue Reading How to Overcome Your Fear of Cancer Diagnosis When Fear is the Natural Response?

Finding the Courage to Heal

April 6, 2011/0 Comments/in Alternative cancer treatment, Boston and Brookline Massachusetts, cancer Blog, Complimentary Alternative Medicine for Cancer, Courage to Heal, hypnotherapy for cancer /by Avinoam Lerner

The word Illness means different things to different people. We have all been ill before, the Flue, Chickenpox etc, and in those times formed our view of illness and it’s likely that your personal experience was different than mine. This means that our attitudes towards it are different, we hold different beliefs about its nature and its purpose and we may even find it hard to agree on the role medicine and medical doctors. On one hand we are very fortunate to live in a time where medical advancements are abundant. A person alive today, even with illness such as cancer can expect to live longer than any other time in history. On the other hand, these same technological and medical advancements may cause us to feel more and more separated from our bodies and the illness. Instead of being viewed as a whole being with a physical dimension, mental, emotional and even spiritual dimensions we are viewed, through the prism of medicine, as a collection of parts, organs, tissues and glands. The modern view of illness is as an act of genes, environment, and viruses, promote the sense that we are but victims of the illness and therefore stand helpless against it. In light of this, it is easy to see why the first-order for healing is courage. One must find the courage to break free from cultural, social or personal beliefs about illness and see his or her true whole nature. Breaking free from these cultural, social and personal beliefs is neither easy nor comfortable. But recent history shows that a great number of those who have released themselves from societal norms of diseases survived. Louise Hay is a prime and an extreme example of this last statement. She chose a non-medical healing path despite of her doctors warning that she put herself at great risk. Louise Hay, as she reveled in her book “Heal Your Body” (1976) had vaginal cancer and was able to recover and heal by addressing the mental causes she believed produced her physical illness. While this path worked for her but it may not be for everyone. The main point here was that she did summon the courage to stand for what she believed to be right. And in making this stand, something within her was triggered and activated that allowed her body’s innate healing to take place. The online dictionary defines Courage as. The quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear. In my view there is more to courage than that. It is not only facing the danger and pain without fear, but despite of it. And in the context of illness, to have courage is to recognize that illness has a purpose, that through illness we are provided with an opportunity, a way to become more than we currently are. If you yourself have found meaning and purpose in your experience of illness or know someone who did, feel free to share it with us. Continue Reading Finding the Courage to Heal