Monique Newton is a Yoga Therapist, C-IAYT, Mind-Body Coach, and Conflict Coach. As a trauma-informed somatic practitioner, Monique works with the embodiment of our individual and collective lived experience.
This article considers personal resilience in the context of a life change. After a recent breast cancer diagnosis, I found myself reflecting on what it means to be resilient. And since I was about to go through a big change, I wondered if I wanted something more than just resilience.
My situation did not require urgent surgery or treatment, as is sometimes the case with people who have been diagnosed with cancer. So, I had some time between appointments with my doctor and surgeon and further tests. These pauses gave me an opportunity to attune to myself and the change I was going through.
As a yoga therapist, I have some knowledge of cancer care from a yoga therapy perspective and have supported clients with life-changing illnesses, including cancer. I remembered how my mentor taught us that we come to cancer and those with cancer with a “deep bow.”¹
Moving toward being in a relationship instead of just being resilient
In my curiosity about resilience, I saw that the usual ideas about personal resilience as a capacity to rebound from adversity or to fight back against a disease or health condition don’t acknowledge a relationship, and there is no deep bow. But I knew I would want more than a ‘bounce back’ after my cancer care.
In the first weeks after my diagnosis, questions that came to me often were: how will I be in relationship with this new experience in my life? How will I be in relationship with my body?
To come back to a relationship, I turned to a paper I wrote a few years ago.² When we talk about our well-being, it is helpful to acknowledge the cultural context of ideas about resilience. The Western philosophical and colonial socio-cultural context has a foundation of dualism: mind over body, human over nature, expert knowledge over alternative knowledge.³ In this context, resilience shows up as a capacity to maintain the status quo.⁴
One clear way this is illustrated is in the work of Glenn Albrecht, who has written a lot about our human relationship with Earth and the connection between this relationship and our physical and mental well-being. Albrecht’s work points to patterns in our contemporary ways of being that use the concept of resilience as something that can help us maintain the status quo.
As someone with cancer, I understood that I did not want to be resistant to change but rather in a relationship with change and the grief that comes with change. I saw that pushing against and striving to maintain things as they are is not being in a relationship; it is not being curious about my embodiment or about what I was holding and grieving.
One way mind-body dualism might show up after a diagnosis is when we find ourselves in a pattern of thinking that our body is doing something to us or that our body is now our enemy. When we encounter this thinking in ourselves, we need to hold it with a lot of compassion and care. Coming back to relationships creates an opportunity for us not to position body against mind, health against disease, and life as it used to be against life as it is now becoming.
Being in a relationship supports our resilience and how we show up for ourselves. I really appreciate this way of understanding resilience: “It's our growing capacity to be here with what's here, it's our growing capacity to stay in relationship.”⁵
Two areas for reflection
Look for places where you have choice
Cancer is complex and multi-layered. Having a cancer diagnosis makes us vulnerable; we have to rely on the expertise and opinions of specialists who are busy and need to be efficient. All the information can be confusing. The choices about approaches and treatments may seem limited, and for some people, there may be the added pressure of dealing with an invasive cancer quickly.
I was informed right from the beginning that the type of cancer I have requires a mastectomy. Based on research, unless I want to risk the cancer spreading, there is not much choice about the mastectomy. But there are places where I do have a choice: do I have a breast reconstruction? Do I have an implant? How do I want to prepare for my surgery? What will I do to support my healing after surgery? How will I allow myself to be in grief for this lost body part? These are areas of choice.
Look for ways to draw on the wisdom of your lived experience
The way that we draw upon our self-awareness and wisdom based on our lived experience is also an area of choice. This understanding of ourselves can support our capacity to make choices about what is nourishing and joyful to us even when we are also confronted with and experience challenges to our well-being.⁶
Our capacity to be in a relationship with what is in our life at this moment is something to practice and cultivate.⁷ To close, here are some questions for reflection for you to consider. You might also write your own reflection questions!
Where do I have a choice at this moment in my life?
How can I act on my areas of choice?
How do I want to show up for myself?
What do I already know and understand about myself, my strengths, and my capacities that I can rely on?
What nourishes me, what brings me joy?
What am I in a relationship with right now?
How can I create moments in my day where I can practice being in a relationship?
Read more from Monique Newton
Monique Newton, Yoga Therapist-C-IAYT, Mind-Body Conflict Coach
Monique Newton is a Yoga Therapist, C-IAYT, Mind-Body Coach, and Conflict Coach. Monique believes in the generative power of somatic awareness for social justice, conflict resolution, and personal transformation. She has dedicated her own healing journey to becoming more self-aware, decolonizing her presence and body, and living with humility.
Monique supports individuals and teams with intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict and working through change. In providing services and support, Monique focuses on trauma-informed approaches and emotional and mental well-being.
References:
[1] Anne Pitman, School of Embodied Yoga Therapy (SEYT). See also Leibel, Leigh, Pitman, Anne, 2023, Yoga Therapy Across the Cancer Care Continuum, Handspring Publishing: UK.
[2] Toward Embodying Grief – Stepping Into our Human Place within Earth, 2021 for my MA research project.
[3] For more on mind-body dualism see for example: Glenn Albrecht, 2019; Anna Tsing et al, 2017; Thomas J. Csordas, 1990, 1993.
[4] See for example, Albrecht, Glenn A., 2019, Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World, Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London and Albrecht, Glenn A., 2017, “Solastalgia and the New Mourning”, in Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of Ecological Loss and Grief, ed. Ashlee Cunsolo & Karen Landman, McGill-Queen's University Press: Montreal, pp. 292-315.
[5] Scott Lyons, Somatic Stress Release Certificate, The Embody Lab.
[6] In their generative somatics work through their social justice focused Politics of Trauma courses and discussions, Staci Haines, Erika Lyla, and Brandon Sturdivant connect resilience to a practice of being in and acknowledging what bring us joy.
[7] As a yoga therapist and somatic-based practitioner, I have grown and benefitted from the teachings and practices of many wonderful activists, leaders, and practitioners. I have been especially fortunate to engage with the generative somatics work that Staci Haines, Erika Lyla, and Brandon Sturdivant are leading in their social justice focused Politics of Trauma courses and discussions. I have also been training as a somatic stress release practitioner with Scott Lyons, founder of The Embody Lab, and practising with Shanyn Emerson. My yoga therapy trainings were directed and mentored by Anne Pitman at the School of Embodied Yoga Therapy.
