As your cancer survivor speaker, I am compelled this morning to speak louder!

After speaking with several people the last few days about cancer, one thing kept ringing in my ears louder and louder!  And the doctors are still not telling the millions of people with cancer!!

We trust our doctors and listen to them and believe they are doing everything they can to help save our lives.  This is true in most cases.  But my experience tells me they don’t have all the tools.  And if you don’t have the tools, you can’t use the tools, and if you don’t have the tools, you can’t share the tools.

Speaking from personal experience only, I know when I asked the most obvious question to my team of doctors, their faces dropped and they said, I don’t know how!!

My trip to Tulum, Mexico was an incredible transformational experience and truly a gift. It was a natural healing of body, mind and spirit. 

Little did I know where this journey would end.  I guess I still don’t, and it doesn’t matter.  I am learning to enjoy the adventure.  Resting in the knowingness that the perfect experience will happen today or NOW.

This new year began with a knowingness from within to start cleansing my physical body.  I followed my heart and had no idea where this journey would take me.  At the time, I had no plans for a trip to Tulum.  I only felt a need to clean out the old and begin putting clean, healthy nutrients back in a clean body.

Then a nudging from within was felt and I knew I could drop
the fear I was experiencing.   It was my choice!

As they were closing the door for the second time, I said, “I am ready!  I am going back in!”

I saw who I was, the being beyond the mind and the fear. This recognition was part of my healing and was part of my purpose there at that moment.

Confidently I enter the lodge and centered myself within.  I began to breathe and focussed on the energy within my body.  I focussed only on the moment and the experience I was having.  I allowed my mind to be still with no thought whatsoever.

As part of the adventure in Tulum, we were going to experience a sweat lodge temazcal, which they are traditionally called in Mexico.

Many North American and Central American Indian tribes have traditionally used the sweat lodge for purification, cleansing and healing of mind, body, emotions and spirit.

I knew the sweat ceremony was another opportunity for cleansing and healing for me and I was so excited to participate. Only six of the ten women chose to participate. We began with a ceremony outside standing around a fire. Together we chanted and offered prayers. Although I don’t think any of us really understood one thing said or done. Our leader was a shaman in his thirties who had grown up with the tradition in Mexico. Each of us then left our hand print in the sand around the fire and then proceeded to the sweat lodge.

With each experience in Tulum, I became quieter in my thoughts and more aware. It is a feeling of calm and centeredness.  Although I was active in my physical being all day on the beach, in the water, in healing sessions or exercise sessions, I was still in  my mental being. With this came an awareness of life around me. People’s words and actions became more alive. The sounds were more alive and colors more vivid.
 
With my senses engaged, an inner knowingness is revealed. I guess it’s always there; we usually can’t hear or feel it because we are distracted by our physical and mental worlds. The chatter of our minds and the motions of our bodies cover up our connection to the inner world and our true self. Then we lose our source of natural wisdom.
 
I felt it was time for a cleansing and healing session with a local healer. A non-English speaking woman led me through the woods to a quaint, open cabana. I was welcomed by the smell of incense and the flickering of candles in the night. She caressed every point of my body; artfully  massaging and dislodging blocked energy. I could feel her pulling junk
out of my hands and feet. It felt as if old emotional baggage was pulled  from my body. A release of energy long carried is freeing. I felt completely  relaxed, peaceful and renewed. I was ready to face the world.
 
With the release and renewal, awareness increases and I began to “see” my life more clearly. I saw how I created experiences in my life to suffer. Why do I keep reenacting the same thing over and over? It seemed so clear  and simple. Let it GO!!!!
 
Lesson four was felt deep within… Choose what I want to experience and create what I want NOW!!
 
Use these lessons NOW!
 
Next time….The PANIC within the Sweat Lodge Ceremony!

Yoga is an instrument to open, to be still, and to access the present moment of now.
With each movement is a breath.  The breath allows us to flow with the movement
or the position.  Our breath keeps our focus on what is happening NOW.   In this NOW, is stillness, a space, with no thought.  This is where the peace is found.

I was so grateful each day to experience this space of peace.  Then I began noticing the group I started yoga with was dwindling.  Where were they?  Weren’t they experiencing this same peace?

Later I found them having breakfast in the restaurant cabana, or walking from the store or on their computers doing business.  Their focus seemed to be somewhere else, but I really didn’t know where.  I caught myself trying to figure it out and then I realized, it doesn’t matter.  My mind wanted to create some story about this group of women.  This is what the mind does.  It creates thoughts that become stories.  Then we carry these stories with us.  We begin to believe the stories and then make the stories part of who we are. 

Tulum story continued…

The first morning as I made my way down the sandy path to the yoga cabana, I felt the warmth of the sun and the smell of the sea and I felt at home.  I have always loved the sea and each time I return it feels like a homecoming. Although, 7:30 yoga class was a stretch for me, considering there were no telephones for a wake up call, but I arrived on time. 

An amazing young woman guided us through the yoga rituals.  The postures and positions were challenging, all centered on opening our hearts.  I could feel my energy change and a feeling of peace was all around me.  As we open our hearts we are most connected to our true selves, and we feel the love that we are.  A smile spread across my face.  Each time I return to this space, I wonder how I could have wandered so far away from me.

Then the reality hit….I am alone in this darkness and I am scared to death!

What could I have possibly been thinking?  Staying in a stick hut all by my self, in some foreign country, in the middle of a jungle, with murders, rapists, burglars, wild animals………………………….

As the travel fatigue increased, my mind accelerated………………………….

Looking at the door I realized anyone could knock it down.  The three inch gaps between the sticks offered a perfect opportunity for someone to reach in.  The candles flickered and shadows paraded across the walls of my hut.  Was that a person shadow or a palm tree shadow?

Ridiculous!! I was creating all of these crazy thoughts.  This wasn’t real, I was creating them!  Then I began to believe it!  My mind was taking over my reality and who I was.
I knew it, so I watched it.  I watched my mind create horrible thoughts over and over.  I felt my body unable to relax and sleep.  I felt my emotions vacillate between terror and desperation.

The Tulum Adventure

I just spent the most amazing week in Tulum Mexico.Trusting all would work out perfectly, four days before my departure, I booked a flight and a stick hut on the beach. Yes, you heard right…..A stick hut on the beach! Why would anyone pay to sleep in a stick hut with no electricity and bugs and geckos on my walls? For the experience of course!!!!

I arrived at the airport and immediately spotted Nancy, the coordinator of the trip. Shocked by my presence, she couldn’t believe I was there and that I was going with the group. She is the owner of CenterSpace Pilate’s studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  She and eight of her clients were headed for Tulum to the Maya Spa at Azulik for a week of relaxation, yoga, Pilates, and healing.