So what does this actually mean? Well, what we have been exploring and discovering over the past few years and which was strongly re-emphasized at this retreat is that movement is more than meets the eye. In fact, it includes that too (the movement of the eyelids) – everything from how we walk, to how we stand up and sit down, to the gesture of our hands, to the way we speak as well as the obvious very physical movements that make up our day.

Everything that we do is a movement. And if we pay attention to the HOW we move, we can start to sense if it is happening from a place of connection with ourselves and our body or not.

What we have found useful to develop our quality of being in all our movements (i.e in how we live) is to take some pause moments, perhaps by connecting and feeling our gentle breath or by being still and bringing attention to the body and connecting deeper to a feeling of stillness within. This stillness within is that part of us that is always there and remains untouched by the stresses and impositions of life.

We then offer ourselves the gift of our movements to initiate from this space, from this innate feeling and quality of stillness. At first the quality may be a little difficult to hold, but what we have found supportive is to keep bringing the focus back to the quality, make it a priority, make it your  “good medicine” to move from that inner connection.

Now why would we do this? Because it feels lovely and is purposeful to move in a way where we are connected with our essence.

Initiating our movements from a place of quality and presence builds a deeper and ongoing connection to our body and ourselves, and it steers us naturally to be more self-nurturing and self-honouring in all that we do.

Bringing quality to our everyday movements, to the way we live also deepens and expands the love in our body, a love that we then share with all of those we come into contact with.

And when we are with our body in what we do, those thoughts that sometimes drive us a little crazy – well they drop away because we are not giving them attention as we make how we move our focus, the priority in all that we do. A sure way to see a change in our thought patterns towards a more harmonious way of thinking – approaching the mind through the quality of the movements of our body, through the quality of the way we live.

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Alexandra Plane and Donna Nolan offer Yoga/Yoga Therapy, Meditation, Connective Tissue Therapy, Esoteric Healing and Massage at their clinic in Balmain , Northern Beaches and Cammeray.  Contact us for enquiries or bookings.

Universal Medicine Retreats are offered each year in three locations; Hoi An in Vietnam, Lennox Head in Australia and Frome (Somerset) in the UK. Click here for more information on these health retreats.

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The latest statistics from The Cancer Council NSW state that one in seven women will develop breast cancer by the age of 75. This is an astonishing figure. I was one of those people who had thought to herself, “not me, I’m too young, I’m too healthy”.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2008 at the age of thirty-three. It came as a shock as I had considered myself in near-perfect health condition. I led a holistic and balanced lifestyle with a nutritious diet, exercised regularly and practised yoga and meditation. I was the last person my friends would expect to be diagnosed with the disease.

As a yoga teacher, my job is all about the connection between the body, mind, spirit and soul. Yoga is about our relationships, with ourselves, with others and our environment.

From a yogic perspective, I did not believe that my breast cancer was random, nor that I was plain unlucky. In yoga, disease is caused when one becomes disconnected on some level.

I turned to Ayurveda for some answers. Ayurveda is the ancient Indian healing modality that addresses not only the physical body, but the cause of the disease. It teaches the “causes of breast cancer are both hereditary and acquired; the acquired causes being physical, emotional, spiritual, and environmental”.(Alakananda Devi Director of Alandi Ayurvedic Clinic, Colorado). Ruling out genetics and many of the other contributing factors that are listed as putting one at “risk”, I innately knew that I would have to search deep within to understand where my disease had stemmed from on an emotional and spiritual level.

Yoga and Ayurveda considers each person a multi-dimensional human being and therefore addresses illness and healing in a holistic way. According to yoga, there are five layers to our existence; our physical body (annamaya); our breathing/energy level (pranamaya); our intellect (manomaya); our personality/nature (vijnamaya); and the level of bliss/spirit (anandamaya). All of these levels are entwined, interconnected. What is manifested on one level affects the other levels. The body is not considered separate from the mind. For example, an illness can appear on the physical level, however its cause may derive from the emotions. An example is when we feel sick or have butterflies in the stomach when we worry.

I had come to the understanding that I had developed breast cancer because on some level other than that of my physical body, there was dis-ease. The cancer was a result of an imbalance within my being. I thus began my inward search to find the cause.

This quest led to an energetic healing modality in which I discovered how it was that I was “holding” on an emotional level that contributed to the breast cancer. I had lived my life in “protection mode” so as not to get hurt. The way we “hold” is not always so easy to see on the outside, however, it is an energetic pattern that I had learned from a young age and continued to build throughout my life. It has taken a lot of self-honesty and commitment to make changes in my life to shift this pattern.

My more recent studies over the past couple of years with Universal Medicine has helped me to understand on a deeper level that the energetic underlying cause of breast cancer is a lack of self-nurturing. It’s that simple. We do not love and nurture ourselves enough. To know this and then to change how we are is another (and much harder) story. We need to address the energy that we are living in.

How often do we as women put everyone before ourselves thinking that this is the “right thing to do”? Mothers are great at this. However, in reality, we can never truly love another, unless we have that relationship with ourselves first. For me, self-nurturing used to be about having a nice bath, perhaps attending a yoga class, or buying myself something nice. I have learned that none of these things have truly changed the energy that I’m living in.

How do we make this change? The first step is to be honest about where our bodies are at. To be honest, we need to re-learn how to “feel” our bodies. To take a step out of our heads and dive into our bodies. When we do this and are honest, for most of us we will see that we hold a lot of hardness, pain and hurt. How can love express in a body of hardness?

There is quite a gap between hardness and self-love. The key and the step between hardness and self-love is to be gentle. When we build gentleness in our bodies, we begin to experience living in a different energy. This energy now becomes gentleness. Over a period of time and with consistent practice, this gentleness becomes a way of being/living. We are then able to “feel” when we are not being gentle and it doesn’t feel lovely. With gentleness as a reference point, we are then inspired to go about being gentle in all that we do.

How do we learn to be gentle in our bodies? Some simple examples to look at within ourselves are: How do I walk? How do I open the door? How do I make my cup of tea? How do I do my yoga postures? How do I breathe? Is it with a hardness in my body or could I do these things with a gentle energy? How do I feel when I breathe a gentle breath? How do I feel when I walk in a gentle rhythm?

Interestingly enough, as you start to live in this rhythm of gentleness, the anger, the resentment and the constriction around the heart starts to dissolve – because you have changed the energy that you are living in. You will start to feel self-loving and then the choices you make in your life will reflect this.

Having learnt to make these changes in my own life, it feels beautiful when I re-connect with myself. I feel like me. I feel and connect to that amazingness that we all are and that we can all access. It’s all there – right inside of ourselves.

So that you do not become a statistic and perhaps saving yourself from surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, you might want to ask yourself – what energy am I living in?

How can I be more gentle with myself? It does require time, patience and commitment to build the gentleness. I work on this on a daily basis. By living life this way, I do not live in fear of a reoccurence, as I know that I’m addressing the root cause of my cancer. Plus – it’s joyful, so why wouldn’t I?

Donna Nolan is a Sydney-based Yoga Teacher teaching gentle private, group and corporate classes and retreats. She also runs specific retreats for Cancer Support and offers Esoteric Healing for people with Cancer.  Contact donna@yogaandhealing.com.au

The post My Unfolding Path to Understanding the Root Cause of Breast Cancer appeared first on Yoga & Healing | Therapies Massage Exercise Corporate Wellbeing | Sydney, Balmain & Northern Rivers.