03/12/2025
Dear beautiful Yoga friends,
Thank you for the beautiful outpouring of love over my recent breast-cancer diagnosis. It has been truly heart-warming.
When I decided to so openly share my news, it was with the genuine intention of sharing how we (all of us!) can use the tools of physical yoga, breathwork, meditation and yogic philosophy to help us stay steady and even-keeled when big-life events land upon us.
As humans, we are all going to feel shock, fear, worry, anxiety etc when we receive bad news of some sort or another. As a yoga teacher of nearly 3 decades, I’m interested in how we can apply yogic tools and techniques - when the stakes are high - for our greatest gain. What good is a yoga practice if it cannot help support us through life’s trickiest of challenges?!
When I posted my first video a week or two ago, I was steady and composed (we’ll, as steady as you can be when you’ve recently found out you’ve got breast cancer). After my initial and unexpected diagnosis, I practiced yoga every day and held myself incredibly even-keeled. In fact, there were times where it felt too good to be true. But, like all things, “this too shall pass”, and indeed, it did.
The ’waiting’ (waiting for appointments, testing, plans forward etc) seemed manageable enough… until it just didn’t. So much waiting turned into great uncertainty, which turned into worry, which turned into an unravelling of sorts.
And so, now, this is the place I find myself in… a place where I feel like I’m simultaneously holding it together, and unravelling all at once. It feels like a subliminal space, a space where there are now plans to have a double-mastectomy (in 2 weeks time) and choices to make over treatments. Along with all of this is a great uncertainty questions arise. How much pain will I experience? How long before I can move my arms and stretch again (apparently a while). And then the big ones… how long will I live? What happens if it returns? How much ‘life’ is enough? If I believe in reincarnation, why do I sometimes feel scared about dying ‘prematurely’ (although is there ever any guarantee?!) and leaving behind the ones I love most?
I ponder on why cancer has come to me? What lessons are there to be learned from all of this? What repressed or supressed emotions have potentially led to this situation?
It's BIG life stuff… and it feels like as a yoga teacher, this is where the rubber hits the road.
How can my practice sustain and guide me through this uncertainty?
This is what will continue to be revealed.
For now, I’m so thankful I decided not to go back to work for these 2 weeks before surgery. It is like I inhabit another space altogether. I could have forced myself to go back to work for the money, but it would have meant sacrificing the open, rich, learning space which is before me. The space feels so fertile (& frightening and scary), and I can feel things ‘moving’ under the surface. Some realisations come to me… and others remain hidden… yet I feel them moving and I know deep things are being processed. So, I go with it. In the preciousness of life, I now slide down into a state I’ve not known before. And it continues to be rich and tender, loving and kind, and frightening and uncertain.
We are, after all, human beings. The fact that we are on this earth means we are here to learn. We are not yet fully integrated, full-realised human beings… we still have so much of our potential to explore. And so, challenges will come our way, to teach us to uplevel, and this can be frightening, because it’s moving us into the great unknown, and it tests our capacity of love and confidence in the spiritual ecosystem. If we believe and understand spiritual truths, and we still feel uncertain, it shows us the learning path.
I feel like I could write forever, but for now this feels enough. This is after all ‘social media’, where attention spans often do not last for lengthy pieces of text.
It's easy to share when the practice is going well. And it’s challenging to share when the going gets tough. But share I shall, because like being a yoga teacher, this kind of sharing feels like what I have been born to do. And so, in my own small way, I make my contribution in this life.
Be well dear friends,
Love Jacqui x
