Coping With Cancer

Hi, and welcome to day one of part one of the Headspace cancer pack. So this pack is designed to be a support, a guide if you like on your journey. Of course everybody's experience of cancer is very different. And, where you are on that journey right now may well vary dramatically from the next person. But as someone who's gone through cancer myself my sincere hope is that this will as I said be a support for you. A way of finding some calm in the middle of the storm, a way of finding a greater sense of clarity in making decisions along the way. But most of all, a greater sense of understanding and perspective on what is one of the most challenging of journeys. We're gonna begin in part one in focusing very much on simply stepping back from all of the thought. I think when we first learn we have cancer the mind wants to do anything but be still. It wants to jump forward perhaps anticipating what's down the line. Or it wants to look back perhaps wondering what it was. How did this happen? Was it something that we did? So in learning how to simply be still in the moment, letting go of those thoughts we find a bit of calm, we find a bit of clarity. And that's the starting point for creating a more healing conducive environment in both the body and the mind. So we're gonna start in the usual way. So if you just like to take a moment to get comfortable in your seat of course. If you're too unwell to sit up then it's absolutely fine to do this lying down. And we're gonna begin with the eyes open. Just a very soft focus. So without moving the eyes just aware of the space around you, and just maintaining that soft gaze. Just taking a couple of nice, big, deep breaths. As deep as you can breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. And with the next out-breath just gently closing the eyes. And just feeling the weight of the body sink down into the chair or the surface beneath you. This feeling, that contact, the sensation. Taking a moment to focus on that feeling and just to begin to notice the space around you, the different sounds. So just becoming more comfortable with your immediate environment. And as you bring the attention back to the body now, just starting at the top of the head you're just gonna scan down through the body. Doesn't matter how the body feels. You scan evenly, smoothly, down through the body from head to toe, not pausing in any particular place. Just building up a picture of how the body feels. And if you haven't done already just starting to notice the movement of breath in the body that rising and falling sensation. There's some people who feel it in the stomach, some people it's in...