Your Body, Your Ally. Choose Happiness Talk - Dr. Shani Fox

What if your body could tell you in advance that something is not right before you are diagnosed with a serious illness? What if your body could give you guidance about food, exercise, sleep, and other life choices? Well, it can! We just need to learn to communicate and notice the signals our bodies are sending us all the time. Dr. Shani specializes in helping cancer survivors to return to lives of joy, purpose, and confidence after cancer treatment and she's a great teacher. Enjoy!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the How to Choose Happiness and Freedom Show. I'm your host, Lauren G. Foster, Happiness teacher and author of Happy and Free on Purpose, Daily Practices to Live and Love Your Life. And I am so happy to have back with me again today, Cancer survivorship expert, Holistic physician and certified life coach, Dr. Shani. Thank you so much for being here with me. It's a pleasure to be here, Lauren. And Dr. Shani was on with us a year or so, Or I guess sometime in the past to talk about surviving after cancer. But we're going to talk about some things a little bit different today, But first remind all of us who you are and what you love and how you came to be on this journey and in this place today. Thanks Lauren. I went to becoming a doctor at all was a midlife career change for me. It was the point in my life where I got to ask myself, What do I really want to do when I grow up? And I was actually in the accounting world before that I was in financial management in a very good position, But it was not fulfilling. It was simply not fulfilling. I just didn't know if I was making a difference to anybody. And so I made a decision at that point in my life to choose another career where I felt like I was making a direct impact on people. And I chose to do it through medicine. I actually had wanted to be a doctor when I was a child, Gave that up in the interim for reasons that no longer made sense. And so I took that career back up. And as I graduated medical school, Went into practice, What I ended up receiving from the universe, Basically I was just being sent cancer patients and survivors. And that was wonderful because natural medicine can do a lot for cancer patients and survivors, Especially in recovery from treatment, Which is an area that's really not taken care of by the conventional system. They do treatments very beautifully and better all the time, But what comes after treatment is not their area of expertise. They have not really developed protocols and helpful structure for that and people need it. So I began to do that medically, And that was a lot of fun. And nevertheless, What I noticed during that time was that the emotional and spiritual impact of the cancer journey was at least as significant as the physical impact. And it didn't seem. . . A little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. And it didn't seem that there were a lot of resources available for that. So and as I explored it, I realized there were huge gaps in that phase of care. So that is where I focused my practice and where I still practice now is supporting people at any point in the cancer journey, But particularly as they come out of treatment and are reentering the rest of their lives and are feeling disoriented, Overwhelmed, Confused, And worried, Very worried because they don't want that cancer to come back. They want to know what they can do to keep that from happening again. That is the point where I usually meet people and work with them. And that's so cool. And it's so needed and that I would love to see there be less cancer, But in the meantime, Until we get there, I'm so happy that you're doing this work. And it plays into what's really been on my mind and my heart lately, As I told you, And as we were preparing for the show is that, And cancer survivors are definitely going to be tempted to be mad at their bodies and feel betrayed by their bodies. And so making friends with and having a great relationship with your body is what I'm hoping to glean some wisdom from you about. And for our listeners, I hear people say, I heard a dear friend gesture to her body and saying, I hate this. I have always hated this. And I just, I felt so sorry for her poor little body. I wanted to go and give it a little hug and say, She didn't mean that she doesn't know what she's saying. But so, So I would really love to spread the message that your body is amazing, No matter what's happening. And, You know, No matter what your level of fitness or your level of disease, That it's still lots of things are going great. So yeah. So speak to me a little bit about how we can, We can spread this message of making your body an ally. So when I work with people, And by the way, This is a very prominent theme. You've hit on something very important here, A very prominent theme in dealing with people who have been through cancer. My body betrayed me. I don't know if I can trust it anymore. And that of course brings up a lot of fear because, You know, Until a cancer diagnosis, We kind of just generally speaking, We take our bodies for granted. We assume they're going to be there tomorrow doing exactly what they did yesterday. And so we don't really think twice about having to focus on our bodies to support them such that they will support us. And yet, You know, Most of us in the course of a lifetime will hit a point where our body, Something in our body breaks down, Maybe cancer might be something else, But it's not functioning the way that, In a way that allows us to be carefree and do whatever we want. So if this turns out to be some chronic issue, Especially, Or something that's going to take a while to heal, We go into this period of disgruntlement, Discontent, And the longer it goes on, It can go even go towards despair. So here's how I frame this. What I always say to people is, You know, Your body really wants to do its best for you. It really wants to do its best for you. And if you know anything about how it's constructed, If you've learned anything about how it's constructed, It's not only an amazing design, It's evolved through an amazing design, But it's even got overlapping ways to keep itself healthy. In other words, One thing breaks down, It'll try something else, It'll try something else. The systems are amazing. There's some redundancy there in a good way, In a sense that it takes care of itself, Even if certain things are having trouble and breaking down, It just keeps moving forward, If it possibly can. But when it starts to send up signals, That is symptoms, It's trying to tell us something. It's trying to speak to us. Now if we had a friend doing this, If we saw a friend of ours, All of a sudden sending out distress signals, What would we do? What's going on? We would lean into it and want to know more about what's going on and let the friend talk to us. And we would probably at the first opportunity we would offer to help in any way we could. And for some reason, We don't think of our bodies that way. Our bodies are just something separate, Something that's supposed to work like a machine, I guess. They're much more complicated than a machine. It's not something that we can just send to the shop, Get a spare cart and boom, We're working again back to normal. It's far more complex and subtle than that in an amazing way. That's just a fact. So I use this frame of what if your body was your friend? What if it really wanted to do its best for you, But it was struggling to do that? How would you approach that? Now of course, It's not quite as easy in the sense that a body doesn't have a language that we can hear and understand just like our own language. It doesn't have words. All it can do is send us signals in the form of symptoms. It's very funny, Not funny, But I mean, It's amazing how often I hear that many people will say my cancer diagnosis came out of nowhere. I just had no idea, No idea. But after a while, They'll look back and say, You know, Now I realize that like for a year in advance of my diagnosis, I was really tired all the time. So even though that's a pretty subtle signal, Admittedly, It's not like something is sudden and screaming. It was very subtle. Nevertheless, The body was saying something that it wanted to be paid attention to and very often we'll find this, That it will give us signals, But we're so accustomed to ignoring or pushing through those signals that we didn't do exactly what it needed or even close. And whatever it was had an opportunity to get worse and worse until it finally sent up a much higher flare. And by that time we may be in a position that we have to deal with it for a very long time. Yeah, Exactly. And this is exactly where I wanted you to get to. So how do we change the way we look at our bodies? How do we start that dialogue now? You know, Before anything, How do we get to know our body so that when the tiredness comes up, We can recognize that as a symptom, As a message, As something, What advice can you give us to do better at being friends with our bodies? Well, There's a couple of ways to do this. Number one, You know, There's a lot of information there. Thank heavens. There's a lot of information out there now about what good basic practices are. So you know, There's just certain basic aspects of life and lifestyle. I'm referring in particular to nutrition, To sleep and rest, To movement or exercise, And to how we handle stress, Which of course is a feature of life at different times. We can't do anything about the fact that there is stress in our environment, But how we respond to it, How we handle it, How we manage it. That's the part we can have control over. So even these four things, There could be more, But even these four very basic things, Thank heavens, There's lots and lots of information on how to do these things in a manner that's supportive of our body. And the good news about this is, This is, I mean, We refer to this as self-care, And that's exactly what it is. That's exactly what it is. So if we are interested in paying attention to what we eat, Is it serving our body or is it just something we're eating rather mindlessly to fill up our stomach, But actually its effect on ourselves and our ability to renew ourselves and to think straight and digest comfortably and all that sort of thing. If we're not thinking about those aspects, Then chances are we're feeding our body a lot of stuff that's not helping it, That's not producing any benefit. It's kind of moving through us, Maybe making us full temporarily, But not, Not building us up, Not rewarding or actively harming us. It could be that too. It could be that too. You know, That obviously would be a whole different discussion, Big, Long conversation. In principle is, Are we, Are we doing this in a way that we're, We're caring for ourselves in the act of eating. I'm caring for myself in the act of going to bed at a reasonable hour. And that can vary. It doesn't have to be anything on the dot, You know, It varies per person, But each of us knows there's a point at which we feel like we're active and energetic. And there's a point where we really need to rest. And if we attend to that and allow ourselves to just go and rest when we need to, That we're doing our body's a huge favor. We handle everything better when we're rested exercise or movement, You know, Again, Different for every person, Even a person who's just coming out of surgery or just coming out of cancer treatment. No, They can't run marathons. Of course not, But they can do something which encourages the circulation in their body encourages both blood and lymph circulation, Both of which are important. That keeps our muscles moving and gets them, Keeps them limber so that we don't get stiff and tense. And from there, We can move up into all kinds of exercise as appropriate for the person. But somewhere on that spectrum, There is something that absolutely everybody can do. And the fact of the matter is we feel better when we do it. You know, I've done yoga for probably about 27 years now. And I'm a very wise person said to me, You know what the hardest part of yoga is getting back to your mat each time. It's like, You know, Once you start, It feels so good. And after you're done, It feels like you've accomplished something. And that goes for any kind of exercise it's getting started. That's the part we can resist. But once we do it, You know, If I exercise during the day, The rest of the day could be crappy, But I know at least my exercise went well. I did something that was great for myself, No matter what else happened during the day. So I mean, It's not significant. It changes the quality of our lives day by day. So nourishment, Sleep, Exercise, And then stress management, Which, You know, Maybe a few of us were born with good skills in this or raped with good skills. Most of us weren't. It's something we have to learn. It doesn't matter how we acquire it. It's not a failure to have to learn it. But the fact that we're concerned about it because, And willing to put in, You know, Just some attention to it, Because the fact of the matter is that stress not only doesn't feel good and can cause problems around us, But it's actually corrosive to our bodies over time. You know, The, The, The hormones that are produced when we're in stress are not hormones that say to ourselves, You can relax and work well. They actually say, Be on alert, Be strong right now, Forget what you usually do. I need to tense my muscles and get ready for something to come at me. That's not the way we want to live. We need that in real stress, But yeah, I mean, Physical stress, It does happen. If a car's coming down the street, We got to get out of the way, You know, But, But we, We don't need that on a day-to-day basis. So we need to learn to allow our body to relax because in that situation, It does everything better. It does all the digestion, Even, Even exercise, You know, Every, It will do all these other activities better if we can manage its level of stress. Now I suspect that in the, In the course of your working with people after their, Their cancers and remission, Whatever, All of these topics are really, Really important to avoid cancer coming back. Is, Is it more likely for someone to get cancer a second time than a first time? Is that, Did I phrase that question correctly? Are you more likely? More likely because out of, Out of anybody who gets it the first time, Only a segment of them will get it a second or more, You know, Third or fourth time. So it's less often, But the issue is that the, The, The, The repeat rounds are harder on the body. They're harder to get through. So it's, It's great that, You know, If we pick up our self-care now, This is, I mean, Literally it's not just self care. This is self-love. This is loving ourselves when we attend to whatever regular routines and habits we need to support our bodies in functioning well. You know, If we happen to get cancer, We get through it. It's not too late. That's also a great time to pick up our, You know, To up our game in terms of how we're loving ourselves in these basic ways. And yes, They add up to better chances of not having any other, Any disease of any kind, Diabetes, High blood pressure, They, You know, Any, Any of the ones that are endemic in this country, Not just cancer, You know, Cancer too, But not, Not just cancer. So we're going to, Our chances of being healthier are much greater when we love ourselves enough to adopt the basic routine that serves us, That nourishes us. Talk to me about the role that fear plays. And, And I'm talking a fear of remission for a cancer patient I'm talking of. And I said that we weren't going to talk about COVID, But it's popped into my mind. And so that must mean I'm changing my mind, But I do witness a whole lot of fear all around that. And to me, Fear is like the worst kind of stress there is. And that pretty much guarantees you that something's going to go wrong. So talk to me about how we can put that fear in its proper place. Fear is an opportunist in my view, Fear is what comes along when we are not choosing intentionally the state that we want to be in. So life brings all kinds of issues, Cancer is one, COVID is one. And then there are other kinds of, Of a different nature, You know, Divorce, Loss, Job loss, Grief, Lots of things. You lose your job. Yeah. There's any number of things, You know, There are stresses in absolutely every life at different times. Some of them are major like that. Some of them are less major, But nevertheless bothersome. And so we're going to get, If we just allow ourselves to encounter any emotion that comes along, Fear is going to step in there and say, Hey, I'm here, You know, Pay attention to me. If your fear is that consuming or can be, And with something like cancer or COVID, It can be all consuming. I mean, You know, I've met some very, Very fearful people very frequently. This is why cancer survivors find me because they can't shake the fear. They can't shake the fear. And so what we need to learn to do in that situation, Like we were saying, We, You know, So fear is, Is a stressor, You know, It's got something behind it that triggered it, But fear itself is the stressor. So we've got to find a way to stand up to that fear and say, Okay, I get it. I understand why you're here, But I'm simply not going to allow you to take over, You know, Elizabeth Gilbert, Author, Elizabeth Gilbert had a very beautiful image around this. She, She talks about fear in the context of when she decided that she was going to be a writer, Even if it meant many years of not earning very much, Et cetera, And getting known. So, You know, Like all writers, It took her a while. So during those years, What she used to tell herself was this. She said, Fear, Listen, I'm going on a road trip towards what I want in my life. I'm going on an adventure. Now I know that I can't get rid of you. You're going to be with me, But I'm at the wheel. You're in the back seat. You may not drive. You may not touch the radio. You may not even tell me where to go. You may not tell me the directions. I know you're there and I guess we'll be companions, But I'm in charge here. Right. And that is essentially a metaphor for what we need to do. We need to say, Okay, Fear, You know, And remember, Fear is produced biologically. It's produced in certain situations of stress. We cannot cut it out and erase it. We cannot. It's within us, But it does not have to take the upper hand. And learning to do that, This is what I do with people is show them all manner of strategies for choosing how they want to be and getting themselves in charge. So that are they going to feel fear occasionally? Yes, But they'll come to accept that as a normal thing and also know what to do so that it doesn't take over the entire picture. Right. Because you can't feel two things at one time. So if you choose to feel something else, Then the fear has to take the back seat. I love that example too. I'm so glad that you brought it up. I think that's from her book, Big magic. It is. It is. Exactly. That's a really, Really good book. Really awesome one. Yeah. I like that analogy too. All right, Cool. So if you could say anything to our listeners to help them be friends and be allies and be yeah, To, To, To be a friend. I mean, The way we treat ourselves is it just kills me. And if we were to treat one another that way would, Oh, Would just be shameful. And so yeah. Yeah. So talk to us a little bit more about how we can put in habits that cause us to give our bodies more respect and more attention and more love. Yes. So I promised you earlier to two different aspects of this approach. So the first thing was about adopting some basic habits, Because just by doing that, We are loving ourselves. And that is that's one significant aspect of this. You know, If I put in time and attention to my body in these ways, Every day, I'm going to have a better relationship with it. You know what? It's going to support me better. So that's for sure. The other aspect is a more on an emotional plane. So we started with the metaphor here about what if, What if I had a friend who was in distress, How would I respond? And so it literally becomes, Can I make friends with my body? Can I be a friend to my body? Because my body very much wants to be a friend with, To me. And if we think about any relationship, Our friends, Our partners, Family, Anybody, Relationships don't thrive. If we don't put attention into them, If we just kind of assume they'll be there and ignore what would make it a little better and nicer, More fun for myself and the other person, Both together we do have to put attention into them sometimes more, Sometimes less, But relationships do not do well on neglect. So the relationship with our body is the very same. Neglect won't work. It's a relationship. So just like if the body was a friend we, First of all, We can learn to turn towards it. And if it's demonstrating distress, Be compassionate, Just like we'd say to a friend, Oh, What's going on? Right? Tell me more. We can do that with our body. Now, Will our body respond in words? No, No. Our body won't respond in words, But if we feel a symptom and we just take the time to in our minds, You know, Just say, You know, I'm, I'm, I'm feeling some distress from you. What are you trying to tell me? What's going on for you? Tell me more about what's going on for you and just get a little quiet with it. We'll get a sense. It's not that we're going to, You know, Our body's not going to write us letters, But it will give us a sense or we'll get an idea of something that would be helpful. It might be something fairly straightforward as you know what? I really need some more rest. We can all recognize that. But if let's take the example of, Of my, My digestion is not working. I constantly have pain after I eat, You know, Bloating or stress after I eat, That's not normal. No, It's not the way it's meant to work. Now we can push through that, But it's not fun. And it's only a get worse if we ignore it. So if we just, If we notice it and if we're kind to ourselves and we just say, Hmm, Clearly something's not working. Ideally, I understand that you're hurting a little bit. You're struggling a little bit. What could I do? What could I do? What's going on? Something will come to us. And if it doesn't, If we try this and it just doesn't, Then we can get help. Let's find some support, Right? This is, This is the holistic doctor in me talking right now. There are people like me, Many, Many of us, You know, Or nutritionists or, You know, There's lots of people who can help with this. If it's not, We have more, I think we have more intuition than we know. And if we're allowing just space for it to emerge, Our bodies will start to communicate with us. If they see that we want to know, But if for some reason it's just not happening, That's okay. You're not a failure. Other people will help. You will tell them what you know about it. And then they'll say, Oh, Well, Based on that, Let's try this. Let's try that. You know, They can't hear what's inside of you or feel it, But they can offer what may let's work for other people. It may work for you and tweak it until it does. And so there's very compassionate, Loving support for helping your body function better. If for any reason you find yourself at loose ends. Right. I love that. And just checking in and having a conversation, You know, You talk to your friends every day and this is how you become friends. That's how you get to know them. I have my, My most prized possession right now is my aura ring. Have you heard of the aura ring? It's O U R a and it's. It's like a Fitbit, But like you would wear on your, On your wrist only it's much more measures your heart rate and your body temperature and your heart rate variability and your movement and all of this stuff. And it, You know, It goes to an app on your phone that says, Oh wow, You slept really great. Your heart rate was great. Your heart rate variability and you know, You've recovered well, So have fun today or, Or maybe, You know, I had a little infection and it said, Your heart rate is up and your temperature is up. And so you need to rest and take it easy. And I love this way of communicating with, With my body and in words, Of course, There's an intermediate or there, You know, A translator, But, And I also have just a tiny bit of osteo arthritis in one knuckle. And as soon as that showed up, I'm like, What is this that you're trying to say? You know, It's inflammation. There's the, I need to tighten up my diet and, And, You know, You just keep trying and, And communicating and your body will respond by feeling better if you're, You know, Things done. So, Yeah, You know, That's a beautiful example right there, You know, So osteoarthritis in one little knuckle, You know, Yes, These things happen, You know, And we can function typically for a long time, You know, Around that, But it could get worse. It could start to affect more knuckles. So the fact that you saw it and said, Oh, Wait a minute, Huh? There's a message here for me. Beautiful. That's exactly what I'm talking about. It is noticing what our body says and not getting excited about it or afraid of it or, Or I'm disgusted with it. Just saying, Oh, What's going on here? And yes, That those typically do represent inflammation. And you know, It's not so much that it may or may not affect the knuckle severely, But if there's inflammation, There's inflammation, The rest of your body too, And it can affect other things more severely. So it's a perfect time to get ahold of that. You know, There's lots of things that can be done about that. So I celebrate you for seeing that here and that yeah. And that's exactly what I'm talking about is, You know, Even in a small symptom, Which isn't really that bothersome right now, But it's like, What is my body trying to tell me here? It's exactly it. And catching the early of course is ideal. Yeah. Being willing to listen. I love it. And we're going to spread the word that everybody just love your body and listen, Pay attention. Yeah. Yeah. And bodies have interesting things to say. We can learn a lot from them. Yeah, They do. And you know, This is arthritis in your fingers is genetic in my family, But I gene expression is not that my genes don't have to express the same way as my ancestors. And that's exactly another lesson I would really love to hear. I'm a primal health coach and I don't get to talk about nutrition and lifestyle and things like that very often. So it's very tempting for me to head off on a tangent when we get close to it, But I won't. But I, But I agree with you. Yeah. The things that we assume are, Oh, Well, It's just because I'm getting older. How many times have you heard that? Oh, Well, It's in my family. Right. You know, And yes, We have compassion for the people in your family has struggled with that, But you're absolutely right. I mean, This is science now that genes are genes and yes, We can't change them, But we can change the way they express. So nothing is a foregone conclusion just because you have a gene for it. Nothing is. Yeah. And pain and stiffness and discomfort in your body is not inevitable with aging. That's the other message that I would love for people to hear. Yeah, No, I, I, I'm, I feel very grateful. You know, I see unfortunately friends of mine who are my age, I'm in my sixties, You know, Friends of my age that are, You know, Already struggling, You know, Hip here needs their you know, Diabetes, High blood pressure medications. And these things only tend to compound over time. Now again, This judging that it's bad, But I see that they're struggling. That's the, That's the hard part. I see that they're struggling. They can't walk as far as they want. We can't go hiking anymore. We, You know, Traveling is a problem for them. You know, Things that are fun in life are starting to be off limits for them. And you know, I feel very grateful. Yes. I have some pretty good genes and I'm grateful for that, But things like my yoga practice things that, You know, I'm grateful that I know a lot about how to eat to serve my body. You know, I don't have these issues. I still can say that I can do anything that I choose to do. And I want us to be able to say that for as long as possible. And that's not out of anybody's reach. I'm not special that way. That is, That is available to all of us. If we, If we're friends with our bodies. That's right. And I'm seeing it all around me and I'm in my fifties. So yeah, It's, It's a thing, But we're educating, Right? We're educating. Yes. We're role modeling. Awesome, Well, Thank you so very much for being with me again. And I really keep intend to keep our relationship going and we'll do this again in a year or so, And, And just keep doing what we're doing. If me and my listeners can be in support of you in any way, Well, Please, Please let us know. Certainly. I, If anybody has had cancer on my website is www. Drshanifox. Com, D R S H N I F O X. Com. Lots of resources there and ways to contact me. If you'd like more information, I I'm full of resources for all kinds of services for cancer survivors. And I invite people to contact me personally. Yeah, It's just fantastic. And wherever you're listening to this, If you look down, We'll include clickable links so you can get to Dr. Shani real easily. And we loved having you here. Thank you so much. It's a joy to be here with you, Lauren. Awesome. And for you guys, Come back and join me next week. In the meantime, Remember happiness is a choice. You can always choose to be happy first. I'll see you next week.

Reviews

Dr.Fox knows her stuff! Excellent discussion. If this topic pertains to you, it is well worth a listen. Thank you for this✨️🙏🏽🩷!

Really interesting conversation that inspired me to both think differently about and listen more to my body thanks for sharing!