Living with Illness

 The theme for this month is Connecting with Body. 

  Before beginning the program activities we explore how connection with body is care of the soul.   A cancer diagnosis changes our relationship with our body.

Chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and medication treatments (pills, injections, infusions) are incredibly hard. And then we suffer all the many side effects – chronic changes to our bodies, early menopause, weight loss or gain, hair loss, and all the many physical discomforts. 

When we are living with illness, our physical bodies demand attention and care. 

Our bodies can go from feeling at ease to violently sick. There may be times when we disconnect from our body and how it feels.

Yet the illness and treatment side effects co-exist with wellness in our body. Our bodies hold sickness and health together.

Connecting with body is a pathway to presence, and attunement to the wisdom our physical body holds.

Connecting with body helps us live with illness and support wellness.

Carl Jung wrote:

In reality, there is nothing but a living body. That is the fact; and psyche is as much a living body as body is living psyche: it is just the same.

Our living being is both the physical body, and the non-physical, or psyche. These two flows of life force are connected.he body, the physical material aspect of our being, mediates our experiences with the outer world: what we sense, how we move through the day, the things we actual do.

Psyche is the inner world, the non-material aspect of living: thoughts, feelings, intuitions, spirituality, dreams, and all the experiences of the inner world. There is a reciprocity, a dynamic relationship, between our outer life and our inner life. This connection is a guiding focus of Wisdom Wellness Circles. This is tending the soul.

There are 4 activity modules engaging with Connecting with Body. These will be posted weekly.