The great news is – there is life with cancer.  Your life can be filled with joy and with purpose, causing a reversal of the very cause of cancer itself: the Cancer Death Wish.  Cultivating joy in your life takes work and action.  A lazy mind expecting joy to come to it will be sadly disappointed. Joy only develops within the mind when your life: a] has true meaning and purpose, b] is filled with fun and laughter, and c] is carefree and free of stress.  Consider which or all of these is missing in your life and how you have neglected each.

You can re-learn the art of living your life with joy and cultivate a meaningful and purposeful life with cancer. The following 8 suggestions have been selected to give your life new meaning and purpose, to fill your life with fun and laughter, and to help you live a carefree life, free of stress.

Life With Cancer: Go Swimming Every Day

Swimming releases “endorphins” in the brain that make you feel happy and alive. This lowers cancer-causing stress hormone cortisol levels, boosts the immune system and the feeling of “happiness” and “aliveness” begins a reversal of the Cancer Death Wish.  Learning to have fun again is essential in re-discovering your joy for life and your will to live.  Every time you get into the pool, your mind is taken back to a time when you were young and enjoyed playing in the pool – having lots of fun, free of stress. Endorphins are also the body’s natural pain-killers, producing the same result as morphine and codeine.  Even if you can’t swim, splashing around in the local pool stimulates the release of these endorphins. Go with a friend and splash water at each other, have swimming races or just float on your back and relax.  You may think you’re just stuck in a pool, but you’re actually healing your cancer.

Life With Cancer: Watch Funny Comedies / Laughter Yoga

Learning how to laugh is essential to regain your joy and passion for life again.  Regular laughter for a few hours every day will dramatically lower cancer-causing stress hormones and make you feel happy and alive again.  In the video The Secret, a woman describes how she cured her cancer without mainstream medicine, simply by watching funny comedies and using prayer.  Now there are comedies and there are comedies.  We are talking about the ones that have you laughing on the ground.  Consider also joining a Laughter Yoga class.  Laughter Yoga classes are in most cities and countries, which can be found with a simple Google search, and will train you in the art of having fun and loving life again.

Life With Cancer: Weekly Spoil Yourself Day

Most who have cancer are typically “givers” and fail to give to themselves along the way. This takes all the joy and the passion out of life.  It is essential to carve out for yourself one day each week where you totally and completely spoil and pamper yourself.  This may include a massage, doing something you really love, getting a facial, having a bubble-bath, receiving a spiritual healing such as reiki, watching a movie at the theatre, dining out, playing tennis, or trying something you haven’t tried before. On this day, put your desires first and, if possible, don’t do anything for anyone else. This is a day for you to have fun and give back to your spirit.

Life With Cancer: Weekly Do-Nothing Lazy Day

You are a human “being” – not a human doing.  Most who feel ‘tired of life’ and want out, feel overwhelmed by the chores and responsibilities and stresses of life. It is essential to carve out for yourself one day each week where you can just “veg out” and do absolutely nothing.  On this day you should only include activities that are gentle to your spirit.  This may be reading a book, a gentle meditation, a gentle walk, but nothing stressful.  Ask someone in the family to do the chores for that day, or if it is you alone, then just leave them for the next day. Don’t worry about cancer for that day.  Having a “day off” in this way will help you to re-connect to your Spirit, and will revitalize your mind and spirit. You will love looking forward to these lazy hazy days.

Life With Cancer: Get Creative

You are a creative spiritual being. Creativity dramatically increases your internal will to live. If your life is absent of creativity, you will often feel unfilled and empty in your life.  Remember how much fun it was as a kid to paint, to draw and to sing and to make things? Most people feel ‘tired of life’ because they are not feeding the kid in them – with creativity.  Join a regular creative group that may meets up once a week. This could be an art class, a pottery class, a singing group, a dance group, a wood-working group, a theater group – anything that gets the creative juices flowing again.

Life With Cancer: Write Your Story to Help Others

Your life with cancer has real spiritual purpose.  You have this diagnosis for a reason – to overcome the mental and emotional causes that have created this disease, and in so doing, you become a teacher to help others to heal their mind, their emotions and their spirit to want to live again.  We are starting a project for the future.  If you would like to help others by sharing your story on your journey with cancer then here is an opportunity for you to do just that.  We are inviting people with cancer to tell their story in a daily journal entry over a 365 day period.  Each daily journal entry should be between 50 and 100 words and can be on any subject relating to dealing with cancer.  We are ideally seeking people who would like to share their intimate feelings, thoughts and comments on their journey with cancer, so this can later form a free e-book available via this website to benefit others who are going through a similar journey.  Whether or not you decide to be involved with this project, we ask you to consider writing a daily journal over 365 days for your own benefit.  There are many studies that have shown expressing feelings in journal writing increases longevity of life and boosts the immune system*. [*Here is one study that shows significant immune system increase in HIV patients who expressed emotions in the written form over a 4 day period: http://www.fmhs.auckland.ac.nz/som/psychmed/petrie/_docs/2004_HIV_writing_trial.pdf]  If at the end of the 365 days you decide to be involved with this project and submit your daily journal entries for inclusion in this free e-book, we ask you to email Glen Russell at punawaiora@gmail.com in the first instance.  We will select 5 stories for inclusion in this free e-book.  This project will run between 2012 and 2014.

         

Life With Cancer: Healing Cancer Circle

Create a circle of LIFE – a healing cancer circle that will give you a platform to share your wisdom and inspire others to choose LIFE over cancer.  Helping and supporting others with cancer and receiving their support in return is a great way to connect and form close relationships with others on a similar journey.  With your knowledge on how negative emotions cause and fuel cancer – you can help others to heal too.  Advertise in your local paper the following: “Healing Cancer Circle. Looking for 3 people to share the cancer journey with for mutual support and healing.” Include your first name and telephone number.  Ideally the group should be 4 people, and if you get a large response you can co-ordinate other groups of 4 people.  In such a group you can benefit from each other’s experience, help and support each other, offer and receive advice, and encourage each other to choose LIFE over cancer.

Life With Cancer: Become a Volunteer

Your life can have no greater meaning than when you choose to undertake “selfless service” to humanity.  The feeling you will get from volunteering your time and love and energy to others in need, is indescribable, and truly fulfilling.  You can volunteer in all sorts of ways – in soup kitchens, delivering meals to the elderly for ‘meals on wheels’, lifeline counseling where you will be trained to counsel those contemplating suicide to choose LIFE, for charities, and so on. If you’re not sure, say a pray and ask to be guided to where you can be of service.  Those who develop cancer typically feel disconnected from life and from humanity – and so the simple cure is – to reconnect.