Overcoming Trauma and Breast Cancer: Powerful Recovery Tips with Dr. Keesha Ewers & Dr. Jenn Simmons

[Music] hello and welcome to this week's episode of the keeping of bre podcast I am your host Dr Jen Simmons and what we have for you today is someone who is truly special uh we're going to get right into it with her because Dr Kesha ERS is here and Dr Kesha has a story to share experiences to share and invaluable information in the world of breast cancer and sexuality and so Dr Kesha I've been so looking forward to having you on the podcast we did an amazing amazing amazing interview I think it was two or three years ago for my first summit and um so it's been a while it's been a minute since we've gotten a chance to connect um and so welcome I'm so happy to see you I'm so delighted to be back thank you so much so I would love it if you would start off by sharing your story and how you came to be um a breast cancer expert let's let's start with that I only come to be a breast cancer expert so to speak through my own uh trials and tribulations and so I think a lot of times the kind of medicine that we practice is informed by our own experience right your your your story is no exception mine isn't either y so I I pain exactly I started out as a 19-year-old nurse in the ICU and I did that kind of medicine and critical care for about 10 years had four children uh got married was a marathon runner and you know was very taip Bay very driven and then all of a sudden this is what my patients say too overnight I got sick which of course is not accurate it was not all of a sudden but overnight one night I gained 10 pounds in while I was sleeping of inflammation in all of my joints and I got in to see a physician the next day and I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and it was like someone had taken the batteries out of the Energizer Bunny so I was handed to prescription at that time you know for methot trxade and a non-al anti-inflammatory drug and I was told come back when you get worse not if and we'll change your meds and you know this was back I'm 59 and so this was back when I was 30 this is still the same today yeah same meds same same party line true it's the same right so sad and so I remember like many of my patients you know saying well hang on time out time out I'm very health healthy I make my own food I run you know what else can I do and my doctor looked at me and she said well you know in your history form here you said your grandfather had rheumatoid arthritis and so this is a genetic issue this is it like these are your only options and so on my way home I remember thinking my model of medicine which is good for a lot of things clearly is not good for this and you know the way that I was raised and educated has some limitations I wonder if there's another way to think about this and so I went outside in the pebmed and looked up the research articles and I found an article on yoga and I went to my first yoga class and I remember the teacher wandering around the studio while we're holding our postures this is my very first class and he's talking about the science of ayurvedic medicine which is the medical arm of yoga science and he said enough that got me very fascinated and I went home from that class and went back online and looked up ayurveda and what I found out was quite transforming so back 10,000 years ago these thinkers who were observing humans on the planet in relationship to their food and their environment and each other the Stars uh said that autoimmune disease is undigested anger and cancer is undigested anger and that oh by the way we're not all the same we're not supposed to eat the same things or sleep the same way or exercise the same way at the same time of day that we have individual constitutional types and that the way that we do our medicine where we try to have like a triage right a a decision tree if this is true then do this try to standardize everybody and we call it evidence-based medicine and we are not standardized people so it doesn't work very well especially for chronic problems so I changed a lot and in that time period I learned to meditate and I remember having this sort of download that oh this word autoimmune means I'm doing this to myself hm that means my immune system is going after me and there's nothing outside of me to blame I wonder if this is sort of like a societally acceptable way to commit suicide do like is there a time in my life that I actually wanted to die because that's basically what I'm doing to myself right now why am I attacking me that was a really interesting question and I was glad I asked it because then I was really willing to self-confrontation and I went back in my little memory banks and as I was sitting there meditating and thought is there a time in my life when I wanted to die and sure enough I Came Upon This 10-year-old little girl version of myself who was being sexually abused by the vice principal of the elementary school that I was attending oh and I remember looking at her and going you wanted off the planet my dad was out to see I had tried to tell my mom what was going on but I actually didn't have the right words you know like back in those days it was a different era we didn't have social media I was raised with no television I don't even know if I honestly knew what the word sex or molestation or abuse even meant and so I you know I I remember thinking I was very confused about had I done something wrong this is a person in Authority I tried to tell a teacher that scooted me off the playground said stop flopping your mouth you know and and so I remember looking at this little kid version of myself and going oh I'll bet you this has something to do with up we now have this word called upregulating genetics coded for disease I didn't have that word back then because we didn't have this genetic understanding that we have today but I knew it was connected somehow intuitively so I started doing some really deep trauma work and guess what my Ra was gone within six months and it never came back and I never took those meds now here's the answer to your question you actually started with 10 years later my diet's changed I'm a I'm a regular meditator I'm doing I walk my talk I'm doing everything that I teach my patients to do and my students I'm healthy healthy as a horse my son comes home from college and he says mom I have to tell you something and I sat down I was like this sounds serious and he said well back when you know and he he told me like back when we lived in this other neighborhood in another state uh there was a boy in our neighborhood who was 12 years old and my boys were uh five and three he used to come over and take the kids out back and they jump on the trampoline and you know play together and his mom was my running partner and I remember one day I had my baby on my hip I looked out back they were all jumping on the trampoline having a good time and I opened the sliding glass door and I yelled down hey do you want to stay in babysit while I take her to the grocery store just for a couple of hours and then I'll pay you when I get back and then you guys don't have to move or change anything apparently in that afternoon he sexually abused my boys so my son tells me this and with my history this is like oh my gosh the very worst thing that I think I could possibly hear and I totally freaked out of course because now I'm like the very worst mother that there could possibly be but I left my attention on my son and said so what what I would like to do is get you and your brother into counseling and I went into ICU nurse like Critical Care form and got them into therapy I I found the young man who was now grown uh in his 20s I tracked him down I called him up he said Mrs your I've been waiting for this call for 15 years and you know I asked him some questions I facilitated after they'd gone to counseling for a while this amazing forgiveness process between him and the kids and oh my gosh it was so beautiful and then when everything I think had been it been like at least a half a year everything had kind of settled I went into this rage about what is possible when you tell your parents and I realized that my parents had not done any of that and I was so angry and so right around that time I found a lump in my breast right in my left right over my heart so I went in got it looked at in the ultra sound you could see this blood supply to this tumor it was amazing it was like feeding it and I could just tell what was going on and I remember the the radiologist I was just like oh my gosh look at that blood supply and then I said give me after I had my consultation I said give me a month I know exactly where this came from and I know what I need to do and so I went into very intense therapy again and this time I had the hardest time forgiving myself it was so much easier to forgive my vice principal but to forgive myself I could see this 30s something year old version of myself like I think I was 38 or 40 like opening the sliding glass door yelling down and I I could just like from that place I was screaming at her you know like you lazy cow go get your kids do not leave them with him like oh my gosh so rageful against myself and my earlier version of myself and Fin finally one day I got it when I was in therapy I went into this like really intensive residential I knew I had to do this or I was going to die and so I went into this this Therapy Program and I remember I had four teddy bears that I was holding and I was just sobbing and the woman that was my therapist that was that was sitting there with me I was just like I'm so sorry I'm so sorry you know and I opened my eyes and she was crying and she said I wish my mother would have given half the that you're G that you give about this and it was this really interesting Compass shift for me of oh I'm being so selfish right now because if I don't forgive myself I'm like checking out my kids won't have a mom and what good is that like a mom that can't forgive herself right how useless is that and I remember it just like clicked like this is not just for you this is for your youngest daughter who is still in middle school and she needs you right this is for your other kids who are going to be needing you as life goes on and so after that point I was able to go back to that 30 you know or 40 yearold and say oh you didn't have all the information right you did what you with what you had you did the best that you could and also I recognized that each of my kids had their own path and it wasn't for me to be saving them from all their bumps and bruises and that they also had wisdom to learn like I thought about all the wisdom I attained from my own trauma digesting it that's what ayurveda calls it you digest the trauma and out comes wisdom if you're willing to not sit and regurgitate the traumatic story again and again and again with blame and shame it actually helps you develop compassion if you digest it so I remember like okay it's time it's time to do this digest it and I came out of that I went back to get another ultrasound which had been my agreement with my oncologist I went back in and that tumor was completely gone and that blood supply was just hanging there and nothing there was nothing in it there was nothing to feed and I remember the radiologist going whatever you did keep it up and it was like I don't tell that story a lot because everybody's reason for getting cancer is different right however this one is a biggie this one is a real biggie that trauma informs how you upregulate your genetics that code that you have in there you know I my mother had had had breast cancer her mother had had breast cancer I had a genetic propensity for it for sure my Phase 2 liver detox pathway genetically doesn't get rid of estrogen receptor positive right react um reproductive chemicals that we have being poured by the ton in our air water and soil so you could definitely point to chemicals and all the things that we talk about when we talk about cancer however I was regular detoxing regularly testing for toxic burden knew my genetics regularly taking care of my gut microbiome my adrenals my hormone metabolites like all of that for 10 years had been right on track the only thing that changed was I was filled with self-loathing and hatred for myself I got cancer yeah yeah I totally um I hear that I get it uh and I think that that is a pretty common thing for people that um you know you said instead of telling your story over and over again with blame and shame I think that's what's happening so frequently and I did I I remember a statistic where they looked at trauma in the breast cancer population and when you're talking about the early breast cancer population it's probably 30 to 40% of people that recall uh a trauma that had a significant impact on their life and then when you look at the metastatic population it's in excess of 80% and I'm always reminded of this story of a patient of mine who um came to me and yeah I mean similar to what you were experiencing when you were an ICU nurse and a runner and a you know like doing all the things doing too many things and burning your candle at both ends and you know you kind of get it why you develop some dysfunction this was a very very high-powered lawyer for the government who um you know granted she had a stressful job and she was probably drinking more alcohol than her body could tolerate in process you know we talked about some of the things that you deal with personally or that you do not have the strongest of detoxification genes and capabilities and she definitely had that but the thing that she had that was so unique to her story and it it resonates with your story is that her parents owned a ski resort which was um like an amusement Resort in the summer and a ski resort in the winter and at the age of 10 she was gang raped by a bunch of the 12-year-old boys who you know frequent this ski resort and amusement park and when she told her parents about it they didn't do anything yeah yeah and she relived that trauma over and over and over again probably until the day that she died and by the time she came to see me I mean there was so much blame and shame around that mostly because and again like I'm not blaming her parents but that lack of acknowledgment that lack of belief that lack of um help support from from your parents the people who are trying to protect you the mo or should be trying to protect you the most in this world like what wasn't there and I hear you that everyone you can't Shield your kids from everything obviously and there are some things that they need to experience in order to gain wisdom because we don't learn from our successes we learn from our failures but that pray to God they don't have to be gang raped or sexually abused that's exactly that's the thing right it's like oh yeah I don't mind if they fall off their bike and skin their knee but this right yeah yeah yep this is a far cry from that like don't wear a jacket get cold right that's a consequence and A Life Lesson that we're willing to to take the risks of of our kids dealing with right but you know with these deep deep traumas I it's hard to say like well you know my kid needed to learn from that or I needed to just get over it because it's not something that you can get over so easy easily no no and this is a this is the thing about this is in my spiritual belief system I believe we sign up for our parents and probably a lot of our uh trials that we're going to go through and so I fully believe that about myself like I could I could say oh my gosh I know why I went through this it's so that when I wrote solving the autoimmune puzzle I've helped thousands of people reverse their autoimmunity by helping them see The Missing Link the missing puzzle piece is trauma right when it came to actually granting the autonomy and freedom for my kids to be capable of healing from trauma and gaining their own wisdom so they could be leaders in the world I wasn't I wasn't there I was in full out blame and shame of myself about being a shitty mother right lazy going to the grocery store because I didn't want to grab them off the trampoline and have them complain at me for messing up their summer day right oh my gosh I just could not forgive myself but could you have possibly known I mean even even in retrospect would were there any alarm going off for you I mean yeah when I when I talk to the kid who's again close family friend which is this is actually statistically how it usually does work right as you know the person so you know he's a close family friend when I talked to him 15 years later and I said I just have a few questions like why and he said that he and his friends had found a porn magazine and he was experimenting with the closest thing that was there which happened to be my kids that day yeah so you know it's like I know that that motivation is very different than my vice principal right and as a sexologist my PhD is actually in sexology one of the things in our curriculum that I remember talking about and learning about and developmental like what I call the libido map as you're coming into your sexuality through the different ages and stages of development is that in our culture we tend to pathologize I'll look at yours I'll show you my if I if you show me yours right playing doctor and some of the things that actually children are curious and want to experiment and and in that kind of like world that wouldn't have been as bad as I was making it out but in it it is this culture it is this world and I wouldn't have wanted that to happen to my children right and so it's this very interesting out the outcome of that oh we pathologize you know a lot of this and make it much worse is how the parents respond is really important not downplaying it not saying get over it like really asking questions about what is the impact in their developmental libido map from this event like staying present not freaking out about like I freaked out about what a terrible mother I was I did stay present to his pain and right I freaked out about judging myself was a terrible mother there were some things in that moment I would redo if I could so it's a very complex issue that we tend to try and make black and white so it is really interesting and it is very hard for us I have so many women with autoimmunity and cancer who when I start looking for the places they haven't forgiven their younger versions of themselves there are so many things because we have a bar that we're going to be perfect parents our kids will never suffer right of course we don't want our kids to suffer and at the same time when disappointment presents itself in life are we there to then help teach them the tools for navigating disappointment things didn't go the way we would want them to there's a lot these days with people I call it painting a Norman Rockwell picture of what a parent should be and then comparing their parents to that painting and getting angry that their parents weren't that perfect parent and then trying to be the perfect parent for their children I think that's the that's like our stage of development in my age group and it's created some problems actually narcissism is on the rise and a lot of it is like we don't let our little ones be disappointed they're not allowed to get hurt and we're going to actually punish anybody now again sexual abuse is a place where I would want to do that you know it's like there's a spectrum here right yeah yeah but but we are a little bit creating a generation of monsters because like entitlement yeah entitlement uh having no idea how to navigate the no yeah right like it they they just don't understand that word and they never really experience failure because we don't let them because we we act like a safety net all the time um and it it crushes their their development right their sense of self their ability to problem solve to come out underneath a failure a disappointment when somebody I remember my daughter I teach non-violent communication and empathy building in my practice and as as a teacher for my students and I taught this to my daughters my who are very Adept at it now but I remember I I um about six months ago there was a I was involved with a wire transfer fraud you know it was quite a bit of money I lost in a w wire transfer because someone was fraudulent and I remember my daughter texting me she's 29 and she said well I'm not going to be able to say exactly what she said but she goes mom your need for people to not be absolute is not being met right now that must feel very frustrating you know and it like that's empathy right where you say your need for something isn't getting met right now that must feel awful we actually don't teach our kids how to find the need right that they have and we do we do sort of like project out there that people are supposed to be honest are supposed to have integrity are supposed to be compassionate kind and wise and developmentally grown up and that isn't actually accurate there are many people that walk the planet that are not interested in self-awareness and being developmentally grown up and they have Arrested Development because they continue in their trauma story of victimization and so you know I think that was so astute of her to be able to recogniz that yeah sometimes people act in terrible ways and that's a very disappointing experience and here's some empathy for that and then she she recognized that I would be able to digest it and deal with it and move on right and that's exactly what happened and so it was it's I was really actually I was looking at her text going wow that's amazing she's only 29 and she's able to track all of that right that yeah there are people out there who aren't going to behave the way you expect them to and all suffering comes from unmet expectations that you have of life right and nobody's agreed to your expectations yeah yeah no one has agreed to them so yeah so let's talk about expectations because I feel like we are not Preparing People for their breast cancer Journey at all Yes um they are thrust into treatment you know you you had a very unique position and advantage in that you were so knowledgeable you knew where to go you knew where your work needed to be most people don't even know that they have any power most people don't know that they have a voice a vote uh that they can that that that they have options beyond what is being presented to them at this time at this moment and they're so rushed into sign up for surgery sign up for treatment sign up for chemos sign up for radiation that they don't have time to think and their their ability to make informed decisions is almost not there because they're not talking about the information that's exactly right yeah and so I just wonder first what what what are you saying to the people who are recently diagnosed I know I cover this as the first chapter of my book The Smart woman's guide to breast cancer because I think that it needs to start from the very beginning it does right like we need to empower people to make decisions that are right for them from the very beginning so what what is your counsel to people who are right there in that spot well that spot is going to look radically different for each woman and man because me you know not and nonbinary beings right so female bodies and male bodies get breast cancer yeah so when when I talk about this then I'm going to say people and everyone's position of where that spot is is different so one of the things I'll do is ask first thing I say is how do you feel right now about all of this check in with are they grounded or are they overwhelmed are they completely in shock or are they their chronological age right now have they reverted into an upset six-year-old an upset six-year-old is not going to be taking in any kind of information sorting it and being able to come up with a plan right so I'm looking for where are you developmentally right now are you in or out of shock because it's very common to go into shock when you have a diagnosis like that I also want to know how rapidly is this growing what kind of Runway do we have right so if this is something that is slow growing it's just been diagnosed there's you know it's it we're in stage one then we have a longer Runway and so then I will recommend you have some options here you've got some time I call it a runway for a takeoff right like you've got some time here and here's what I would do if this were me and you know I always ask them first of all what what is it that they need for support and if they're there if they're in front of me it's usually because they want to know what I would do yeah so so I'll say like I want to know what your hormone metabolites are I would like to take a look at you know like a number of different things right and we can actually turn things around that are fairly simple if we know that they're there so so don't don't guess let's test I always say test don't guess if we have time if something is very aggressive there's already Mets you know then I'm saying different things so uh I don't know how you are with this but every person I think of as an individual puzzle and I don't say the same thing to everyone I do ask is your oncology team and you should have a team not one oncologist is your team have you gathered it who's on it do they communicate well together and is your team open to listening to you answering your questions right creating a unique and personalized plan that is based on you not on the sort of protocol right run by pharmaceutical and surgical interventions MH yeah um and I hear you it's all individual and I love the fact that you um consider what is best for that person that you're helping them to build a team where does that exploration [Music] for that that thing that you went through yourself where is that exploration for trauma for what might be at the root of this what is driving this what part of you wants to exit the world and how how I ask that immediately I I go into that a lot of times people come and see me because they've heard this story so if they get a diagnosis of cancer they come to me and they say I know that this past event must have something to do with what's going on here you know and I mean I run I work with plant medicine with people to do things pretty rapidly with that yeah you know can you say more about that because I think that this is a fascinating fascinating field um that I I think is going to really truly forever change how we um treat people for cancer for any chronic disease that that trauma and the effect the long-term effects of trauma might be continuing too and I know that you are working with with different kinds of um substances to try to to help to facilitate this this work so can you talk about that work yeah I can and also um the science behind it is incontrovertible I mean you just it's so crazy you know how we don't all automatically have this folded in the research that's come out of John's Hopkins the research that Maps is doing uh it's it's just irrefutable so one of the things that I'm going to premise all of this with Jen is I don't think that the worst thing to happen is death and that's that's kind of first right is I believe the autoimmune disease in cancer are a bit like a yoga practice of meeting death and making friends with it because there's not anyone getting off the planet without it and to me like we come in through a series of contractions through our mother's wombs or some females WBS and and we come into the light right through the tunnel into the light and then I believe that when we leave we're also birthing not death right we're we're being released through a series of contractions that's what chain Stoke breathing is out of the crown of your head and it's it's like you've just outgrown your favorite dress you know you're you're leaving this shell behind because you've outgrown it and the vast luminous infinite Consciousness that you are is released from the shrink wrapping and so I think of that as a birth right and I don't think of it as a bad thing so I believe that psychedelic medicine is super helpful for people to reach that place which when you are not contracted in fear when you are filled with expansion right spaciousness then toxicity can leave your mind and your subtle energy channels and your cell wall and through your detox organs when you're contracted we know if you're a zebra being chased by a lion your entire reproductive system contracts and so does your digestive system because it's not safe to reproduce or have a bowel movement when you're getting chased so coming out of that place where there's a fear of death is one of the very wonderful utilities of psychedelic medicine and that is what you know participant after participant after participant in these studies say like it freed me me from this very obvious event that's going to be happening I'm freed of the panic that goes with that we do Lamas training to birth our children like why are we not training for leaving our bodies it's crazy it's so crazy instead we'd rather spend our money on face lips and fillers to pretend like that's not going to happen yeah and so you know and I just go oh my gosh facelifts and fillers are fine as long as you're also preparing for this like the aging process is meant to get you ready for this very important one of my teachers calls it the big day you know it's when you you got to practice and train for it and then when it happens you're not doing it with a ton of fear and contracted and your death is pretty peaceful and easy I did years of hospice and that is very accurate so when we talk about the of psychedelic substances and I call it psychedelic medicine each psychedelic medicine is different and what it does every Journey that you have even if it's the same dose of the same thing at different times will behave differently in you because all they are they are not a magic wand they do not change you they do not transform you they don't take anything away they don't heal your trauma they don't move you up the developmental scale all they do is invite you into a space a gap between your reactivity imprints and thoughts so that you can turn around and look at the way that your mind works and you can go oh I see and it will show you how your mind operates at any given moment and then then in integration the next day as a skilled facilitator I can help you with steps to integrate what you've seen so that you can learn a new way of being you can rehabit tuatea to openness and expansion and love rather than the habituated pattern of fear and contraction and resentment those you know contracted fear shame guilt resentment frustration anger those are like they're more toxic than any of the chemicals they're more toxic the glyphosat-prozess thing you know people like to do still Cy and mushrooms in their living room or outside of friends and they'll have a lot of what's called State changes where they have insights but they're developmentally staying the same and they'll still complain and rail on about politics and people who are acting terribly and you know about their expectations that aren't being met because they're not moving into open awake awareness they're not not waking up because they're not taking that and integrating it that's actually what I think the utility is for cancer but that requires a facilitator that requires someone to to help them um make something of the experience that they're not they're not getting themselves exactly yeah um but at the same time and I you know I I've looked at the studies from Hopkins it is extending life yeah it's amazing isn't it yeah because once you're not contracted and fearful and resistant any longer mad at your body mad at someone that victimized you mad at the medical model mad at the government mad at your spouse mad at your children you know mad at your parents once you're not holding on to all that anger and resentment and you have this open expans iess it affects your biochemistry it affects cellular apoptosis and mitosis it affects detoxification capability and it affects the other four layers outside of your physical body your energetic body your emotional mental body your wisdom self and even What's called the anandaya kosha which is your spiritual layer of that connects into what Carl Yun called Collective unconscious like that's that's what we want to have access to that's Bliss right there right but we don't get to that space unless we can clear our subtle energy channels of all this your body is the repository of your unconscious mind so when you are contracted when you have a disease process it's your unconscious mind storage in there that's still active it doesn't matter how much therapy you do from your prefrontal cortex talk you know talk therapy CBT talking to a therapist about your problems and coming up with different strategies to get your needs met if you haven't un you know unkinked your subtle energy body and I'm not talking about Vegas nerve I'm not talking about the nervous system talking about something else if you haven't emptied that out then it's still going to affect how your genetics Express themselves yeah yeah yeah um so I know this might be a little off topic but I'm just curious do you believe that when our souls release that there is an an eternal place for our souls and that that this this physical body is a temporary repository and that RS exist in some kind of Eternal fashion I'm probably not prepared to talk about all of what I believe around that and I also believe that a lot of the ascended masters that have returned have done so because they have really let go of all of the stuff that's in unconscious mind and been able to take another life coming back to help us I would like to be that kind kind of a person right that really works on getting as attaining as much wisdom digesting my stuff opening up my subtle body so that I can come back and be of service to this planet in whatever way it asks right that that Source asks of me and so I'm a very big I love St francis's prayer you know St Francis VII of just like being an instrument in the hands of the Creator so I'm not sure that I believe that that people go and just rest in one place I do believe that those that come back that help us have gone through this process so yeah I mean you know for me I I do believe in our our souls are Eternal I do I believe that this is a temporary place and I kind of love what you said about if you can overcome the fear of death it makes this journey so much more beautiful oh so much you can actually live yeah every single anxiety we have every single fear we have every time we're angry it's because it's a fear of death in some way whether it's a death to our image that we want like someone said something about us that isn't in an alignment with how we want to be seen our financial status our whatever it is something got in our way of what we want to be true about us right instead of so it's all death anxiety it's like death to a dream and when you think about that like if you have a spouse who has an affair and you get divorce then that there's death anxiety in there it's the death to a dream you had with that person right it's all about death yeah and so a lot of people say I'm not afraid of dying and I I would say I understand you're not afraid of the big day because you have a belief system that says it's going to be wonderful outside of this body and outside of this plane of existence and right in every breath that we take the kingdom of God has the opportunity to be inside of us if we will just acknowledge that that's happening Heaven is actually here on Earth if we let it be and we're not so afraid from an egoic standpoint of you know ego doesn't want to die it has like a lot of desire to stay alive right for and the voice of the ego is always going to have contraction and fear associated with it but it is amazing that we do have those moments in our life where we do get to experience that deep deep connection with God creator univer like birth a child like there are there are times and opportunities in our life where we are such firsthand witness to Miracles I know that it really it really fills you with that expansion and you know that there's something so great and so big and so beautiful and um you contrast that with the times in your life that are so filled with fear that you forget that you're part of this great amazing picture so I want to talk about loss a little bit because that ends up being a huge part of the breast cancer Journey for a lot of women they they lose a lot and this goes back to what we started to talk about which is a lack of information a lack of informed consent a lack of understanding of what is awaiting them on their Journey a lack of knowledge and appreciation for what they're going to have to deal with so some women lose part of their breast some women lose all of their breast some women lose their fertility some women lose their virility some women lose their mood some women lose their mind some women lose their energy they lose hair their their relationships yep right death these are all the little mini deaths that I'm talking about yes and so how how do we help them to not only survive this time but find a way to find expansion despite all of the loss by getting comfortable with death think about it what I said earlier all unhappiness and suffering comes from unmet expectations if you somehow have an expectation that you're going to die with everything intact and you're going to look fantastic like you were 25 then that's you're gonna suffer know that anyone is that delusional no I there are there are quite a few people actually and so these are those many deaths that are getting us ready for the big day right and so if we're attached to the body to how it looks and this is where we spend our time externally instead of internally with the core of who we actually are right we are Christ Consciousness we are Buddha nature we are Luminosity we are pure awareness however you want to say that we are Divine and so when when you lean in back into the core of that white light that is in your core channels right none of this other stuff actually matters as much as we think it does so there's a grieving process that needs to happen does it mean you can say Lop off my breast no big deal Move Along no it's really important to digest every experience that you have this is ayurveda again this is what I learned when I was 30 is learning how to digest your memories your feelings your experiences going into them 100% really experiencing them so if that is a a thing that feels like oh I'm not a female anymore if I only have one breast or half a breast or no breasts and I have scarring and I and the external looks ugly when I was in India about I was in 2005 whatever that math is 20 20 years ago yeah uh wow I shaved my head and one of the things I was doing was getting rid of my attachment to external appearance I just like it was an Impulse I thought oh I'm gonna do this I think this is this would be such a good exercise and I was going to be there for two and a half months and so I I had like laundry soap and a biig razor my backpack and a Swiss army knife and I used those little tiny scissors and cut off my hair was this length yeah and I was going to say you know how long it took you to shave your head with that hair I know must have gotten halfway through and thought well if had I this through I probably had all these little bloody Micks and things from using like detergent and water and in a big razor I was a hot mess but what it did was I found that as I moved through the world I acted differently I no longer felt attractive so I didn't my gregariousness my willingness to make eye contact with people was gone I receded into the background I watched people more I looked for what they were thinking I was like oh this is so interesting and I gradually gradually stopped doing that and just became myself but it was a really wonderful exercise for oh you don't even realize how much you lean into looks right yeah your smile your the way that you are in the world like what you're trying to manipulate to feel safe and get something back that's friendly and so I was just like it woke me up really big time for that so I think that cancer will do that for us it's not a choice anymore it just does it for us right yeah that had been a personal choice I could I could step into it at like the level I wanted to I could play with it because it had been my choice when you lose your hair because of chemo or radiation that's a different story altogether but if you can come around to that place where play with it right make it into a spiritual practice it makes that loss something that uh creates the ability to digest the experience and come out with wisdom so I mean I love the the verbage of digest right like if you have an apple you know it has certain nutrients in it it has fiber it has all these things that we know are really good for us if you look at the Apple you're not going to get those nutrients if you talk about the Apple if you hold the Apple you're not getting the nutrients you actually have to bite into it you have to chew it you have to swallow it and then the digestive process does its thing I think about this as our experiences too and life hands us experiences that we didn't expect all the time quite suddenly things have just like changed overnight right if you can take take that as oh this is an apple I need to bite into really chew and Savor and taste and then am I going to get the nutrients from it and then I'm going to flush down the toilet all the parts that don't serve me right we don't hold the whole Apple forever yeah right we get rid of what we don't need that's the meaning of digesting trauma digesting memories that are hard digesting experience expences that are tough the times when things are happy and complacent are times we're resting we're not growing we're not learning yeah it is the time when we're going through loss that is our greatest moment of being able to digest that and attain wisdom yeah so it it goes back to kind of you know when you're faced with this adversity what are you meant to learn from this what are you meant to get out of this to extract from this to digest from this I think everyone's different in what that will be I remember a woman that had breast cancer that was a patient of mine who turned into a friend that was she got breast cancer three times first time she came in she said I don't know what so I do a lot of pulse diagnosis because the virva and when I'm in someone's pulse I get a lot of visuals like things get shown to me so I was doing a pulse diagnosis on her first breast cancer go around and I said oh it looks like you've got some things in here to learn that are about men in your life and Trauma and she started crying because her husband had died about five years prior to that and the you know when someone dies I think a lot of times they get Sanctified and she hadn't really dealt with some of the abusive situations that had been in her marriage she hadn't talked about it and she just started crying she said I have so much as you say undigestible about this and I feel like I can't do it because he's dead I said no no no no we can absolutely do that and so we really worked at that level with her and her cancer went away second time and she said all right what is it this time and I went into our pulse and I said well we's see what what your body tells me what your spirit says and and what came forward that she went oh this makes so much sense is that she was meant to step into a leadership position and really help women learn what she had learned and that's what she did for the next five years she held uh she created this goddess group she called it and she oh she was such an amazing leader and really helped Shepherd women into these places where she had gotten to with her journey five years later she got cancer again and she came in and she said all right what is it this time and so I saidwell what do what do you hear like what is it that you hear back on this and she goes honestly I'm not going to tell you I want you to go into my pulse and we'll see if they match and so I went in her pulse and I said you know what I get that it's time to go home and she burst into tears and she said so do I and I'm so happy I'm so excited to go home and that was it like this was this was her time to go and she did and she did it so beautifully I mean I had such an honor and a privilege to be by her side as she transitioned and you know with her community of women that she had just nurtured for the five years prior to that and oh so beautiful so you know like I think that what you meant to learn for me I had to learn how to for give myself I think that this is going to be different for every person I want to talk about I mean this has been like so amazing and it's going to resonate with so many people I do want to talk about sexuality though after our breast cancer diagnosis because I feel like this is an area where so many people struggle you know it's not like pancreatic cancer stomach cancer C and cancer it is such a part of our identity it's a sexual organ it's a physical organ it is um it is part of a relationship between between partners and um people really struggle with their sexuality afterwards not only because of the physical aspect but because many of the treatments for breast cancer material change your hormonal makeup which which makes you feel differently your mood is different your sleep is different your desires are different um so how how do you counsel people who are in this kind of situation and their relationship as a result is really suffering because that is one of the main parts of our relationship is is how you are relating to one another physically that that can be true for people for it's shocking how many couples that's not true for actually but that that's as a sexologist I hear all kinds of things right uh so yes this is a major part of recovery and I find and one of the things that I do you know your question is how do I counsel people is that it's like what what is it that you want for your next steps in intimacy with yourself your significant other if you have one your community life God you know whatever your name for that is so because you've just come through what's called a linal space ainal space is like a BAU in Buddhist terminology where it's a space between two realities cancer is that and on the other side there's often a birthing into a new developmental level and when you anytime no matter if it's from cancer or anything else when you move into a new developmental State then a lot of things need to be restructured because you're in a more expansive space and so it might even be that trauma work that you've done before in a different developmental State you have to kind of redo in this new place because that material comes up in a different way so you your sexuality might be engaged with differently in a new developmental State whether it's from cancer or not and so it's like what is it that you desire I work a lot like my PhD work um the study that I conducted in 2013 was on women with low libido and it's called The Healing unresolved trauma study and the healing unresolved trauma or hurt model came from that and so I work with people you know men and women it just from that hurt model helping them identify from this place that I stand right now what do I desire because often when you've been a peop pleaser and a perfectionist and holding on to the poison a past pain for so many years and now you're freed of it it's a brand new world and you might not even know what you desire so getting in touch with what your desire is is first and then what do you need to remove in your life and that's usually beliefs of your own right to be in that space that you desire and again cancer is often like the I think about repotting a plant where you shake off the dirt clouds of your roots sometimes cancer is that it's like God's repotting you into a bigger pot shakes off the dirt clouds with cancer and then puts you back in this bigger pot where you can flirt and get you know Thrive and your fruits of your labors will be bigger you know and so what is it that you need to have that happen so I have a seven-week course called the libido cure and it's based on all of my research and and it gives you ways of identifying where am I now in my libido story and where do I want to be because I can't even tell you Jen how many people I ask that question of and they don't know what do I desire what do you mean what do I desire I'm so used to like filling everybody else's desires and now I realize that I need to be on the front you know the top of the list of who needs to get cared for but I don't even know how to start that so if that's the person in front of me that's where we begin do you part of of a cancer diagnosis is that so many women never ask what they want or what they need exactly what do you desire I mean I I do this work with psychedelic medicine in group and onetoone settings and in the group settings I can find that person in a heartbeat that has not ever gotten in touch with what it is they desire and so when when I ask them that oftentimes the plant medicine will slow down what's called the default mode network of the brain which is the i i i me me me m m mine part and if that person's I me and mine selfworth has been based on taking care of everyone else and not themselves then I invite them into that space to ask their inner child part what what is it that you most desire right now right their older wiser woman self what is it you most desire right now you know and to just like start that dialogue right there that's I always when I teach doctors like I I'm on the faculty for the institute for functional medicine and I teach functional sexology a lot I'm the mother of functional sexology and one of the things that I'll say is you know really good sex comes from good communication but scrape you off the ceiling sex comes from scrape you off the seing communication and that's not necessarily with everyone else it's also with yourself right that's where it begins what's in your head goes to your bed and so the that's where I start right not with standing in front of the mirror naked and loving your body that's also important but that's jumping over a bunch of steps to you know too early yeah I actually think that um you know that that whole thing that you just said what's in your head goes to your bed I I think that that connection is not about a physical connection at all I think that the people that are truly connected they they they see something more beautiful than any physical combination that you could come up with it's exactly right yeah there's a connection there that that comes from again the inner core of that energy center that you have spent time really f Ing and then you've met the other persons this was what Tantra sex actually is Tantra is not about sex Tantra is about the realization of the Divinity within you nurturing it and getting all of the garbage out from in front of it that's obscuring it then when you meet another person that's doing that same work though that's where you connect from and then your sex is amazing but it's not tantric sex right it's it's about really establishing your Christ Consciousness like being and it's already there you don't have to do anything it's releasing anything that's covering that up for yourself yeah yeah absolutely I love that so you have a couple of programs that I would just like you to talk about a little bit because you know it's great that people are listening to this podcast but often that is is not enough to really uncover what needs to be uncovered in order to find that freedom of fear of death find that openness find that that Consciousness so I would love for you to tell us about the libido cure and about healing your trauma yeah so I have two programs that are what I called do-it-yourself that you can just do online uh that one's called the libido cure program and it's seven modules that go through it's really like I said from my doctoral research there are five root causes to low libido and two kinds so one kind of low libido is called innate low libido that's innate means you've always had it there's there's never been a time when you've had sexual desire for yourself or another person the causes the root causes of that are often times and this is about 45% of people will have innate low libido which is interesting that's a lot you know it can come from trauma sexual trauma or otherwise in your background I always say a hypervigilant mind where you're not sure if you're safe in the world creates a hypervigilance in your endocrine system and your immune system so this is where autoimmun and cancer eventually emerge from so acquired low libido is the other kind so innate will mental health issues OCD anxiety past trauma so obviously hormones are not going to help that right these these are my TED Talk was about this have you heard from your libido lately and I said people often think hormones are the thing right if you have innate low libido hormones are not the thing because when you had your highest peak hormones at the age of 14 and your libido didn't turn on right then that's not a thing so then acquired low libido is the one where we go oh yeah let's do some hormone testing some metabolite testing some adrenal testing some thyroid testing let's see what's going on with your microbiome acquired means you've had a sexual desire level that you are completely satisfied with but something happened and now you no longer have it that could be cancer it could be chemo radiation surgery a diagnosed illness of some kind like Hashimoto right we've talked about that before any autoimmune disease any cancer it can also be menopause or andropause um I I always say relationship dissatisfaction is the number one root cause for women with low libido where it's acquired so I used to love to have sex with this person but now they've had an affair or they started drinking or I found out they have a porn addiction or a gambling addiction you know whatever it is and now I don't want to have sex with them and then they come in to see me and want hormon I'm like that's not the answer right so if you don't like your partner hormones aren't going to fix that like we have to get at this from a different space so those are the two kinds and then the five root causes of low liido will be found physically I've rattled off a bunch of physical reasons you know medication side effect is another one guess what you have low libido you go in and see your medical provider guess what the number one thing is that you're given an SSRI anti-depressant whose number one side effect is Lolo so crazy making so you know like those are those are the physical reasons then there are mental reasons for lobido I don't feel attractive I've gained a bunch of weight my partners gained a bunch of weight they're not attractive to me you know I don't feel safe like those are the kinds of things and then emotional root causes and spiritual root causes you may have grown up in a sex negative culture religion or household um you weren't allowed to have sex until you were married desires of sin and then all of a sudden you're married and now you're supposed to be able to turn on that faucet sometimes that doesn't work very well and then in your libido Story the way that you tell your story the map how it was how it was starting to get created as you went through your different developmental States and stages so that libido cure course goes through all of that it's very comprehensive and it gives you a lot of beautiful beautiful awareness around the context of the importance of libido which is life force Vitality it's not just about sex right it's the energy for you to live your life purpose it's the passion that you have for whatever maybe your grandchildren maybe writing your book maybe creating a piece of music you know you might be a spiritual renunciate who doesn't have sex and the energy that you were expending sexually that you're supposed to be now using for Spiritual Awakening if it's not there then you're not going to get that either yeah so it's like this energy is really important to find and fix the Kinks and the blocks right so that's what the libido cure program is about and then the other program that I have is a is a nine module program on helping people uh really get into the process of digesting ing trauma I always tell people they're not getting rid of their trauma they're not healing their trauma they're not even transcending their trauma they're digesting it so that you get to the wisdom attainment place right and you can flush what you don't need down the toilet I love that um if people want to hear more from you where can they find you at Dr kia.com and my book solving the auto immune puzzle amazing Dr Kesha thank you this has been an enlightening conversation I know that it will help so many women or people to um see their diagnosis differently maybe give it a different meaning maybe give it a second thought um and be able to come at it from A New Perspective that is not um cons consumed my fear because I really think that that is what defines almost everyone's breast cancer Journey currently and if we can get out of that fear space and get out of that space where we are making these kind of rot decisions based on fear because that's what's happening across the board really truly and that's why the mastectomy rate continues to increase that's why we haven't changed the death rate we haven't changed the experience for women in decades because we're still completely operating from a place of fear um so I know this is going to help so many women and and really resonate with them and change the way that we that we experience breast cancer um and hopefully all other chronic disease so thank you so much for your time today for your work for your beautiful beautiful person and spirit and mind I'm so grateful to you I'm so grateful to know you and I look forward to many many many more conversations between us me too thanks for your work and Everyone by the book it's going to be lifechanging and really help you on your path yeah everybody thank you so much so if you liked this podcast please like it comment share it with someone who needs to hear it again my book The Smart woman's guide to breast cancer is available on Amazon and I will be back here same time same place next week it's Dr Jen bye for now [Music]