How a positive mindset works in dealing with the ups and downs of life
“The moment you change your perception is the moment you rewrite the chemistry of your body.” Bruce H. Lipton, PhD
I was milling around a hallway at the Boston Sheraton, waiting to go into a class at a yoga conference in 2001. A soft-spoken woman and I began chatting, and within minutes—as women do—she felt comfortable enough to say, “Yoga got me through breast cancer.” She said she woke up and did her practice every day, no matter what. I could picture the routine she described—on her yoga mat, early in the morning, still dark outside, the light from her TV flickering in her living room as she followed a yoga video.
Fast forward 18 years. Now that’s me. Now I’m a person who can say, “Yoga got me through breast cancer.”
by Julie Shaw, MEd, C-IAYT
I already had an established yoga practice when I was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma Stage 2a in 2019. I had practiced yoga for over 30 years and was certified in yoga therapy. But after the cancer diagnosis, I can’t overstate how essential my daily yoga practice became. It helped calm my nerves, exercise my body, restore my energy, and keep my heart and soul moving in the right direction.
Heading into treatment, I wanted to stay as positive as possible, down to the words I was using and the thoughts I was thinking. A few years earlier, I had worked on a clinical team delivering a cardiac health program, developed by Dr. Dean Ornish.[i] My role was to teach participants how to use yoga to reduce their stress levels. One of the key techniques we taught was positive imagery. This was the trickiest part of my job, because although we provided clinical research showing that positive imagery and visualization are correlated with improved health and longer life,many of the participants just couldn’t buy into “imagining” themselves to health. [ii] [iii] [iv]
When I became a cancer patient, I leaned into positive imagery. Psychologists and neuroscientists studying neuroplasticity have shown that repeated patterns of mental activity actually change the brain’s structure and function. In other words, you become what you think. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson’s research showed that meditation can alter patterns of activity in the brain to strengthen optimism and a sense of well-being.[v] Bottom line: If you consciously practice a positive mind-set, your brain physically changes to reflect that positivity, affecting how your entire body functions. Conversely, a negative mindset negatively affects your health.[vi]
It wasn’t just science I was listening to, though. The ancient wisdom of yoga had been saying the same thing for over 2,000 years. The Yoga Sutra of Patañjali, written around 400 CE, begins with this profound insight:
- Yoga is the ability to direct and focus mental activity.
- With that focused mind, we gain the ability to see what is most profound and important within us.
- Otherwise, when the mind wanders aimlessly, we identify ourselves with those aimless wanderings.[vii]
Patañjali understood that “you become what you think.” He recognized that our true inner self is something much deeper than our busy, often negative minds. Importantly, until we understand this, we continue to mistake our busy minds for our inner being, and we miss out on a fundamental opportunity for the true happiness and well-being that comes from abiding in our true nature. Whether through the lens of modern neuropsychology or ancient yoga, the message is the same—the conscious choices we make about our mindset matters.
Yoga offers several techniques for putting the “power of positive thinking” into action. I reached out to a friend and colleague, Ellen, to help me create a positive imagery practice. She listened to the images and concepts that resonated with me, then wove them together into a meditation, offering back my own “healing medicine.” One of my favorite parts was, “Let your awareness settle into this pastel-filled heart, allowing and inviting your ancestors and angels to visit, to be with you, to accompany you, in whatever way is just right for you.” That image came directly from my imagination, which is exactly what made it so powerful and meaningful.
Here’s what I learned about my susceptibility to depression during cancer treatment: serious illness, and often the treatment required, erodes our physical strength as well as our endurance and motivation to keep doing the things that help us stay mentally strong. It becomes an enormous effort to keep a positive mindset. Having a tool like this positive imagery meditation was invaluable. It consistently reminded me to choose positive thinking and gave me a reliable way to reconnect with something deeper than my worried or depressed thoughts. I saw it as “banking” the good energy I would need not only for the months of treatment ahead, but for the rest of my life.
You don’t have to have cancer or any illness to benefit from a positive imagery practice. Life brings ups and downs for all of us. Each moment we have a choice about where we place our attention and how we view our circumstances. Doing what we can to face challenges head-on fosters our inner strength and changes our brain to reinforce that strength.
The preceding was adapted from “Hello, Nausea. How Are You Today? How Yoga Helped Me Through Cancer” by Julie Shaw.
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When certified yoga therapist Julie Shaw was diagnosed with breast cancer, she leaned into what she had relied on for more than three decades: her yoga practice. In her new book, Hello, Nausea. How Are You Today? How Yoga Helped Me Through Cancer, Julie shares a candid, compassionate, and often humorous account of her cancer journey, offering accessible yoga-based practices designed to support readers through treatment and recovery.
With over 35 years of yoga experience and certification as a Viniyoga Therapist, Julie brings both credibility and relatability to the page. She is a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists and a lead faculty of the American Viniyoga Institute’s® accredited yoga therapy training program.
References
[i] “Ornish Lifestyle Medicine,” accessed November 2024, http://ornish.com/.
[ii] “Dr. Rick Hanson,” accessed November 2024, https://rickhanson.net.
[iii] Diane Serra et al., “Outcomes of guided imagery in patients receiving radiation therapy for breast cancer,” Clin J Oncol Nurs., Dec;16(6) (2012): 617-23, doi: 10.1188/12.CJON.617-623. PMID: 23178354.
[iv] David Bresler, “Physiological Consequences of Guided Imagery,” Pract Pain Manag, 2005;5(6), https://www.medcentral.com/pain/chronic/physiological-consequences-guided-imagery.
[v] Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, The Emotional Life of Your Brain (Plume, imprint of Penguin Books, 2013).
[vi] “Dr. Rick Hanson,” accessed November 2024, https://rickhanson.net.
[vii] Ranju Roy and David Charlton, Embodying the Yoga Sutra (Weiser Books, 2019), 14-29.
