Metamorphosis through Meditation – Surviving Metastatic Cancer
How I became a Butterfly

By Jennifer Cantrell

No-one can prepare you for the words: “ The cancer has spread to your liver and lungs and there is nothing I can do” and the feeling that death is closer than you ever imagined. The mind can destroy you before the disease does.

I am on a journey – a journey of self discovery, a journey of life. For the first time in my whole life I am starting to feel awake to life. I feel alive! The last 43 years have been a mind controlled roller coaster ride and it is only through a life threatening illness I have realised how much lack of presence in the now I have had and how important meditation is to help still the mind and focus on the present.

I am blessed and thankful for everything I have and everything I am. My husband, family and friends, my oncologist, surgeon, naturopath, psychologist have all helped immensely in the healing process and helped me on this journey of self discovery. A cancer patient wrote in Lance Armstrong’s book, “It’s not about the Ride”, that we were the lucky ones – now I know why!

I initially had surgery and radiation treatment after being diagnosed with breast cancer and refused chemo for several reasons, but after 6 months, after discovering a lump under my arm – scans showed that the cancer had spread. The metastases were from the original tumour and a scan at the initial diagnosis would have discovered this. I was devastated I was sure I had done everything I could – changed my diet, increased my vitamin supplements, weekly yoga and meditation, daily walks, raw juices, decreased stress levels – but on reflection these were only actions. I ticked them off forgetting the most important area that needed to be healed was my mind and emotions!

My background was in health and fitness and I was studying Naturopathy and working in a Clinic where a fair percentage of the clients were cancer patients.
I read numerous books to educate myself and tried various methods to help overcome the fear I felt. I increased my vitamin and herbal supplements, had weekly vitamin C infusions, ate organic food, eliminated dairy and meat from the diet, ate apricot kernels and reduced the stresses in my life again. When you are in fear of losing your life you will try anything!

I found a wonderful compassionate oncologist and we began my orthodox treatment of Chemotherapy and Herceptin (a new antibody that I had tested positive for.) Along with my husband, family, and friends my team and healing programme were in place!

I felt I had the basic tools and the positive attitude – but I was missing something, something to push me more towards my goal of finding peace of mind. My intuition told me however that it was on a spiritual and emotional level that I need to heal and everyday I started doing up to 3 hours of physical relaxation techniques and some meditation tapes I had from the Ashram. I started to feel more relaxed and my orbit started to slow – of course at times I was dreadfully ill but I was better prepared for it with my new state of being.

But it wasn’t enough - I wanted to find peace of mind and I wanted to really understand what meditation was all about. I made the connection that meditation was the vital jigsaw puzzle piece to give me peace of mind, a sense of my inner body and who I really am. “I have a mind I am not my mind” - Petrea King (a survivor of leukaemia and director of the Quest for Life Foundation in Bundanoon) kept repeating like a mantra when I went down with my husband for a week retreat, and at first I did not understand what she meant!

I have done yoga and meditation all my life to varying degrees. Meditation I only did sporadically and really had no sense of what I was doing or trying to achieve thus it was an easy practice to give away. Why ? because it was too hard – too hard to get out of bed, too hard to still the mind, too hard to sit cross legged - just plain too hard. How can something so easy, yet so life transforming be so hard ?

I have practised Yoga since I was 15 – all different types, but never completely disciplined enough to make it a daily practice. Sometimes I like the more physical disciplines of Iyengar or Bikrams, or something different more energising and heart related like Dru Yoga – but I have always gone back to the Manly Ashram to continue Hatha Yoga, Yoga Nidra and Meditation – but never realising why I was drawn to this style of yoga and meditation.

Six months on your back virtually in a self and chemical imposed retreat of sorts to rid the body of the cancer that has now invaded the lungs and liver, gives you a lot of time to think about life. My main goal changed after spending a week at Petrea Kings’ program in Bundanoon. I didn’t want to do battle with my disease – that meant wasting energy. Energy I needed to heal. My goal was to achieve peace of mind – whatever that meant and felt – I wanted to live whatever time I had left in my life with peace.

My psychologist was a Buddhist Monk who had disrobed. He taught mindfulness meditation and led retreats and meditation classes. Although I was too sick to attend these, he would lead me on a personal meditation during my session with him. I started to read more and more – about Buddhism, Mindfulness meditation and started to understand with more awareness what I was doing and how important it was to still my mind and truly be awake in this beautiful crazy world.

It was about this time that I had a spiritually life changing experience. I was down at Bundanoon at the Buddhist Monastery that John Barter had sent me to, walking with the Venerable Sujarto to a beautiful waterfall and rainforest area. I was walking behind him – watching his measured steps – each one deliberate, slow and done with full consciousness.

As I followed him the visual scene in my mind became clear – the lifecycle of a butterfly - a cocoon, caterpillar – and the emerging butterfly, beautiful, serene and free. I saw my cocoon as my incessant thinking mind, my habits and addictions, my human physical body and my retreat from society to heal and get well. The caterpillar was the use of meditation, eating nutritious organic foods, orthodox treatment and the life saving changes I would need to make to complete my own lifecycle. And finally the emergence of something so beautiful, serene and at peace:- a butterfly – me! A simple normal daily insect lifecycle was the metaphor for my life. I knew that I was going to be that butterfly and that meditation was going to be the key to my metamorphosis. In that moment I knew I was going to be okay.

I was too sick to attend the Ashram during the healing process of chemotherapy to continue my now vitally important yoga and meditation. I had no energy to do yoga – it was an effort to clean my teeth, but I kept focused that this was only temporary and that I would get back to yoga. Meditation continued daily lying down in my bed again knowing that eventually I would sit up again to do my meditation. I surrendered and accepted it as all part of the process.

They say that books come into your life at certain times to guide you – for me Eckhart Tolle’s, “The Power of Now”, a book on spiritual enlightenment was that book. It reinforced everything about the Mind – about how much it controls us by looking back into the past with regrets and guilt and projecting itself in the future with fear and forgetting to be present in the Now. We must watch the thinker (our minds) and be more present to have real peace of mind. My mind was all over the place – fear of dying, fear of not living my dreams together with my husband, my regrets about the past. When I started to really watch my mind I realised how much my mind was either in the past or in the future and very rarely in the present. I had a lot of work to do!

Then I went to the Satyananda Mangrove Mountain Ashram for a Yoga and Meditation weekend and all the jigsaw puzzle pieces seemed to come together. Finally after 28 years, I had an understanding of the importance of the Asanas in Yoga and the Pranayama in preparation for meditation. Finally, clarity and understanding of the importance of being aware of your physical body, of being in touch with your inner body and mind and being present in the now. It all seemed so obvious but I had been blind to it before.

Our wonderful teachers – Rishi Yoga Diwali and Rishi Nityabodhananda, looked themselves at peace with life, they glowed, they were present and I was thankful that I have had some amazing teachers along my journey of discovery so far.

Love is also an important part of this process of transformation into a butterfly and I would never have achieved it so successfully without the deepest love of my beautiful husband, puppy, family and friends. I am blessed to have a loving, caring, passionate husband to share my journey with – he is my soul mate, lover and best friend.

My friends and family were amazing – cooking, cleaning, transporting, walking the dog, calling to check if I needed anything, sending me gifts, praying for me – I felt so loved and wanted and it made me feel blessed and thankful for my life.

At the stage of writing, my scans have come through clear and I am in remission. I keep remembering a quote I read early on that said “even advanced breast cancer can be overcome “, and at the moment I am living proof of that. I know that nothing is a given and I take each day at a time. So I continue with my antibody treatment every 3 weeks and stay cautiously optimistic, living in the present.

Meditation is an amazing tool, I wish everyone could understand how important it is, how much it awakens you to this life ….but that is other peoples journeys and I guess when they are ready to experience the metamorphosis and finally become awake, they too will discover peace of mind and joy for living.

Thankyou to everyone who helped me along my journey thus far and I look forward to my daily meditation practice, achieving peace of mind and being present in the now. There really is no better place to be!