I was playing the wrong game

18 months of cancer, grief, surgery, and recovery, and what emerged from the other side wasn't just physical healing. It was a shift in how to relate to life itself. This episode is about what that actually looks like.

A lot of it comes back to the body. There's grief for what's been lost and a genuine wonder at what remains. Not about appearance, but about resilience. The capacity to go through something that significant and still function, still move, still show up. That's where this episode starts.

From there it moves into the bigger questions. Identity, control, and what's left when you strip both away. The teaching of Neti Neti from the Upanishads surfaces here, along with an honest look at what it means to stop outsourcing your sense of stability to outcomes you can't control. There's also something about the difference between empathy and rescuing, and why presence is more useful than fixing.

The episode ends with what practically shifted things: active breathwork, spinal flexes, moving stagnant energy through the body rather than just thinking your way through it. And a new chapter opening. This stretch of the story, the descent, the grey months, the slow climb back, is finishing. What came out of it was unexpected. This episode is about what that is.

LINKS:

• Work with Monica: https://cultivatecalmyoga.com.au/energy-alchemy/ 
• Curious about Yoga Alchemy?: https://cultivatecalmyoga.com.au/yoga-alchemy/
• Website:https://cultivatecalmyoga.com.au/
• Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/cultivatecalmyogabrisbane/

Transcript

0:58

Welcome back. We've now crossed over into part three of this season of the podcast. The fog had lifted, the misery had passed, and that spark is still burning. Looking back over the past year, the thing that changed me most wasn't surviving, it was learning to let go. And that sounds simple, deceptively simple But I think letting go is one of the hardest things to do because it goes against everything we're wired to do I spent most of my life trying to hold on and control outcomes. It was only when I realised I had no choice but to let go, when there was literally nothing left to hold onto, that I found out who I was underneath all of that control. And this episode is all about who I became when I stopped trying to hold everything together. But before we begin, let's take a long, slow exhale together Now remember, the information I share here is just my personal experience. It's not medical advice. Please always speak with your doctor or health professional So I'm gonna start with the body because that's the most honest place to begin. Now I'm grateful for my body, genuinely, for what it's carried and what it can still do, and I'm still self-conscious about it. But who isn't? Not many people stand naked in front of the mirror and love everything they see, and I'm no different. The body ha- I have now is not the body I had before. There's scars and a chest that tells the story of the last decade, whether I want it to or not I still feel grief for my breasts. Amputation's just such a shitty thing to go through. There's no sugarcoating it. I have missing body parts and I still miss them I also get phantom limb pain, the kind that amputees describe. Sensation in part of the body that's no longer there. It's like the body hasn't forgotten what used to be there And despite this grief and ongoing pain, I'm still amazed at what my body can do. I remember when the surgeon told me that it takes about three years to make a full recovery after a mastectomy It just seemed like such a long time. And at the time of recording this episode, it's only been 18 months, and I've amazed myself at what I can do. Honestly, once I knew I had to have this surgery, it did cross my mind about whether I'd even be able to teach yoga still and whether I could do any of the poses. And it's true that I've lost a lot of strength and that some things will just remain out of reach for me. But I've surprised myself by what I can do, and I'm ever so grateful for my amazing body. What's changed is my body, what it looks like, and what she can do. It doesn't take up so much mental real estate anymore. Yes, the grief is there. Yes, the self-consciousness is there. The pain is constant, but it's not running the show. And yoga philosophy teaches us that we have five layers to our being, and our physical body is just one of those layers. We're not our body. We're not even our minds. Who we are is consciousness. And if we become overly identified with our physical appearance, we're almost guaranteed to suffer because the body isn't permanent, and every day we're aging and changing. The only thing that's unchanging is that the conscious awareness that's always been there After my first cancer diagnosis and my dad dying and my divorce, I came out of that feeling really strong and resilient, like I could handle anything. And in hindsight, that was a little arrogant. It was just an identity that kept me stuck. Because when you're the person who handles everything, you don't let yourself fall. It's just another persona that you manage Going through this latest experience hasn't given me that same feeling. I haven't come out of the other side feeling strong or resilient or thinking I can do hard things,'cause that's just another identity. It's just a story I'd be telling about myself. And that's also the reason I never refer to myself as a cancer survivor, 'cause cancer's just something that's happened to me. It's not who I am What actually happens in the life events that shape us, if we let them shape us, is that we meet ourselves when everything else is dropped away. The psyche, the persona, the narrative, all the roles we play. When we're stripped bare and there's no story left, just awareness, just presence, just whatever's underneath once everything's fallen away One of my favorite consciousness exercises is called Neti Neti. It means not this, not that. It comes from the Upanishads, the old Vedic texts written about 700 BCE. It's a process of negation. You ask yourself who you are, and you keep negating every answer until you arrive at something that can't be taken away. And you start with the obvious stuff, like my name is Monica, but I could change my name. I might describe myself as a woman, but I could have a sex change. I might describe my age or my physical appearance, but they're always changing. I could describe my job or the roles I play in life, but they're also subject to change. We start with the most physical, obvious things and realize all of that is changeable. You keep stripping back, then we work on our emotions Then we work on our mind and our thoughts. But our emotions and thoughts are always changing We might arrive at our personality, even our beliefs, but all of these things are subject to change. What remains is the awareness beneath And what makes Neti Neti more than a thought experiment is what happens when you actually sit down and do it as a practice. Actually doing the self-inquiry rather than just thinking about it And something interesting starts to happen as you go deeper And I usually do this with my alchemy clients, and for some of them it helps them find themselves. But others feel incredibly lost by it because they have this sudden realization that they're not who they thought they were Either way, self-inquiry is the only way to connect to that deeper part of ourselves And underneath that loosening, something else becomes apparent It's a quality, it's a stillness. It's that sense that there's something here noticing, and that something was here when you were three years old, before you had learned the person who you'd become That same quality is there at the age of 13 and 30, and through every version of yourself that you've inhabited. It never changed. It was always there in the background while everything else moved. And that's what Neti Neti is pointing towards In the tradition this comes from, that awareness isn't personal in the way that we usually think. It's like the wave in the ocean. The wave has its own shape, its own rise and fall, but it was never separate from the ocean. It was a part of the ocean the whole time Yogis have different names for it, Brahman or Purusha. It's pure conscious awareness. That realization that our true nature beneath the veil of identity and story is consciousness itself And that might sound abstract, but when you have the actual experience, it's far from it. When everything is stripped back and the only thing that remains is the awareness And when our individual awareness unites with the source of awareness, with Brahman or Purusha, we experience bliss. That's the wave returning to the ocean That's the real union of yoga, uniting the individual with the source So yogis believe that life is a game of consciousness trying to find itself, Leela. And we get so caught up in trying to control the game, the outcomes, the relationships, what other people do, that we miss the whole point of the game. And for so long, I played the game of life trying to get what I wanted, and that only ever led to suffering Either I got what I wanted and the happiness was brief, or I didn't get what I wanted and that caused suffering And all the mental and emotional energy tied in knots trying to control something that was never really controllable. That's exhausting Now, don't get me wrong, I still like being in control. That's why I work for myself. I'm convinced that at this point in my life, I'm completely unemployable. But anyway, trying to control reality or other people is a fool's game and leads to enormous suffering. Don't ask me how I know this. It's written plainly in the Yoga Sutras as one of the main causes of human suffering, our desires and preferences. If we need everything to be a certain way in order to be okay, then what we're really doing is outsourcing our happiness and contentment to external events. If we can only be okay when things go to plan, we're setting ourselves up for a massive fall And it's also a very powerful position to be in when you can accept reality and be okay when things don't go the way you planned. There's actually an incredible amount of peace and freedom in that So if we can learn to let go a little and not fight reality, to see that life's unfolding the way it is, then we can learn to ride that wave rather than pushing up against it Now, of course, we can have ideas and plans for our life and our future, but if we're so rigid in the plan that it has to be a certain way, then we end up expending an extraordinary amount of energy trying to control the uncontrollable. Whereas that energy may have been used to ride the wave when it comes our way Think of a sporting team that's operating in defensive mode. They won't let another team score against them. They'll be so busy controlling the defense that they never actually score a goal, let alone win a game. Whereas a team that plays their natural game and is free to enjoy the game and to play what's in front of them, that team usually wins. And the point of this game of life isn't to win the game, it's to enjoy the game you're playing, ' cause you never really know when the time's up And letting go of control makes space for life to actually move through you rather than it being dammed up by the effort of constantly managing it The other thing that's really changed for me is compassion, and I notice it most at work. I can feel people in a way I couldn't before. Behind the masks they wear, behind the saying they're fine and holding it together, I can see who's suffering. I can see who's running on empty. I can sense who's struggling. I'm far more attuned to the humanness underneath the performance And I have so much more compassion than I used to, and it's a healthy kind of compassion What I had before was empathy, that genuine desire to help people But underneath that empathy that I used to have was a desire to wanna help people and rescue them from their pain. What I have now is a genuine desire for people to be well, to have ease, to be free from pain and suffering without needing to fix it for them or pull them back from anywhere when my students are in Shavasana, I do an active compassion meditation. I shower them silently with love, and who knows if they feel it, but I think it makes a difference to be in a space where someone genuinely only wants the best for you, where there's no agenda, just that desire for you to be happy and free from pain and suffering This now brings me to the most counterintuitive thing that I now know. You can't save someone from rock bottom. Not because you don't love them, but because if you pull them back halfway down, if you rescue them before they reach the bottom, they'll never get to find out what's there. And what's there is the thing that propels them back up The old version of me has tried countless times to save people from rock bottom. When I saw someone heading that way, I would reach in to help them with the best possible intentions. But rock bottom's where the teaching lives. You can't come back up if you don't go all the way down So what you can do when someone you love is in rock bottom is just be present with them. Sit with them in the dark without the desire to pull them out or shine a light. Just be there. Hold space for them. Love them anyway That's what changes when you've been there You don't offer advice, you don't offer words of wisdom. You just offer your calm, loving presence, and that is enough And in the Inanna myth, it was the two small beings that Enki sent into the underworld, the Kugarra and the Galatur. They didn't argue with Ereshkigal or try to reason her out of her grief. They felt her pain with her. They sat with her in her suffering genuinely. They allowed her darkness to be what it was without flinching. And it was that, the genuine allowing of the feeling, the willingness to go into the darkness without trying to fix it, that was the key. That's what softened the queen of the underworld and allowed Inanna to be released So the lesson isn't about what to say or what to do. It's about the capacity to feel, to hold space for someone who's in pain without trying to fix it, to make them or you feel better That capacity is what opens something Now, most of us have organized our inner lives around certain conditions. We need things to go a certain way for us to feel okay. We need people to behave as expected and events to go according to plan. And when life cooperates, this works fine. You barely notice that your okayness is conditional on external events. It just hums quietly in the background, and you assume it's just you being okay. The real shock comes when the conditions stop cooperating, and they will. At some point for all of us, reality unfolds on its own terms without warning We get a diagnosis, we experience a loss, a door suddenly closes And suddenly you're not okay and you have nothing certain to cling to Trust me on this, it's a huge shock to the system because we honestly thought we were in the driver's seat We worked hard and made dec- good decisions, and somewhere underneath all of that effort is that quiet assumption that we can keep the bad stuff at bay. But you can't. You can't fight reality. You can try to resist, but it only persists. It doesn't move. The only thing that moves is you The Yoga Sutras call this raga or attachment, the need for outcomes to go a certain way. Now, of course, wanting things to go well for us is just being human. But needing, the kind of needing where your entire inner state hinges on a certain outcome, that's the trap And what the mastectomy and the long gray months of recovery taught me is that the capacity to be okay doesn't live in the external circumstances. It's in you. It was always in you You just couldn't find it because you never had to look And this isn't an argument for not caring about what happens. I still have goals, and I still care about outcomes, and I know that life can change in an instant. I know that any sense of certainty is false, and I also know that whatever happens, I'll be okay. It might not be easy or pleasant, but I'll be okay. And just recently, someone else in my family has been diagnosed with cancer, and it's been quite a stressful time. Of course, my mind wanders to worst-case scenarios, but this time I have steadiness that I didn't have before. I could feel the fear and anxiety swirling around me. I could see my thoughts spiral, but it didn't get inside of me. It remained outside as objects within my field of awareness. I remain rock solid and grounded, which is exactly what's needed when life throws another curveball at you And there's a version of engaging with life where you're so uptight and rigid about how it has to go that you can't actually play the game well, and that version saps the joy from life. Then there's another version of playing the game, same effort, same desire to do well, but without the white-knuckling it. You play the game because you love the game, not because you need to win or prove something. That version is lighter and more fun. You can actually enjoy it. You show up, you do your best, and you let go of the outcome. That's it Now I want to tell you about what practically shifted things for me, because the insights matter, the neti-neti, the philosophy, the understanding, the surrender. But knowledge and understanding alone doesn't shift our reality. Something else did that, and the practices that shifted things weren't gentle ones. And I know that's not what people expect to hear on a wellness podcast. There's a version of the conversation that sells you that more rest, more yin, more stillness, and sometimes that's exactly right. But when you're deep in tamas, that heavy collapse of a system that's just been through too much, gentle doesn't move it. And when you're in a heightened state of rajas, that wired, restless energy with nowhere to go, taking a few slow breaths to take the edge off might work for a few minutes, but then you're back where you started. What actually shifted things was intensity, and this goes against what most of us believe about calming down. The instinct when you're dysregulated is to go soft and slow down and to rest and quiet the mind. And the mind being the mind just resists. You sit there trying to silence it, and it just gets louder. You try spamming your mind with affirmations and positive thinking, and it knows you don't mean it. That approach doesn't work because it's working on the wrong layer We don't have a mental problem, we have an energy problem. And here's what yoga understands that a lot of modern approaches miss. The mental body sits above the energy body. The mind floats on top of the energy field, and when the energy below the mind is chaotic, when you're running on unprocessed stress and grief and stuckness and months of activation that has nowhere to go, the mind can't settle. You can't think your way into calm. You can't affirm your way out of energetic chaos. The energy has to move first, then the mind follows. And most people don't figure this out. They spend years working directly on the mental layer, managing the narrative, challenging the thoughts, all while the energy underneath stays exactly where it's at. And then they wonder why the new insights and revelations don't hold, why they still understand everything and analyze it all, but they still feel the same way in their body. The order is wrong. Clarify the energy first, then the mind clears Now imagine you're trying to clean all the grime and dirt off your driveway. You can't just wet it with a garden hose and hope the stain lifts. It doesn't move. You need a high-pressure hose, consistent directed force to actually break up what's been sitting there, especially if it's been embedded for years. The energy body is the same. That heavy tamas that has accumulated over months of stillness doesn't respond to soft, and rajas that's been running in a survival response for months, it's become a baseline, doesn't respond to gentle. You need to either match or increase the intensity of what's stuck to move it And in energy alchemy, that's what the active practices do. The breath of fire, the spinal flexes, the O breath, the shaking, these aren't relaxation techniques. They're designed to generate enough heat and directed energy to move what's in the way, to break up old patterns, and give the nervous system something new to orient toward. And I started these practices in the depths of my recovery. The shift wasn't dramatic or sudden, but it was consistent, and it was real And the fog lifted faster on the days that I did the practices because I could channel the stress and emotional turmoil into something and transmute my stuck or chaotic energy into clarity and lightness. And that sense of clarity, that sattva that we seek, that balanced state of clear and calm, it doesn't arrive by accident You have to generate the conditions for it, directed and sustained and intense enough to actually do the job And that's what Energy Alchemy is, and that's why I built it. They're the exact practices I used to climb out of rock bottom and change my energy Now, in the next episode, I'll talk about my return to teaching, what happened when I walked back into the room, and why this moment right now in the world as it is feels like the reason all of it happened. Until next time, my friend