Cultivate Calm

This is what I really want you to know

• Monica Rottmann • Season 2 • Episode 14

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This is the final episode of the season. It started with a text from a radiology office and ends here, with a life that looks ordinary from the outside and is irrevocably different on the inside. This episode is about what the full arc of that journey actually looks like and what the word surrender really means when it's tested against something serious. Cancer recovery, life transitions, surrender, yoga philosophy, emotional resilience, Inanna myth.

The episode explores the concept of life quakes, those moments where a single phone call or diagnosis shatters the illusion of control and pushes you onto terrain you didn't choose. The central argument is that you don't recover from a life quake by reverting to who you were. You emerge as someone different. This episode is honest about what that process actually involves: rock bottom, reliance on others, long stretches of grey, and the slow quiet spark that eventually begins to lift things. Mind body connection, nervous system, emotional healing, cancer survivor and mastectomy recovery.

There's also something here about what life looks like on the other side. Teaching yoga, picking Ruby up from kindy, the routines of an ordinary week held with a kind of gratitude that only comes from having lost them for a while. The transformation that followed this period included becoming a Reiki master and developing an energy healing practice that grew directly from the experience. Energy healing, Reiki, Energy Alchemy, yoga teacher, intuitive healing and inner work.

The season closes with the same myth it opened with Inanna descended into the underworld and came back without the parts of herself she'd been gripping. This episode is about what gets left behind in that descent, and what becomes possible when you stop trying to control what was never yours to control. If this season has resonated, leaving a review helps others who are in their own underworld find it. Transformation, grief, acceptance, psycho-spiritual healing, surrender, life after cancer, personal growth.

LINKS:

Welcome back. This is the last episode of this season of the podcast, and if you've been here from the beginning, thank you. This has been the most personal thing I've ever put out into the world, and to be honest, I wasn't quite ready to share my story as I'm still in it. But I won a grant from Brisbane City Council, and so here we are. My intention for this season was to share a different perspective on navigating hard times, to talk about the stuff that's never mentioned on social media, the dark side. Because life can change in an instant: a phone call, an email, an argument, a diagnosis. None of us are immune to a life quake, and they always come out of the blue And here's the thing, after a life quake, you never go back to who you were. That's actually the purpose of it, to shift you onto a different plate and to guide you forward into a new space that you would never have voluntarily taken And I think our culture doesn't know what to do with that. We're told to push through, to get back on our feet, to get back to normal, to be strong. But there is no back to normal. There's only what we can do with it It's how we play the cards that we're dealt And if this season had one central lesson, it's surrender, which is anything but easy Now, before I dive in, let's take a long, slow exhale together And remember, the information I'm sharing here is my own personal experience. It's not medical advice. Please always speak with your doctor or health professional for personalised guidance. So it all started with a text message from the radiology place, then the anxious wait to get the diagnosis, then the two quick surgeries while I prepared myself mentally for the amputation I told you that I didn't want to be strong or resilient, and that this time around I was going to surrender And I use the myth of Inanna as my guide into the underworld I shared honestly about the anxiety and dread I felt in the weeks leading up to the mastectomy and how I was in constant flight mode I shared what it felt like to be at rock bottom and to be stuck there for months. I talked a lot about the physical recovery and the humbling experience of completely losing independence and relying on others to help me with the most basic things I talked about being so sick of the pain that I had no alternative, no other way out than to go into it, and that's when something caught me and lifted me out of the pit. A spark was ignited that day which helped me to slowly climb out of rock bottom And now I'm here. My surgery was only 18 months ago, and apparently it's three years for a full recovery. Technically cancer-free 18 months, but I've heard that before I have another surgery coming up in July, and hopefully that's the last. And that will total 11 breast surgeries. That's what my poor body has been through Now, on the outside, my life looks very ordinary. I drop Ruby at kindy, I teach a yoga class, I do some work from home, and I pick her up in the afternoon. It's quiet and routine, and I'm deeply grateful for it Coming back to ordinary life after something like this is strange though. The world expects you to just resume as you were, but you're not the same person My inner world is different to what it was, and it's still opening up In the last 12 months, I've been training in energy healing and energetic mastery. I'm now a Reiki and Ashardi master, and I do energy work on myself and my family every day. This is one of the things that my descent opened up in me, access to my higher senses and intuitive gifts. I wouldn't have gotten here without going all the way in And Ruby just turned five last month, and we decided that we should do another year of kindy rather than sending her to school this year Everyone thought we were crazy, including her teachers. They said she's ready for school, but the research doesn't lie. She would've been the youngest in her class, and there's no doubt she's experienced some trauma from our cancer experience. We wanna give her more time to grow into herself and to blossom before she enters the school system And we know that the first seven years of a child's life shapes them for life, and we wanted to give her more time to grow her confidence and to catch up on all the things she missed out on Something that I've come to believe, or at least be curious about, is that if the same thing keeps showing up in your life, it might be worth getting curious about it. Pema Chödrön says that whatever we resist persists. The pattern keeps appearing to get you to look a little closer, and three diagnoses is a pattern The first one came when I was in the middle of a divorce, not really taking my own life seriously, and the cancer arrived loud and clear, "Wake up. Take your life seriously." I did that whole diagnosis largely alone to protect my parents, and I absolutely believe it was the right choice, and I would do it again. The second time was very different. This time I had support. I had to tell my mum, and I had Tim, and I was also able to tell my community, which I couldn't do the first time, and this made the whole process and healing much, much easier But by the third diagnosis, something had to change, and that's when I made the conscious choice to conduct my own surrender experiment And what surrender really is, is not resisting reality. Letting go of our preferences and the need to control, and letting events unfold without forcing them to be a certain way. Now, surrender shouldn't be confused with giving up. That's a really superficial take on surrender. In the spiritual sense, it's an advanced technique, and I was ready to test this after all my years of practice and study None of this was glamorous. There was a lot of misery and long, long stretches of horizonlessness. It was a really shitty time and something that I had to do on my own. I was in so much physical pain, but the emotional pain was what really weighed me down. I fell into a deep, deep tamas The turning point was when I stopped resisting the physical pain. I had no other choice but to go into it, and that's when things shifted People wonder how I've been able to return to teaching and carry a full load of classes. They wonder where I get my energy from, and the answer is that I conserved it. I didn't waste it on resisting my reality We all go through natural up cycles and down cycles in life, and when we hit a down cycle, our natural tendency is to resist it. By choosing to surrender, I was going to ride that down cycle all the way down into the underworld and not waste precious energy that I didn't have in fighting it Because eventually the tide turns and the wave of good fortune comes our way. And if we've spent all our energy and resistance, then we can't ride that wave back up again The tide always changes. The up cycle always returns, and the key is to be ready for it when it comes I also tended to my emotions and nervous system in real time. I was determined that I didn't want to get through the other side of this and have trauma lodged in my system. I was processing as I went and not storing it up for later Cancer had already taken so much from me, and the statistics are pretty bleak. 80% of mastectomy patients have chronic pain five years later, and almost 90% are depressed five years later Most people think that surviving cancer would give you a new lease on life, and you feel lucky to be alive and have another chance. But it's just not like that, and there was no way I was gonna spend the next five years or more stuck in a deep depression or functional freeze I wanted my life back That wanting got me up when I didn't wanna get up. It's what kept me going when I didn't feel like it, and it's why I'm still here. So the energy that I have now didn't come from nowhere. It came from not leaking it Now I'm in a natural upcycle again. This is my season, but I know that eventually the season will change again, and I won't fight that either. Remember, it's our clinging to our desires and attachments that cause suffering Now, when you've been in survival mode for any length of time, it can become your default. Your nervous system stays on high alert because that's what kept you safe. You're scanning for the next thing. And I have to remind myself on a regular basis that the worst is over. We're not in survival mode anymore And I was talking to someone recently who's been through their own version of this, not cancer, but another significant life upheaval. And they said, "I feel like I should be over it by now." And I said,"How long did it take you to get in? You probably didn't go from feeling fine to being in a crisis in a single day, and the way out takes just as long." And there is no way out other than going through it Now, there's things that don't resolve. I still need regular scans, not just my breasts, but bowels and ovaries as well, and at some point I'll need a full hysterectomy, although I'm not ready for that yet. The vigilance is real. I've talked before about living in the shadow of cancer and the sword of Damocles. That's just my reality Now, what I carry, I carry in a knowing in my bones that I will be okay, and that I can be okay when things are not okay, and that's new My life is not stress-free. I've had a few recent stressful situations, but I'm much more grounded and less likely to fall into a mental spiral because I can be okay even when external things aren't I'm happy and content just because I am, not because of things going my way I'm no longer outsourcing my sense of okayness or contentment or happiness to external things. Now, of course, I still have preferences, I still have goals. Of course, there are things that I want in my life. I'm human. But the controlling has eased back And I've talked about the grief in the last episode. It just becomes a part of you, and some days I catch my gaze in the mirror and cry, not for the body that's disfigured, although I'm used to that now, but for what I've been through. And honestly, it was just too much. I wouldn't wish it on anyone And I have a much different relationship to my emotions and energetic states I now know how to clear my energy and shift my state, and this is a source of great comfort and agency. And as David Hawkins said, "The fear of life is really just fear of our emotions." And I don't fear those intense emotions anymore because I know how to transmute them, and that's what I'm now teaching others I began this season with Inanna, the Sumerian goddess who descended into the underworld voluntarily She was stripped at each of the seven gates, her crown, her breastplate, her jewels, her robe, until she arrived at the bottom naked and bare. She was hung on the meat hook for three days, and it was empathy and compassion that convinced Ereshkigal to set Inanna free. But she could only leave if something was left behind. She could only come back if something stayed behind So what did I leave down there? That version of myself who was trying to control reality. And what I carried back up is what you've been hearing all season There are no shortcuts through difficulty We spend our lives seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, but eventually that game becomes exhausting Because if we outsource our okayness, and I'm not even using the word happy, I'm just talking about basic okayness, if we outsource that to external things going our way, then we're setting ourselves up for a massive fail There's so much we can't control. The only thing we have real control over is our internal state, and the only way to shift that state is to feel what's there And the way through is surrender. And yes, it's as uncomfortable as fuck. I won't pretend otherwise I see this in my students too Someone will come to my class in the middle of a really hard time in their life, and I'll ask how they're going, and they'll say, "Fine. I'm fine." They've done all the reading. They know all the theory. They've moved on intellectually, but they haven't let the body catch up yet. They haven't felt the feelings. They're still managing it and controlling it from a distance And here's the kicker, you can't get the fruits of the practice without the practice Nature doesn't bloom all year round, and bamboo shows no visible growth for two years while the root system goes deep. And then when the conditions are right, it can grow up to a meter in a single day. That kind of exponential growth doesn't happen without the roots descending into the underworld So if you're in the season right now that's hard, if you've found yourself in rock bottom, let it do what it came to do You don't need a diagnosis for any of this to be relevant to you. If you've been through any kind of a life quake, go all the way in and feel what's there And I wanna leave you with a passage from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. He talks about the four locks and keys to a happy mind." By cultivating an attitude of friendship towards those who are happy, compassion toward those in distress, joy towards those who are virtuous, and equanimity towards those who are non-virtuous, lucidity arises in the mind." So basically, be happy for the people who are celebrating, especially if you feel envious. Be compassionate to the people who are struggling, especially if you're struggling yourself Be happy for the people who are doing good things. This acts as an antidote to resentment. And be impartial to the people who are causing harm. This prevents you from sliding into judgment or drama Because the energy that we put into the world shapes all of us, and the world could do with good energy right now My intention for this season was to offer you a real and honest account of what it's like to experience a life quake, find yourself at rock bottom, and how to climb back out again. It was never about cancer. It was about how to surrender, how to handle hard things, and meant to be an alternative to the be strong, you're so resilient narrative. So thank you for being here. Thank you for giving me your time I know some of it was heavy, but I really hope some of this content was useful. And if this season has meant something to you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. It would really help me out if you left a review on Spotify or Apple. it's how new listeners find their way here. And if you email me a screenshot, I'll give you a free week of yoga. So you can find me at Cultivate Calm Yoga in East Brisbane. If you wanna work with me or join one of my programs like Energy Alchemy, the links are all in the show notes. Thank you. Until next time