Love Is The Strongest Medicine: Notes from a Cancer Doctor on Connection, Creativity, and Compassion

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To Be Present

To Be Present

It was so hard to feel good.

I was worried about my health every single day.

My partners were fighting like the Kardashians.

No matter what happened, something new symptom popped up.

My immune system was down.

Then I got nasty skin cancer.

I felt like I was at the end of my life.

I saw specialists.

I was a specialist seeing specialists.

Stress was making everything worse.

Exacerbating a vicious cycle of imbalance.

My body was on high alert all the time.

My rock bottom body.

I had to admit my life was out of control.

I had to surrender.

To something I knew in my soul but had forgotten in my monkey brain.

I had to do anything in my power to reverse the vicious cycle.

To transmute it into a virtuous cycle.

That thing was transcendental meditation.

TM.

I started.

I meditated twenty minutes twice a day.

At first, I'd have to do it in my car to prevent distractions.

In the evening, I feel the pent up emotions and stress melt during those first TM sessions.

It was the first superpower I'd experienced in years.

I slowly starting living rather than merely surviving.

I had to embrace the fact that I was slowly killing myself.

This can be a hard concept to embrace.

I have to remember how I felt back then.

To remind me how easy it can be to slip back into darkness.

A tiny daily reminder.

To be vigilant.

To keep practicing.

To feel a tiny bit better than yesterday.

To appreciate everything.

To be present.