Please share this slideshow with anyone who may be interested! Watch all our webinars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4dDQscmFYu_ezxuxnAE61hx4JlqAKXpR In this webinar: ● Complete cancer care (conventional + complementary care) ● How to empower the body ● Ways to feel & think better ● The science of the body-mind-spirit connection View the video: https://youtu.be/xAsxWnhKexI Follow our social media accounts: Twitter - https://twitter.com/survivornetca Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CanadianSurvivorNet Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/survivornetwork YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/Survivornetca

1. The body-mind-spirit connection:
Making a difference on the cancer journey
Rob Rutledge, MD, Radiation Oncologist
Associate Professor, Dalhousie University
CEO, The Healing and Cancer Foundation

2. Goals of people who have been given a cancer
diagnosis
• Maximize the chance of recovery
• Feel better physically and emotionally
• Think more clearly and function better

3. Overview
 Setting the intention
 Complete cancer care
 Empowering your brain physically
 Practical neuroscience
 SKILLS
 Stress and relaxation
 Meditation
 Reframing difficult thoughts
 Taking in the good
 Level of spirit
 Questions

4. The 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People
Foster and Hicks
• Intention: they commit to being happy
• Accountability: they assume personal responsibility for their lives, refusing to
blame others
• Identification: they identify what makes them happy, not what others tell them
should make them happy
• Centrality: they make what brings them happiness central in their lives
• Recasting: they transform stressful problems and trauma into something
meaningful and important
• Options: they are open to new possibilities
• Appreciation: they choose to deeply appreciate their lives, experiences, and
other people
• Giving: they share themselves without expectation of return
• Truthfulness: they choose to be honest with themselves and others

5. Setting the Intention
• In preparation of going into any situation:
– How do you want to be in the world?
– What do you hope of yourself?
• What’s your intention for this lecture?
5

6. What is Complete Cancer Care?
(Integrative medicine)
• Understanding what’s happening
– www.Willow.org
• Getting the best from the medical system
• Empowering body with healthy lifestyle
– Exercise, diet, maintaining reasonable weight, sleep,
relaxation techniques
• Healing skills – level of the mind
• Nurturing a spiritual life / perspective

7. Exceptional Cancer Survivors

8. Exercise! Exercise! Exercise!

9. NUTRITION

10. Maintain a reasonable weight

11. Sleep

12. Meditation & relaxation

13. 13
1313
FOCUSING ON THE MIND
Thanks to author Rick Hanson!!
Buddha’s Brain and Hardwiring Happiness
www.RickHanson.net

14. 14
Your Brain: A Product of Evolution
• ~ 4+ billion years of earth
• 3.5 billion years of life
• 650 million years of multi-celled organisms
• 600 million years of nervous system
• ~ 200 million years of mammals
• ~ 60 million years of primates
• ~ 6 million years ago: last common ancestor with chimpanzees, our closest
relative among the “great apes”
• 2.5 million years of tool-making (starting with brains 1/3 our size)
– ~ 150,000 years of homo sapiens
– ~ 50,000 years of modern humans
– ~ 6000 years of blue, green, hazel eyes
• Living in tribes of 100-150, competing for food, tribal warfare

15. 15
Evolutionary History
The Triune Brain

16. 16
Three Motivational and
Self-Regulatory Systems
• Avoid Harms:
– Predators, natural hazards, aggression, pain
– Primary need, tends to trump all others
• Approach Rewards:
– Food, shelter, mating, pleasure
– Mammals: rich emotions and sustained pursuit
• Attach to Others:
– Bonding, language, empathy, cooperation, love
– Taps older Avoiding and Approaching networks
Each system can draw on the other two for its ends.

17. Many pathways to STRESS!!!
• Real threat to your life
– Jumping out of way of a runaway car
• Perceived threat to your life
– Worrying about the test results
• Ego/Social threats
– Argument over who does more housework
– Public speaking (threat of being ostracized)
• Fear of the unknown
– Financial
– Relationships
17

18. Stressor Perception Stress

19. HOW DO YOU EXPERIENCE STRESS?
• What are your triggers ?
• What happens in your body?
• What emotions do you feel?
• What happens to your thinking?
• What thoughts do you have?
–What do you say about yourself?
–How do you label other people/situations?

20. TIME TO DE-STRESS
• Press the ‘pause’ button
• Be very curious about the physical sensations
• Four slow breaths into the abdomen
• Reassure yourself with wisdom and kindness

21. Update on Stress
• Do you believe stress is harmful for your
health?
• 30,000 Americans followed for 8 years
• 30% increased risk death if felt stressed
• But increased risk only if felt stress was harmful

22. Oxytocin
• Cuddle hormone
• Released during stress reaction
• Drives pro-social behaviour
• Decreases inflammation, opens up heart
blood vessels, promotes regeneration of heart
cells

23. Stress is not all bad
• If you believe stress is not harmful to your
health….
– Release hormones which help the brain grow from
stressful experiences
• Stressful life is associated with a life of
meaning, fulfillment, and joy
• Stress connects us with others

24. 24
Your Brain: The Technical Specs
• Size:
– 3 pounds of tofu-like tissue
– 1.1 trillion brain cells
– 85 billion “gray matter" neurons =
• Activity:
– Always on 24/7/365 - Instant access to information on demand
– 20-25% of blood flow, oxygen, and glucose
• Speed:
– Neurons firing around 5 to 50 times a second (or faster)
– Signals crossing your brain in a tenth of a second
• Connectivity:
– Average neuron makes ~ 5000 connections with other neurons:
~ 500 trillion synapses

25. 25

26. 26
The Connectome - 2
Hagmann, et al., 2008, PLoS Biology, 6:1479-1493

27. 27
Facts about Brain and Mind
• As the brain changes, the mind changes.
– Mental activity depends upon neural activity.
• As the mind changes, the brain changes.
– Transient: brainwaves, local activation
– Lasting: epigenetics, neural pruning, “neurons that fire together, wire
together”
– Experience-dependent neuroplasticity
• You can use the mind to change the brain to change the mind
for the better: self-directed neuroplasticity.

28. 28

29. 31
Christian Nuns, Recalling a Profound
Spiritual Experience
Beauregard, et al., Neuroscience Letters, 9/25/06

30. 32
Lazar, et al. 2005.
Meditation
experience is
associated
with increased
cortical thickness.
Neuroreport, 16,
1893-1897.

31. Meditation – A life skill
• The Hand Model of the brain
33

32. 34
Meditation - Neural Benefits
• Increased gray matter in the:
– Insula - interoception; self-awareness; empathy for emotions
– Hippocampus - visual-spatial memory; establishing context; inhibiting
amygdala and cortisol
– Prefrontal cortext (PFC) - executive functions; attention control
• Reduced cortical thinning with aging in insula and PFC
• Increased activation of left frontal regions, which lifts mood
• Increased gamma-range brainwaves - may be associated with integration,
“coming to singleness,” “unitary awareness”
• Preserved telomere length

33. 35
Meditation: Physiological Benefits
 Decreases stress-related cortisol
 Stronger immune system
 Helps many medical conditions, including cardiovascular
disease, asthma, type II diabetes, PMS, and chronic pain
 Aids wound healing and post-surgical recovery

34. 36
Meditation: Psychological Benefits
 Improves attention (including for ADHD)
 Increases compassion
 Increases empathy
 Reduces insomnia, anxiety, phobias, eating disorders
 Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for depression
decreases relapse

35. Feeling Better by
Examining and Changing
Your Thoughts
With Mindfulness
Awareness & Kindness
(based on David Byrne’s Feeling Good)

36. You can change your mind
• You can change the way you think and look at
things
• You can change your underlying beliefs and
thought patterns
• These will change how you see your self, your
life, others, the world
• This will change how you feel, emotions,
moods, outlook, attitude and productivity

37. STEP 1
Mindful of
Distressing
Thoughts
STEP 2
Awareness
and
Inquiry
STEP 3
Kind & Rational
Response
-Acknowledge the difficulty
with kindness
-Look at the situation from
another perspective
-Encourage yourself: “I
can..
Situation:

38. Mindful of
Distressing
Thoughts
Awareness
and
Inquiry
Kind &
Rational
Response
Situation: Tired and irritable during chemo

39. Mindful of
Distressing
Thoughts
It’s no use!
I don’t have
the strength to
get through
this.
Awareness and
Inquiry
Kind &
Rational
Response
Situation: Tired and irritable during chemo

40. Mindful of
Distressing
Thoughts
It’s no use!
I don’t have
the strength
to get through
this.
Awareness and
Inquiry
1. What emotions
follow from this
way of thinking?
2. How does my
body feel?
3. Is this a helpful
or harmful
thought?
4. Exaggerated,
irrational?
Kind &
Rational
Response
Situation: Tired and irritable during chemo

41. Mindful of
Distressing
Thoughts
It’s no use! I
don’t have the
strength to get
through this.
Awareness and
Inquiry
1. What emotions
follow from this way
of thinking?
2. How does my
body feel?
3. Is this a helpful or
harmful thought?
4. Exaggerated,
irrational?
Kind & Rational
Response
Who says you
always have to be
strong.
Sometimes to cry
and fall apart is
the best thing to
do. Then it seems
I find an inner
strength or higher
power.
Situation: Tired and irritable during chemo

42. 44
Honoring Experience
Your experience matters.
Both for how it feels in the moment
and for the lasting residues it leaves behind,
woven into the fabric of your brain and being.

43. Building Inner Strengths
46

44. 47
Inner strengths are grown mainly from positive mental states
that are turned into positive neural traits.
Change in neural structure and function (learning, memory)
involves activation and installation.
We grow inner strengths by internalizing positive experiences
of them and their related factors.
Growing Inner Strengths

45. 48
Inner Strengths Include
• Capabilities (e.g., mindfulness, insight, emotional intelligence, resilience, executive
functions, impulse control)
• Positive emotions (e.g., gratitude, self-worth, love, self-compassion, secure
attachment, gladness, awe, serenity)
• Attitudes (e.g., openness, determination, optimism, confidence, approach
orientation, tolerance, self-respect)
• Somatic inclinations (e.g., vitality, relaxation, grit, helpfulness)
• Virtues (e.g., wisdom, patience, energy, generosity, restraint)

46. What inner strength would you like to
build?
• Or what are you struggling with – and find the
antidote positive state?
49

47. 50

48. 51
Inner Strengths Are Built From Brain Structure

49. 52
The Brain’s Negativity Bias
• As our ancestors evolved, avoiding “sticks” was more important for
survival than getting “carrots.”
• Negative stimuli:
– More attention and processing
– Greater motivational focus: loss aversion
• Preferential encoding in implicit memory:
– We learn faster from pain than pleasure.
– Negative interactions: more impactful than positive
– Easy to create learned helplessness, hard to undo
– Rapid sensitization to negative through cortisol

50. 53
Velcro for Bad, Teflon for Good

51. 55

52. 56
Taking in the Good

53. 57
Need activation and instillation of the positive!
Without this installation, there is no change in the brain -
no useful learning, no healing, no growth.
Positive activation without installation is pleasant, but has
no lasting value.
Meanwhile, negative mental states are being preferentially
installed into neural structure.

54. 58
The Negativity Bias

55. 59
Learning to Take in the Good

56. Have a Good Experience

57. Enrich It

58. 62
“Enriching” Factors
• Duration
• Intensity
• Multimodality –perception, emotion, desire, action
• Novelty
• Personal relevance

59. Absorb It

60. Link Positive and Negative Material

61. 65
HEAL by Taking in the Good
1. Have a positive experience. Notice it or create it.
2. Enrich the experience through duration, intensity, multimodality, novelty,
personal relevance.
3. Absorb the experience by intending and sensing that it is sinking into you
as you sink into it.
4. Link positive and negative material. [optional]

62. 66
Your Turn
1. Have a positive experience. Notice it or create it.
2. Enrich the experience through duration, intensity, multimodality, novelty,
personal relevance.
3. Absorb the experience by intending and sensing that it is sinking into you
as you sink into it.

63. Spirit

64. The story of my 110-year-old Grandma

65. Praise for The Healing Circle
“A book for anyone who has ever sought their
wholeness in the midst of a cancer crisis. Don’t
go to your Doctor’s office without it”
Rachel Remen MD, Kitchen table wisdom
“By drawing on the wisdom and experience
shared in this book, life’s difficulties can truly
become blessing which help us heal our lives.”
Bernie Siegel MD, Love, Medicine and Miracles
“The Healing Circle takes us into the realm
where integration of body, mind and spirit –
our true wellness – can be found.”
Gabor Mate, MD, When the Body says No
To learn more or to order books please visit
www.healingandcancer.org
or email info@healingandcancer.org

66. Questions
Rob.rutledge@nshealth.ca
HealingandCancer.org
70

67. Canadian Cancer Survivor Network
Contact Info
Canadian Cancer Survivor Network
1750 Courtwood Crescent, Suite 210
Ottawa, ON K2C 2B5
Telephone / Téléphone : 613-898-1871
E-mail jmanthorne@survivornet.ca or mforrest@survivornet.ca
Web site www.survivornet.ca
Blog: http://jackiemanthornescancerblog.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @survivornetca
Facebook: www.facebook.com/CanadianSurvivorNet
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/survivornetwork/