This is so obvious to me, and yet when I'm out in the world, I still get questions. I don't mind them. Every person who has asked me has been genuinely listening — and I've been listening back. There's something about this conversation that invites real connection.
So let me answer it properly: why did I choose to stay flat after my mastectomy?
1. I already stopped wearing a bra on weekends — and I loved it.
Before surgery, I had discovered the quiet joy of going braless on days off. No underwire. No straps. No sweaty underbust situation to deal with at the end of the day. I didn't mind the jiggle. I liked the freedom. I was tired of tying them down. So when it came to reconstruction, part of me thought — why go back?
2. Reconstruction in a diseased breast is not the same as augmentation.
There's a common assumption that reconstruction means you simply "get them back." But the reality is more complicated. Outcomes are often uneven. Most reconstructions are nippleless. The shape is frequently different from the original. It's not a cosmetic upgrade — it's a surgical workaround in compromised tissue, and the results are often just weird looking.
3. Either way, you're not getting sensation back.
Here's something nobody really talks about: you don't have sensation in a flat chest after mastectomy either. That's gone regardless. So this was never a choice between feeling and not feeling.
What it actually came down to was this — why would I carry around silicone or saline bags that I can only feel weighing me down from the inside? There is no sensation across the skin of the reconstructed breast.
I am okay being flat in a dress or on a beach. I've been wearing temporary tattoos and going topless on the beach and at music festivals. I look at my body as the package of my soul, and I can move my package as I like. It's liberating.
If others are uncomfortable with how I look, I secretly hope that they really see me. The smile on my face, the way I'm moving my body with ease and grace. I hope that they see that I am happy. I am shining. That is what I want them to see.
Disclaimer: Everyone's journey is different. These are my reasons. If you're navigating this decision, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
You Don't Have to Meditate. You Just Have to Feel Your Lips.
Most people I work with say the same thing when I mention mindfulness.
"I've tried meditation. I can't do it. My mind won't stop."
And I always say the same thing back: that's not a meditation problem. That's a body problem. You're trying to quiet the mind by working with the mind. That's like trying to calm a stormy sea by arguing with the waves.
What if the door wasn't through the mind at all?
What if it was through your left heel. The weight of your hand in your lap. The feeling of your ribcage moving as you breathe.
This is what I teach. Not meditation as a destination — but body sensation as the path that gets you there without you even noticing you've arrived.
The Body Is Already Present. You Just Have to Meet It There.
Here is something I know from years of working with bodies, in clinical settings and movement studios and quiet rooms with people who are tired of being at war with themselves:
The body does not time travel.
Your mind can be in last Tuesday or next month simultaneously. Your body cannot. It is always, only, generating sensation in this moment. Temperature. Pressure. Pulse. Weight. Tension. Ease.
This means that sensation — physical, ordinary, unglamorous sensation — is the most direct route to the present moment that exists. More direct than breath counting. More accessible than a mantra. It requires no training, no cushion, no app, no quiet room.
It just requires you to notice what is already happening in the physical structure you are living inside.
The Lips as a Portal
My very first break from my thoughts came from a Berts Bee’s lip shimmer. It gives the lips a little tingle. I sat under a fan on my back porch and felt the sensation of lips for 2 whole minutes. It was then I noticed that I did have some control over my thoughts.
You can do this with any body part, the lip tingle gave me the extra sensation to keep me on track. If you can start spending just a few seconds in this present moment. That it not nothing. That is the entire practice in miniature.
Sensation Is Not Analysis
This is the most important distinction I make with the people I work with, and I want to make it clearly here.
Noticing sensation is not the same as thinking about sensation.
My shoulder is tight — that is a thought.
The actual experience of tightness, the specific quality of it, where exactly it lives, whether it has a shape or a temperature or a grain to it — that is sensation. And sensation can only be met in real time. You cannot think your way into it. You have to feel your way in.
This distinction matters because most of us, when we try to "check in with our bodies," immediately convert sensation into narrative. My back hurts because I slept badly. My chest is tight because I'm stressed about that email. My stomach is off because I shouldn't have eaten that.
The narrative takes us straight back out of the body and into the mind.
The practice is to stay just one layer below the story. To feel the tightness without immediately explaining it. To notice the sensation before labelling it, judging it, or trying to fix it.
This is harder than it sounds. It is also, with practice, one of the most settling things a human being can do.
The Body as Teacher, Not Problem
What I have seen, again and again, is that when people begin to meet the body with curiosity instead of judgment — when they stop trying to fix sensation and start simply feeling it — something shifts. Not all at once. Gradually. The way a room warms up when you've been in it a while.
The body becomes less of an adversary and more of a source of information. Even in a body that has changed. Even in a body that is in pain. Even in a body that looks or feels different than it used to.
There is always something to feel. And the feeling itself — the simple act of noticing — is regulating. It tells the nervous system: we are here, we are paying attention, we are safe enough to be present.
That message, repeated often enough in small moments throughout a day, changes things.
Three Entry Points That Aren't Meditation
If sitting still and closing your eyes sounds like a setup for failure, start here instead:
1. Walking with weight. Next time you walk — even just from one room to another — feel each footfall. Heel, arch, ball, toes. Slow it down slightly. Notice the shift of weight from one foot to the other. This is a moving body scan, and it is enormously grounding. No gym required. No special walk. Just the hallway.
2. Temperature as anchor. Hold something warm — a cup, your own hands together — and just feel the heat. Or splash cold water on your wrists and notice the sensation fully for ten seconds. Temperature is one of the sharpest anchors to the present moment because it is immediate and impossible to imagine your way into. You either feel it or you don't.
3. The exhale pause. Not breathwork. Not controlled breathing. Just this: at the end of a natural exhale, before the inhale begins, pause for one or two seconds. Feel the stillness in that gap. The body at rest between breaths. That pause is a doorway. Most people find it far less activating than being told to "focus on the breath" because it is brief, passive, and requires no effort — only noticing.
And Then, Eventually, Meditation
Here is the thing about body-based presence practice: it quietly becomes meditation, without the resistance that the word carries.
When you spend time throughout your day dropping into sensation — even for thirty seconds at a time, even just your feet on the floor while the kettle boils — you are training the same muscle that formal meditation develops. The capacity to notice. To return. To be here.
After some weeks of this, people often find that sitting quietly for five minutes feels not like a challenge but like a relief. Like coming home to something familiar. The body has already been teaching them how. Meditation stops being a performance of calm and becomes simply an extension of what they've been doing all along.
“Elbow pain after breast cancer can trigger fear of recurrence. Learn how to distinguish biomechanical pain from red flags.”
Even the word sounds stinky, and to be honest, it’s not fair.
The arm pit is the crossroads of our upper extremity and trunk anatomy. We have big blood vessels and nerves passing through there. The axillary artery gives nutrition to shoulder, lateral thorax and the entire upper arm. The brachial plexus is a whole web of nerves that give power and sensation to the entire upper quarter. We have networks of lymph nodes working to drain toxins from our vessels that are biproducts of cellular metabolism. Muscles that support the shoulder, rib cage and shoulder blade, and tons of fascia live there. Fascia is a thick white connective tissue that holds things in place and potentially holds much more.
As we study fascia and the nervous system, we are learning that our fascia is a communication tool for our body. It needs the nervous system on board to stand down and relax or release. Fascia is an area that is being studied and one that I am very excited about.
The arm pit is a sacred place that holds many controls which our body depends on. It is stretchable, ticklish, detoxifying and one of our very best fleshy folds.
Cheers to your armpit and all the wonders that live there. 🦋
Armpits can become stiff, achy, burny after lymph node surgery, right away or sometimes years down the line. This is something that we can help through movement and manual therapy.
Follow my socials for a full armpit video series. Facebook, instagram, tik tok and linked in.
Fascia is a continuous connective tissue system that surrounds and connects muscles, organs, nerves, and vessels throughout the body. Rather than acting as isolated parts, the body functions as an integrated whole—and fascia is a key reason why.
Healthy fascia is adaptable, hydrated, and responsive to movement. When the system is exposed to stress, surgery, radiation, prolonged posture, repetitive movement, or emotional load, fascia can become restricted or less responsive. This can affect mobility, body awareness, circulation, and overall ease of movement.
For breast cancer survivors and women in midlife, fascial health becomes especially important. Changes in tissue, nervous system regulation, and movement patterns often require approaches that are gentle, intentional, and whole-body in nature.
Fascia and the Nervous System
Fascia is richly innervated with sensory receptors that communicate with the nervous system. This means fascial tissue plays a role not only in movement, but also in body awareness, regulation, and perception of safety.
Slow, intentional pressure and movement—such as myofascial release (MFR)—can:
- improve interoceptive awareness (how the body senses itself)
- support nervous system down-regulation
- reduce protective holding and guarding
- improve tolerance to movement and load
This is one reason why faster or aggressive approaches are not always effective for healing tissues. Fascia responds best to time, presence, and graded input.
Movement Across Planes Supports Fascial Health
Unlike muscles, fascia is designed to transmit force across the body in multiple directions. Daily life and traditional exercise often emphasize forward-and-back motion, but fascia thrives on variability.
Practices that include:
- rotation
- side bending
- spirals
- diagonal and asymmetrical loading
help maintain fascial glide and adaptability. Yoga, mindful movement, and manual therapy are especially effective at introducing this type of movement in a controlled, responsive way.
Myofascial Release: Supporting the System, Not Forcing Change
Myofascial release is not about breaking tissue or pushing through discomfort. It is about creating the conditions for change.
When pressure is applied slowly and intentionally, fascia has time to respond. The nervous system can interpret the input as safe, allowing tissue tone to shift without force.
Self–myofascial release can be a powerful tool when done with awareness, breath, and curiosity rather than intensity.
