Healing in Healthcare: Integrative Approach to Building Resilience in Providers & Patients

Presented to staff of SickKids hospital, as part of the Mindfulness & Compassion Rounds

Message from the organizer:

Note:  This is a very vital, sensitive, vulnerable, honest and emotional session of an adult recounting their healing journey post treatment. Some may find the presentation triggering. As a whole, we as a group felt it was important to share and to start to go deeper into the topic of healing a life; for all of us that give bedside care this is an important recounting.  This is Part One, we hope in the near future to present Part Two where she is today and how this has motivated her to support and heal others…and to bravely share her story.

Montana is a yoga and meditation teacher, guiding individuals facing health challenges to discover their inner wisdom and healing potential. As a former childhood cancer patient at SickKids, Montana's presentation will highlight how the absence of emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions in her treatment led to decades of mental and physical health challenges.

Through the design and implementation of an integrative approach to well-being for herself and her clients, she has found that patients access increased agency in healing, overcome hypervigilance and fear, and discover a sense of peace with their new-found identities and in their lives.

Montana strives to bridge the gap between biomedical and integrative healing for healthcare professionals and patients alike, recognizing that these tools must be accessible to everyone. Learn more about her practice and get in touch at: https://montanaskurka.com/

Montana Skurka is an OCT-certified Integrative Wellness Educator and yoga and meditation teacher with a Masters of Teaching degree from the University of Toronto specializing in mental health education. She has over ten years' experience coaching individuals and facilitating self-care groups, providing her students with tools and supports to access their innate healing potential. Montana's dedication to this therapeutic holistic work and the mind-body connection stems from her personal struggles navigating health crises throughout her childhood and young adulthood.

♾️ Inner Alchemy Healing

One-on-one support for individuals facing health challenges addressing the emotional, spiritual & mental dimensions of your journey

Drawing from my lived experience with disease & disorder, I offer you empathetic and personalized support

Through tailored meditation, restorative postures, Reiki and additional embodiment techniques, I guide individuals on a transformative journey, fostering relaxation, resilience and holistic sense of well being

Your body is wise beyond comprehension. I am here for you 🤍

What is the Story of Your Life?

Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash

I had been going to different therapists on and off for several years when I found myself in Jacob’s office. I didn’t know if I still believed that therapy could help me. However, I had retained a sliver of hope, because Jacob specialized in trauma, and I had finally recognized that my symptoms of depression, anxiety and disordered eating all stemmed from medical trauma. This was the root cause of my ongoing psychological and spiritual pain, and without treating the root cause I was destined to continue to experience these symptoms.

With a mixture of deep skepticism and hopefulness, I entered Jacob’s office prepared for combat. I wanted him to know that I had spent countless hours reading books and articles on mental health symptoms and treatment options. I explained to him that I was a therapy veteran: I had filled out worksheets, learned to meditate, practiced yoga (had even become a yoga teacher!). Ultimately I was trying to prove to him that I was going to be a tough case for him.

I could hardly afford these sessions, and required him to prove himself to me. I asked him to read several pages of journal entries I had written over the past few years. I also emailed and called him several times - abruptly changing my appointments or asking him therapy-related questions on the phone. I had lost much of my trust in healers over the course of my years, and subconsciously was testing him.

This is not the way that I acted in the rest of my life, but my trauma was created within a medical context and it played out in these relationships I had with medical professionals of all sorts. As soon as I was in the office of a health care professional of any kind, whether Western or Eastern, hospital or naturopathy, my adult rational self receded to the background and my Inner Critic ran the show.

I desperately wanted Jacob to really see me and help me. I wanted him to be my saviour, like I had with all the others beforehand. But I also did not trust him, because at that point I had put my blind faith in other healers of all kinds, and was always left disappointed. So I put him through a series of subconscious tests to ensure that he really did care, that he did not just see me as an ignorant patient. I had developed this feeling that I was viewed as sub-human, ignorant and pathetic to the doctors who had treated me throughout my life: something that my Inner Critic told me daily. I needed Jacob to prove to me that this was not the case and I could emerge from the dark tunnel I found myself aimlessly wandering in without a way out.

Over the next several months, Jacob passed all my tests. He read all my documents. He answered my phone calls and emails at any time of day. He allowed our sessions to go a bit past their allotted time when it was clear I needed a few more minutes to collect myself. He even opened up to me about his own life and insecurities to make me feel less alone. It was becoming clear that he truly did see me as a fellow human being, not greater or lesser than he.

What I wanted to know was: am I another patient to you? Do you see the humanity behind my struggles? I desperately needed him to, because I did not.

But that wasn’t good enough for me, because the goal of my Inner Critic was to convince Jacob of the truth: that I was hopeless.

As with all therapists and medical professionals I had visited with over the course of my life, both allopathic and holistic, my subconscious goal was to convince Jacob that I was a hopeless case.

He didn’t buy it. He would even give examples from his own life to show how similar we actually were; that neither he himself nor anyone else was better than I was. That the feelings of confusion, broken-ness, isolation and fear that I felt were felt by everyone. That “figuring it all out” is not the prerequisite for beginning to live a life of fulfillment and joy.

Jacob was a hard case for my Inner Critic to crack. Maybe this time I wouldn’t be able to convince him that I was a hopeless case. I used all my usual ammo to try and convince him, but he was ready to defend my case and countered back with sincerity against all the verbal attacks I waged against myself. In each session what he was communicating to me was that no matter what I had been through, no matter what my obstacles in life may be, no matter how immense my struggles, I could not convince him that I was a hopeless failure.

Finally, after several months, I submitted to his arguments. The shame that my Inner Critic had stored up to use against me was no match for him and no matter what shameful things I divulged to him about myself, he was not fazed. Maybe I wasn’t so different than everyone else and equally deserving and capable of living a good life.

But yet, I couldn’t shake how different I felt deep down, as though I was some sort of alien here to survey human life and attempt to mimic their moves, always knowing it was merely an act. Others worked, had families, went on vacations - they didn’t seem weighed down to the point of paralysis by their shortcomings and shame. How?!

At this point the shame could paralyze me at any moment. One moment, I was securely in adulthood, performing the actions of everyday life. All of a sudden, before I knew it, I was paralyzed on my couch, hysterical or numb, or some tortuous mixture of both. It didn’t seem to matter how many books I read, or how many self-improvement workshops I attended, this paralysis by emotion continued. So what was the difference between them and I?

What’s the difference between them and I, Jacob? The answer was profound and simple - as all profound truths are:

“Because you believe you are a failure, and they do not.”

I was shocked to hear this. So… what you are telling me is that the reason I am in such acute pain is because of a story I am telling myself? We each have a different experience based on the story we tell ourselves?

Yes, pretty much, he replied.

In that moment, everything changed for me. Because I knew that he was correct. My Inner Critic had been the loudest voice in my head for the majority of my life and she had created and maintained this story about my hopelessness that I wholeheartedly believed. The goal of my Inner Critic was to prove to me and everyone around me that I was a hopeless and unloveable failure. My Inner Critic was strong and intelligent and sneaky, and incredibly manipulative and convincing. She dictated the story I was telling myself about my life, and I followed.

But I was the one who created her. Which meant that I was stronger and more cunning that she was. I just had to create another storyline for my life, one where I was a strong and capable healer, rather than a passive victim.

Prior to this appointment, I had come into therapy sessions as though they were trials - I always had something to prove. But now I was seeing the role of a therapist, and all health care professionals, as that of a sort of story editor.

Our developmental traumas lead us to believe things about ourself and the world that cause us immense suffering. We medicate ourselves with drugs to numb the stories of defeat our Inner Critics begin to write: alcoholism and workaholism are one and the same for the purpose of distracting us. All to avoid the despair generated by ourselves through the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and the world around us.

 🜁 ~ 🜂 ~ 🜃  ~🜄

To be at home in this world is to recognize the truth of your story:

That as long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.

That as a member of the human family, you are capable of extraordinary things.

That whether you look at this mystery of being through a scientific or historical lens, you are an unequivocal miracle.

That you are inextricably linked to the collective.

That you are whole.

You are enough.

We are all storytellers, whether therapists, physicians, teachers, parents, lovers, friends. Make your story beautiful; it is up to you.

How Are You? The Most Meaningless Question in the World, and Why it Matters

Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash

It feels like a silly question to ask these days. There’s societal breakdown happening on all levels; systemic cracks in our healthcare, economic and political systems deepening while on the personal level more of us are struggling physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Everyone can feel it.

And yet, we continue to check in with ourselves and one another, posing the question when we greet each other. How are you? And then both parties sheepishly look at each other, not quite sure how to respond. Do we have the words to accurately describe the feelings that churn through our beings throughout these difficult and chaotic days we are living through?

I have always thought of myself as a person who is in touch with her emotions. I thought I hated this question, because it didn’t seem to mean anything; or more accurately, it’s meaning felt more determined by the person inquiring and the social context than the inquiry itself.

But the truth was, I became nervous and confused when people asked me how I was doing, because I didn’t really know the answer. I realized this when I noticed that I resisted the question even more if a true answer was required. For example, if you are in a therapist’s office or with a close friend, they want to know the truth. The more genuine the question seemed, the more flustered and nervous I became. I was at a loss for words, and typically quickly would try to get the conversation back to them.

This was because in my mind, the most important and relevant question was not how am I doing, but ‘how do you think I am doing?

What that meant was, it didn’t really matter if I was in a hospital bed or in the midst of a depressive episode. I always had a smile plastered to my face, and I was always okay. I didn’t really know how I was feeling, and I was rewarded for complying to societal standards of me. Throughout most of my life, that was the definition of success. The problem was, I couldn’t keep it up and I felt like nobody really knew me, so I was completely isolated and terrified behind that big smile plastered on my face.

The truth was, I really was not okay. But I was so out of touch with my emotional state that I continued to go on with my life as normal - alternating between periods of busy-ness during the day with periods of distraction to numb me from my uncomfortable internal state.

I didn’t understand why life felt unbearable, because people around me told me I was okay, and I wanted to believe them. It seemed to me that society placed in utmost importance our physical appearance and level of productivity and status. I was on my way to success in both areas. How I was doing to others seemed well. That was the only question I really understood how to ask.

Meanwhile, my body was telling me something with increasing urgency: we are not okay! I did not listen. I couldn’t listen, because my body was interfering with my goals and it had to be silenced. I kept smiling and carried on. Deep down I knew I could not carry on like this, but I held on to this illusion that the doctors would fix me up again, like they always had before. That my body was against me in every way: it didn’t look the way I wanted it to, and it didn’t perform the way I wanted it to. It was hurting, and it didn’t stop; I was increasingly turning against my very being and resented myself deeply. Performance was living at that time, and my body would not perform the way my mind commanded. I was at a standstill, slowly drowning in the quicksand of my life. Still smiling.

The reasons that I did not know a) how I was actually feeling and b) how to address my basic needs are not due to a personal failing of mine. I was simply following the directions of what society told me to do, and had never learned differently: that how I truly felt mattered.

Our current systems are set up to prepare us to connect with ourselves and our emotional landscape on the most basic level. In a school setting, how we are doing is determined by our behaviour and grades. In a healthcare setting, how we are doing is determined by tests that doctors perform. How we feel, in the meantime, is seem as much less relevant. This is a true tragedy. In an age of social media where image is everything, this situation seems to be increasingly worsening. And so are mental health and chronic illness rates.

After many years and long journey, I have learned that there is no expert or external marker that can determine for me how I am doing and how to meet my needs. I practice cultivating a compassionate sense of how I am truly doing through meditation, yoga practice and other somatic tools of self-inquiry. Slowly, this question is becoming more important to me than how you believe I am doing. This felt immensely selfish at first, but I have come to understand that it is when each of us is primarily responsible for meeting our own needs that we can effectively care for others and contribute to society in a meaningful way.

It seems to me that more people than ever are facing the dilemma that they do not know how they are doing when the role is removed and the mask comes off. Facing this reality head-on is immensely difficult, but ultimately incredibly fulfilling and healing.

It begins simply, by sitting still, turning off the distractions, and asking yourself: “how am I doing?” and then allowing whatever comes up, no matter how uncomfortable. Place your hands over your heart through this process and remember that you are capable of sitting with any emotion. That you deserve to be heard by the most important person in your life - you. If you are looking for personal guidance on this journey, please reach out! We can discover together how you are doing. No, really.

The Necessity of Feeling Necessary: What I Learned in the Forest to Prepare Me for COVID-19

Humans don’t mind hardship. In fact, they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern life has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It’s time to change that - Sebastian Junger

“I think I’m going to go out of town for a bit”, I vaguely told friends and family members at the beginning of October this past year. A day or so later, I sent a mass text message informing everyone I was in the airport on the way to a retreat in the forest. I would have no access to my phone or computer for the duration of my stay and would be gone for at least a month, most likely two or more. I left on a whim, and spent sixty days at this secluded location with a group of strangers from all walks of life.

We had all come to the same conclusion before arriving: there was something wrong and life simply could not resume until we figured out what it was. Surrounded by acres of tall pine trees, green vegetation and wildlife, we spent our time in reflection. Tasked with a series of writing assignments, we were instructed to write down the most traumatic events that have occurred in our lives. Our internal inquiry led us to write down in excruciating detail every shameful and difficult incident that we had locked deep in our memories. Once we had completed a writing assignment, we would read it out loud to one another in a group setting, and receive words of encouragement and support in return.

It is quite a curious situation to abruptly leave one’s life, responsibilities and loved ones to spend time with strangers sitting on the floor of a cabin dissecting painful things from your past. Quite frequently I would ask myself: what exactly was I doing?

Sixty days later, I turned back on my cell phone and headed to the airport to slip back into my life in Toronto. I returned home around the winter holidays and attended festivities trying to avoid questions about my seemingly mysterious adventure. It took some time to adjust back to society, and I assured my loved ones when they inquired that I had experienced something life changing. The truth was, I hadn’t yet quite processed the experience I had been through: what exactly had I just done?

 🜁 ~ 🜂 ~ 🜃  ~🜄

As one can imagine, without any access to technology, work, or the usual distractions of modern life, I had a lot of time to ponder in the forest. I began to imagine us retreaters as members of a strange yet beautiful tribe. As we spent each day getting to the bare basics of life, we all became highly valued members of this tribe-like collective. Tribes have ceremonies and rituals, and ours was no different. It was becoming clear to me that each one of us was there to undergo an internal rite of passage, seeking to transition from the passivity of childhood to the power inherent in responsible adulthood.

Every culture has rites of passage, where a young man or woman takes on a challenge in order to become accepted as a full-fledged member of the tribe. From the modern Western perspective, many tribal rites of passage ceremonies seem unnecessary and cruel. Perhaps our modern world has been too arrogant and hasty in disposing of these traditions.

In our unique tribal structure in the forest, the rite of passage entailed us to dig to the depths of our souls and locate any past pain or hurt we had experienced. In revealing these stories to one another, we exposed a level of vulnerability that is quite rare. Through unearthing the most painful shards of glass from our spirits and tending to each other’s wounds, we faced our past hardships head-on. One at a time, we held space for one another, processed the pain, and gave ourselves the space to heal.

There don’t seem to be many places to do this type of deep internal work in modern society, where we are all constantly so busy and the first question someone asks when they meet another is “what do you do for a living?” Perhaps this is what compelled each of us put pause on our lives as we knew them and retreat inwards. We said no to a society increasingly consumed with status and success. We turned off our devices where we obsessively curate our happy and perfect lives on social media. This seemed to me to be a bit revolutionary.

Each person in a tribe is necessary. We all did the work and revealed our greatest vulnerabilities to one another. We all supported each other any way that we knew how: a smile, a word of praise, a shoulder to cry on. We knew each other on a deep level, while not knowing each other’s last names or much about what they did for a living. Asking someone “what do you do?” seemed irrelevant to the point of absurdity, much like asking someone about their political beliefs. Whether a CEO or on welfare, we were all there together sitting in a circle holding space for one another to just be.

I had asked many times over the course of the sixty day adventure what I was doing. I now understand that I was there to learn and teach this eternal truth: You. Are. Necessary. Once a member of the tribe internalized this message, we began to notice that we had the tools to face whatever challenges may arise in our lives back at home. We had simply forgotten how to access our own internal power supplies. Through expressing ourselves authentically and unearthing past shame we finally could move forward with confidence, dignity and strength.

 🜁 ~ 🜂 ~ 🜃  ~🜄

As the year 2019 shaped up to be a year of massive internal transformation for me, 2020 seems to be a year of transformation on an Earth-wide scale. It doesn’t seem hyperbolic to state that we are living in a time of immense hardship and massive change. Each of us feels the weight of this pandemic beginning to crack at our society’s superficially glossy exterior. Wounds are forming; whether through sickness, lack of safety or financial loss. However, no matter our individual lineage, each of us comes from a line of ancestors who have survived unimaginable hardship. We have the strength and power to face this.

The world is our tribe now, and the connections we all share are undeniable from the microscopic level of the virus to the global economy we all take part in. Now that the Earth herself has forced this pause, it is an opportunity for us to return to the basics of life - much like what I did with my new friends in the forest not too long ago. It may be an opening for us to take the time to reflect on how to create a society that provides nurture, while also including rites of passage ceremonies of some kind that prepare us as adults to face hardship. Our previous lives of comfort did not adequately prepare us as members of a global community to band together and protect ourselves and our loved ones when the world grew to a halt.

It is through this sense of belonging to a tribe and learning to navigate through challenging rites of passage that we build skills of resilience and reconnect with the power and strength we inherited from our ancestors. And while it may be tempting to become nostalgic of the world before this pandemic, I wonder how many of us were truly joyful, peaceful and happy living in a life of comfort. The rising mental illness and addiction rates in affluent communities would suggest otherwise.

May we all go through our own process of initiation

May we unearth the parts of ourselves that life cannot flow through

May we find the power in ourselves to support others in facing hardship with strength and compassion

May we all work together to create a world where we all feel necessary

 🜁 ~ 🜂 ~ 🜃  ~🜄

How I Learned to Stop Craving Control

I have always had a fascination with adrenaline junkies in the way I imagine an alien would be fascinated with the human race.

My mind is constantly taking me on a mental roller coaster throughout each and every day.

The thought that someone would seek stress inducing thrills is something I simply cannot relate to. A list of activities that I avoid due to the “buzz” they offer includes: drugs, theme parks, sad and/or scary movies.

The world is filled with so much danger, sadness and pain—why do some seek it out?

Rather than trying to understand the thoughts and feelings of others, I really should turn my pondering inwards. What all of these activities in which I avoid have in common is they require giving up a sense of control. Why do I crave control so intensely? I think many of us who have overcome difficult experiences in our lifetimes grasp for the reins of our lives in order to avoid pain.

Personally, I have gone through traumatic health related crises that enlightened me at a young age to the fact that danger lurks around every corner. I became keenly aware that, as human beings, we are incredibly fragile. I learned that I was a target and had to protect myself from any potential hazard and risk.

So I tried to gain control over myself and my surroundings. However, the more I’ve attempted to manage and oversee the elements of my life, the more out of control I have felt. This is because the world is completely indifferent to my demands. What I would like to happen in my interactions with others never seems to come to fruition.

Moreover, my own mind and body similarly do not heed to my commands. This feels like the ultimate form of betrayal. For some reason, trying to force myself to feel a certain way never quite works, and in the process I become my own adversary.

I turned to mindfulness when I was tired of the constant internal battle for control between me and the universe. It had become abundantly clear I was losing the war, and my mental and physical health were suffering as a result. A central tenet of mindfulness involves letting go of perceptions of what we think our life should be.

It is about taking our experiences as they come, moment by moment, in a non-judgmental way. In practicing mindfulness through meditation and yoga, I have begun the process of loosening the reins on control.

I have officially handed in my resignation for the position of authoritarian dictator of the Kingdom of My Life—after all, I was never very good at ruling it anyway. In the quest to control my life in order to avoid pain, I was inflicting a level of anguish upon myself that was cruel and unnecessary.

Who knows, maybe I will try bungee jumping now? On second thought, I think I’ll stick to ground-based activities. 

This blog post was originally published on Elephant Journal