About the Healing Circle
Healing Circles at Love Heals Cancer and ZenOnco.io are sacred and open-minded spaces for cancer patients and caregivers to share their emotions and experiences. Healing Circles are meant to bring a sense of calm and comfort amongst participants so that they feel much more accepted. These Healing Circles’ primary objective is to help care providers, survivors, and cancer patients become mentally, physically, emotionally, and socially stronger after, before, or while undergoing Cancer Treatment. Our sacred space aims to bring about hopeful, thoughtful, and convenient processes of helping participants mitigate several healing obstacles. Our professional experts are dedicated to offering undivided guidance to cancer patients for safe and fast healing of the body, mind, spirit, and emotions.
About the Speaker
Dr Monica Gulati is a cancer survivor and a trained Immunologist and holistic healer. She did her PhD in Neuroimmunology from Zurich, but after her cancer episode, she found herself getting drawn towards holistic living and education. She co-founded the NGOLivinglight.inwith Taru Nagpal and is also a faculty at SACAR(Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Research).
Ms. Taru Nagpal shares about Livinglight.in
Dr Monica Gulati and I founded Livinglight.in because we felt that life could be simpler. The way we live is very mechanical, and it feels heavy. But being blessed with some lightness, we realized that if it is possible for us, then it is possible for others as well. We have sharing circles, parenting circles, and talks where the basic goal is to see and connect with oneself.
Dr. Monica Gulati shares her journey
I got married in 2010 and conceived my first child in 2013. In 2014, while I was pregnant with my second child, I noticed blood in my urine. Before my marriage, I lived a life of my own, not bound to any roles, and I was exploring my life fully.
The moment I got married, no one forced me to do any sort of work, but the influences after marriage are so overwhelming in the Indian context that from a liberal girl, I got trapped into a single role which was suffocating for me, and even I failed to realize it.
When I gave birth to my second child, I had painless bleeding in the urine. Slowly, the frequency of blood in the urine got increased, and then I consulted a doctor who asked me to go for urinary bladder Ultrasound. I underwent an Ultrasound and found that there were tumors in the bladder. It was very shocking because nobody gets into illness at such a young age and whenever you read the newspaper, you read that it is happening to older people.
It felt like my life had stopped, but I had to fight what was in front of me. Suddenly, all my attention went to where the cancer had come from and what has to be done. Before cancer happened, I was involved in the process of self-inquiry, alternative medicines, and immunology, so I knew that emotions have a powerful role in diseases. When it happened, it felt like God has given me an example of how emotions are connected to a disease.
The first thing that happened was a big grounding that I felt. The second was that the time just stood still, and suddenly nothing else mattered. My whole concentration was on this topic because it was a matter of life and death. The third thing that happened was the deep aspiration to know what was happening and also a yearning to sort out my emotions. Because I created this myself, it was as if there was a raw material that I was preparing in a pressure cooker that was ready to blow the whistle. Cancer was the whistle, and I was the raw material sitting on the gas stove. I knew this, but I didn’t know how exactly to go about this.
I spoke to a few friends and told them what has happened and asked them that I wanted someone to guide me on what was going on in my inner being because I had no clue how to go about it. Luckily, I found a therapist in Gurgaon and did nine back to back sessions of guided meditation with him where he would say something to me, and I will get in touch with a deeper space within me, which I had ignored in my normal daily life.
From the beginning, cancer showed me more of myself. It broke me out of the cage in which I was living. From the beginning, no matter how painful it was, it was an opening in life and never a limitation.
The guided meditation sessions gave me the strength to go through the surgery, and my limiting beliefs got broken. When I realized that my life is opening for me because of cancer, I didn’t complain. I never find myself praying to God that I do not get cancer again because I feel that if that is important for my growth and I am ready to go through that. What is more important for the universe is our growth as an individual.
Many powers come to you when you go through divine grace; when we are ready to be porous to all the experience that has come. I had two back-to-back surgeries, and I was expecting a near-death experience, but that did not happen to me. After the two surgeries, I had short therapy sessions where they washed the bladder with the BCG vaccine. After that, I took a big risk that I never looked back at the doctors. I never wanted to go to the hospital or do scans again.
I stopped procrastinating. I feel life is more open and I find myself a bit more grounded now than before. When we are grounded, we can fly high, and it is essential that these experiences ground us and get us in touch with true essence, which is away from the mind, feeling, and body. When we get more hold of ourselves, everything is welcome, and we won’t shy away from any remission.
I believe that God knows best. If I have to go through remission, I will go through that, but as of now, I am taking care of my physical, mental, and emotional space.
What I am doing today with my life is I am postponing my joy and gratifying myself in little pleasures, not anchored in my inner presence. These were the burning questions for me after cancer happened. It is the most urgent thing that also ignited the birth of Livinglight.in with Taru Nagpal because she also realized after her near-death experience that it is critical to live life now and not postpone anything for the future.
The lotus that blooms in the middle of the mud is a beautiful example that no matter how messed-up life seems to us, we can still blossom, and everything is welcomed.
How to not forget the lessons learned from the journey?
We are like a sponge; if we keep ourselves in the muddy water, we soak it, and if we keep ourselves in clean water, then we soak that. So, where we want to emerge is the choice that we have to make. It’s very easy to get into bad habits and into repeated toxic modes of thought, but efforts must be put where we have to consciously lead a life of purity.
It is a blessing because cancer is something which I have to acknowledge throughout my life, it will stay with me, I cannot ignore its presence, and it reminds me continuously of what I want to choose.
Through Livinglight.in, we are continuously emerging ourselves day in and day out in words full of light, consciousness, full of deepening inquiry about what I am doing, where I am heading, and the like. This is an active choice where we choose where we want to be every moment.
Dr. Monica shares about how she manages to do everything in this chaotic life
It’s a choice; we think that we have to work and only work, but if we pause and take a second, we will see that we don’t need a large bank balance. All I need today is a life full of joy, peace, progress, and contentment. The money that I am accumulating in the bank is the biggest burden that I am giving to myself. I am a slave to that money, and throughout my life, I will be running around saving that money only to land up in the hospital ultimately. I manage because I want to, not because the circumstances are very cordial. I manage because of the conscious choice of not wanting to enter a life of chaos.
I need to choose where I need to be in this moment; do I want to run in the rat race, earn more money and be discontented, or do I want to take a pause and live life. I have money, and it will last three years; I want to live life right now.
Dr. Monica shares how she managed her negative thoughts when she was alone
Again, it’s about the choice that we make. When I became conscious that there will only be misery if I go that way, I tried to see if something could be done about it.
First and foremost is grace; grace is present in each moment of our life. No person can say that I don’t have much grace and other person have more grace. It’s just that we are not open to receive it. When we are hard as a wall, it takes more water to get drained but if we become soft like soil, then it takes only a few drops to become wet.
The universe never does anything out of space, so if you are put into any situation, then there must be some reason for it. It would help if you had some faith, and the lessons of that journey will be revealed to you. So a little openness and faith are essential.
Everyone shares about how they manage stress
Akansha- Everyone has lots of stress, and hearing about inner self makes it clear that what comes out of you is very important. We have to make the environment so peaceful that it makes us feel better in every situation.
Monica- I remind myself as much as possible to not take life for granted. Stress is something that has become almost intolerable. We have to stand against our thoughts and feelings and choose lightness in life. We need to do some higher work that keeps us absorbed and helps not buy into the lollipop of Stress. We have to ignore negative thoughts, feelings, and absorb ourselves into something cleansing and detoxifying in the process.
Taru- It feels more of a happening than a doing that now you cannot tolerate Stress. Whenever there is any amount of stress, it becomes so big that urgently you need to pay attention and have to do something about it.
Mehul Vyas- I chant Gayatri Mantra whenever I am scared of anything. So I believe that there should be something you hold on to. I learned that I need to hold on to something because that keeps the negativity out. There are many negative people but the best thing is just being away from such people and listen through one ear and throw it out from the other. I go out for a walk or stay alone and talk to myself whenever I am stressed.
Neha- I had three chemo therapies while I was pregnant. My first Chemotherapy was very painful because I felt that my life has ended. But when the doctors told me that nothing would happen to my kid, I gained the energy to fight. I avoid any kind of Stress by just choosing to focus on positivity.
Atul- I try to live in the moment, and that is the most important thing that I’ve learned in my life. We mostly expect something from the future or get affected by what happened in the past, but then we can choose correctly when we start living in the present. Whenever I feel stressed, I do meditation.
Rohit- We have Stress and negativity. We need to do things that divert our minds and enjoy the little things. Whenever I feel stressed out, I go through healing stories because I believe that you learn from other people’s journeys.
Dr. Monica shares about immunity
The biggest immunity is to be directly in touch with life. There is more to immunity than just eating good and healthy food. Each and every moment is an add on to the immunity.
Dr. Monica shares her thoughts on caregivers
As a caregiver, we do whatever we can, but we exhaust ourselves in the process. The first thing I realized when I landed up in the hospital was that I was dispensable. Even if I were to pass away at that moment, my kids would be taken care of. So as caregivers, we do whatever is required at the moment keeping close contact with our well-being.
