By Simone Monique Barnes

It’s officially autumn. At this time of year, I find joy in trying old and new recipes — enjoying the smell and taste of pumpkin bread, hot apple cider, butternut squash soup, and other goodies from the fall harvest season.

Fall also brings the memory that it was the season when I met my medical oncologist after an annual mammogram showed that the tiny lump I found was actually triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive form of breast cancer with high rates of recurrence and mortality.

Fall was the beginning of several hard seasons of chemo, surgeries, and radiation treatments. Fall continues to be the season when I get an annual mammogram and a pelvic ultrasound and wonder whether or not they’ll call me back into “the room” because they’ve seen something unusual.

Fall is also the season that I remember how many of my loved ones have been taken by and impacted by this family of diseases: cancer. It’s easy to emotionally spiral about life’s miseries. So fall is also the time of year that reminds me about the importance of recipes to nourish my spirit.

Finding Joy After Breast Cancer

Every day, I remember the words of one of my favorite poems, “To Build a Swing,” by the 14th-century Persian poet, Hafiz. The poem’s first and last stanzas always stay with me:

“You carry

All the ingredients

To turn your life into a nightmare —

Don’t mix them!

…

You carry all the ingredients

To turn your existence into joy,

Mix them, mix

Them!”

I have all the ingredients to turn my life into a nightmare. But I don’t have to mix them.

But the realities of cancer treatments, side effects, grief, death, and loss … where can joy be found in that? The truth is joy and suffering are no strangers; they are well acquainted. We don’t have to pretend we aren’t sad about some things. We also don’t have to neglect our joy.

In the kitchen, my favorite wooden spoon, the good spatula, and a perfectly sized cast iron pan tend to be tools that I regularly use to cook recipes I’ve come to love. I also keep a list of my favorite restaurants, those whose food and service keep me full.

But we don’t survive and thrive on food alone. I also have to nourish my spirit to have the energy to sustain me throughout the day.

Laughter Yoga: A Tool for Joy During Cancer Survivorship

One of my favorite tools to use to mix the ingredients that bring joy into my life is Laughter Yoga. It is a practice that began in India over thirty years ago with physician Dr. Madan Kataria.

Laughter Yoga is the union of unconditional laughter and pranayama, deep yogic breathing. It is a series of exercises that evoke laughter and silliness, along with different methods of breathing.

I often teach and talk about Laughter Yoga exercises in the cancer world. Laughter and cancer? Absolutely.

One of my favorites is “Crying Laughter.” During this exercise, we pretend to wipe our faces downward with sadness and crying, and then a moment later, we pretend to wipe our faces upward with happiness and laughter, then repeat those movements several times.

Crying, then laughing. Laughing, then crying.

It’s a good reminder that it’s okay to cry, and it’s okay to laugh. We’re strong enough to handle both, even during the same season.

As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would say, “It is often necessary to laugh in order to survive.”

Making Room for Happiness

One of the merits of this practice is that we never need to leave ourselves feeling down. We can always find joy that isn’t reliant on our circumstances to pick ourselves up.

While uncontrollably losing all of my hair during chemo was hard, I recall how fun it was to play with colorful lipsticks, large earrings, and gold rub-on tattoos on my head. (You can see one in the mirror I’m holding up in the first photo above.)

We often spend a lot of time managing our anger, our stress, our grief, our depression. I’ve learned that it’s important to manage my happiness, too. I look for happiness daily. It’s what makes my joy sustainable.

Being in a room full of cancer survivors at conferences or support groups sharing the painful truths about their experiences brings tears and heartbreak. It also brings hugs that are genuine, laughter that is real, dance moves that are outstanding, and a sense of connection between us all. (Plus the sponsored swag bags are usually next level. Ooh, la, la.)

The ingredients for pain and sorrow are easy to find. We know where they are. Any cancer survivor or their co-survivor can rattle off their list of pain, suffering, and loss, be it physical, mental, emotional, or social. But joy sometimes requires a little work. It needs to be cultivated. 

In Laughter Yoga, we often quote philosopher and psychologist William James (1842–1910), who wisely taught, “We don’t laugh because we’re happy; we’re happy because we laugh.”

Laughter Yoga-Inspired Recipes for Joy

So, here are some Laughter Yoga-inspired recipes for joy:

• Take a deep breath in, hold it for five counts, then laugh your exhale out.
• Set a timer and laugh for a whole minute nonstop.
• Laugh quietly, trying not to make any noise.
• Laugh at every red light or stop sign on your way to and from anywhere.
• Pretend to laugh with someone on your cell phone. (Hint: No one knows there isn’t anyone on the other end of the fake phone call.)
• Laugh until you cry. Cry until you laugh. (Fake laughter and fake crying count.)
• Dance to music that inspires you to move your body. Dance to silly songs. Dance to songs that groove. Dance to songs that stir you to feel deep within.
• Let your clothing be an outlet for vibrant expression. Sway that scarf in the air. Wear the fun and beautiful things.
• Laugh until you begin to remember what joy feels like in your body. If it doesn’t remember, try again later. And keep trying.
• Then, remember what else made you feel that joyous way, and go do it. (Even if it’s a modified version of it.)

You have all the ingredients for joy. Mix them. Mix them!

Simone Monique Barnes is a Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher and a Triple Negative Breast Cancer Survivor, observing more than eight years of what she calls “no shark sightings at the beach” (which her doctors call “No Evidence of Disease,” or NED). Simone regularly speaks, teaches, and preaches about the importance of having joy practices, especially in hard times. She uses Laughter Yoga as fuel to have the energy to do good work and to stay in good trouble. You can find her at SimoneMoniqueBarnes.com or on Instagram @simonemoniquebarnes