Dancing with Cancer: Using Transformational Art, Meditation and a Joyous Mindset to Face the Challenge

Combining the personal and the practical, this book mixes the author’s own cancer story with the tools she discovered and adapted to support her treatment.

The wisdom and knowledge that Judy has learned from her experience with cancer can be our guide and coach.' ―Bernie Siegel MD, author of Love, Medicine & Miracles and The Art of Healing.

Dancing with Cancer focuses on the creation of a positive and proactive mindset with which to face the specific challenges and stages of cancer. It combines the author’s own experience of using what she calls Thought Work (including creative self-expression, healing energy work and meditation) with conventional cancer treatment in order to connect her intentions for healing to the everyday reality of a diagnosis of incurable bone-marrow cancer. The book offers guidance and inspiration not only to cancer sufferers as they undergo the various stages of treatment but also to those supporting them, enabling them to understand better the experience of the cancer patient as well as the possibilities of mind–body empowerment.

Part I allows the reader to gain inspiration and reassurance from Judy’s personal cancer story, as well as put into practice her Thought Work suggestions, which include revelatory questionnaires and journaling, creative exercises (such as drawing healing mandalas) and guided meditations. Part II gives a more detailed description of the Thought Work tools, including instructions for setting healing intentions, for using mindful breathing and for cultivating an attitude of gratitude, as well as meditations for a range of cancer situations and step-by-step instructions for creating artworks. Throughout the book are examples of Judy’s own transformative artworks, which she offers along with the reminder that any creative self-expression can be healing – it is not the outcome but the physical process of doing that matters, enabling multi-level transformation.

Judy Erel is a painter, a poet, an art teacher and a meditation guide. In 2009 she began providing guided meditations and mandala-drawing activities in the haematology and oncology departments of major Israeli hospitals supported by the Roche Pharmaceuticals ‘Roche Lends a Hand’ project. Her degrees include a BSc in human development from Cornell University, as well as a senior fine arts and art teachers degree. She has also completed MA studies in educational psychology.