Pace Yourself: Season 2 Episode 1

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Introduction

Survivor Wellness

Dana Levy // Executive Director

Dana Levy (she/her) joined Survivor Wellness as Program Director in 2021 after a long career in the fields of dance, movement, martial arts and yoga, both in the U.S. and Japan. Survivor Wellness is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1997 as Cancer Wellness House with the mission of providing cancer wellness and integrative health care services and support for cancer survivors, their family members, caregivers and loved ones in a home-like setting. Survivor Wellness is a cancer care community, a sanctuary in the heart of the Salt Lake City.

Dana is a certified yoga therapist (C-IAYT), a certified Laban Bartenieff Movement Analyst (CLMA), has a master’s degree in modern dance and a nidan (2nd degree black belt) in the Japanese martial art of aikido. She has 30+ years in the fields of choreography, performance, martial arts, and movement education. While living in Tokyo, Dana directed FURLA yoga, a boutique yoga studio in Tokyo, Japan, from 2005-2017. She has taught yoga in Salt Lake City since 2013, training yoga teachers and yoga therapists at local studios, at Salt Lake Community College and at the University of Utah. Dana has worked with Huntsman Cancer Institute since 2019 as an adjunct yoga instructor in the Wellness and Integrative Health Center. She is also the co-chair of the Yoga Therapy Special Interest Group for the Academic Consortium for Medicine and Health. In addition to her directorship responsibilities, Dana also works with the clients of Survivor Wellness, facilitating the Wednesday Evening Support Group, and offering movement classes, private movement/yoga therapy sessions, and retreats.

Transcript:

David Pace 0:00

Hi. I’m David Pace, and this is Pace Yourself, a podcast from the University of Utah College of Science and Wellness.

Good morning, everyone. Today, my guest is Dana Levy, executive director of Survivor Wellness here in Salt Lake City. Survivor Wellness is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 with the mission of providing cancer, wellness and integrative health care services and support for cancer survivors, their family members, caregivers and loved ones. Welcome, Dana.

Dana Levy 0:42

Thank you. It’s great to be here.

David Pace 0:44

So Survivor Wellness provides a number of programs and services. I understand group and individual health counseling and support individual integrative health care therapies like massage therapy, Reiki, is that how you pronounce Reiki? Reiki? I was testing you. Nicely done. Yoga therapy, etc.. Mmhmm. Also, group classes like yoga. And I’m not going to get this word right.

Dana Levy 1:09

I’ll say it. Qigong.

David Pace 1:11

Qigong. Thank you. Mindfulness and so forth. And also some community events you do as well. So how did you get involved with Survivor Wellness and tell us a little bit about your background.

Dana Levy 1:23

Okay. Well, David, I was working in private practice as a yoga and movement therapist for many years and came into Survivor Wellness because there’s a lovely small yoga studio there. And I thought maybe post-COVID it was time to start teaching in-person again. And I was fortunate enough to meet the then executive director who was ready to start building up programming after COVID because the houses out of which we operate, because we operate out of two small historic homes, have some lovely gardens and outbuildings, and they were empty. It was kind of, dare I say it, dead. It was not a lively place at that time. And it’s hard to serve cancer survivors when you don’t have something alive.

So I started helping build out the programming from one support group to what it is now. We offer services most days of the week and have a very active campus many days of the week as well. But my background, as I said, is in yoga and movement practices, dance, martial arts. I lived for a decade and a half in Tokyo. I ran a yoga studio there. And all of that somehow coalesced into working with cancer survivors in an extremely satisfying way. I will also say I’m proud to be an adjunct faculty at the Huntsman Cancer Institute as well.

David Pace 2:55

Yeah, I was going to just mention that in there. Wellness and Integrative Health Center?

Dana Levy 3:02

That’s right.

David Pace 3:03

Tell us a little bit about that.

Dana Levy 3:05

So everyone’s familiar with Huntsman. It’s one of the top. Well, we serve a five state region with cancer services and one of the top research institutions in the country. And what many people don’t know is that it has a very powerful cancer wellness and integrative health care center, offering movement and meditation classes, strength classes, massage therapy, acupuncture and other complementary therapies as well.

And any patient at the Huntsman, as well as staff members and family members, are eligible to utilize those services through their diagnosis and treatment and beyond. So it’s an incredible resource, and I encourage any listeners who may have been a patient at Huntsman or a staff member at the U to look into it and see what the Wellness Integrative Health Care Center has to offer.

David Pace 4:03

So when you were talking, it struck me that, you know, here we are sitting in the College of Science and of course, health sciences is up the hill and Huntsman is part of that. Is there a tension between these alternate, what we would call alternate therapies as opposed to, say, hardcore medicine, pharmaceutical, and surgeries? I mean, let’s just dive into that for a minute.

Dana Levy 4:32

I love this question. Yeah, I love the word tension because tension can have positive and negative. We need tension. And we also sometimes become over tense, overly tense. Right. So when we talk in yoga therapy, we talk about finding that balance. I mean, we all talk about finding the balance between tension and not tension. What I would say is what we offer as wellness and integrative health care providers is meant to complement the traditional medical treatment that’s given to the people with whom we work, not to replace it. So one of the most important tenets that I share with this staff members Survivor wellness, is that the care that you give is not meant to replace, but to complement and help bring out and make more effective and/or help with the outcomes that you have in your life from any experiences that you have. So when we talk about tension, I would say that tension might come from lack of familiarity, much like when we’re in a new situation. And everyone knows that massage therapy can be helpful for them. Many people don’t know what Reiki or Qigong are and how it can be helpful. So part of that journey or part of my role is to help introduce people to therapeutic practices that might give them a different perspective on who they are and how they are in the world in relation to what they’re undergoing their cancer journey or their cancer diagnosis and treatment or that of their loved one.

David Pace 6:03

So I think it’s a tribute to Huntsman that they have embraced this kind of integrative approach to cancer survivors.

Dana Levy 6:16

I would also like to put a plug in for the academic consortium of Integrative Medicine and Health. And if you’re not familiar with it, you can all become members as members of the University of Utah, because we are a research facility dedicated to improving the lives of individuals through offering integrative health care services and support and the academic consortium is meant to bring together the researchers who are within the medical field and the people who are practicing what we call now integrative health care practices.

David Pace 6:50

Now, is that the Osher Integrative Health?

Dana Levy 6:53

No, it’s a separate actually national organization. They’re special interest groups and researchers and annual symposiums where individuals can share information about the research that they’re doing and the efficacy of utilizing medical treatments in concert with integrative health care practices like what we’re talking about.

David Pace 7:13

Right. So maybe we can put a link on our website about that if you want to share that with us so that people can maybe look that up and investigate it a little bit.

Dana Levy 7:24

I’d love to have a little bit more activity in the yoga therapy special interest group. I do help co-chair that, so we’d love to see you out there.

David Pace 7:32

And that’s a national program, but it has a chapter for want of a better term here.

Dana Levy 7:37

It’s a national program that you can become a member of if you’re a member of an academic institution that does research in the area of integrative health.

David Pace 7:46

That’s interesting. So we’re perfectly poised for that here at the University of Utah. Related to what you were just talking about, Dana, can you tell me a little bit more about the history of can we call it a movement? I don’t know of survivor wellness specifically.

Dana Levy 8:02

Definitely. I love this history. It’s one of the reasons that I love being in this environment. In the early 1990s and in the 1990s and prior to that, if you received a cancer diagnosis, you knew that you went to the hospital and then you went home and tried to get better. And there were people who realized that these services that we’re talking about, these practices could improve outcomes, help people reduce stress, live better, increase health and vitality and what we call whole person health. So the founders of Survivor Wellness, which was founded as Cancer Wellness House, were a group of local oncologists from Holy Cross Hospital, which had a very large oncology department at the time, it was just early Huntsman years. Local oncologists, community members, cancer survivors and a powerful local individual named Tika Beard, who started the first mobile mammography unit in Utah.

David Pace 9:04

Excellent.

Dana Levy 9:05

And they did some research into cancer wellness centers that existed in other parts of the United States and gathered together and said we should have one here in Utah. And the activity that really brought them together was a hike to the summit of Kings Peak, three day hike, 26 miles, 14,000 feet, with a group of cancer survivors. And it was called survivors at the summit. They carried tribute flags with messages and names of those near and dear to their hearts, loved ones who’d passed from cancer, who were experiencing cancer, made the hike, came back, and then Holy Cross Hospital donated the use of the building at 59 South 1100 East for cancer wellness house to establish itself. So the room that is my office now was where we had yoga classes and some support groups. And the bathroom on the second floor had a platform built on top of the bathtub to deliver massage therapy. It was that vital that we get these services to the individuals who needed it. So that’s kind of how we started. It was very grassroots organization involved, you know, and a really unique resource in the Intermountain West.

David Pace 10:17

So that hike still happens every year, but you don’t go up to the high uintahs for that, right?

Dana Levy 10:25

We don’t go out to Kings Peak at this time, although I’d love to reestablish that tradition again.

David Pace 10:31

Great. And when is that happening next?

Dana Levy 10:33

It’s happening on August 4th. From 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Brighton Resort. So we’ll be throughout the resort in a variety of different ways. It starts with the mountain breakfast and live music gathering for some guided hikes. Of course, we’ll have the ubiquitous yellow tribute flags there for some people have already done some hiking. People will bring them. People will make a donation in exchange for a flag to write a message and then we’ll have a large display of tribute flags at the area where we’ll have lunch and our wellness providers will be there as well to share what they do at Survivor Wellness so people can learn a little bit more about what we do. It’s a really powerful event. And the reason I say that is because when you go through the cancer diagnosis and treatment or your loved one does, you’re faced, as you can imagine, with a different sense of your mortality. And often we make it through that process, and we don’t realize how much emotional impact it had. And being in the mountains and taking the long view and standing there, seeing those yellow tribute flags and acknowledging what you’ve been through sometimes can be extremely helpful or even cathartic for individuals who didn’t recognize the impact that it had on them as well as those who did.

David Pace 12:05

And healing, sounds like.

Dana Levy 12:06

And healing. Yeah, exactly.

David Pace 12:09

Yeah, that’s a remarkable scenario that you just painted for us, because especially after the isolation of the pandemic which was a health event as well, I think that there were a lot of us that attempted to make just paper over that, like, I could do this, I got this, I can do this on Zoom. I can live my life here. And we did. But the costs that came as a result of that were sometimes pushed aside because the business of life took over and we wanted to get back to the new normal.

Dana Levy 12:48

You’re saying the exact words that the members of Survivor Wellness say, I facilitate what I call the heartbeat of the organization, which is a Wednesday night support group. And many of the individuals who come to that support group come because they recognize that we heal by association, that being in community often helps us recognize how we are and who we are in the world in this moment. And I often hear them say exactly what you said is, “I want to get back to my life. I want to be normal again.” And as we all know, there’s no normal, there’s no going back. There’s only moving forward into the next iteration. And it’s incredibly powerful to see people acknowledge that the transformation that comes from that acknowledgement and the environment that supports the opportunity to transform, so to speak.

David Pace 13:46

Right. So you’re speaking the language of wellness all through this, which I appreciate. And we can unpack a lot of a lot of things in this way. I’m kind of interested, though, because quite frankly, a personal friend of mine, about how we help as friends and family, you know, cancer survivors or people going through the cancer journey, if you will. And it’s funny that we should be talking about this because if you don’t mind my maybe setting up a little case study here and I’m going to ask you some questions about what can I do in this scenario for my friend whose husband is struggling with what looks like colon cancer and just last week, she wrote and I wanted to share some kind of the story, the chronology, because it made me wonder about what she’s going through right now as the spouse of this man who is in his mid-seventies. So she wrote me a text out of nowhere on Tuesday. So not even a week ago, I have some really sad news. He has stage four colorectal cancer. We are having some more tests today to see what the best course of action is. All of this is expected in something like this, but it will likely be palliative care, still in shock, both of us. This is the email we had out of nowhere. Come to find out, they had been struggling for a couple of weeks knowing that this was developing and that this was an issue. Then that night, blood tests tomorrow to look for cancer markers, several nodules on liver that are characterized as peritoneal and suspected as secondary, which is bad but not certain yet. Heard from the doctor and he is ecstatic that the colon seems to be okay. Okay, so this is the first roller coaster bump for my good friend. And we’re just like, what do we say to this woman whom we love? She’s my oldest friend.

Dana Levy 16:11

Mm hmm.

David Pace 16:12

And then later, peritoneal nodules are malignant, But we have eliminated the worst case scenario, which is a metastasized colon, which is really good. So she’s, you know, she seems to be clinging to whatever she can. I’m a little confused about that. This is all on text, a little confused about that, because the doc today said he only looked at descending colon rather than ascending, which is located on the right side. Maybe I misunderstood. So she’s trying to fill all this doubt again. He says we are not in the clear yet that we have a lot of testing yet. I can’t tell what he is thinking.

Dana Levy 16:54

Mm hmm.

David Pace 16:54

So she thinks that the doctor knows something that he’s not telling her. An hour later, all blood work normal. We are relieved, confused, and exhausted. What do I do for this woman? vHow do I respond? You know, another scan, she says in a couple of months.

Dana Levy 17:19

So I hear the gravity and the emotional impact on you and on your friends. Thank you for sharing that.

David Pace 17:33

Yeah, I was just struck by this instantaneous, in-your-face experience, and I remember that when I remember thinking that when I’ve been in these scenarios before, the person that is caring for the person has to repeat over and over and over everything she can say about what she knows. And so I did encourage her to do that. I said, You need to just tell this story 50 million more times to everybody using all this new language and vocabulary that you’ve picked up. Peritoneal. You know, I had to look that up and I’d like at least for me, I would like to think that would help me process what’s going on. And to have permission to repeat myself is okay. So that’s the only thing I’ve come out of this scenario. And I was wondering if you could elaborate on any of this, because survivors are also the people that are caring for the person who is surviving.

Dana Levy 18:38

Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. Since we’re talking about the markers of wellness. So first, I want to acknowledge that, as you said, the National Cancer Institute stated in 2021 that a cancer survivor includes the caregiver and loved ones of that individual who receives the diagnosis. Mm hmm. Many people don’t know that. So when you see the word survivor wellness, many people ask, Can I come if I’m the caregiver? And absolutely, the impact goes beyond the individual with the diagnosis, as you said. You’re a survivor from the moment you hear the words you have cancer. What my members say is I feel less alone when I know that I’m a survivor. That there’s a community. So what you’ve done is enabled your close friends to have a sense of community. What’s challenging, like you said, is knowing what to say and how to support that person. We westerners go to our intellect and we feel our emotions. And you made a great choice in saying find out as much as you can and as much information as you can. And that’s a wonderful place to start. Where can we take it from there? What I observe is that we begin to feel helpless or disempowered or powerless in this situation, as with any type of crisis. So my question to you then is, what can you do to feel more powerful in this situation? And that depends on the individual. And for some, it’s gaining in intelligence, so to speak. Like you said, for some, it’s processing the experience by talking about it. For others, it’s going and doing a hike. For others, it’s sitting in a support group. For others, it’s walking with a group of people. And what it is that helps me change. The other thing that I see some of my I’ve got to call them empowered clients or empowered members, empowered cancer survivors is individuals who say, I feel hopeless, I feel helpless, and I need to figure out a way to feel, as I said, powerful again. One of my favorite clients said when I received my diagnosis, my boss said to me and he had had a close encounter with cancer in his own life. He said to me, Tell me what you need. And this member looked at him and she said, I need three things from you. One, I need you to make me laugh every day. I need for you not to pity me. And when you ask me how I am, be deeply interested in my answer.

David Pace 21:50

Don’t just wait for them to finish so you can continue to talk, in other words.

Dana Levy 21:56

To be interested. Because we’re afraid. The person who’s talking about it is afraid. I’m afraid. And if I told you something bad happened to me, my car has a flat tire. You hear me speaking from my helpless perspective. But if I say my car has a flat tire, we need to call the tow truck. You know what to do, right? So how can we help each other figure out what to do, what this person needs, whether it’s knowledge or information or whether they need emotional support or whether they need you to come cook a meal for them or to take them out and take them for a walk. If you can collaborate and find out what will help that person in that moment, that you’re an ally in this situation, when they feel powerless, then you’re building a better environment for everyone.

David Pace 22:48

Mm hmm. Including yourself.

Dana Levy 22:50

Right.

David Pace 22:51

Right.

Dana Levy 22:52

And a sense of connection, which can be helpful.

David Pace 22:58

Yeah. That’s very helpful. I think that as we think about connection, which wellness is so connected to whether it’s physical connection or emotional connection or social connection or so forth that it kind of creates, like you say, an empowerment because we know how to connect deep down because we connected with our mother and our father. And as you know, hopefully we did. But it seems to have gotten complicated as we’ve grown older. And as we’ve experienced loss and fear too. Because connection requires bravery, kind of courage that there’s a part of me. To be perfectly frank, I don’t want to deal with this with my friend. I want to go back to having dinner with them and gossiping about her impossible kids and, you know, doing all the dramas that are really psychodramas in the end, because that’s the devil I know. That’s the person I love. But it does ask us, I think, to… and what I think I hear you saying, Dana, is that it does ask us to step forward and to re-jigger or reiterate, if you will, what it means to be a friend, what it means to be a lover, what it means to be a spouse and we don’t like to do that. We like to watch Netflix and see it portrayed very quickly in 2 hours.

Dana Levy 24:55

So easy, isn’t it?

David Pace 25:00

What else can you tell me about Survivor Wellness and the group that you’re doing? We have a few minutes left.

Dana Levy 25:06

When we think about the setting of where we receive medical treatment, it’s usually in a hospital or clinic.

David Pace 25:40

Right.

Dana Levy 25:40

And when I came into Survivor Wellness and as you know, it was originally called Cancer Wellness House, right? It’s not a hospital or a clinic. You actually walk into a historic home that feels like an old friend’s house or may I say grandma’s house. Hopefully that has good associations for you. But a place where you have good associations when you walk in the door, you are now an insider in this world of cancer, wellness and integrative health care. When you stand outside the door, you are an outsider. Much as you feel like an outsider in this relationship, you’re navigating a new relationship with your friends and this new diagnosis. So one thing I would like for folks to know is that that is what sets Survivor wellness apart. And that’s one of the main reasons that I feel it’s important to advocate for and continue having this resource in the community, because I see people’s bodies change when they walk into the building and they soften. And that is, I think, the first step to healing or to change or transformation maybe. The second thing that I would like to share is that at this time, all of the people who provide services for the people who are our members, the folks who walk in the door impacted by cancer volunteer their time. So they’re doing it out of love, courage, compassion and skill. They’re professionals. And the way that we support them is many of them run their private practices at Survivor Wellness. So you may come in as a cancer survivor for massage therapy or Reiki treatment, a class or counseling, but you can also come in and receive a reduced rate treatment or therapeutic session. And a portion of the proceeds for that paid session goes back to support the houses. So we have what you might call another unseen ecosystem whereby the practitioners are also supporting the houses, as I call them, the organization as a non-profit and their clients are as well. So we’re creating, I want to call it an environment of wellness and healing because we’re all supporting each other. In that way, I mean, that’s something that most people who walk in the door don’t know when they come in the first time. And that’s okay, because the most important thing is that, you know, there’s a space that you can walk in that’s safe and welcoming that allows you to be yourself in this new iteration, as you said, to be surrounded by people who are also courageous and compassionate and who are living through maybe what seems like the hardest time of their life and are living through it and are living are really looking differently at what it means to be here in this world.

David Pace 28:41

Well, hopefully we’ve pulled back the curtain a little bit on that unseen ecology, is that what you called it? Of health wellness, survivor wellness, and there’s some of these resources we’ll post on our website so that people can read further about this amazing project that you’re doing as a non-profit. So I’m sure they take donations as well.

Dana Levy 29:05

Definitely

David Pace 29:06

Well, thank you very much, Dana, for being here. This has been a very enlightening and even a little moving. So I’m moved. But we do need to move to close here. And thank you again.

Dana Levy 29:26

Thank you.

David Pace 29:33

From Cancer Survivor Wellness here in Salt Lake City. Thanks for being here.

Dana Levy 29:44

Thank you.