Being invited into another: transforming bodily awareness through co-creative movement after cancer illness.

Abstract

In this article, we share participants' reflections on five workshops offering a co-creative movement practice with peers in cancer rehabilitation. Due to illness and treatment, many young adult cancer survivors experience mental and physical challenges for years post-treatment. Adolescents and Young Adult (AYA) patients with cancer are a group of patients aged 15-39. Using the term here, we refer solely to Young Adults, as participants in our study were 29-39 years old. In the workshops, co-creative movement scores were chosen to enhance bodily awareness and to gradually introduce bodily proximity with others as trust increased in the shared space. Themes were collectively identified at the beginning of the intervention. Shared group reflections, individual reflective work and ethnographic interviews bring participant voices to the front, sharing both narratives of the unique survivorship challenges faced by the participants and how the co-creative movement practice helped the group reconnect holistically with themselves after severe illness. Recurring in many reflections was the sentiment that the illness journey had made participants experience life beyond their years, prompting negotiations of a new self, a '2.0' version, impacted by severe illness. Many reflections touched on reclaiming bodily autonomy after having had to relinquish control of oneself during treatment. Participants described a reconnection being forged between mind and body during the intervention. Shifts in ontology and agency were reported throughout the course of the five workshops, suggesting that the bodywork was helpful in relation to working towards healing and sensing oneself as a whole human being post-treatment.