How Dance Helped Me Reclaim My Body And Mind After Chemo

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We talk with Jenny C. Cohen about dancing through chemotherapy, rebuilding safety in the body, and the tools midlife women need to protect hormones, bones, and boundaries. Energy, access, and advocacy shape a candid look at survivorship, care systems, and movement as medicine.

• discovering belly dance and fusion as grounding practice
• performing through chemo and understanding energy exchange
• posture, neutral pelvis and safer technique for adults
• elitism in dance and widening access through online teaching
• book and podcast born from lockdown survivorship
• chemo, early menopause and osteoporosis risk
• gaps in medical systems, cost and caregiver burnout
• bioidentical HRT, lab testing and informed choices
• men’s health, testosterone and recovery
• heart math, three-body brains and listening to signals
• building self-care checklists and hydration, vitamin D, DHEA
• adult membership with dance, tai chi and myofascial release
• practical steps for women 40+ to act early

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Transcript

Meet Jenny C. Cohen

Speaker 0:01

You're listening to Diva Tonight with Carlene Humphrey, a relationship podcast with a focus on life, love, and friendship. Welcome to Diva Tonight.

Carlene 0:13

Hi, I'm Carlene, and this is Diva Tonight. My guest is Jenny C. Cohen. She is a neurosomatic practitioner. She's also an author, award-winning dancer, global dance movement expert, and she's also a breast cancer survivor. And there's more to your resume than that, but we'll leave it there. So thank you, Jenny, for taking the time to be honest with you. Thank you for having me. I'm so honored to be here today. You are an award-winning dancer. So, why what started your dance career? Let's start there. Yeah.

Discovering Belly Dance

Fusion, Safety, And Posture

Speaker 2 0:51

When my kids were about three, I found in a penny saver a belly dance class. I was desperate to get out. Like we just moved to this very country area of New York called Chester. And we moved in the middle of a snowstorm, like four feet of snow. And I was buried in the snow in the country with my kids. I was like, I gotta get out. I gotta get a house. But we were in December, so all the normal studios shut down for the Christmas break. But I was going on my head and I saw a penny saver belly dancing, and I was like, honey, I'm gonna go belly dancing. Which day are you home early? And he's like, uh, I get home from New York City Mondays early. So I take off on a dark Monday evening, driving through country winding roads, and I show up in this belly dance class for advanced dancers because I was desperate and they all knew the choreography. I did not know anything. I just did step touch, step touch, fell in love with the dance form. And that was in 2002. And before that, I had done hip-hop, tap, jazz, belly dancing. There's something about it that made me feel so safe in my body. And you know, when you shimmy, which means that there's different kinds of shimmies, like just moving your hips fast, right? It could be knee-driven, it could be your hip-driven, it could be like the washing machine kind of shimmy. Either way, that really grounds you, and that's something that I've been searching for all my life. So since then, I've become uh uh this passionate hobbyist for belly dancing, and I would take all kinds of it. My primary teacher, unfortunately, that first that first teacher, she was very possessive of her students, so she didn't encourage me to go anywhere but her. You get teachers like that, it's fine, whatever. So I didn't open myself up to more traditional country-based study until much later. And then I realized, oh, it comes from Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, right? Different countries have their version, even parts of Asia, because we were on the Silk Road. So people trading back then would bring dance forms as entertainment throughout that whole part of the world, and then it kind of infiltrated the states. I didn't know any of this stuff. And then I started to study and really realized, wow, I love this. Now I stepped away from the traditional forms because I realized I was so lacking in the beginning of my education, I had to study it. But I was doing a form called Fusion Belly Dance. And fusion is more I combine hip-hop, contemporary, and some forms of belly dance. It's like a version of like an American style and some Egyptian style. And that's my performance base. And I just loved it. Then when I got breast cancer, because I was dancing a lot currently during that time and I got breast cancer, I danced throughout my treatment and realized, whoa, why do I feel so much better when I go away and do dance? And I'm talking about I did 16 cycles of chemotherapy, then surgery, then another 35 cycles of radiation, and then another year of infusion. And I danced throughout all of that. And it was the only thing that kept me present and feeling safe in spite of all that medical treatment. And that's why I still danced because I was like, whoa, it makes me come home to my body. And I realized everyone should have that. Why would no one know it's free? You can find belly dance classes for free on YouTube, you know, and there's specific people who specialize in different styles. Like I'm the church style certified teacher through Rachel Bryce, who's a very famous fusion belly dancer, and she formatted to keep it safer for people so that we're not hurting ourselves. Because one thing I will be honest with, like my first couple instructors, their method of teaching didn't fix my posture. So I ended up with like pretty bad like hip issues, not realizing I was hurting myself, right? But now we know everyone knows about staying in neutral pelvis. Even belly dancers aren't allowed to tuck their booty on your it hurts your back. So everyone's learning in retrospect. And so we teach a lot of the safety mechanics during dance.

Dancing Through Chemo

Carlene 4:34

So you started dancing later on in life. You're not like 10 years old, like or younger. Because for me, I was like, oh, something, something that we have in common. I dance, but I don't dance as much anymore. But I started taking jazz dance when I was 10. And then I did ballet because they kept saying ballet keeps your form, and I didn't like ballet, but it was important, I guess, for dance structure. And you know, I'm I think it was all well almost 10 years that I danced for, and and it's still a part of who you are. Like, you know what I mean? It's it's like that little escape. So I understand that. But what what I want to ask is how did you have energy to dance? Because like chemotherapy doesn't drain you. You're you're like drained.

Speaker 2 5:22

Yeah, I mean, chemotherapy is let's be honest, right? They're poor, they're pumping poison into your system, hoping it'll hit the cancer. It does not differentiate between healthy and cancerous tissue, though. So it goes throughout your whole system, it hits your brain, it hits every single one of your organs in your body, it hits your nerves. I had pretty severe nerve damage in my hands and feet from the chemo. And so, like as I was dancing, I could feel less and less in my hands and feet. I would be dropping my favorite mugs. I stubbed my toe and broke it because I couldn't feel it. It would it felt like I was wearing six pairs of woolen socks all crinkled in my shoe. That's how bad the neuropathies got. Why did I dance? Because when you're moving, you're actually increasing an energy frequency in your body. So if we understand some science, our bodies are made of cells and then atoms that are constantly vibrating. Even if we're standing still, everything's vibrating in our body. And we respond to sound. That's just the science, right? So when you're in a space dancing andor sitting because I'm tired because I'm going through chemo, and other dancers are dancing, they're generating frequency that's actually quite healing for people. When you perform, the good performers, we have energy with the audience because the audience is providing energy, we're generating energy, we're taking the energy from the audience, alchemizing it, changing, and giving it back to them. That's my definition of a good performer. There are performers I love, and all they do is take energy. So the audience members, we feel really tired at the end of the performance, and we don't know why. We don't know why, right? And that's the key because there's always an energy exchange, either one way or both ways. So that's why I was able to do it during chemotherapy, because I would go and get charged up with all the other dancers in the room. So I would go to a festival. And if there was a performance, right? If I if I was performing that night, because I did do performances also, I would choose which days I would take class versus oh, I'm gonna perform, I'll just sit in on the classes and learn from the teachers visually.

Carlene 7:22

Yeah. So they say, you know, like it's not where you're going, it's where you came from. And so the dance side or like the family side, like what did your parents do? Was it was someone in the arts in your family that brought that on, or I kind of wish. No.

Energy, Performance, And Healing

Speaker 2 7:38

Yeah, yeah. Well, I was born in Taiwan, and my parents were both very, very poor peasants from Taiwan. Okay, so Taipei, which is Taiwan's like a bean shape, and Taipei is the northern part of this bean shape. And my mother came from the middle of the bean, and my father came from the southernmost poorest part of Taiwan. So they were too poor. No such thing as the luxury of arts and and even dance. There's no such thing. So when we came to the station, I wanted to take dance. My parents were like, no, you get good grades, become a doctor, we'll talk. But I'm a kid wanting to do dance classes. And I think after three years of begging my mother, she let me do one semester of ballet when I was very little. Unfortunately, my parents owned a restaurant at the time, so whenever they had the little show that the kids would have, my parents couldn't go because it was during their dinner hour they were working. So I was the only one lone child without a parent doing ballet. And it was not a good experience, so I didn't go back. And then it wasn't until high school that it was an elective. I still remember my my very first official ballet instructor, Mrs. Levine. She was so wonderful. She really brought up the love of ballet for me and modern. And then in college, I took a actually, um, Deborah Messing from Will and Grace, she was my classmate at university. So I got to take class with her. She went on to be an actor. Then I had to go and be in, I ended up like, my parents were like, no, you can't major in dance. First of all, there's no degree at your university. But you need to make something of yourself. So I ended up going for my master's degree in occupational therapy. And so when I was working in New York City, I took class at Broadway Dance Center in New York City. And so here I am in my 20s, not really dancing full-time, taking classes with dance majors who are taking my one and a half hour hip-hop class as a warm-up. I'm exhausted. They're like, okay, I'm ready for my day of classes. I'm like, I hate you, you 16-year-old, you know.

Carlene 9:32

Oh my gosh. Dancers are in a league of their own, I have to say. As someone who took dance all throughout high school, and then I took some electives in university. When you walk into a class, it's so daunting, Jenny. Like it's it's one of those things. I remember walking. I could, you bring me back to my dance days too, because like sharing you talk, like the how much energy they have. But I remember walking in and I I didn't wear dance clothes that day because I'm like, oh, it's the first day, like I'm in university. I didn't really think about it. They're all in their leotars. And like the teacher was like, Are you in the right class? I'm like, Yes, I am. This is I enrolled in this class. They're like, you need to go check. So I literally had to go upstairs to check on something I already knew. And then I came back down and I'm like, I am in this class. Right. And so it was all, they were always questioning me about why I'm taking this class. And then I felt like you had to, I had to prove myself.

Family Roots And Early Training

Speaker 2 10:26

I don't know why, but like with dancers, they just have a son who graduated with a ballet degree. Okay, the it's a very old school mentality. They're very classist and elitist. And that's one of the things why, you know, even so my son graduated with a degree in ballet, he felt that there were a lot of unspoken rules and laws that need to be re rewritten to make it more accessible. So, like he teaches ballet for adults in my online membership because we want to help adults have access to all forms of dance. Like he teaches ballet, my daughter teaches Tai Chi, I do my fascial and dance movement classes because the goal is to get more people moving, you know, not be a gatekeeper. We're those days are over. I don't know if people realize that. Anyone and everyone has the birthright to dance growing. It really should be that way. So, you know, the olden days of us feeling like we have to prove ourselves, those should be out of the picture. However, you know, we have reality. So we just have to make our own table. Like, that's it. Make our own table. There are studios being made by people who are like, I never belong, so I'm starting the studio, so everyone's welcome.

Carlene 11:38

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, as someone who is a dancer and like you're promoting dance now, like even your podcast. I was listening to your podcast, and that's it's a different take. I I mean, years ago, I don't think I could find a podcast on dance. And so that's very different. Like, I mean, I didn't listen to the whole thing, but what what brought that on for you? Like creating a dance podcast, right?

Elitism In Dance And Access

Speaker 2 12:04

Yeah, yeah. It the podcast was launched hand in hand with my book, Outside in Recovery, dancing my way back to myself after breast cancer, because really truly, it was one of the few ways I could feel safe. Because once you go through an illness, your brain doesn't trust your body, and your body certainly does not trust you because you just put it through all this chemo. It's like, hello, I thought you wanted me to be alive, but you just pumped all this poison in me. What am I supposed to do with this? So, dance is one of the safety highways that the body and mind can reunite. Okay, because if you think about it, when you're dancing to music or what you perceive as music, it requires a good portion of your brain to work together. You can't compartmentalize in any way. You just can't. Your vision, your your mode of planning, your emotions, your proprioception, which is awareness of where you are you are in space, all that has to light up together. Okay. So that is a modality that people don't realize is part of getting present in the moment. Most of us were not present, especially post-Panini. I call the pandemic Panini, because everyone has definitions about it. The panini. Okay, okay. Yeah, because everyone has definitions about whether or not it's really over. We're all survivors, though, of this big lockdown that the globally affected the world. We're all survivors. And I knew realized, oh, not a lot of us came back mentally after that, because it was so scary on so many different levels for us. Some people actually lost family members, like huge amounts of family members. All of us have anger about it, which I talk about in my book. All of us have some form of survivor guilt, right? Where they're not, they acknowledge if there was a virus or not, a lot of people died. And there's subconsciously a level of like, well, I survived, like, what do I do with my life now? You know, because some people they find that very hopeless, and some people find that very guilt-written. Yeah. Even just the shock of what happened. Yeah. So it's those three things. Most of us are like, I don't even know how to like function. I know life is different, but how do I manage this now? And so the book talks about that. And I was like, well, the book needs some avenue to talk about it. That's why I started the Dance Seal podcast. It was mostly for breast cancer survivors. And then I realized, oh, it's actually for survivorship. We all survive something together globally. And I really needed to rebrand, and we just did that this year. So now it just talks about how life is a dance, and every dance requires a certain number of things like knowledge and empowerment. That's why the podcast is now called, it's still called The NC Heel.

Carlene 14:30

Life is a dance. That's that's what it's life is a dance. It is, it is. It is a journey of highs and lows. And I think the, you know what? You say the pandemic, or what do you call the panini? I like it. It makes it sound a little bit more, you know, not so toxic. But I think, if anything, the pandemic taught me that when everything stops, like you don't like your routine stops, like there's no way out. And I think that forced me to deal with my problems then. My anxiety went through the roof, Jenny. I had to go and get that checked. And then I finally got assessed to figure out what's wrong with me. Because for years, it's like when everything's when you're when you're going into work every day, nine to five, doing the motions, you're functioning just fine. But when everything stops and like you're just like, I had no idea when I was going back to work. I couldn't plan for anything. I'm like, okay, well, what am I supposed to do? You guys are not even telling me when, right? And so I think that forces us to do a lot of things. And and even for you, like you said, when did you write the book? Was it during that?

Speaker 2 15:36

During the lockdown.

Carlene 15:37

Yeah, see.

Speaker 2 15:43

When I was graduated, right, they were like, You're you're healed. Goodbye. I'm like, what? The cancer showing up kind of how do I know it's not gonna come back? Well, you know, you just need to lose some weight. I'm like, but you made me fat from the treatment. Like, what am I supposed to do now? You know, they they were like, Well, you know, you've gained some weight. I'm like, because you put me into menopause. Like, what am I supposed to do now? Well, you know, you just need to eat less. I'm like, I'm not eating at all. Like, seriously, this is ridiculous. I gained so much weight. And it wasn't until this year, because when I got menopause from chemotherapy, it increased the osteoporosis in my body. So then I had to get both female for osteoporosis. Yes, yes, when you go into early menopause, people have to be really aware when when our female hormones decrease, it opens up the pathway for things like menopause, like um osteoporosis. Because we need the hormones for both.

Carlene 16:32

Yes, I heard briefly, but not that much discussion about it. So I'm glad you're talking about. But wait a minute. So you're telling me from your chemotherapy. What?

Book And Podcast Origin

Speaker 2 16:42

Yeah. My first because I had um 16 cycles. The first four cycles were this a a cocktail of two particular chemotherapies. One was called the Red Death. That was a nickname. Do they do they tell you that though? Before you even they don't tell you you're gonna you're gonna your period's gonna stop. They don't they they might do that now, but not 11 years ago or 12 years ago when I started chemotherapy. They're just kind of like they see your fear of death and they go, we can save you. And I go, Okay, let's do it. Because I want to see my kids grow up. My kids were 14. I was like, I cannot bear the thought of my children growing up without a mother. So when the doctors 2015, right?

Carlene 17:20

Around that time.

Speaker 2 17:21

2014 was my 2014, yeah. So the first cycle chemo, I got my period like a month before when I was supposed to get my period again, and it never came. That first cycle of the red death chemo was enough to knock out my entire reproductive system. Just one cycle, just one dosage.

Carlene 17:36

And is it is it case to case? Like not every woman.

Speaker 2 17:40

No, every woman you get if you go through chemotherapy, that's why it's so devastating for younger women, because I already had kids when I got breast cancer. A lot of younger women, and by the way, the rates for breast cancer for younger women is increasing, okay? Yeah, because a lot of factors, a lot of factors, environmental, it's in our food, like everything. Okay, the rate of breast cancer for younger women is increasing, which means it affects younger women's ability to have children. If you have to go through chemo, it messes up your entire body. It's very hard to like the the options to be pregnant are gone for a lot of women that start chemotherapy.

Carlene 18:16

Oh man. I don't think I don't think we we think about that. Like when you're in that situation, and so I guess it's it's like a blessing that you had your kids before everything happened. Like, I mean it was a blessing. Yeah. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger? Like, I mean, yeah. Tell me about like how hard that is. I think I think a lot of people have a family member that has been through it and like they either choose to do chemo therapy or not. I remember my great aunt, she had bone cancer and she didn't do chemotherapy because it was against her religion, right? So as someone who went through that, you know, and like in the States, it's expensive with healthcare and like the whole process, no? Yeah.

Collective Trauma After Lockdowns

Speaker 2 18:58

Well, in the States, if you have the finances to afford health care that covers things as catastrophic as cancer, you're you you're afforded the option to do it. It depends on what kind of cancer you have and also your age, right? Because if you're younger, the cancer most likely is more dangerous because your cells are repla uh replicating at a higher rate. So if you're a younger woman with cancer, their method of treatment, if it's something that requires chemotherapy, is really, really life-saving for you. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. I do know of a couple of women that they had a type of cancer that just required radiation and a very short cycle of chemo, and then they were good. Like they didn't even need surgery. Does that make sense? So that was super good. But then they lost it, they never had kids because they they couldn't they couldn't have kids after because of the chemo. And then there's some some older women who like my mother ended up with breast cancer after my cancer, but her cancer was different. Hers was more related to like almost aging. So her cancer just required surgery and radiation, which I was very relieved about because my mom was in her like 70s, almost 80s. I was very worried about her going through chemo. And thank God her type of cancer did not require chemotherapy because I had I was very worried that she would survive it. Because the chemotherapy is so devastating to your entire system, you have to be very, very strong to do it because it will break you. Like that's just a button. People are talking about, oh, you're so brave, I'm gonna shave my head with you. Please don't shave your head, people, unless it's your child. Uh when I was sick with chemo and my head, my hair fell out and I was bald, I didn't want to see other bald people. Like, I don't want to see someone else imitating my illness. Please don't do that. Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1 20:45

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Carlene 21:14

For women, I think our hair is important. Like, hair is a thing for us. Like, I don't think it's it's it's easier said than done. Like until you're actually in that situation. Like, was it hard? Like when you lost your hair, you know?

Speaker 2 21:27

Well, I I I was delusional. I thought I was gonna keep my hair. So I had the first chemotherapy treatment, and the second one was two weeks later. They did it every two weeks. Okay. And a week and a half into it, I'm like, oh, I'll keep my hair. Look at this, so thick. And then it started falling out the next day on my pillow. I'm like, oh no. We're not doing this. We're not gonna try and preserve a part of my hair. So I had had a hairdresser that I was going to regularly. When she found out I had cancer, and she's and I said to her, I'm gonna come in and cut my hair. And she was like, No, I'll come to your house. So Before my second chemo therapy, she came to my house and buzz cut all the rest of my hair off for me. Cause I was like, I can't watch it drop because that will break me. Because my hair was even worse. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just cut it off. So she cut it off and then buzz cut me down to a buzz, and then it all fell out eventually from the chemo. Like the little little hairs kept falling out everywhere. And what I did was, let's see, my chemo started at the end of July. So about August, September, you started getting all the ads for cosplaying online. So on the Halloween tour, I ordered like 20 Halloween wigs. And I had all the range. It's how different guys it looks. Yeah. For a while, you know, and then I got pretty hair wraps and got fake flower clips and clipped hair, like flowers all over my head. Because I was kind of like, I don't want people looking at me and saying to me, Oh, you're dying. Like I was like, F you all. I'm gonna fight to live. When I had a girlfriend, I love her, she's now living in Germany. She was like, she came to visit me and was like bawling. I'm like, stop it. That's like, don't be grieving me. I am very much alive here in front of you. Does that make sense? When you're fighting for your life, you want people to be crying out of your circle. Does that make sense? Like, that's one of the first things that I would tell anybody if you have someone that you love that gets diagnosed, right? You care for them and then you go cry to your friends. Don't cry to the person who's trying to fight for their life. It's very draining. And I would have friends, like I had one dance friend who gave me permission to die. I was like, F you. My kids can give me permission to die. Why are you giving me permission to die? Like, that's not your point.

Carlene 23:42

Why didn't she say that? Why did she say that? I was like, girl, stop.

Chemo, Menopause, And Bone Health

Speaker 2 23:46

I don't think she remembers myself. No. We're not, you know. The goal is you surround the caregivers of the person has support. So, like, for example, I'm the when I was going through breast cancer, I could cry out of my circle and get support because I had to keep healthy enough and strong enough mentally to fight the treatment from taking over. Then my outer wall was like my husband, my kids. And they, instead of crying into me, were supposed to cry out to family members. We didn't have family members who were of any help at that time. Wow. But that's the goal, right? Like the primary caregivers should be able to cry out to the other family supporters. And those people cry out to other family supporters. Don't dump into the circle, please. Please don't do that because it's so much stress. Like nobody was taking care of my husband or my kids. So my husband bore the brunt of taking care of me and caring for the kids, and nobody was there for him. Because I couldn't be. And I know this because when he had cancer, I did the same thing for him.

Carlene 24:38

Yeah, I I I heard your conversation about that, how you decided to leave your job just so that you could be by his bedside, right? And so when your employer was like, oh, you could still work, right? But for you, there was no, there was no second guessing, right? There was no thought process behind that.

Speaker 2 24:55

Well, because I was an OT at the time already in the hospital system, which is even drastically less. Um back when I was an OT, so my kids are now, what, 27? So 30 years ago, right? Yeah. It was different. People stayed longer in the hospitals. Nowadays, they kind of get you out as soon as they can, right? So in the first acute phase, they're very attentive, and then they just kind of because the the whole goal is to get you out as quickly as possible. Because it's not financially helpful to the hospital for you to stay longer than like three, four days, because then they can't charge as much, or they'll make up charges. We're gonna do we're figuring this out, right? At least here in the States, current. That's what it is.

Carlene 25:32

Oh yeah. I think it's probably the same here too. I mean, uh, we're covered by OHIP, but even still with OHIP, the time to get stuff done. Like, let me tell you, I have uh an appointment with to see uh specialist, right? I'm not seeing her till February. And I just I saw my doctor a few weeks ago, right? And so even the wait time, that's not even that's just to have a consultation. That's not I don't know, I don't know what the wait time is to get the surgery done. You know what I mean? So yeah, we are we're definitely dealing with trying times now, especially in the medical system. I I don't know. We haven't COVID's gone, but we haven't recovered from it in the medical system, I don't feel like right now. Yeah.

Speaker 2 26:15

We lost a lot of staff because my husband was just recently in the hospital for because his his his surgery from his testicular cancer from almost 30 years ago caused him to be more at risk for bowel obstructions. So he got a second and third bowel obstruction this past fall, October end of October into November, and then November into mid-end of November. It was terrible. All the staff was either older, they survived the pandemic lockdown, and then or really baby, like young, young children. There was no yeah. There's no really young, very in-between people. We lost a lot of staff, a lot of quality people left because they're so burnt out.

Carlene 26:56

Yeah. What do you think is is the solution for that? I feel like there's there's some issues with within Canada and the US with the medical system, just based on like my own personal experience, you know. So because it's for profit.

Speaker 2 27:11

Yeah, we'll just leave it at that. Business.

Carlene 27:14

We think it's for our good, it's business. It's a business thing. It is, it is. At the end of the day, you are a number. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 27:21

It's business. It's a business. People, we forget that.

Carlene 27:26

We do we're like, you're supposed to help me, but the doctor is trying to see as many patients in the day, right? It's it's still the doctors don't home the hospitals unless it's a private practice, right, Carlene?

Costs, Choices, And Caregivers

Speaker 2 27:36

No. The doctors are just employees. We forget that. The hospital itself, there's like doctors, humans also, right? They're just humans trying to pay their expensive medical school bills, most of them, unless they go into private practice and they can have money. But the ones working in a hospital, they're paying off medical school bills. And then you've got like board directors who own the hospitals who want the profit, at least here in the States. It's very much that. So the quicker they can get you out, improve their numbers, and making a profit for the hospital, the better for the hospital. Yeah. Doesn't mean that they don't want to help us, right? Versus like, I don't know what you're seeing on social media, like in China, in the very, very rural areas, they've opened up AI-operated diagnostic centers where you go in, give them all their things, they scan you, and then they either give you a script or send you to the hospital.

Carlene 28:26

Wow, they've already gotten that advanced. This is scary. This is scary. This is stuff that I saw on TV when I was watching Chicago PD, when they were, and they were we're going down a rabbit hole here, but I'm just gonna say something real quick. So I remember an episode where they had the AI operate on a patient, make a mistake. The doctor had to like lie about it. They finally found out the truth because they were looking back at the video, trying to figure out what happened. Like you lost the patient. How? This is like a well-trained surgeon, right? And so AI makes mistakes. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 29:03

AI mistake, and humans do too. And so do I my husband was he was he was sent home when he should have stayed home, like say at the hospital for the first surgery, and not he was hospitalized October 27th here, and then and then he was uh discharged November 4th. He shouldn't have gone home. He we shouldn't have gone. Yeah, they sent him home, and then he was sick, me nursing him 24-7 for three days, and we brought him back to the ER, and they're like, Oh no, like you weren't taken care of the first time. That's what they said to us at the ER. And then he had to be cut open a second time that following day. So, you know what I'm saying? Like, everyone makes this mistake. What I'm what my thing is is like, you know, you say, What's the problem? Like, how do we fix the system? Like, I don't know. I don't know because here in our countries, our hospitals are businesses, right? And then I just I sugg I said for comparison, you've got people with very few quote unquote freedoms, like China, their government sending out places like rural areas, country country areas, so they they also don't have enough staff. And rural areas where people can walk in and have medical care versus we have medical care, but you have to be able to afford it.

Carlene 30:14

And even when that's the thing, but like when you can afford it, then you get the best the best service possible, right? And that's the thing. Even here, it's like it seems like they want to try and get it to be private, but you can't. We we there's so many years of this, and so we we're having an issue with people wanting to go in the medical field because of the process. You know what I mean? Like, even so if you if you become a doctor in the US or Canada, it's easier in the system. But when we have doctors coming in from other countries that don't have the same system and the whole process behind it, that's the that's the issue, too.

Speaker 2 30:52

Yeah, I mean, even like in I know that in the state of Nevada, I'm in Utah, but in Nevada, because generally the medical coverage is so bad, so bad, people will pay privately a doctor to be on call for them a year. They will literally contract a doctor, a private doctor, for their own family care for the year so that that doctor can help them when they have to go into the hospital. I was like, what? He's like, Yeah, my husband told me that. Because they he knows someone who lives there and they had to do that so that they could have good medical coverage. So they're they're already paying for medical insurance, and then they privately contract a doctor.

Carlene 31:29

Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's like you said, I I think it's like even with the money, we we are dealing with a shortage. It's like the baby boomers, like my uncle's retiring next year. It's like who's up and coming? Do we have, you know, enough doctors being trained in the first place?

Medical Systems And Burnout

Speaker 2 31:46

Like it seems like even the training needs to be updated, you know, because like here in the states, the FDA finally removed the black box warning on estrogen. And women have needed hormone replacement for how long? But there's no in the state's FDA approval rates for women to get testosterone or or estrogen, like all that stuff, right? Like me, I should have been on all that stuff five years ago.

Carlene 32:13

And you are in the room.

Speaker 2 32:14

And now I'm trying to reverse osteoporosis in my left femoral hip so I don't get a hip fracture from a fall that was caused by chemo-induced menopause. Like, come on, people.

Carlene 32:25

Yeah, like we have issues here getting like just even progesterone. Like to a doctor to give that to you, it's it's not an easy fee.

Speaker 2 32:34

It's really right, unless you pay for it out of pocket.

Carlene 32:36

Yeah.

Speaker 2 32:37

Like I pay for all of my bioidentical hormones, and I get everything now. Progesterone, uh, testosterone, estradiol, estrogen.

Carlene 32:45

Yeah.

Speaker 2 32:46

That's all bioidentical, which is safer for your liver, which I didn't know. Like we had to get our own degrees for ourselves, just so you know, people are like that stuff. And I was like, because I have hormone positive breast cancer, but it was lower risk for me. It like I had to wait. Do I want to because you know everyone's like, Worry, well, you're hormone positive. Why are you getting hormones again? Because I'll most likely die from a hip fracture than getting cancer again. That's a crazy rates of women getting hip fractures. Every three out of ten women will die from a hip fracture. You will never survive from a hip fracture. You'll get hospitalized, it'll decrease your activity, it'll increase you for other illnesses and will die from a hip fracture.

Carlene 33:25

So it's like you need a doctor, you need a hormone replacement, like a naturopath, like you have like a whole slew of people helping you, you know? Yeah, getting older is hard, right?

Speaker 2 33:37

Yeah. Well, my husband, because he had testicular cancer curling, right? And he was told, so I have permission to speak on this, it's very important for men to understand this. They don't even have updated levels of men's hormones. Okay? Because right now they're like, oh, if you increase your testosterone to a certain level, you're at higher risk for like heart attacks, correct?

Carlene 33:57

Yeah.

Speaker 2 33:57

However, my husband, when he like two, two or three years ago, he was in a biking acid in curling. And he had uh 11 broken ribs down his back and a shattered acromium process in his shoulder. And it's not a candidate for surgery because it'll make more damage than anything. So he had to heal by himself. But he's an avid swimmer and he was having pain. So they sent him to a specialist who does things like PRP shots, which would where they draw your blood, spin out the protein, and put it into your injury site to increase your body's self-healing. But the doctor said, I'm not even gonna have you spend the money because your testosterone levels are so low that it does not behoove us to do this. We have to raise your T levels. So he increased my husband's T levels. My husband's a strict vegan, okay, Carlene? And because he wasn't eating meat, he was losing all of his muscle mass. He looked a little like a little a little monk. Like he lost his butt muscles. He just has a big juicy butt. His butt was decreasing, right? And we couldn't understand why, but when he went on the tea, his butt came back. Like all his tea levels were too low. Nobody told him that. So they had to bump his tea levels up, and then he realized because he's he swims like a crazy person, runs like a bikes like a until his bike accident. He doesn't bike on the road. I won't let him do that. I'm like, no more of that. You can bike in the garage. But, anyways, he works out a lot, a lot, a lot, and his recovery time decreased from being on the higher level of tea. Like he next day. Increased energy, increased clarity in his mind. He didn't realize his tea levels were so low, he was getting brain fog from it.

Carlene 35:35

A man can get brain fog too. Like we don't hear a lot about that, right?

Speaker 2 35:39

Well, we joke about it being menopause. Men must be checking their levels. You had to be checking your levels, boo-boos. Like, if you're not checking your levels, you could be opening up the path of so many other illnesses that are reversible and avoidable.

Carlene 35:55

What levels should men be checking? Like, that's the thing. Like we always are always talking about women now. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Hormones, HRT, And Reversals

Speaker 2 36:04

Men are at very high risk. There was a doctor on, oh god, was it on diarrhea of a CEO or Mel Robins? There was a male doctor who said, listen, if you know, it's not a simple fix, like just give them erectile medication. If a man is having trouble having an erection later on in life, go and get a full body checkup. Because that's one of the first things that that manifests that you can't get an erection. It's not just because of a mental illness. Some of the times it is, you know, like you're too stressed or whatever, but there's some other things happening that you need to be paying attention. That's your body's like alarm system for men. Okay. Is it your levels are too low? Do you have another physical thing that's starting to pop up? So your body is shutting down certain areas like getting an erection to pump towards that area of distress. What's happening? Are you tuned in? You know, oftentimes we're not taught in this modern society to tune in internally to your body. You know, even have you heard of heart math, Carlene? No, no. So it's called heart math talks about your heart rate variability, which talks about your your ability to tune in to your heart has a second brain. Science has found that the heart's cells are very similar to the brain's cells. So they're neurons, right? And then when they trace the directions, right? Usually you think, oh, the brain's controlling everything. Actually, the majority is the heart sending messages up to the brain. We may not be aware of it. But the heart sending more messages to the brain than the brain sending down to the heart. So when you're tuned into your heart, your heart health, more than just the physical, like if you have cholesterol, but your actual heart is very similar to your gut, which also has neurons in your brain. You actually have three brains in your body: mind, heart, and gut. And they're in the intricate system, always talking to each other. The goal for me is to get people to be more in tune to the heart and brain and gut messaging, because they're the ones really telling you what's what's going on. And if you're not paying attention to that, you'll just end up being sick because your body's screaming at you, hey, do you realize you haven't had enough water, Carlene? Yeah. You have weed for like three hours, you know. That's that means I had to shut down this system because you didn't bring enough water through your mouth. So now what are they gonna do? Right? Things like that. Like I have a very intricate self-care list that that even includes like, did I drink enough water today? Yeah, yeah. You know, am I am I taking enough vitamins? Where am I low? My husband has um an extra vitamin called DHEA that actually helps certain things metabolize in his body. Very few people will test for that. And he had to up his before they would do the PRP for his back, in addition to his testosterone. He is very low in vitamin D. Most people are low, by the way.

Carlene 39:07

I think depending on where you live, you're not getting enough sunlight. I mean, especially in the winter months, like we definitely have to increase that. So you just reminded me, I have to take my vitamin D today. I didn't take that many. So yes, yes. We have talked so much about like the medical thing, but I I think like, you know, listening to your body, I think is is important, right? And and I just learned this heart math and and that the fact that your body has more than one brain, that's that's new to me. But I think because this show is a series focused for women in their 40s and older, what advice do you have? Because I mean you've been through so much, you know, in your journey to here and now.

Speaker 2 39:51

Yeah. So for if if you're starting to get symptoms where your sleep is not optimal, or your eating is not optimal, or you're drinking, especially your liquids is not optimal, take that time to make that number one. If you're not present in your body and all your body is doing is whispering, it's gonna start screaming. And screaming means a lump in your breast, okay? A fracture that you didn't expect, heart palpitations. We'd like you to avoid those. Don't get to that point. If it gets to that point, please stop and take care of yourself. Usually when things like that show up, it's because you've been ignoring a lifetime and we've been conditioned to ignore. 2026 is the new age of women going, wait a minute, why am I suffering? There's no need to suffer. When I started this interview, I said to Carlene audience members, I said, I'm an open book. Why? Because no one thought to tell me this stuff at all. I didn't know, Carlene, that if you're, and this is a big thing that no one talks about, if you're prone to UTIs, that's not normal. That is not acceptable. Okay? You urinary tract infections are very dangerous for women because they're silent killers for us. Those usually happen if you've got menopause or even painful intercourse. Those are all correlated because if you're if you're also in perimetopause, that means your levels have to be checked. They're all correlated, and there's ways to get healthier if we would just be listening to your body.

Men’s Health And Testosterone

Carlene 41:22

No, you're right. You're right. When you don't listen, I think when it's it's at dire straits where I've been there where my body was saying something and I wasn't listening. And so, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 41:34

We're so good at listening to everybody else's needs. Stop with start with yourself in 2026, start with your own needs.

Carlene 41:41

Yeah, yeah. I know sometimes those people are considered like such a you know, like you're so into yourself. But I mean, at the end of the day, it's it's you, it's it's your life and it's everything. And so we didn't talk about what you do, like you you're heavily involved in dance, but do you, as a neurosomatic practitioner, you are the second I've met. Do you practice full-time? Is that the other thing that you focus on?

Speaker 2 42:06

Yes. So I currently have a membership that implements the discover process in from my book. And what we're doing is getting people safe in their bodies. Here's the thing: no matter when you start the journey of returning back into your body, it's a very individual journey and it has to be a regular process. Meaning, if someone's trying to sell you or a thing where they're like, I could heal you in 30 minutes, please don't trust that person. It's a temporary band-aid, all right? You'll feel good for like an hour and then you'll have to go back for another fix. The goal is that you don't need anybody, like you can get in touch with your own body and figure out how to communicate with yourself about what you need and what you don't need. And what the membership does is people come in to get in touch with their bodies. They do dance, myofascia release, ballet, geared towards adult learners, because we learn a different way. Tai chi, which gets you present. And then we have monthly meetings where people are in community and just learning to listen to themselves again. Then from there, if you want more, then we'll start going into this. It's more trauma-aware neurolinguistic programming because there are ways that we need to deprogram ourselves from everything telling us of what we should have been, what we could have been, what we need to be versus what you're meant to be.

Carlene 43:24

Having the clarity and knowing what you're meant to be. I think that that goes a long way. Sometimes the brain, like you're so you've been through so much, like your whole trauma. And like when you finally get clarity, everything makes sense. Like for me, when I got clarity, it was like, oh, it now makes sense. Like when when people used to say like that I have certain gifts, I'm like, I don't see it. No, right? But then one day I woke up, I was like, I get it now, right? And so it's always good when you finally understand. It's like a slow progression, but I think some of us are given gifts, right? And you have your gifts too, right? And so if someone who's listening wants to check out the the program itself.

Speaker 2 44:08

Well, what what they can do is if they go to move tobloom.com, there's a free masterclass that I give uh the end of this month. Um when this episode launches for your audience, and they just go to move to bloom. It'll be updated for every month. They come to that, they could follow me on my Dance to Heal podcast on YouTube. They can also reach out to me private message on any social media platform under Jenny C. Cohen. I I purposely did that so y'all can find me, because you know.

Heart Math And Body Signals

Carlene 44:41

There's another Jenny's Jenny Cohen, right? You know, yeah, there's many, many Cohen, but there's very Jenny C. Cohen's who are Asian. Yeah, so Jenny C. Cohen and then dance dance to heal. I like it. I like it. It works, it's good. I might have to check that out. I I I I I appreciate the whole dance thing. As a dancer myself, I feel like dance will always be a part of who I am. It's in my DNA. And it was, you know what? I think like when I think back, it helped through a lot of things. You know what I mean? And and you know, like in life when you're going through a lot of hard times, like dance probably helped me through a lot of my childhood trauma. And like it's amazing that dance was helpful for you during your cancer, you know, like when you were not in good health, you were fighting for your life, you know, as they say, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much, Jenny, for sharing your insight and your story. And I I just learned so much. It's amazing. So thank you so much for being on the show. I'm Carlene, and this is Diva Tonight with Jenny C. Cohen.

Speaker 45:51

Thanks for listening to Diva Tonight. Follow us on Instagram at DivaOntheRadio. That's D.Va with two eyes. And don't forget to follow us on TikTok at Diva on the radio for more clips and conversations you'll love. Want to share your thoughts or send us a message? Text us anytime at divatonight.buzzsprout.com. Until next time, stay fabulous.