| This research explored and analyzed the relationship of five female breast cancer survivors and the interconnectedness of the disease to trauma, emotions, and body image. The cooperative inquiry examined how weaving the threads of practiced awareness, breath and bodywork, visual arts, and metaphor recognized the ongoing transformation of their perception/experience into a new reality.;The principle of sunyata or "interconnectedness" guided this research through a nondualistic, feminist lens, producing a description of cultural influences upon women's body image and our perception/experience thereof. Awareness of the breast cancer experience and inter-related emotions, thoughts, and sensations were used to cocreate a process to understand the relationships that produced the body image.;Data revealed that breast cancer survivors working in collaboration overcame their reticence in speaking about their experience with breast cancer, to acknowledge their somatic responses and lived body image. They uncovered the integral effects of emotion, distress, and trauma on women's ability to reconstruct their bodies and body image.;Through metaphorical, aesthetic, and somatic interventions, we explored deep levels of the sense of shifting reality, emotional and physical scarring, and loss of personal power. Following Heron and Reason's (1996) model of cooperative inquiry we created a safe space in which women posed questions of themselves, each other, the culture of the United States, and the Western medical model.;The focus group for this qualitative study was taken from a small group of women living in the northwest United States, volunteers diagnosed with breast cancer who were not likely to re-experience trauma. This target group was selected from cancer centers and women having personal knowledge of the research project.;This study contributed to the body of knowledge and understanding of the interconnection of relationships to our perception/experience of body image. It explored the process of identification, association, and the ability to form a social creative process. The research followed the focus group and recorded the increase of awareness, as well as the ability to express and redirect perception/experience of body image. The information in this study is useful to breast cancer survivors and the medical and therapeutic professionals who work with them. |
