Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcription has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors and ommissions.

Robin Daly
Hi and welcome to the Yes to Life show on UK Health Radio. I’m Robin Daly, host for this show and founder of Yes to Life, the UK charity that promotes integrated medicine for cancer, helping those affected to find out about and access its many benefits. As part of our 20th anniversary year, we’re focusing on one aspect of integrated medicine each month, and currently we’re featuring exercise. My guest this week is in that vein as she’s developed her skill, dance, into a healing art for those who are cancer. Emily Jenkins calls her organisation Move, Dance, Feel and is by now hugely knowledgeable and experienced in providing support and in teaching others to follow her lead.

Emily Jenkins
Hi Robin, thank you so much for having me, it’s a joy to be back.

Robin Daly
So we’ve got some catching up to do, as would you believe it’s been more than four years since you were last on the show. So one thing I learned last time you’re on is that you are a major doer intent on pushing forward your particular line in integrative care, dance. So I’m expecting you’ve got quite a bit of news for us on the trajectory of move dance feel. First, for those who are not fortunate enough to have come across you already, can you start by telling what you’re doing importantly, why you do it.

Emily Jenkins
Yeah, of course. I am a dance artist. I’ve been working in the dance sector for 15 years. And eight years ago, I founded Move Dance Feel, which is now a community interest company offering dance to women living with and beyond cancer, any type of cancer at any stage in a cancer journey. And it’s also open to women who are supporting someone affected by cancer or warning the loss of someone to cancer. So we try and be as open and as inclusive as possible, even though we’re a women -only initiative and in the cancer community.

Robin Daly
Mm -hmm great. So how did it happen? How did you get here doing this? I mean, it’s an unusual course for a dancer

Emily Jenkins
Yeah, I mean, going back, I think I’ve always had this interest in where dance is not happening and who is not feeling that dance is accessible to them. And I guess my personal history of dance, I’ve danced since I was four years old, really arose through community spaces. Although I then went to a conservatory years later, I guess it was more of a grassroots dancing in community, everyone can dance, if you can move, you can dance. And so when I did get in those more professional contexts, I still had this questioning of kind of what in dance feels good for me, it’s primarily a social art form, you know, as long as there have been humans on this planet, there have been humans dancing.

Emily Jenkins
And actually, it remains so central to many indigenous practices and cultural traditions as a way of not just building community, but maintaining community and also celebrating cycles, whether that’s changes in seasons, which we’re now in, or, you know, the arrival of a baby, a person into the community or grieving someone who’s passed away, dance is such an innate part of our physical expression, which in the western world just felt a bit lost. It became in the early 1900s, a bit more associated with a high art, and an art form that was often affiliated with opera and theater houses. And so for the past kind of 10 years, I would say I’ve been questioning and saying, why aren’t more people dancing in the west when we know the levels of inactivity and mental health challenges are rising.

Emily Jenkins
And I could see in the work that I was doing, limitless possibilities for how it supports health, physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, spiritually. And so why move dance feel? I grew up with some quite personal experiences of canceling my family and close friendship network. And then in my early 20s, when I was really starting to look at dance, kind of at the intersection of health, and there are quite a number of initiatives now really under the Arts and Health umbrella, I guess eight years ago was quite new to look at the relationship between them.

Robin Daly
It was.

Emily Jenkins
dancing cancer, and I guess two main driving factors in setting moved out of the sphere. One was the very sobering percentage of people reported in, I think it was McMillan statistics at the time, 2014 -15, that 75% of people post -treatment, so kind of in remission from cancer were reporting negative side effects that were very prolonged, very debilitating, and really having an awful impact on the quality of life, and it really indicated that there wasn’t enough support, and enough support that focused on holistic health, and none of that prioritizing movement and creativity. And parallel to that was a lot of evidence I uncovered around the benefits of physical activity as this wonder drug, and yet in London at the time there were hardly any physical activity initiatives.

Emily Jenkins
I thought, well dance is a physical activity, it’s holistic, it’s incredibly social to really give a palpable sense of support and a sense of belonging in a group, and it’s a way to express ourselves and express feelings and parts of ourselves for which there are perhaps no words, you know, there’s so much overload cognitively when diagnosed with cancer and moving through treatment that you almost need to get out of your head and back into your body, and that was one of the starting points, and then I’m sure we’re going to talk about where it’s growing and evolving.

Robin Daly
we are really interesting there’s so much more you’re saying there you’re right just back there when you were starting that’s when the message was getting out that people were surviving cancer but surviving was about it really and it was just tough and people were depressed and having symptoms that wouldn’t go away yeah there was so much was being uncovered then and and also yeah exercise was just beginning to get on the mat back then wasn’t it but i mean now there’s no doubt about it exercise is probably the most universal best thing that people with cancer can be doing for themselves um it doesn’t mean it’s being recommended in our hospitals yet but it’s got too soon they can’t be held off much longer

Emily Jenkins
You see the report just out that was earlier this year that looked at a range of different exercises and modalities and found that dance specifically was the most effective antidepressant. Dance was the one that seemed to alleviate those symptoms.

Robin Daly
How amazing. Well, I mean, I was just about to say this is it’s interesting. Well, there’s this general thing about exercise and movement and cancer is, you know, it’s well established now that is not questioned. But dance is very specific and it has all these cultural associations you’re talking about. It’s very interesting how, you know, dance and music are actually really central to culture, aren’t they? And but you’re right that dance is sort of it’s taken a bit of a backseat comparatively. Music’s still out there as a very cultural thing. People are massing together to enjoy music and everything. But not so much so with dance, but you’re right. It used to be a center of local community life everywhere at one time. And so, yeah, maybe we’re missing a trick there. And it’s it does affect us in many, many ways.

Emily Jenkins
My argument in that, if I may, jump in and challenge your preconceptions around dance, many of us living in the West, a lot of people look at dance because watching dance is wonderful, but we make comparisons around the athleticism or the aesthetics or, you know, the performance quality. And actually we need to change the narrative that it’s not really about what it looks like, how it makes you feel and how it brings you into the depth of connection with yourself and one another simultaneously. But I think in the West we’ve got so much in our minds around perfectionist tendencies that people get self -conscious of wondering what they look like when they dance rather than just leaning into that abandon and having fun with it. And that’s enough.

Robin Daly
So, your original title for your work is doing you well at this point mood dance feel is right on the money, yeah? Yeah. Very good. Okay, so look, let’s do a quick round up with you of the benefits of dance to people with cancer, all the key ones.

Emily Jenkins
So, in the eight years that Move Dance Field has been running, we’ve done four cycles of research and service evaluations and the benefits that we have discovered are, of course, improved energy and greater range of motion in the body, improved sleep, I’m thinking also now on the kind of physical activity exercise area, people just feeling that it is an effective way to combat tiredness, even women saying, I come feeling tired, and then I leave feeling like I have more energy. Sometimes you have to push yourself a little to then know that you can move through it and actually leave with energy rather than exhaustion.

Emily Jenkins
The main one that I see time and time again is this enhancement of body appreciation, this way to reconnect to the body that also has been through so much, we can’t necessarily think our way into repairing that relationship with our body, but to move through the body and find a sense of comfort in it again, sometimes even pleasure in it again, is one of the most effective ways to move through some of the distrust or the shame or the pain. We know you just mentioned music, that music is also an effective pain relief, and we always dance with music, and we know that it reduces loneliness. The way kind of in the move down to your methodology, the way that we facilitate really does invite people into connection with one another, we place great importance on that social aspect.

Emily Jenkins
So a lot of our research results talk about that reduction and feeling alone, and actually this greater sense of belonging to a family or community or sisterhood. And the main one that is most obvious in the process of dancing is that mood shift, that alleviation of stress and anxiety, which you know is incredibly prevalent in this context. And dancing for joy, we don’t place enough importance on joy. I mean, we do in the dance context, but those in the health context. And joy is an antidote to fear. Joy and fear cannot exist in the same moment, and how prevalent is fear and worry in this context as well. Absolutely. That joy, and when it’s amplified through the relationships with other people, and you see your joy reflected in other people’s joy, it’s such a liberating, kind of powerful, empowering outcome to that.

Robin Daly
This is the message that keeps on growing, is that the actual power of group work of all kinds to do that thing, that kind of reflective energy of everybody wanting everybody else to succeed in some way, is enormously powerful to people’s well -being and to answer in some belongings.

Emily Jenkins
And what I found most interesting, I would love to do another study on, is that interrelationship between mental and physical health and people finding that when you develop a greater sense of positivity in your thinking or your feeling state, of course, your body responds, like our mindset actually has a definitive impact on our physiology. And there needs to be more research in that area, it’s not a good idea for this. It’s true, as different things, as positive functioning, as positive relating, and know that there’s this two -way channel, we’re not just brains into bodies, there’s bodies into brains, only valuing and noticing it and enhancing that mind -body connection through dance, which sadly a lot of us find intangible when we’re not really taking time to be present in our bodies.

Robin Daly
Yeah, I get really excited about the development of the science of psychoneuroimmunology. It’s kind of taken a lot of stuff that got labelled as a woo -woo and made it as, you know, biochemical fact that this is what actually happens and that this two -way street you talk about is immensely important to people’s recovery. And if you ignore it, you’re missing half the picture, virtually.

Emily Jenkins
Yeah, and if I may add, so what I just talked through is some of the benefits that we’ve captured, let’s say, in -house through our work specifically. But over the last two years, supported by a Churchill Fellowship, I’ve been traveling internationally and connecting with other, you know, dance and cancer programs or initiatives I’m aware of. And through that work have collated 37 research papers all looking at dance and cancer or dance movement therapy and cancer. And this is a body of research that now spans almost 20 years. And myself and a cancer biomedicine student at UCL went through synthesizer with these papers and essentially categorized areas of effect for benefit. So in addition to what I said, there was a lot around kind of body appreciation and body image that was reassuring, kind of combating fatigue and feeling more energized, but then there are additional categories all in mix around self identity, improving self identity, self -effect accuracy, and symptom and side effect management.

Emily Jenkins
Somebody studied range from the more quantitative and the kind of okay enhanced range of motion in the shoulder for people affected by breast cancer, for example, the specificity, but some of them were a little bit more holistic in nature. Again, talking about this sense of group and the unity that is felt through dance, the kind of intimacy that’s felt means that the relationships that are catalyzed through the dance activity transcend outside of the dance space and can be friendships of the life. And then actually, there’s quite an awakening in some people in terms of when you are confronted by your mortality, and it can sometimes give a sense of purpose and clarity as to what you might want to do now going forwards and the kind of relationships that you invest in that really carry a lot of meaning.

Robin Daly
Well, I’m thirsty.

Emily Jenkins
If you’re interested, if anyone’s listening is interested on that, you can go on the Movedanceville website. It’s on a page called the Argument for Dancing Cancer Care, and at the bottom there’s a link to public access to this database, and you can do that in more detail.

Robin Daly
piece of work. I have a little bit more to say about that later. But yeah, fantastic. I wonder if we just go back to one of the things you mentioned that might not be understood by people who haven’t been there, which is what you’re talking about this relationship with your own body, the break of trust that cancer can create. You just say a little bit more about that and how dance can help with that.

Emily Jenkins
Yeah, and I think I just want to voice that I haven’t personally had an experience of cancer in my body, but I’ve spent a lot of time with people navigating cancer specifically and also other major health challenges that, of course, disrupt that sense of trust in the body. And so I don’t want to talk too much about that without lived experience. Everyone has a different experience of how they move through and navigate those challenges. But what I’ve felt through dance is that it activates so much emotion and creates space in the body for the emotion to surface, which is not necessarily a bad thing. When we suppress that in the body, it builds tension, physical and mental tension, and things get locked. And that’s often manifest in terms of pain or aches. And so when we find a sense of release through the dance practice, through the actual movement, we can create space in our body to release long held or locked emotion that needs to be let go of, needs to alchemize.

Emily Jenkins
So that’s one part of it, something we’re actually finding a little bit more softness in the body and less physical pain. And as I said before, I think that’s really related to the kind of tension we can carry in mind, which is really understandable in this context when there’s so much tomb hold to cognitively. But the way that we work really focuses on artistry. So the sense of possibility with how we move and moving through perceived limitations, whether they are set by ourselves or another, sometimes the medical context really focuses on what we can’t do or where the problem is and how the body is problematic. Whereas in dance we focus on, okay, what are the possibilities here? How are all the ways we can move? And if we move into a part of ourself that feels a little bit sticky, how will we move around that?

Emily Jenkins
There are just so many possibilities. And that comes from this creative interrogation that there is no necessarily right or wrong. Of course, we can find rhythmic structures and choreography, but there are so many ways and possibilities to move that creates new neural pathways, like how we move into the space behind or the space above or into spirals or into circles or into lines, for example, creates different ways of thinking, creates different ways of seeing, and importantly, seeing ourselves. So what’s interesting in the work and the research finding is our own body appreciation is not necessarily improvements on that physical level, although that does exist kind of in heart stamina or flexibility, but more so research subjects and people we’ve done to talk about a shift in self -perception.

Emily Jenkins
So they might still have their scars, but they are less confronted by them. They can look in the mirror again, whereas they perceive themselves at the start of dancing as old and ill and kind of struggling with reconciling the complications in their surgery. Six months later, they’re like, you know, I’m actually really accepting of my body. I’m starting to find a greater sense of appreciation for what it’s been through and even celebrate it now and its resiliency, and I feel more alive. And that’s, you know, works on a level dance with feeling the energy run through our veins, feeling the blood flow, feeling the breath, that you have to feel the body in a stronger position again and powerful.

Emily Jenkins
At the same time, we balance that with a sense of nurturing. So we know how far we can push it without exhausting people, and we give a lot of options different ways in, and we balance this kind of challenge, this artistic challenge to get you feel more enlivened with then kind of softening into a nurturing practice that involves touch, involves breath awareness, involves relating to one another, involves rest, so that we can start to really attune to the sensations in the body and de -numb. Often what happens, and I know the word trauma has come up in a lot of cancer spaces, cancer related PTSD, but let’s face it, trauma is kind of prevalent across society to different degrees even on micro levels, and everybody has a resistance to pain, and we numb from it, and actually as much as that can be an understandable coping response,

Emily Jenkins
when we stay in that state for a long time, we lose touch with our bodies because we’re not able to sit with the pain, we’re not able to sit with what’s happening, and we need a body intelligence to move through the world in a way that we can understand ourselves better in relationship to our surroundings and one another, so it’s a long answer to a short question.

Robin Daly
No, they’re great answers, really interesting stuff. And the other aspect that I often think about is the story we’re told about cancer, which I think is scientifically questionable, is that somehow our body is turned against us. And this also can deeply affect people’s trust, because they always trusted their body up to that point to look after them, didn’t matter what they did. It healed itself up, it got you well again, got over the infection, it got over the disease, and on you went. But suddenly, this is now, oh, there’s something inside me attacking me, is the picture we’re given. And that’s a hard one to swallow for people. And can have a really fundamental effect on the way they’re looking at themselves going forward.

Emily Jenkins
Yeah, and I think it’s utter. We need to change the narrative as well. You can’t carry the guilt of thinking that you’re not on your own cancer as well as we navigate to the treatment processes of fear that that brings. And I’ve danced with thousands of women now over many years, and it seems somewhat unpredictable as to what age you are when cancer strikes under a little more health condition and people who eat all the right things and exercise in the right way and still caught by surprise. Of course, we’re getting into a state now where we can’t deny the challenges associated with planetary health and how that interrelates with human health in terms of the quality of the water we’re drinking, the quality of the food that we’re eating, air pollution, et cetera.

Emily Jenkins
And I think that is a detrimental effect for sure. But I don’t think people can… I don’t think it’s helpful to carry the guilt or the questioning around what have I done to bring this on. Sadly, it’s kind of just the times we’re living in that cancer is so prevalent and increasingly so, and it’s one in two. And as sobering as that statistic is, on the flip side, it’s like, well, let’s also take these opportunities to feel fully alive, even in the face of dying. And that, for me, is what dance offers, to not lose the joy of living and having moments where we can feel ecstatic in the lives and in connection, especially if our time is limited.

Robin Daly
Right, okay, so now I want to ask you about something which people might find a bit unusual, I find it a bit unusual. There you are, you’re a dance artist in Emil Nevelesen for these things that people associate with somebody who’s a dance artist, we also kind of research geek, which is another world altogether. How come these two things come together in you? What’s led you to, an active interest in pursuing the science, building the science, creating the basis for what you’re doing to give it a substantiation in the scientific world.

Emily Jenkins
Yeah, I mean, I always feel I want to quote Albert Einstein here, it’s like curiosity has its own reason for existence. And I would say that everything I do, whether it’s developing, you know, rigor in my dance practice or rigor in a research model and research design, it’s, it’s led by my curiosity. It’s, you know, artistically I’m, for example, facilitating and offering ideas and inviting us to use the space differently, and I’m really observant, you know, how people are responding to this, you know, humans are quite readable with our faith and expressions and our body language. So I’m really present with noticing that what’s happening as it’s unfolding in response to dance practice. Is it the combination of music and the rhythmic structure and the synchronicity with that? Is it also in my choice language?

Emily Jenkins
Is it also in the way that I’m pacing the session and bringing the energy up and bringing the energy down? I question, which is fed by my curiosity. And to pair that with the research side, I mean, that’s kind of the language that the health sector speaks. They want everything evident. When I first had the idea for Lou Dansfield, it took me over a year and a half to really set it up, which ended up doing voluntarily because although I had so many promising conversations with cancer care professionals, they kept telling me, despite their concrete hypothesis, that there wasn’t any research. No, I said, I know, but we have to do the project. They kept the research, the pilot and the evidence. Yeah, it’s chicken and egg. So that was when I kind of threw the talent, okay, I’ll just do it anyway, voluntarily and do six weeks.

Emily Jenkins
And I had to do a research study around it to kind of get it off the ground. But to answer your question, I think that’s what hooked me in because then when I could see through my artistic inquiry, how the practice was influencing the research results, and simultaneously, we call this practice based research, how the research results was illuminating nuances in the practice, which were contributing to wellbeing, I kind of just dug with a bone, I got hooked and thought, oh, this is deepening my understanding. It’s helping me broaden my vocabulary for what’s actually happening here. I’m developing a language in which I can take this to health care professionals and cancer support centers I wanted to work with who could potentially program dance in their activity offerings. So that’s kind of where it began. And then it’s, it’s snowballed. The more you look, the more you find, and whether, qualitatively, it’s.

Robin Daly
That’s very interesting. I mean, not normally they come from two different places that the practice and the research You know two different people two different groups of people. So it’s it’s very interesting that one person is pushing both forward But I mean it’s ideal in many ways Because obviously you’ve got this intimate knowledge of both sides of the picture And so, you know what research needs doing You know how that research could inform the practice and improve the practice. It’s just the you know, perfect

Emily Jenkins
I’m going to add as well and then one of the first studies when I was going in with quite open questions, what are the benefits of dance in this context? Did it connect to notions of wellbeing and therefore how are we looking at wellbeing because it’s also a contested concept depending on which kind of research measures you’re using. I found through a lot of qualitative explorations and in vivo coding and looking at participants’ responses because I really went in perhaps I’m usually as a researcher saying I want to learn from the people who are dancing with me and people affected by cancer.

Emily Jenkins
I want them to tell me and show me what the benefits are and how can I set up a research framework that effectively captures that whilst also having a very informed hypothesis to come in with. One of the things that came up in terms of wellbeing was that the choice terms and phenomena very much sat in that realm of positive psychology and when we look at wellbeing now and all the ways it exists in terms of holistic health and what’s needed of our time 2024 and when people do use wellbeing models often it has origins in positive psychology and this comes back to what we were saying earlier our thinking effects are doing.

Robin Daly
Yeah, very important. Well, it’s great. I mean, well -being is, since the pandemic, it’s now a thing. I think before it was something that Hippis did and, you know, it wasn’t taken seriously, but now I think it is. I think it’s on the map and that’s one of the actual benefits that came out of that horrible period of that pandemic. Okay, so there you are. You’ve been doing all this research. As you mentioned, your latest and greatest, the argument for dancing cancer care, a massive endeavour. You’ve been travelling around gathering together every single scrap of evidence on the planet for what you’re doing and you’ve synthesised it in an extraordinary way, very comprehensively, to yet further strengthen the argument for what you’re doing. Um, yeah, how did it add to what you already knew?

Emily Jenkins
In a way, it wasn’t so surprising, but it was very reassuring to know that there was synergy, that a project that I had started in the UK that is still relatively small grassroots initiative is retrieving similar findings to that in New York, to that in LA, to that in Switzerland. So actually, it was just very reassuring to know that there were commonalities in terms of people’s reported benefits, and also to create a network of initiated dancing cancer care network of artists, of researchers, of health professionals, of students who are also exploring or working in this niche area of dancing cancer care so that we can share knowledge, whether that’s knowledge around our approach to research or approach to artistic practice or actual design of programs, and parallel to that in 2021, initiated training opportunities. So many people were reaching out to me going, what are you doing? How are you retrieving these benefits? The patients are coming to me, which is amazing because of dance.

Emily Jenkins
This is way more effective than any of the prescription drugs I’ve been put on. So I’ve initiated a dancing cancer care introductory training program, and that’s been running since 2021, and we’ve done seven iterations of that, so we have over 130 people who have come through that program, and I want to say that that program is for health professionals and dancers or artists, so movement enthusiasts or those who are working in holistic health, and the strength of that offering is that it’s interdisciplinary. We normally have 18 training needs per cycle, and we have 50 -50 of those working in health and those working in the arts or dance. And then as an evolution from that, we had a number of dance facilitators and artists specifically wanting to really run with this work.

Emily Jenkins
Already many of them have initiated programs in their geographic location or country. This is across the UK, but we’re also working with people internationally now as well. And so I just concluded yesterday a four -month dancing cancer care practitioner training program that I developed alongside Middlesex University, and this was a deep dive into how you can really effectively hold space and creative opportunities for people affected by cancer, and I want to stress as well that this has wide applicability, so when we think about our choice language, working rhythmically, embracing vulnerability, finding a way to be comfortable with our own vulnerability and that of others, navigating grief and loss in this work, which is inevitable, there’s so much loss when we’re confronted with a long -term health challenge, a lot of that has wide applicability into all community or dance and health spaces.

Robin Daly
I was just thinking, yes.

Emily Jenkins
What’s been wonderful is the cohesion that that has brought to this larger dancing dance again, that work, that it’s not just, as you so kindly said at the beginning, my progressive thinking and an anomaly of innovation. It’s actually mirrored in these spaces where we’re gathering to have these rich conversations as professionals and realizing that there’s not just a need for this work, but the way that we’re responding is so, so very effective.

Robin Daly
So, yeah, you’ve had a seemingly a very big vision right from the start, which has taken you a lot of places already in a very short time. I mean, eight years, actually, in medical terms, is nothing, you know, to actually bring about the amount of change that you have in terms of the understanding of what you’re doing, of actually training people to do it, and building the science behind it is extraordinary. And as you say, you’ve got emissaries out there working away right now in various places, quite a few in Britain, so there’s an increasing chance that there’ll be somebody down the road or anybody with cancer who could help them. And I’m sure you’re not stopping anytime soon. So that’s amazing. And of course, that will only breed more of the same. I’m pleased to see that these massive efforts have gained some recognition here and there. Do you want to just mention some of the things that happened along the way?

Emily Jenkins
Yeah, I guess big milestones in the work so far, we were awarded a National Latoo Prize in 2021, and I think from 1 ,500 nominations, and we were nominated unexpectedly by the Move Dancefield community. We’d been running an online program throughout the pandemic, which is now continuous for anyone who wants to dance with us online for free. And the women of Move Dancefield nominated me for a National Latoo Award, which was incredible and brought quite some profile and awareness to the work. And then I was also selected as the Churchill Fellow, which is a brilliant initiative that not enough people know about. It was founded or set up when Winston Churchill died in 1965 and was a legacy of his work, where he really believed in UK citizens to build better communities and work in this area of social change.

Emily Jenkins
And so this fellowship is a very privileged, prestigious award that funds selected fellows to travel and interrogate an area of research further and bring that learning back to the UK or the work that they’re doing in the UK to essentially better the lives of people that engage with it. And I had the award ceremony, I think, last week, and they are now open. I’m just going to plug that now open for anyone who might want to check out further or sitting with an idea, particularly in the area of health or physical activity, it can also be in the areas of environment or education, et cetera. But it really helps you to become a little bit more serious about your work, to bring the rego, which is a word that we keep using, and to undertake a kind of period of personal and professional development.

Emily Jenkins
The two for me are very much interlinked to reflect on what you’re doing and think about how you want to grow it or evolve it, I should say. It doesn’t have to be growth in terms of world domination, but it can be deepening, actually, my philosophy over the last few couple of years is depth over breadth. And this is part of the reason we are offering the training, because I’m all perfect, I can’t be everywhere and support every community, but I can offer a solid foundation of knowledge and practice that is evidence -based, that people can build on and take forward in their own way, in response to their own communities and their own countries and really help people and really grow this work to evolve.

Emily Jenkins
The dance ecology, as well as look at health more broadly and knowing that the way that mainstream medicine is approaching health, is sadly not holistic enough and not creative enough. And there’s so much evidence out there to show the value of arts and creativity that we cannot ignore it and we cannot dispute it. And, you know, losing and playing creatively is so essential to our health. We need to create more opportunities for people to experience that.

Robin Daly
Yeah, absolutely. You haven’t entirely given up the world domination there, by the looks of it. The way you’re going is going extremely well from that point of view. I mean, that Churchill support must have been an amazing thing for you, I imagine, to just have that freedom to go out and explore all the science around the world. What a great thing to be able to do. It’s only through that kind of philanthropy that these opportunities arise at all, doesn’t it? But for someone like you with the passion you’ve got to get that kind of support to go out there and just follow it, fantastic.

Emily Jenkins
Yeah, it was a huge endorsement for what I’m doing, because sometimes when you are at the forefront of change, you can sometimes feel a bit deluded when you have so many rejections. The early days was going on loads of different cancer support centres or trying to get my seven hospitals and speak the language of healthcare professionals. And some were receptive, but some of them were just a little dismissive or skeptical. And so to then have something like the backing of the Churchill Fellowship, like the National Longing Award, like a letter from Sadiq Khan, which he had and 10 Downing Street, which is amazing. We’re not deluded, it’s working. And there are people out there who share this vision, who recognise the need for it, who also understand that change is necessary. And sometimes our approach to the growing health challenges that we are all experiencing, I think everybody now knows someone affected by cancer.

Emily Jenkins
And even if it’s not cancer specific, everyone can relate to loneliness, look at the pandemic, to feeling too much in our heads and not enough in our body to feeling tired, because we haven’t had enough time to be active, to not be fully comfortable or accepting of our bodies. There’s so much that dance can offer, whether there’s a cancer experience or not, that helps us feel more in touch. But the world around us is through our bodies, that we really experience one another and our surroundings and through our sensations that we can feel into what life has to offer. When you meet someone and you have that, who are they? My personal, it’s from intuition, it’s from a felt sense, it’s not necessarily cognitive. And that’s one example of many of what this body awareness and body intelligence can tell us about ourselves and others, just listening to our needs.

Emily Jenkins
But we need to train that listening capability in our body, we need to open to it. And sadly, I think one day living with this busyness and scheduling and demands on our time means that we aren’t really listening to our bodies enough. And responding in a way that is taken care of. Wow, that sounds

Robin Daly
Well, that’s a great message to end on. Thank you for that. Beautiful. So, yeah, big thanks for coming on today. I’ve got to say, I’m supremely impressed. From where I stand, it’s like you invented a new modality and you’ve made it happen. And I mean, I’m sure you’re getting a tribute where you’ve come to lots of other people as well, who you based your work on. But nonetheless, you’ve made an amazing impression in eight short years and brought an extremely valuable resource to people with cancer. So, full respect for doing that. And yeah, great to hear you talking about it today.

Emily Jenkins
Thank you, Robin. It’s amazing what can happen when you do, Polly, you’re curious. Go down that rabbit hole and then it can expand in ways you just didn’t imagine. Thank you.

Robin Daly
Thank you.

Emily Jenkins
Take care. Bye -bye.

Robin Daly
Emily leads a monthly Yes To Life well -being session and if you’re interested in joining her look for well -being sessions under our services on the Yes To Life website.