David Dachinger and Tamara Green, are Licensed clinical social workers (LCSW), co-founders of the Loving Meditations App. They are also a married couple and authors of the bestselling book, Live Calm With Cancer (and Beyond…). David is a Grammy® nominated composer, fire lieutenant, and stage-4 cancer survivor. Tamara is a psychotherapist, dating & relationship coach, and meditation facilitator. Their cancer journey transformed and inspired them to pay forward the benefits of mindfulness and meditation to those touched by a major illness. Their Loving Meditations App is a self-care resource that helps people experience more calm and ease while on their own healing journey.

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Contact Info

• Website: LovingMeditations.com
• Website: www.CalmCancerStress.com
• Book: Live Calm With Cancer and Beyond by David Dachinger and Tamara Green

Live Calm With Cancer

• David Dachinger and Tamara Green are incredibly giving and generous people who simply want to share their knowledge about overcoming the fear, the frustration, and the discouragement that a cancer diagnosis can bring.
• Tamara's wish for you: What if everybody woke up and gave themselves tremendous kudos for even getting out of bed. Acknowledge yourself and say ‘Yay, me'. Give yourself a lot of kudos for just getting up every day and doing what we do.
• David: I'm grateful for my body and all the miracles it performs without us even being aware of it. It's super important to acknowledge and be grateful, to stay in touch with our bodies and make sure we move them every day.

Most Influential Person

• David: Eckhart Tolle
• Tamara: Michael Beckwith

Effect on Emotions

• David: Mindfulness has taken judgment out of emotions. I move through them. If it's something negative, then I'm able to move through it quicker.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Tamara: If you can breathe, you can meditate or be mindful. Just being able to focus on nothing else but the inhale and the exhale. That's it – Mindfulness, right there!
• David: Breathing comes into play all the time. If I'm responding to an emergency and I need to really get focused and stop the mental chatter. Focusing on the breath is a great way to quiet down my mind.

Suggested Resources

• Book Suggestion by Tamara: Radical Mindfulness by Daniel Guttierrez
• Book Suggestion by David: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
• Book: Live Calm With Cancer and Beyond by David Dachinger and Tamara Green
• App: Loving Meditations App
• App: Insight Timer

Bullying Story

• Tamara's Story – It was sixth grade, the middle of the school year and this poor girl named Debbie comes into class and she already developed. Age eleven and comes in the first day and already the boys were just teasing and taunting her and telling her to lift up her top and all these terrible things during recess.
• So she went as far back into the schoolyard as she could go. She was crying, and I went after her. I told her, those guys are jerks and don't listen to them. I can tell you're a nice person. Let's be friends and that whole thing.
• I don't know if it was mindfulness but I was very present with her and I allowed her to cry and tell me why she moved. I started asking her all these questions. Curiosity is definitely a mindfulness tool. To this day, we are very, very good friends.

Related Episodes

• 410 Master of Mindfulness; Daniel Guterriez
• 341 An Answer to Cancer; Dr. Ivan Misner
• 200 Cancer Mindfulness with Lee Silverstein
• 016 Cancer Survivor; Brian R King

Free Gift

Do you want to become more calm, relaxed, peaceful, and content? If so, you can learn how by downloading this free ‘Waves of Content' Meditation by Bruce Langford. Unlock the secrets of calm by downloading the meditation here at MindfulnessMode.com/wavesofcontent

Episode Transcript

Note: The following transcript is a draft transcript, and as such, may contain computer-generated mistranslations.

Bruce Langford:
So David, you have been a fire Lieutenant. Were you one of those boys who always wanted to be a fireman? Tell us how you got into this space.

David Dachinger, Live Calm With Cancer:
It's a great question. I really wasn't, I do have a picture of me about three years old on a tricycle with a fire helmet. Don't remember that, but literally did not enter my consciousness until we bought a house right next door to a firehouse. And what started as a little concern about the noise and the activity over there. I was invited to a barbecue and I'm like, okay, I'll go meet some people. They invited me to a drill, one thing led to another and the next thing I knew I was just, I'm in love with the whole activity, the whole brotherhood, the whole community of, of the fire service. So it started about 20 years ago.

Bruce Langford:
Okay. And then you started working full time in that area?

David Dachinger, Live Calm With Cancer:
Yeah, the kind of schedule we have is 24 hour shifts. So we have time to do other things like loving meditations for me. So it's really, it's a beautiful job in terms of being able to be there full time and also have other other projects, other activities that we can work on, on the, on the downside.

Bruce Langford:

Right. So Tamara, tell, tell us about the day you found out that David had cancer.

Tamara Green, Live Calm With Cancer:

Yeah, it was in October. In 2013 David had a haircut and his barber noticed a lump on his neck actually. And that prompted David to see the doctor. So I went with him and he, they were doing needle biopsies right there in the office and they came back and they said, you have stage four cancer. And about four days prior to that, our 13 year old son was diagnosed with Lyme disease. So it was one of those kind of weeks, you know. So

Bruce Langford:

I was just going to say, what was your first reaction? How did you deal with that news?

Tamara Green, Live Calm With Cancer:

Shock and then overwhelm that day. I was overwhelmed. Shock is to protect us from overwhelm. And I realized that I went into shock to protect me from feeling that overwhelmed initially. And then from shock, I allowed myself to kind of get to the real feelings, which was overwhelmed. And so that overwhelmed for me look like about two weeks of sleepless nights. But in the meantime, I was, you know, I was very busy taking care of my guys, setting up appointments, you know, getting everything prepared and ready for everything that they needed for their treatments. So I was very busy, very occupied, not sleeping. And then one night I just said, Oh my goodness, if a client came to me and said, Tamara, this is what's going on, what would my advice be? And it was get back into your spiritual practice, which was, you know, gratitude and prayer and you know, mindfulness. And so I did and everything really started to switch around for me. Right.

Bruce Langford:

And so, David, were you already meditating at that point? Was meditation a part of your life already?

David Dachinger, Live Calm With Cancer:

It had been in various parts of my life. I learned transcendental meditation in college and we as a couple had been doing different kinds of say mindful or personal development kinds of courses that had tools in them that we had learned. But I must say that right at the onset of the cancer diagnosis, we forgot about them. We were just caught up in the whirlwind of this whole expedited treatment plan, the whole, a whole disruption of continuity in our lives, not working, not being able to work out the things that we just, you know, we're seeing very similar parallels with the Coronavirus pandemic where your life has turned upside down and nothing is the same from that point forward. And so it took us about two weeks to kind of come back down to earth and remember, Oh yeah, you know, we have these tools and particularly as a patient spending hours in the chair in the infusion center and then all the time in between treatments where you're just sort of, you know, not have motivation to do daily activities. I thought, let me use this downtime to do something positive. Let me go back and revisit those tools. And some of the techniques we've learned to kind of make this a productive time sort of choose to have a positive experience rather than being this sort of victim mentality of, you know, poor me, I've got cancer, I can't do this, I can't do that. So I figured instead of hitting the panic button, let me hit the reset switch and kind of revisit, you know, what's possible.

Bruce Langford:

Right. Tamara, do you remember you and David going through a series of emotions as you moved through this or some of the emotions?

Tamara Green, Live Calm With Cancer:

There was one day in particular where David we didn't know it at the time, but we had a very deep discussion about what if I don't make it? And you know, what, if it's gone too far and you know, we won't see our two children get married and, and you know, all those, we're having those kinds of discussions and something flipped in that moment that we were both crying hysterically and, and just kind of being with sort of allowing all these emotions and thoughts, scary thoughts to come to the surface where David decided to put his energy into living instead of putting his energy into dying. And that was a very powerful moment for both of us. It was, it was like this immediate shift. And so that was certainly one of the emotions of just complete you know, ooze despair in that moment.

Tamara Green, Live Calm With Cancer:

And that really flipped over into, Nope, this is this is a journey. And, you know, the, the patient with the major illness is definitely going through a journey, but so is the caregiver. For me, I see everything as his spiritual journey. So for me it was a spiritual journey as well. And for me it was about you know, let me use those tools of mindfulness, but let me take it even further and let's see if I can have every moment be as present as possible, be present to what David's going through, be present to what I'm going to through our son, you know, be present with the nurse or the doctor. And it was really amazing that it was about a six month treatment period. And I have to say, I don't think I've ever had such a long period of time in my life with where I really felt present with almost everything. I certainly had my moments, but I was very present. So it was a deeply spiritual time, like a deep spiritual experience for me. It really was.

Bruce Langford:

David, I have the sense that in your relationship with Tamara, you have tremendous amount of communication happening, that you have this ability to communicate very, very deeply with your partner. Has that always been the case in your life? Have you always enjoyed that kind of communication skill?

David Dachinger, Live Calm With Cancer:

I think it's a certain level, yes. We have had it for, for our entire relationship. And at the same time, it's an evolving kind of part of our relationship. But particularly during the cancer journey, particularly during the time when we were really in a position of showing up in a certain way for Tamara was showing up as a caregiver for me was showing up as all right, my new identity is, I'm not the, I'm not going out and helping people in their worst day. Now I'm receiving treatment, I'm receiving medical care, I'm receiving the love from my friends and family who are there to support me. But during that time the depth of her presence and my sort of opening up to receiving the love that that was pouring out from her, from these other friends in our community really was a shift for me as well. So I think it took our marriage, our relationship to a deeper level. And I have to say, looking back on the cancer journey, that there was so many gifts that came out of it. That's probably one of the ones that I really, really feel grateful for. I think it's so fantastic.

Listen to the episode to hear more from David Dachinger and Tamara Green about how to Live Calm With Cancer.