Healing Beyond Diagnosis
This month, we celebrate Lara Toni Benigson and Pia Tedeschi — two women who prove that a breast cancer diagnosis doesn’t mark the end of your story.
With courage, intention, and powerful mindset shifts, they show how daily practices and lifestyle choices can help us rise stronger and create a life more beautiful than before.
Both women now dedicate their lives to sharing the modalities that supported their own healing — helping others embrace wellness and reclaim their sense of wholeness. If you’re feeling lost or in need of support, my hope is that you reach out, book a session, and allow yourself to begin a new journey toward healing.
Lara Toni Benigson & The Equilibrium Life
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. For many, it’s a time to wear pink, book a mammogram, and support awareness campaigns. For me, it is also deeply personal. Two years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. That journey reshaped not only my body but also my perspective on health, resilience, and what it means to live in alignment.
Today, as an audiologist, health coach, and founder of The Equilibrium Life, I bring those lessons into my work , supporting women on journeys of prevention, recovery, and empowerment.
Listening to the Body
My career began with listening helping people hear more clearly and regain balance. But my diagnosis taught me that listening goes beyond the ear. It means tuning into fatigue, stress, sleep disruption, or emotional overwhelm before they become louder signals.
Just as I calibrate sensitive diagnostic equipment, we can learn to calibrate our daily lives , fine-tuning habits and responses so we remain steady and resilient.
“Wellness isn’t about perfection. It’s about listening deeply and giving yourself permission to live in equilibrium - steady, resilient, and whole.”
Lessons from The Smart Woman’s Guide
to Breast Cancer
Dr. Jenn Simmons’ book reflects much of what I’ve lived and now teach:
- Prevention matters : genetics play a role, but lifestyle, stress, and environment profoundly influence risk.
- Diagnosis is not destiny : what you do each day matters more than any single event.
- Health is holistic : emotions, trauma, sleep, nutrition, and hormones all shape outcomes.
- Small changes add up : micro-shifts create momentum.
- Agency matters : being informed and engaged changes your trajectory.
Prevention & Daily Practice
Screenings save lives. But prevention also happens in kitchens, bedrooms, and daily routines. At The Equilibrium Life, I frame prevention as empowerment:
- Prioritising restorative sleep.
- Nourishing with whole foods.
- Protecting emotional energy.
- Moving joyfully, not punitively.
- Creating rhythms that sustain vitality.
Alignment, Fine-Tuning & Your “Why”
Many women feel pulled in too many directions. Alignment is the antidote bringing actions back into harmony with biology and values.
Habits are the dials of that alignment. When they slip, it’s not failure, it’s feedback. Fine-tuning means asking: What does balance look like for me today?
And behind it all lies your “why.” True change is fuelled by purpose: your children, your vitality, your desire to live fully. When you find that, habits stop being chores and become acts of self-respect.
Building Resilience
If you want to deepen your resilience, I recommend:
- “Proven Habits to Build Resilience” (The Liz Moody Podcast)
- Understanding Resilience (Headspace Podcast)
- 8 Life-Changing Habits to Start Now (The Mel Robbins Podcast)
- Creating rhythms that sustain vitality.
These resources echo what I teach: resilience is not one big change, but many small ones stacked over time.
Practical Tips for October
Resilience isn’t only about bouncing back. It’s about building forward. My recovery demanded it — physically, emotionally, spiritually.
Lara’s Equilibrium Life Checklist
- Listen early: treat fatigue, poor sleep, or mood shifts as signals to adjust.
- Choose one micro-habit to align with this month ;sleep, movement, or stress reset.
- Ask questions: know your risks, history, and prevention strategies.
- Prioritise recovery: sleep and downtime are essential, not optional.
- Reconnect with your why: let it guide your habits and resilience.
These resources echo what I teach: resilience is not one big change, but many small ones stacked over time.
Becoming the Architect of Your Own Life
Awareness months remind us that health is precious but they also remind us of our agency. You are not just a patient, survivor, or statistic. You are the architect of your own life.
For me, October is no longer only about ribbons. It is about pausing, listening, aligning, and choosing. It is about designing a life that supports prevention, healing, and vitality.
At The Equilibrium Life, my mission is to help women hear those inner signals, fine-tune their habits, and step into that role as architects of their health and their whole lives.
Final Word
“Healing is not what happens to you ; it’s what arises through you, when you become curious, informed, and intentional about your health.”
PIA TEDESCHI IS NOT SURVIVING, BUT THRIVING
Two days after my 41st birthday I had my first bag of chemo therapy, aka the Red Devil. A big bag of toxically-healing red liquid dripped painstakingly slowly into vein in my hand as I sat in a lazy boy in the chemo room in Sandton, wondering how on earth this was even happening to me. Deliberately disconnected from the other cancer patients in the room, unable to accept the position I found myself in, disassociating myself from the reality that I too was a cancer patient.
Outside the rooms I could hear a familiar war cry from joyous school kids across the road, cheering their team on. Life is for celebrating. Live in the moment.
The crack is where the light gets in.
My brain abuzz with disconnected thoughts becoming more foggy as the drip continued….
From this first chemo of absolute agonising fear and despair to another 6 months of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, 6 weeks of daily radiation, an incidental finding of another primary cancer of the kidney the following year, followed by a nephrectomy, numerous surgeries for breast reconstruction and another incidental finding of a third primary cancer of the thyroid and thyroidectomy over a period of 5 years much has shifted for me.
From the first diagnosis and the next two, the endless doctor's rooms, 9 surgeries and chronic medication to ensure full, heightened chemical menopause from 41 years old, and life thankfully continues for me.
This period while it was unfolding and into the years beyond active treatment up until now is a perpetual evolution of deeper connection within, deeper gratitude for life and knowing that all we have is this moment we are in.
Throughout this period certain practices have remained the basic framework to keep myself not just ok, but thriving. Mediation. Yoga. Breathwork. Writing. Sharing. Radical gratitude. These I share and practise in the space of YogiHood , my yoga studio in Norwood, as well as retreats and offsite workshops for groups and corporates.
“Normal” life (kids, husband, family, friends, work, school, holidays, pets, domesticity) too carries on and offers opportunity for grounding deeply and weaving much joy into the daily grind. And sometimes offering moments to test how deeply centred we actually are 😉
At various stages other alternative modalities have offered immeasurable support and then kind of run their course for that moment. The variability of these is broad and I believe that the universe will offer up exactly what you need in any given moment, you simply need to be present to recognise these offerings and then choose to embrace them . Generally the inner work is challenging, but this is where great shifts towards liberation happen and a sense of return to self. Systemic constellation, sweat lodges, therapy,TRE, travel, oxygen therapy, massage, transcendental mediation, taking my dog for a walk, enneagram workshops, eating a first fruit of the season…..
so many opportunities strewn throughout the days, some simple and some highly specialised and needing of facilitation and expertise, but all offering an opportunity for coming back to the part of yourself that is sacred and divinely connected. The thing is life continues and there are no promises of certainty or forever so to live fully despite this and because of this is the key. From simple to more complex, from steeped in physicality to soaring spirituality, both are equally important and indeed the very substance of the human experience.
With this philosophy I curate wellness days for groups or corporates that are varied depending on budget and the desired experience. From deeply transformative to light and fun, anything is possible. Talking as a survivor of cancers may or may not be included and the way in which this is shared depends on the audience and event. Some degree of yoga, mediation, mindfulness is always included as these are the fundamentals for me.
Wherever we are at, there is the moment to choose with intention how we will be, how we will experience this moment, this life.
As a meme I recently read said, “The true retreat isn’t in Bali, it's in traffic.” Although a retreat in Bali would be lovely too.
Website: yogihood.co.za
Instagram: @yogihood_jozi
Branding, Design & Media by Melisa Liebovitz :
083 393 1313 * mliebovitz@gmail.com * http://www.behance.net/melisa-liebovitz
