In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Keola Grey, a childhood brain tumor survivor from Oahu who has spent over two decades learning how to feel safe in a body that was once the battlefield.

Keola was diagnosed as a young child. The tumor was caught early and removed completely, and that is where the harder part of his story begins. He had to start again from ground zero. Learn to walk again, learn to speak again, learn everything from A to Z. For years he could not relate to other kids his age. As he puts it, he fit in everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

This conversation is about the second fight, the one that arrives after the medical one is over. Keola talks about the day he realized his cancer history and his mental health were two separate things, what it took to come back into his body, and why the holistic road called to him after years on the pharmaceutical side.

At the center is a simple reframe that changed how his system runs. You don't have depression, you're feeling depression. Keola describes emotions as the puppet and the mind and body as the puppet master, and how learning to watch a feeling instead of being run by it gave him room to choose. Victor maps that in real time to the nervous system work of stepping back and observing rather than attaching.

The signature question arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Keola answers from the day before, fresh out of the ER with clean scans, surprised to notice he felt safe in the one place that used to undo him.

He closes with hard-won, practical advice for anyone in a health fight right now, theirs or their child's: listen to your doctors, keep your checkups, ask the follow-up questions, get the second opinion, and above all learn to read the signals your body is already sending. And the one line he wants you to keep: don't let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.

IN THIS EPISODE

Starting from ground zero and relearning the body after surgery. Fitting in everywhere and nowhere as a kid. The second fight, when the medical battle ends and the mind's begins. Why the holistic road called after years on the pharmaceutical side. The reframe: you don't have depression, you're feeling it. Emotions as the puppet, not the puppeteer. Feeling safe in the ER, the place that used to undo him. Practical advice for anyone in a health fight right now.

ABOUT KEOLA GREY

Keola Grey is a childhood brain tumor survivor and mental health advocate from Oahu, Hawaii. He shares his story to support others moving through their own health fight and the longer recovery that follows.

Find Keola:

* Instagram: @green_i808

* Facebook: Keola Grey

FROM VICTOR

If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside the Breath X Collective and one to one with a few people at a time.

* Breath X Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio

This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.