Brush my pretty tail and magic things will happen

A lot of what I do now just feels like good bloody sense when you think about it for a mo, but some things are a little strange, need explaining, or are, well, somewhat Swedish. No that there's anything wrong with the Swedes. They're a lovely people rather obsessed with bathing rituals and extreme temperatures.

Enter dry-brushing.

When I hopped on the cancer train, the first place I wanted to stop was lymphatic land to learn a few things. See, you come to realize quickly when you do any amount of reading that disease is good friends with an internal system that tends to get backed up or bloated or sedentary. No big news there. So seriously, if you get constipated regularly and aren't pregnant, you're on a path to danger... the shit is piling up, literally, and you need to work that shit out.

The point is, you need to keep things moving. Not just by working out your quads - although yay if you do - but by working out your lymphatic system. It carries all the garbage away from your cells, helps you fight off disease and delivers the good stuff where it needs to go. If your lymphatic system is broken, the raccoons get into your trash. And that's just plain stinky.

I had my sentinel node removed from my left side (there was cancer in there at the beginning), which means I have the full-time job of trying to keep my left arm in a bubble world. No paper cuts. No cookie pan burns. No thorn pricks when I'm lip-dubbing to Heart in my backyard. If any of these things happen, my lymphatic system rushes to the rescue without realizing there's not enough juice in there to fix the problem, everything shuts down and I risk getting a balloon arm that lasts the rest of my life. This could happen tomorrow or in 25 years. So rather than refrain from lip-dubbing, I've chosen to take matters into my own hands - and honestly, the docs tell you nothing about this shit.

There are a three good ways to keep your lymphatic land in tip-top shape:

• Put a dash of cayenne in a cup of warm water and lemon in the morning
• Rebound on a mini-trampoline
• Dry-brush every day

I've been on the cayenne kick a few times (it hasn't stuck yet), and come and go with my rebounding (although I'm back to it now), but I dry-brush myself like a pretty pony every day of the week. Granted I don't have an infrared sauna to jump into after I dip into my freezing cold lake water, but I do feel rather Abba-like when I do it. Here's what it involves.

Get yourself a medium-handled, natural bristle body brush (I have two - one from HomeSense, one from Superstore) and keep it dry.

Strip down to your one-button suit before you hop into the shower and start brushing from your toes to your neck. Brush always toward your heart (so at your shoulders, brush downward) and do long strokes where you can. I go crazy on my feet and hands because chemo did a number on the circulation in my toes and fingertips, and give the numb parts on the back of my left arm a good scrubbing. Be firm but don't scrub like you're trying to forget a bad date. You want to feel invigorated.

I take 1-2 minutes max on this ritual - as long as it takes for my shower to heat up. Some added benefits? Dry-brushing removes dead skin, makes you glow all over and helps get rid of cellulite. Do you need a bigger endorsement than that?

- Carissa