Chemotherapy Plus Qigong: Cancer Cure?

Everybody is familiar with the word “cancer.” When people hear it, they cringe, because they know what it means: months or years of pain caused by the disease as well as intolerable sickness. a side effect of the chemotherapy and/or radiation. But not too many people are familiar with the word “qigong.” It’s a Chinese word that means “energy work.”

Qigong has been practiced by the Chinese world for thousands of years. It consists of thousands of exercises, which can be done sitting, standing, moving or lying down. All these exercises are designed to bolster the immune system, boost energy, and integrate the mind, body and spirit. Qigong is soft, gentle and can be done by anyone, even someone undergoing cancer treatment.

I first started practicing qigong during my first bone marrow transplant in 1993. Initially, in 1991, I had been diagnosed with stage four bone lymphoma and given six months to live. I was 32, and my sons were aged two and six months. I went out on long-term disablity, put aside my professional aspirations that had driven me in the corporate world, and focused on one goal–surviving to see my sons grow into men. I studied everything I could about the habits of people who had survived terminal illnesses. Most of these people meditated and visualized to use their minds to fight the illnesses in their bodies. So I learned to meditate, practiced several hours a day, and in six-months I was cancer-free. My doctors were amazed, and so was I.

Unfortunately, the cancer relaped in a year. As it was a bone cancer, the pain approached agony. So I did some more research and found out that the Chinese had been utilizing the mind/body connection for almost five thousand years. They called this art qigong.

I located a local teacher who had taken seminars in tai chi chuan and qigong from Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming of Boston, a world-renowed kung fu, tai chi chuan and qigong master. My instructor taught me several moving qigong sets designed to clear out energy blockages in the body (Qigong operates on the same principle as acupuncture: that there are meridians and channels of energy in your body that lead to organ systems. When these channels becomes blocked, energy stagnates, and you become sick. With qigong, you can clear these blockages on your own.)

I practiced qigong diligently and got out of the transplant isolation room in record time. I lost my hair, but I was barely sick, even though the high-dose chemo in a transplant is five times worse than regular chemotherapy. After all, it’s powerful enough to destroy your bone marrow and hopefully, all the cancer cells in your body.

After the hydrogen bomb chemo I’d received, I was sure I was cured. I was wrong. About a year later the lymphoma relapsed. As the cell was very aggressive, the oncologists recommended a second bone marrow transplant. This was risky, as my immune system and energy were suppressed for life. A second transplant could kill me.

I was determined to live. God helps those who help themselves. I realized I had to go deeper into qigong to build up more energy. I once practiced martial arts intensively, and I knew of a famous master in Boston, Dr. Yang Jwing Ming. I was all set to contact him when I saw a flyer announcing that his top disciple, Rami Rones, would be teaching a qigong seminar in a nearby Connecticut town. Rami was a Israli Special Forces veteran who had come to study the martial arts, full-time for twenty years, under Dr. Yang’s tutelage. He had won gold medals for forms and fighting in North America, Europe, and China.

I attended the seminar and worked up my nerve to approach him. “I know you are a great fighter and qigong expert. Do you want to take on the toughest challenge of your life and help me beat cancer?” He was at the top of his game and it turned out a little bored with fighting. So he agreed to take me on as his personal student, and we began to train.

Rami taught me many things about proper breathing, the way to warm up and stretch the body, various qigong sets from white crane and tiger claw qigong. But the most important thing he taught me was an exercise called Embrace the Tree, a posture from standing post meditation. It works like this: You stand, feet shoulder width apart, knees bent a few inches, your spine straight and your head level with your arms held in a wide arc in front of the chest. It was designed to gather energy from the atmosphere through a cavity on the top of the head and from the earth in the soles of your feet. This energy would be stored in your dan tien, or field of elixer, that exists several inches below the navel. It’s the most difficult internal energy exercise, and is used by patients fighting serious diseases and by martial artists to build up energy for fighting.

Relentlessly, I practiced. Rami recommended that I work up to holding the posture for an hour, as Chinese masters do. I started out Embracing the Tree for five minutes, played through the lactic acid buildup in me shoulders and thighs, and in several months I was standing for an hour every day.

I would need the energy The second transplant was five times worse than the first. It consisted of three four day hospital stays, in which the oncologists brought your immune system to almost ground zero with high-dose chemotherapy, then brought it back to normal with growth hormones. Headache, vomiting, fevers, terrible weakness and nasty mouth sores that wouldn’t let you swallow without heavy-duty painkillers–those were the symptoms. Yet I praciced Embrace the Tree for an hour every day, even though I was sick and in pain. I knew I would need the energy for the actual bone marrow transplant, which used stronger chemo to kill your marrow and hopefully all the cancer cells. Then marrow, previously harvested from your bones, would be dripped back into your blood stream to recreate your immune system.

I made it through the transplant in record time. The doctors were amazed as I’d had a previous transplant, which suppresses your energy and immune system for life. An oncologist I cracked jokes with said as I was leaving the isolation room, “See you around, Ellal. Invite me to your son’s barmitzvah.” I wasn’t Jewish, but I planned to be at both my son’s weddings and I would keep him in mind.

Now, after the high-dose chemo of two transplants surely I was cured. What cancer cell could survive that onslaught? I was wrong. The cancer came back six months later, in my lower spine. It was like acid eating into my vertebrae. I could barely urinate and my legs would unpredictably collapse underneath me when the tumor pressed on a nerve.

I went to my oncologists office. From the look on her face and her body language, I could tell she was at a loss. I had been through every type of chemotherapy known to science and still the cancer relapsed. She couldn’t put me through another transplant; the chemo would destroy my heart and damage my brain. I thought to myself: My sons are aged 9 and 6–I had years to go before I saw them grow into men. I had to do something.

On a hunch, she gave me one treatment of the original chemo I’d been on when my cancer first was diagnosed. I started Embracing the Tree with more intensity.

A month later I had a gallium scan, a nuclear medicine test to decect cancer. The cancer was gone. It never came back. That was in 1996.

I’ve been clear of cancer for twelve years. The doctors call me their “miracle man” as according to medical science, I shouldn’t be alive.

Today my sons are aged 21 and 18. The older one is in Navy Special Forces and the younger is a student at the New England Institue of Art in Boston. I achieved my goal. I survived. The chemotherapy eventually killed the cancer, and the qigong I practiced gave me enough energy and strength to withstand the lethal effects of the chemotherapy.

One piece of advice: If you want to practice qigong, either to maintain your health or to fight a disease, find a tai chi chaun teacher. They all include qigong as part of their curriculum. Ask the teacher how long he’s been practing, and who his teacher is. Look the teacher up on the Internet and find out what his credentials are. Is he in a lineage chart, which descibes the genealogy of his teachers? Dr. Yang has a lineage chart going back to China, so I knew I was getting authentic teachings. As in many alternative health offerings, there are many charlatans in the qigong world. Make sure you have the real deal before you spend your money.