“Quan Yin, Chinese Goddess of Compassion” by Ren Adams
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Daily practice of meditation, yoga, or Tai Chi Chuan can be remarkably helpful in relieving stress, and, in that way, can benefit our health. There are stories of individuals, exceptionally adept in Taoism, Buddism, yoga, or Tai Chi, who remained unusually healthy and youthful appearing until quite late in life. In “The Tao of Pooh,” Benjamin Hoff recounts the story (reportedly true) of Li Chung Yun, who lived an astonishingly long life, appearing much younger than his age, and remaining in vigorous health. Although he regularly practiced Taoist exercises and walked long distances, Li Chung Yun attributed his long life and good health mostly to his inner state of mind, what he called “inner quiet.” Whether the various stories about Taoist adepts are fully true, exaggerated, or even fabricated, the message they convey, and the inner kernel of truth that they share, is that, by adopting a daily practice that cultivates serenity and reduces stress, we can enjoy a better quality of life, and probably a healthier life.
The July/August 2003 issue of Kungfu/Qigong magazine had a fascinating article about Helen Liang, an accomplished martial artist and daughter of the esteemed martial artist, Shou-Yu Liang of Vancouver (http://www.shouyuliang.com). You can find the full article at this website:
http://www.shouyuliang.com/helen-liang-opening-and-closing-the-gates-of-heaven.shtml
It tells the story of Helen’s ordeal with cancer, and the way that she used meditation and Tai Chi Chuan to help her get through it.
She was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma in her late teens, and underwent months of chemotherapy, which failed to put the cancer into remission. She was still extremely ill, and her oncologist told her and her family that the only remaining possibility for curing the cancer was a bone marrow transplant, which had less than a 5% chance of success. Without the bone marrow transplant, the doctors predicted that she had only a couple of weeks to live. She made the difficult decision to forgo the bone marrow transplant, leave the hospital, and live out her remaining days at home with her family. Despite the grim prognosis, her father and their family doctor did not give up hope, and worked with her intensively on Buddist and Taoist qigong, meditation, tai chi, Chinese herbal medicine, and alternative Western medicine, in a last-ditch effort to save her life. Every day, Helen spent prolonged periods meditating or doing tai chi outside. Weeks passed, and she did not deteriorate or die, but rather her fevers began to subside. The article describes in some detail her meditation practices:
“As Helen’s recovery progressed she practiced Buddist and Taoist qigong with her father, and also a serious amount of meditation by herself. ’Every day,’ she recalls, ‘I’d go in the backyard where we had flowers and bamboo. In the morning, facing the sun, with no noise, I’d sit and meditate. I’d combine methods, and shorten then, tailor them to me. I focused sometimes on the goddess Kuan Yin; I’d feel peaceful whenever I’d think of her. So I’d do something that has something to do with her, visualize an image of healing light.
‘Another thing that really helped me, I found it myself. I would sit there and imagine I am one with the universe, almost that I’m not there. When you think about that, how immense the universe is—the good, the bad, disease and everything, how everything moves on, recycling, coming in a circle—you’re no longer afraid of anything. I’d think, I’m not even sick right now, I’m the universe—feel how powerful the universe is—I’m not there and yet I’m powerful.
‘Sometimes feeling the pain, the side effects from chemo, I’d feel horrible, that’s when I meditated the most. I’d wake up and feel refreshed—peaceful and powerful—I was the universe.’
“As her body healed, Helen had the strength to practice more taiji and other internal styles…In the quiet bamboo shade of her garden, or the salty air of the Vancouver beach, Helen’s focus never wavered. She took in life moment by moment, day by day, becoming one with nature.
‘Everyone tried not to talk about it at the beginning,’ she remembers. ‘Then three weeks passed, four weeks passed, then I just don’t think about it anymore. One of the things I learned most is let nature run its own course. Don’t worry about the outcome. Worry about the process, and let nature go from there. Always try your best, but don’t worry. If you fail and lose, it doesn’t matter. That’s part of nature.’”
–Martha Burr, “Opening and Closing the Gates of Heaven: Helen Liang’s Triumph over Tragedy, Battling Lymphoma with Qigong, Tai Chi and Chinese Medicine,” Kung Fu Magazine, July/August 2003 issue
Over the course of about a year, she progressively regained her strength, and the cancer seemed to go into remission or disappear, as she continued to use Chinese herbal medicines, practice mediation, qigong, and tai chi. She has lived to this day, 14 years after the cancer diagnosis, in good health, and she still practices and teaches martial arts as President of the Shou-Yu Liang Wushu Taiji Qigong Institute in Vancouver.
Someone with a background in Qigong or traditional Chinese medicine may have a theoretical framework that can provide some explanation for why or how Helen recovered. But as someone who comes from a background in modern, Western medicine, who is not well versed in Qigong, and who is not typically an advocate of alternative medicine, I found this story fascinating and puzzling. What are we Westerners to make of it? The facts of the story seem to be indisputable: Helen Liang is a real person, and this happened to her, and she is still alive today, recovered from an apparently fatal cancer, for unknown reasons. To try to understand it, my tendency is to first use the framework of Western medicine to think of all sorts of possible explanations. Could the initial diagnosis have been inaccurate? Or could this have been such a rare form of lymphoma that so little was known about it, including the fact that it sometimes can “spontaneously” remit…in other words, could the doctors’ prognosis have been wrong? But, on the other hand, if the diagnosis and prognosis were correct, and she really was on the edge of death, then what was it that allowed her to recover, despite there seeming to be no chance? As the article itself says, “Whether to attribute this miracle to Kuan Yin, the goddess or mercy, to qigong, to bitter Chinese herbs, to a family’s unwavering love, or to Helen’s own will to heal her cancer, the answer is still a mystery.”
I don’t know which of these factors or combination of factors, if any, made the cancer go away. In the parlance of Western medicine, Helen’s story is “anecdotal,” a single case, and therefore it is not possible to make any definitive conclusion about what caused her to recover. I don’t tell this story to encourage anyone to forsake conventional medicine, or to use only alternative or non-Western medicine. If I, or someone close to me, had a serious illness, I would seek out conventional, Western medical care, although I respect the right of others to choose alternative approaches, and clearly, as in Helen’s story, there are situations in which one can run out of good treatment options in conventional medicine. If I were in Helen’s situation, after the chemotherapy failed, I’m not sure what I would have decided about the bone marrow transplant. One thing is certain, though—that the meditation and Tai Chi that she practiced was wonderfully effective in relieving her fear and stress, and in enabling her, in the midst of this situation, to reach a state of inner peace and calm…even bliss. Helping patients to cope with the potentially crushing burden of fear and stress inflicted by serious illness is so important, but so often neglected by conventional Western medicine. And why does Western medicine neglect it? Even from a hard-nosed, skeptical, Western scientific/medical perspective, there are reams of convincing data indicating that severe anxiety and stress can have strongly negative consequences on our physical and mental health.
I was moved by reading about the situation that Helen faced, and by the way her meditations about the immensity of the universe and feeling one with the universe enabled her to reach a state of no fear…and by her stance of letting nature takes its course…trying your best, but not worrying about the outcome…if you lose, fail, or even die, it is OK…it is part of nature. Who knows?….maybe her ability to let go of fear and stress really did contribute to her recovery. In our society, we have a tendency, quite different from Helen’s, to encourage people with serious illnesses to “fight” and “battle” the disease. This attitude of “fighting” apparently helps many people to not give up, to hold on to hope and to a sense of control. But sometimes I wonder whether all this talk of “fighting,” “struggling,” and “winning the battle” against the disease could, at least in some people, be counterproductive, could even contribute to stress or to a feeling of defeat and failure if things don’t go the way they were hoping. I wonder whether Helen’s stance—not of fighting and struggling, but of becoming a part of nature, doing her best to care for herself but not worrying so much about the outcome, going with the flow of nature—may be more relieving of stress and burden for some people…it would seem more relieving to me, at least. And, in the end, by not worrying about “winning,” she won. She embodied wu wei, “doing not doing” or “effortless action.” Whether one is ill or healthy, it seems clear that joining the flow of nature through meditation and Tai Chi can enhance our quality of life, can help us let go of the stresses that wear us down, and can help us reach a state of inner peacefulness and happiness. That is why I want to continue practicing Tai Chi Chuan, no matter what happens in life, letting the attitude that Helen describes sink in.
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