[WhollyViber] How Chi Gong Works on Cancer

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Misty L. Trepke

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How Chi Gong Works on Cancer

[Excerpt from Paul Dong's book, Chi Gong: The Ancient Chinese Way to

Health, Paul Dong and Aristide H. Esser, 1990, Marlowe and Company]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1569248567/wholyviber-20

 

FMI on Chi Gong, http://www.fiveelementarts.com

 

Haughtiness invites ruin; humility receives benefits.

-I Ching (The Book of Changes)

 

Paul Dong has a personal interest in the effect of chi gong on

cancer which he explains as follows:

 

Because several of my relatives and friends died of cancer, I always

felt particularly fearful of cancer. When I came across a Chinese

book on five chi gong exercise techniques and discovered that chi

gong can cure cancer, I became highly interested and started

collecting materials on this subject. I also went to China in 1984

to see for myself, and found that it is definitely true that chi

gong is being used to cure cancer. In the eleven years since 1979,

the Chinese have cured hundreds of cancer victims through chi gong,

and thousands upon thousands have used chi gong to achieve

improvement and to prolong their lives. When news of this spread

outside China, many medical professionals from other countries came

to mainland China to observe. Members of the staff at Harvard

Medical School have shown great interest in this area and have been

to China twice to observe the practice. According to the

article " Cancer Does Not Mean Death " by Ke Yan,1 an American

oncologist (the article doesn't give the doctor's name) visited

China and requested an interview with the pioneer of chi gong

cancer treatment, Mrs. Guo Lin (1906-1984). Guo Lin said, " Even if I

tell you about it, you wouldn't believe me. You'd better find a

patient of mine to talk to. " The oncologist found quite a few of her

patients in the Beijing district chi gong cancer class, spent four

days talking with them, and saw the facts for himself

 

Doctors have taken two contrasting approaches to cancer. The first

approach is to consider the cancer to be an isolated condition

localized at one spot in the body and to attack it directly using

chemicals, surgery, or radiation. The second approach, which is

gaining more and more prominence today, is to consider the condition

of the whole person as the environment for the cancer, and to

strengthen the body's resistance to cancer. This may come under the

modem heading of psychoneuroimmunology (discussed in chapter

13) and relies on many factors, including exercise, diet, and mental

imaging to combat the disease. Chi gong is part of this second

approach.

 

The use of chi gong cancer treatment in China originated with Ms.

Guo Lin, a Chinese traditional painter, mentioned above. In 1949,

she was afflicted with uterine cancer and had it removed by surgery

in Shanghai. The cancer recurred in 1960. This time it had

metastasized to the bladder, and she had another operation in

Beijing to remove part of the bladder that was cancerous. When she

had another relapse, the doctors gave her six months to live.

However, she did not give up hope, and in her struggle against

cancer, she remembered that her grandfather, a Taoist priest, had

taught her as a child to practice chi gong. She determinedly began

to research and practice chi gong, hoping to recover her health in

this way. After initial practice with no effect, she turned to the

ancient chi gong texts willed to her by her grandfather and created

her own exercise schedule. She practiced diligently for two hours

every day, and in half a year her cancer subsided. She was strongly

convinced of chi gong's ability to cure diseases, and in 1970

started giving lessons in what she called New Chi Gong Therapy.

According to Cyrus Lee, Master Guo's therapy is not based on the

external energy (wei chi) of others, but upon the inner energy (nei

chi) of the patient (for these distinctions, review chapter

1, " Special Section on Chi " ). Her therapy combines " active and

passive exercises in three stages: relaxation (sung jing),

concentration (yi lian), and breathing (tiao hsi). " 2

 

By 1977 Master Guo had achieved spectacular results and proclaimed

publicly that chi gong can cure cancer. Cancer victims from all over

immediately streamed into Beijing to take part in the chi gong

cancer therapy class she had organized. Each day three hundred to

four hundred people studied chi gong techniques for cancer treatment

with her. Until her death in 1984 she worked tirelessly, curing

hundreds of cancer patients, while easing the pain and prolonging

the lives of thousands more. Mrs. Wong Chung-siu, a student of Guo

Lin's currently living in Fremont, California, told Paul Dong that

Guo Lin's pinnacle of success came in 1982. Aided by nine assistants

she had trained, Guo Lin held nine cancer classes of seventy

students each, meeting three times a day. With her nine assistants

to help her, she was able over the next two years to travel all over

China to twenty provincial capitals to teach and lecture at the

request of many local health care and medical departments, and she

became a national celebrity before her death in 1984 (twenty years

after her life had been given up by Western medicine).

 

Because Guo Lin had demonstrated that her chi gong techniques were

able to cure cancer, people trained in other styles of chi gong were

eager to see if they could achieve the same results. Among these

other styles, quiet gong and movement gong also demonstrated the

same ability to achieve cures or alleviation of cancer. Paul Dong

judges from the Chinese literature that movement gong is more

effective in curing cancer. The technique used by Guo Lin combines

both movement chi gong and meditation chi gong (movement first

and quiet gong afterward).

 

One type of movement gong is Flying Crane, which is quite popular in

China. According to reports, it has cured many cancer patients. In a

journal Qi Gong of the flying Crane, published in Beijing, an

article " Fight Cancer with the True Qi " , written by Xie Hau,3 states

that the Beijing Flying Crane Club invited eleven cancer victims to

participate in an experiment. After three months of practicing chi

gong, they showed varying degrees of improvement. Among them, Li

Shan-cheng showed the most notable effects. Li, fifty-nine years old

at the time, had cancer of the esophagus and was unable to eat; in

fact, he couldn't even swallow water. He was emaciated. Then he

watched a report on TV about chi gong curing cancer and joined

a Flying Crane therapy class. After practicing chi gong for ten

days, he had a check-up and discovered that his tumor had become

smaller, and he was able to eat again. With this encouragement, he

practiced chi gong an hour at a time, four times a day. After three

months, he had made a complete recovery and went back to work as

usual. He credited chi gong with saving his life.

 

In Hebei province's Tianjin University, the chi gong class for the

fourth quarter of 1983 included fifteen cancer victims (the

categories were cancer of the liver, the stomach, the mammary gland,

and the rectum). After six months to a year of practicing chi gong,

not one of them had died. Their conditions showed various levels of

improvement, and all of the patients experienced the triple benefit

of eating, sleeping, and feeling well. They were also firm in their

conviction that " to exercise right is to survive. " The styles of chi

gong that they practiced were Standing-On-Stake and meditation gong,

which will be described in chapters 8 and 12 respectively.

 

All kinds of cases regarding the cure of cancer with different

styles of chi gong are frequently reported in chi gong magazines.

The conclusion may be that no matter what chi gong style is used, it

is possible to cure cancer. The simple truth is that every style of

chi gong adheres to three principles: (a) achieving a state of

tranquility, (b) relaxation and release of tension, © commitment

and development of willpower. And each of these principles is

important in one's fight against cancer. In addition, we think that

the reason Guo Lin's chi gong was especially effective is because

she had her patients train in groups. Group practice is the best way

to arouse interest and bring good cheer. Interest helps one

concentrate on doing the chi gong exercises, and cheerfulness

produces a beneficial effect on the organism. As the first step in

curing cancer, Guo Lin had the patients come together as a group and

swear an oath to resist cancer, for the purpose of increasing their

fighting spirit. Willpower was applied as a healing technique. In a

large group of patients (Guo Lin's cancer therapy groups usually

consisted of seventy people), there would be one or two of a more

sensitive disposition, achieving the beneficial effects of chi gong

earlier than the others. As soon as one or two patients had shown

good results, the rest of the patients would be encouraged to

have greater confidence, and as we know, a positive attitude plays a

role in curing disease. Also, if people practice chi gong exercises

alone and then fail to achieve results, they are more likely to

become discouraged.

 

One reason for the negative impact of failure acknowledged in

Western medicine is that the feeling of helplessness appears to

suppress the immune system's ability to resist tumor development.4

On the other hand, fostering positive images appears to strengthen

immunological competence.5 Lawrence Leshan has pointed to

psychological factors in cancer causation since the fifties.6

Specific methods to fight cancer successfully with visualization

techniques were introduced in the U.S. by Carl Simonton, M.D., in

the early seventies. 7 Thus there are reasons to think that a

positive attitude improves and negative thoughts decrease the immune

mechanism's ability to defend the body.

 

Much, but not all of chi gong's effect is based on entering a state

of meditation. In meditation, there are no distractions, depressing

thoughts, or worries. The body's functions are able to return to

normal by relaxation, which is the key to balancing the circulation

of the chi and the blood. In Chinese traditional medical theory,

stimulating the circulation of the chi and blood is the main healing

method. Additionally, a sense of happiness is achieved in

meditation, and that is a major wellspring of increased confidence

and fighting spirit.

 

The several effects described above are important mechanisms for

treating any disease. As the term psychoneuroimmunology implies,

these mechanisms include both psychological and physiological

elements. As we know, the psychological and the physiological

aspects operate in interdependent ways. From the physiological

point of view, the Shanghai Institute of Medical Science's Institute

for the Combined Use of Chinese and Western Medicine has conducted a

study on the effects of chi gong and tai ji chuan on elderly

people's endocrine systems (the pituitary, thyroid, and sex

glands). They invited forty-seven elderly people of the same age,

sixty-six years old, to perform chi gong exercises regularly. After

doing this for several weeks, the capabilities of their pituitary,

thyroid, and sex glands were shown to have increased. This

strengthening and stabilizing of the endocrine system can have a

beneficial regulating effect on the vigor of the whole body's

metabolism.

 

This is not to suggest that we understand the extent of chi gong's

effects on cancer. We do know that practicing chi gong exercises

influences many of the body's mechanisms. For instance, it not only

raises the capabilities of the endocrine system, it also has a

regulating effect on cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) and

cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP). These two substances play a

vital bioenergetic role in phosphorylation, which is the key to

respiration and thus the oxygen provision for all of the body's

cells. As we will review below, oxygen prevents cancer growth.

 

In a recent study, Wang Chong-xing and collaborators at the Shanghai

Institute of Hypertension reported at a world conference on chi gong

on improvement in the ratio of cAMP/cGMP within one year of chi gong

practice.8 It is claimed that the concentration and physiological

stability (expressed in a stable ratio) of these two enzyme

messengers play major roles in the normal regulation and maintenance

of health. It is assumed that cancer cells thrive when the blood

cAMP content is low. Ding Shen and other investigators, reporting at

the same world conference, have found that the practice of chi gong,

among other beneficial effects, increases the cAMP content of the

blood which may explain part of chi gong's effect on cancer.

 

Another important factor in cancer growth is whether or not the

body's oxygen content is sufficient. Beijing's Qi Gong and Cancer

Research Unit has conducted many experiments on this aspect. When

the body is deficient in oxygen, cancer cells grow; and when the

body is rich in oxygen, cancer cells die. One explanation for the

sense of serenity produced by entering a state of deep meditation

through chi gong is the increase in the absorption of oxygen. In

ancient China, Taoist priests chose to meditate underneath

the pine tree because they had discovered that the pine exudes the

greatest amount of oxygen.

 

The above points are possible explanations by modem science of

several mechanisms by which chi gong cures cancer. From the point of

view of Chinese traditional medicine, chi gong has the functions of

activating the body's vital forces (chi), strengthening the blood's

circulation, balancing the yin and the yang, stimulating the

conductivity of the meridians and improving the psychological state.

Chinese medical theory emphasizes that chi is the driving force of

life. The body's health is determined by the strength or weakness of

its chi. As soon as the chi is weakened, the " blood is clogged, " the

yin and yang lose their balance, and disease will result. Research

by the Bei Dai He Chi Gong Clinic indicates that after doing a

chi gong exercise for a certain period of time (we judge this to be

approximately forty minutes), the body's internal regional blood

volume increases by 30 percent and the body temperature rises two to

three degrees Celsius. For the Chinese, these facts demonstrate the

way that chi gong acts to clear the meridians-unclog the blood-and

moderate the chi and blood. In other words, when the chi and the

blood are flowing freely, the (the balance of yin and yang),

and diseases will disappear of themselves.

 

In recent years, scientists and medical specialists have been

turning their attention to the immune system for the purpose of

fighting disease. China took up this point more than two thousand

years ago. As The Emperor's Classic state in " Questions and

Answers " : " Be imperturbable and the true chi will come to you;

concentrate the inner spirit and well-being follows. " This signifies

that if the body's energy is at its full level, it will not

sicken. Chi gong exercises bring out and mobilize the body's latent

strength, raise the body's energy level, and activate the cells of

the immune system, causing a feeling of well-being.

 

Many studies have demonstrated that people suffering from emotional

damage, tension, a low level of energy, depression, and irritability

have a markedly higher rate of cancer occurrence. Through the

practice of chi gong, especially when reaching the level of the deep

meditative state, a whole set of beneficial psychological and

spiritual conditions emerge, including emotional well-being,

spiritual happiness, stability of mood, and complete relaxation of

the body. This directly inspires the patient's confidence of

defeating cancer, as well as benefiting the body's dynamic

balance, and as a consequence makes a positive contribution to the

healing and comfort of the body.

 

Besides one's own practice of chi gong, another method of treating

cancer is through the use of a chi gong expert who can provide

relief by transmitting external chi from his body to that of the

patient, thereby purportedly killing cancer cells. Dr. Feng Li-da,

vice-president, General, and professor of immunology, Beijing

College of Traditional , has done many experiments

in this area. She reported that by transmitting external chi for one

minute, a chi gong expert can destroy 90 percent of colon and

dysentery bacilli, and in ten minutes 60 percent of a flu virus. In

sixty minutes, the rate of destroyed uterine cancer cells is also

around 60 percent, and that of destroyed gastric cancer cells 25

percent. A twenty-gram tumor on a mouse disappeared within a five-

week period of external chi treatment. A few of the experiments

referred to above were reported in the following press release of

November 28,1983, by the New China (Xinhua) News Agency:

 

A meeting for the evaluation and demonstration of the action of chi

gong on certain bacteria had recently been held, presided over by

Feng, Li Da, deputy superintendent of the Navy General Hospital and

director of the Immunology Research Division. Test tubes filled

respectively with coliform bacillus and dysentery bacteria, golden

and white staphylococcus, and virus were handed over one by one to a

chi gong master, who held each of the tubes firmly in his hand for a

minute to release external energy (chi) at it. A projector displayed

the image of each experimental sample on a screen. Under an

electronic microscope, the bacteria were shown to be expanding,

cracking, and dissolving, being killed by chi gong. From the

immunological standpoint, Feng has thus demonstrated that chi energy

is an objective reality. Furthermore, she has confirmed that chi

gong is effective to a certain degree in treating B-hepatitis. There

is also encouraging preliminary evidence of the therapeutic effect

of chi gong with respect to the treatment of guinea pigs suffering

from ascites ( an accumulation of fluid in the abdomen) caused by

cancer. Dr. Feng declared that in mainland China chi gong has now

advanced from the prescientific phase to a new epoch in which modern

methods are employed in its study.

 

Another example: A Japanese cancer victim, Ansei Shonin, who had a

tumor in the lower part of his head, deeply imbedded in his nasal

cavity. Made a special trip from Japan to Beijing's General Hospital

of the People's Liberation Army to undergo external chi treatment. A

chi gong expert performed twelve days of external chi treatment, and

as a result Ansei Shonin's tumor, as large as an egg, shrunk, and

his pain was distinctly eased.

 

Why external chi works toward strengthening of the cells and the

immune responses of the body in the case of healing a disease, and

appears to kill or otherwise interrupt and reverse the growth of

cells (or bacteria) in the case of cancer (or the influencing of

bacterial cultures) is not known. To the best of our knowledge, it

is due to the different intent of the qi gong master. This may be

similar to visualization or imaging therapy, as applied in Western

alternative medical approaches. As part of the therapy, the

determination is made in advance whether the patient will visualize

growth of healthy or destruction of cancerous cells in his or her

own body.

 

In conclusion, then, cancer victims apparently can achieve effective

treatment by practicing chi gong as shown by Master Guo. But one

might suggest that if the patient is too weak or for other reasons

unable to practice chi gong regularly and vigorously, external chi

should be tried as a cure or used as a supplement to chi gong.

Finally, as described in the previous chapter regarding practices in

the Bei Da Hei Clinic, combinations of " internal " and " external " chi

with dietetic therapy and Western medical science may all be

attempted when looking for a cure for cancer.

 

Notes

 

1. Ke Yan, " Cancer Does Not Mean Death, " Beijing Literature, July

1982, 43.

 

2. Cyrus Lee, " Qi Gong (Breath Exercise) and Its Major Models, "

Chinese Cukure 24 (September1984): 71-79. The description was Guoted

by Prof. Lee from Guo Lin's book Hsin Qigong Liao Fa (Hofei: Science

and Technology Press, 1980), 4.

 

3. Xie Hua, " Fight Cancer with the True Qi, " Qi Gong of the Flying

Crane, Beijing, n.d. 4. See for example, M. Visintainer et al. in

Science 216 (1982): 437-40.

 

5. See for example, P Lansky in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

23 (1982): 496- 503.

 

6. See for example, Lawrence Leshan, You Can Fight for Your Life:

Emotional Factors in the Causation of Cancer (New York: Evans, 1977).

 

Warmly,

Moe Webster

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