Ali Hammer Winans shares her thoughts in the article found in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 50, Fall 2005 about her recovery from cancer:

“The real healing from cancer will be on the emotional and spiritual level, not on the physical”

Going back in time a little, on the South Jersey shore, May 5, 2005: (continued)

In contrast, when I paid attention, I opened up my body by making small postural adjustments, lifting my rib cage by lengthening through the solar plexus. This, combined with putting more awareness in my pelvis and legs, changed the way I was walking and the way I felt. My stride became longer and more open, my pelvis moved with each step and it felt like my legs really were connected to my body. The whole front of my body felt subtly more open, exposing instead of protecting my vulnerability. It was easier to breathe deeply, and I felt emotionally more open, empowered and present. Specifically my groins felt more open and like they were stretching more with each step.

The Jin Shin Jyutsu Safety Energy Lock 15 lives in the groin, in the front where the leg meets the torso. One of the pieces of wisdom in Jin Shin Jyutsu is that a stuck place above the waist, which shows up as a symptom or disease, is caused by stuck energy below the waist, and vice versa. An effect below the waist has a cause above the waist – as above, so below. This is why, for example, if someone is having trouble breathing, we may wish to hold Safety Energy Locks on the feet or legs. And when we use a “15 Flow” it helps to open the chest. The insight I just had is that maybe the breast project, a “stuck” in the chest, really originated in a “stuck” in my 15s. When I used to have my sessions with Mary Burmeister, she always paid a lot of attention to my 15s. The meaning of Safety Energy Lock 15 is “Joy and Laughter”, and when our 15s are open, we can feel the joy that is our birthright and an inner smile lives throughout our whole body, helping all our billions of cells to smile in harmony. The 15s also help to keep the physical body in harmony. And considering that I have been focusing recently on being more present in my body, it makes sense that this would then help the 15s to open.

My bodywork therapist had given me a visualization to do as part of my homework which has helped me to get to this new place. It is very simple: you simply sit quietly and imagine the universal or cosmic energy coming in through the top of the head and down to the pelvis, at the same time as the earth energy is coming up both legs into the pelvis. That’s all it is, you don’t have to figure out where it goes after that, just feel it continually coming in from both directions. This was difficult for me at first because I had so little awareness in my legs, but just recently it had begun working for me, and it feels good – so that makes it easier to do.

This whole experience is about making small physical changes, but huge changes in beingness. The reason I write about it here, is that it is many small moments like these that create my healing and recovery. At this point I have recovered physically from a life-threatening disease and medical interventions. Now I am still healing from the associated grief and fears and also from the trauma, stress and emotional pain of living with relationship difficulty and financial crisis for over four years. And because I take the words of my doctor to heart, that “the real healing from cancer will be on the emotional and spiritual level, not on the physical”, I see that my recovery also encompasses healing older emotional wounds and really clearing the energy pattern that created the cancer in the first place.

Thank you, Ali.

Thank you, Mary.

Thank you, David.

Gassho, Namaste, Blessings

Ali Hammer Winans shares her thoughts in the article found in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 50, Fall 2005 about her recovery from cancer:

“The real healing from cancer will be on the emotional and spiritual level, not on the physical”

Going back in time a little, on the South Jersey shore, May 5, 2005: 

This next passage was written when I came to the “shore” for five days for a retreat alone – to write, to do yoga and meditate and to do a liver/gall bladder flush, all of which were very successful ventures. I was able to do this by being gifted with a place to stay by myself by two of our Amma satsang members. Thank you Amma, thank you God!

I really get a lot of my inspiration from being in nature. I walked along the Margate beach again today for over an hour enjoying the feel of the warm sun and ocean breeze, the gentle roar of the ocean waves and the screeching of the gulls. After a while I focused more on the way my body was feeling as I walked. It feels so good to move, and especially to walk on sand, on the earth. I became aware that my body is feeling more integrated, like the parts are more connected. I have been seeing the bodywork the bodywork therapist at my doctor’s office for Integrative Therapy since January, and my chiropractor since last August and believe I am feeling the results. The bodywork therapist has been helping me to be more “in my body”, so that I can really inhabit my body instead of living in my head and just dragging my body around with it. The regular chiropractic adjustments have been removing interference to the proper functioning of my nervous system, which of course helps everything else. I have also been practicing more meditation recently, both a practice received from Amma and the meditation I have learned at the Wellness Community, which have been helping me to be more mindful and more conscious of my thoughts and feelings.

As I was walking I became more conscious of my posture and realized that by making subtle changes, I could walk like the old me or like the new me. When I let my chest cave in and rib cage slump just a tiny little bit, the alignment of my pelvis was altered very subtly, and my pelvis felt locked and more stationary even as my legs were moving. I was mindful of the sensations as I walked in this way and it felt like a very old pattern, a way of moving through life like a clockwork toy or a robot, as if my spirit does not really inhabit my body. This posture is related to being emotionally shut down and not in touch with my feelings. The solar plexus and abdomen were more contracted, holding in unexpressed anger and very deep survival fears. This is a subtle version of the way that animals will roll up to protect the soft underbelly from physical attack. Unfortunately, we humans do this chronically to protect ourselves from emotional attack, and I learned to do it at a young age. I recognized that it is also connected with an old way of being in which achieving the goal or getting somewhere is more important than experiencing the journey. When I wasn’t paying attention, I noticed that I kept slipping back into this ancient, lifelong posture like going back to a comfortable pair of old shoes. And I noticed that it didn’t really feel that good anymore.

To be continued…

Ali Hammer Winans shares her thoughts in the article found in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 50, Fall 2005 about her recovery from cancer:

“The real healing from cancer will be on the emotional and spiritual level, not on the physical”

While undergoing chemotherapy, April 10, 2002: (continued)

Can I even get to a place of loving the cancer? I feel betrayed by my body I’m not in control. My body has turned upon me and could destroy my life. I am taking drastic means to keep life in this body. But maybe I can see it differently. The cancer is a manifestation of conflict and destruction and pain that was hidden deep inside. It is bringing this up to my attention. My body wants to heal my spirit. In the language of Jin Shin Jyutsu, there is a project in my Safety Energy Lock 13. (Safety Energy Lock 13 is the energy center located on each side of the chest above the breast.) Thirteen is the number of the Creator, the One who IS all Love. What this says to me is that there is a crucial, demanding need for me to love myself so totally and completely, that I end up BEing love. To really love all aspects of my SELF, knowing that all is divine, all is GOD. And that will release me from all the self-criticism and self-judgments, then help me to love others more completely.

Moving ahead to July 4, 2005:

Reflecting on this last paragraph over three years later, I ask, “What did I mean when I said loving the cancer?” This is as shocking a concept as Jesus telling us to love our enemies, and maybe it is the same thing. Could I love something or someone who wants to kill me? My intuition says yes, love is the answer, even while my mind recoils saying no, no, no. Love everything, even the disease, even your enemies. How can I do it though? The idea of loving the cancer cells infiltrating the body is like loving the insurgents destroying Iraq. You’d have to be a saint to love that. A saintly person like Amma (my spiritual teacher) is so completely established in BEing love that she truly loves all beings, and her life shows many examples of how her love transformed the actions of those who tried to harm her.

I am, however, a beginner, and growing into this love is a cyclic, ongoing process – which is illustrated by the Buddhist Loving Kindness practice. First love yourself, send love to your friends, family and community, send love to those you have difficulty with, and then send love to the entire world. This routine is repeated daily as a meditation. The words of Mary Burmeister come to mind here, “Turn your problems into projects,” and “See the harmony and not the dirty dishes,” informing us how to begin loving the difficult situation, the disease, the enemy.

For now I am enjoying good health, and from where I am, I can love the cancer for being a wake-up call and a teacher. I can love the reminders to love life, to love others, to appreciate the little things, to ask for what I need, to speak my truth, to take care of my body, for bringing me an opportunity to know myself more, and for the reminder that life and all I love is so precious.

To be continued…

Ali Hammer Winans shares her thoughts in the article found in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 50, Fall 2005 about her recovery from cancer:

“The real healing from cancer will be on the emotional and spiritual level, not on the physical”

While undergoing chemotherapy, April 10, 2002:

The other day I was thinking about how I am/have been fighting my demons. The demons being the fear, doubt, anger, resentment, guilt, blame, self-hatred, lack of self-esteem and self-worth, despair and so on. It felt like a fight to me. I wanted to push these feelings away, stuff them, and get busy. I did not know what to DO with them. What came to me last night as I contemplated, sleepless in bed, is that I do have a way to re-language this. As the women talked about in the book Speak the Language of Healing – Living with Breast Cancer without Going to War, it doesn’t have to be a war, a battle within myself. This is most crucial – I need to heal the inner conflicts. Instead of fighting the demons, I can be with them.

The ancient practice of sitting with what shows up in the present – sit with it, put it beside me and simply be with it, whatever it is. It will transform. And I don’t have to just sit in meditation. Jin Shin Jyutsu can be a part of this spiritual practice. Mary has always told us, “BE the observer of the transformation. Awareness leads to Understanding to Technique.” I’ve been graced with much healing power flowing through me to help others and myself. Now I am seeing that I can go even deeper in experiencing the truth – going from the complicated back to the Simple.

My practice needs to get simpler: Go into the Breath, hold the fingers. Watch what comes up in the mind, but don’t go off and get lost in the stories. Only in this way can I connect with the deepest part of me that knows, connecting heaven and earth…AHA! A realization comes within me, and the pieces of the jigsaw come together, showing me what it means to work with negativity in meditation and how the real healing happens on the emotional and spiritual levels.

Then I have contemplated the two commandments of Jesus. The first one is to love God. I do believe that my experience of Nature here and loving it all is how I am feeling my love of the Divine. And then there is the second commandment, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. It’s clear that Tom (my husband) and others around me are given as expressions of the Divine for me to learn to love. But it has to start with me with total self-acceptance and self-love. With this, I connected with the truth of all the therapists and healers who recommend mirror work to increase self-love. This is what I can do – use my mirror. Look at my physical visage. Love my face even without my beautiful hair. This is part of the job. The rest is loving myself as I sit with the demons, and even love the demons.

To be continued…