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…