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