Medical Qigong for Cancer Patients
Advances in the study of mind-body medicine increasingly point to the power of the mind to effect measurable changes in chemical processes in the body. As an acupuncturist and former journalist, I like to investigate how the mind can be harnessed to promote increased psychological well-being.
While at studying for my acupuncture qualification at The University of Lincoln, I was awarded The Angela Lippiatt Research Award and given a grant to investigate the use of mental relaxation in the form of qigong, meditation and breathing exercises (which are strikingly similar to MBSR techniques) to support people with breast cancer psychologically. I reviewed the existing research literature that addresses how to promote psychological well-being in people with cancer through mental relaxation using qigong, MBSR and any other meditative practices. And found there is plenty of research to support the ideas within Chinese medicine that DO NOT separate mind from our physical body with treatment of one always affecting the other.
“The Relation of Cancer-prone Personality to Exceptional Recovery from Cancer; A Preliminary Study” by Katz and Epstein, studied a group of women who had exceptional (statistically and medically unlikely remissions) recoveries from cancer. Their study attempted to find common psychological markers that differentiated them from their less fortunate peers. Of course, it is difficult to know how many of those peers could have shared such psychological characteristics with the remarkable survivors, but the study found that a common factor in these remarkable survivors was profound mental change.
Jon Kabat Zinn pioneered the use of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and has published numerous books and studies on mindfulness and its clinical applications. Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues published a research paper demonstrating in a small clinical trial, a four-fold effect of the mind on the rate of skin clearing in patients with psoriasis undergoing ultraviolet light therapy: [Kabat-Zinn et al, Psychosomatic Medicine 60:625-623 (1998)]. A more recent paper [Davidson, Kabat-Zinn, et al. Psychosomatic Medicine 65: 564-570 (2003)] shows positive changes in brain activity, emotional processing under stress, and immune function in people taking an MBSR course in a corporate work setting in a randomized clinical trial. The MBSR course involved a weekly meditation class and a commitment to daily meditation and gentle stretching for six weeks.
Chinese medicine sees disease as a manifestation of a disharmony affecting both the mind and the body. The ancient Chinese doctors wrote that the cause of breast disease is a disharmony in the emotions. Mental change, especially relaxation (often in the form of qigong exercises), is seen as both preventative and curative. Qigong is based two words. Qi or chi means energy and gong means work or study. So qigong exercises teach people to work with the energy of their own bodies and use their minds to soften and relax their body.
People with cancer undergo intensive treatment to their physical body, so it makes sense that they should be receiving treatment to increase/protect their psychological health as well, and that this treatment is equally important to their health.
At ModernAcu, I teach medical qigong exercises (also known more recently and scientifically as gasotransmitter therapy) that can help patients to harness the power of these traditional practices to calm and relax the mind as well as the body using ancient, yet simple breathing practices. Book an appointment and start to change your mind and heal your body….I have no doubt both will happen.