Dr. Kelly Turner lost a young friend and an uncle to cancer
early in life, which eventually prompted her to become a psychotherapist and
researcher specializing in integrative oncology. She wanted to focus on cases of spontaneous remission.[i] She quickly discovered there were more unexplained
remissions than at first she imagined were possible.
She also discovered that most physicians were unwilling to
discuss or even be reminded of unexplained remissions. One reason for this resistance was the
alleged fear of arousing “false hope” in patients they thought were doomed.
On the other hand, anomalistic healings–like anomalies in other branches
of science–might contain clues to new insights and even new healing paradigms.
Turner therefore spent about ten years gathering case
histories of what she called “radical remission”–remissions due not to
conventional treatment but unconventional interventions. Her book so titled is based
on about a thousand case histories from medical records and others she investigated;
and she traveled all over the world from China to Zimbabwe, interviewing fifty
non-Western alternative healers about their methods of treating cancer.
Radical Remission
is above all a practical book, addressed to cancer patients, their families,
and to anyone interested in optimizing their health. It makes no claims that promote “false hope” and doesn’t
discourage the use of Western medicine.
It does propose that certain data suggest a radically modified healing
paradigm for cancer is a real possibility. The author’s compassionate enthusiasm for a wider vision of
what constitutes the way to health and well-being is evident throughout.
Turner found about seventy-five factors that were cited as causally
related to cases of radical remission.
From these she selected nine as the most frequently mentioned by
survivors: “Radically changing your diet, taking control of your health,
following your intuition, using herbs and supplements, releasing suppressed
emotions, increasing positive emotions, embracing social support, deepening
your spiritual connection, and having strong reasons for living” (p.8).
The nine factors are each discussed in a chapter, and each
chapter covers “action steps,” specific things one can do to implement the
factor in question. Each chapter
reviews scientific studies that support the beneficial claims of the healing
item in question; and each chapter focuses in detail on a particular case
history of radical remission.
Turner notes that seven of the nine helpful variables are
mental. The two physical variables,
radical change in diet and the use of herbs and supplements, also presuppose
mental input in the form of judgments one has to make and the exercise of one’s
voluntary skills to stick with the new diet and the sometimes exotic use of
herbs and supplements.
In fact, the two physical, as well as the seven mental,
remission factors not only call for personal choice and active intention, they
have a social and political dimension.
For the challenge to survivors in a very real sense is to change their
worldview and their life-style; in practical detail, it is to effect a personal
revolution. For example, to
radically change one’s diet – e.g., dropping sweets, meat, dairy, refined foods
– one has to resist corporate advertising media that are primarily driven by
the profit motive and not by concern for public health. One way to change one’s diet is to fast;
this of course is an offense to the church of consumerism. And yet, when animals get sick they
don’t rush to the pharmacy; they stop eating and consume nothing.
The call for personal revolution is evident with the seven
other cancer-transcending candidates unearthed by Turner’s research. For example, what could be more
revolutionary than to shift from perceiving yourself as a passive victim to re-conceiving
yourself as the active custodian of your health and illness? (Passivity shouldn't be confused with
receptivity, which is a special form of activity.)
Passivity is conducive to depression, which acts adversely
on the immune system. The sense of
helplessness, the feeling that nothing can be done, also weakens the immune
function. (Turner cites various studies supporting these claims.) Add to this helpless stance fear,
anxiety, and stress: also agents that enfeeble the natural mechanisms of our
bodies to deal with endogenous foes.
To rise to the challenge of self-healing is to mobilize the
latent immune powers we naturally possess. The worst thing is to wallow in passivity and yield to the
ugly sprite of helplessness. The challenge
is to seize the reins of choice and change. When we say yes or no, when we aim and act, exercise our
minds and direct our bodies, we are, I believe, using suggestion, pricking the
immune system into performing its genetic duty.
Kelly Turner questions the model of cancer as an invader that
we must kill with drugs, radiation, and surgery, requiring that we accept the collateral
damage of pain, nausea, hair loss, sexual dysfunction, and the like. Turner recommends a different model in
which the emphasis is on restoring the compromised immune system. Instead of reaching for our weapons to
fight what is perceived as the other, the enemy, the terror, we can deploy our skills
and intelligence to detoxify the body, a way to re-vitalize the immune system.
The suggestions the author presents are built around this model:
radical activation of the “wisdom” and healing powers of our bodies. Being existentially active not passive is
one way of doing it, but other ways are possible. For example, the data shows
that survivors follow their intuitions. The prospect of death concentrates the
mind and is apt to tear open one’s intuitive potential. Turner provides
testimony showing how unpredictable and strange the logic of many intuitive breakthroughs
can be. Many ways, the author
stresses, are possible for our healing self to wield its magic. When our backs are up against a wall,
we must find the ability to imagine the impossible.
According to the empirical data, emotions are key to producing
radical remissions. So a revolution
in emotional life is called for.
First, one must be released from those vitriolic emotions we try to
suppress but that stick in the craw and waste us: fear, guilt, shame, envy, hatred,
regret, resentment, and all the rest; clung to they can wreak havoc on the
immune response. “I was angry with
my friend, I told my wrath; my wrath did end; I was angry with my foe, I told
it not; my wrath did grow.”
Blake’s poem seems a parable of cancer. Vent, express, and slough off the poisonous clots of consciousness--but follow up with building positive emotions.
Turner suggests we have to consciously cultivate the
positive emotions in whatever way we can: yes, joy, love, bliss – don’t be shy,
defy logic and rational expectation, and go for it! Be a Bacchanalian in your will to touch the bliss and scale
the heights. And moreover, she recommends,
in the spirit of Norman Cousins, take full advantage of the healing power of
laughter, of levity, good humor, the droll, and of course, the absurd.
The important point, as far as I can see, is that no matter how
pressing the circumstances, it’s always possible to orient your consciousness
in the direction you choose.
In case this sounds hyper-individualistic, another key factor that kept
cropping up in accounts of people who beat the odds was a willingness to
embrace social support. It is a willingness
that often bears unexpected fruit.
Look at the studies: there is data showing that people socially and
communally in touch with others live longer than folks who are cut off and emotionally
starved. The author noticed during her research in New Zealand how
“closely-bonded” the Maori were in “their tight-knit communities”, contrasting
what she saw with America where people live in “fenced-off houses” and
neighbors don’t know each other (p.199).
Are there criteria of healing communities? In taking responsibility for our health,
we should think about the toxic or therapeutic traits of the communities we
inhabit: family, neighborhood, workplace, city, landscape – a topic to research. One wonders whether our rapidly
evolving technologies of communication are creating life-enhancing communities
or disease prone syndromes. I
suspect the answer is both.
There are two more factors in radical cancer survival. The
first calls for a willed attempt to connect with a higher force, a spiritual
energy. Call it a quantum leap
into the unseen dimension of existence.
It doesn’t matter how the connection is made, as long as the healing
potential is stirred to action. It
has to be based on real experience, not just hopeful inclination or compliant
fantasy. One way is through meditation, which, Turner reports, makes for peaceful sleep, thus refreshing the immune system. Part
of meditation is the effort to stop the mind, which somehow awakens the healing
powers of the body. Turner
associates unconditional love with the highest form of spiritual energy, a
potent if mysterious ally in dismantling cellular pathology.
But how do you manage unconditional love during a mortal
crisis? Experience often confounds us; terrible situations sometimes elicit transcendent experience. We also have the trope of mysticism that
couples the idea of ego death with influxes of higher consciousness. All we can say for sure: survivors
report these heightened states along with their remissions.
And then there’s the politics of transcendence. The ordinary world is not set up to
facilitate healing states of consciousness. Violence and oppression, gross and
subtle, possess much of planetary life—not friendly to ecstatic release or the
healing magic of love.
Nevertheless, revolt against the Zeitgeist remains an option. The possibility of personal spiritual
revolution exists for everybody. Much evidence shows that the “impossible”
happens; so learn to expect that it will happen.
One final ingredient, the ninth factor, on Kelly Turner’s
list, crucial among creative cancer survivors. They had to have strong reasons for living. There’s a difference between not
wanting to die and wanting passionately to live for something. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as
it fires up the soul. One of
Turner’s most robust survivors was a grandma determined to live so she could
take care of her two grandchildren.
But how does all this work? Physicist Helmut Schmidt spoke of “goal-oriented thinking”
in successful PK experimentation.
One aims solely for the desired outcome; one never dwells on the how but
on the what, the great aim, the great goal. If somebody in
a PK experiment can influence events at the quantum level of reality by virtue
of sheer intention, why couldn’t the same person be able to muster what it
takes to heal one’s body? Research
shows that survivors find their callings, become resolute and impassioned about
living for some specific reason.
They’re energized by a focused sense of purpose, and their lives are
infused with healing vitality. The
infusion may be slow and halting or quite rapid.
This ninth factor is perhaps the most powerful, but for many
not easy to take advantage of. For
vast numbers of people—victims of war, poverty, exile, homelessness,
discrimination (all kinds) --the goal is just to survive, to make it through
the day. Even the well-off among more fortunate societies--victims of
metaphysical depression -- often have no life-enhancing passions. The ninth factor may depend on
luck. Or else it demands a certain
skillful imagination to believe in or invent robust reasons for living.
Nowadays when the cost of illness can destroy you economically,
learning to exploit our inborn healing potential seems an idea whose time has
come. The secret should be
revealed. The greatest “health
care system” is our own life, how we use it and what we do with it. The beauty is that the system is free,
but only if we learn how it works. It’s for us to use in whatever way is best
in the improvisation we call our lives.
No government or insurance company can take it from us. Radical
Remission provides an evidence-based manifesto of our self-healing
potential. It is grounded in the
experiences of people who survived cancer against the odds. We are in debt to the author of this eye-opening
book.
[i]See her Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against
All Odds. An early version of
this essay appeared in the peer-reviewed journal, Explore, edited by Dr. Larry Dossey, the author of many important books
that supplement and complement Dr. Turner’s.
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