develops, the stillness naturally reveals itself. We rest in open, undistracted awareness. Easy as that.
This is the essence of mindfulness-based stillness meditation, and this, the main meditation technique that is recommended, is set out at the end of the next chapter.
Time to Practice
Finally then, what level of commitment is required? Quality of life or quantity of life? Your aims and priorities must be very clear. Any time allocation has to be balanced by your needs, your beliefs and your other commitments.
Quality of life is vastly improved by doing ten to twenty minutes once or twice daily. To make an impact on quantity of life, to aim for recovery, three longer sessions per day from forty minutes up to one hour each are recommended.
I feel it very important to set yourself a goal in this regard. Work out your priorities and set a goal for the coming week. It is far better to set a conservative goal to begin with and succeed in meeting it than to fall short of an overambitious target.
So having set your goal, practice for a week. Then assess your results, reassess your goals and priorities, and reset your target. Remember that it is probable that you will have what seem to be good sessions and ordinary ones to begin with. The more meditation you do, the more repeatable and the more satisfying it becomes.
When I first began, my situation was critical and I did about five hours a day for three months. I then did three hourly sessions for the next year, then around an hour each day ever since. Also, for many years I have continued to regularly attend (or give) more intensive meditation retreats. This is obviously a big time commitment. I did it when I was ill because it felt good and it gave me results. I continue to do around an hour each day for the same reasons.
If quality of life is your aim, and time appears short, ten to twenty minutes twice a day will help you a lot. I remember the story from many years ago of a man who had been estimated to have three weeks to live. He went to Dr. Meares full of enthusiasm for his ideas around meditation and was keen to begin. However, on being told he would need to spend three hours a day at it, he replied, “Oh, I haven’t time for that” and left!
I am sure meditation improves both quality of life and quantity of life.
Only you can do it.
The body’s natural ability to heal itself is really quite phenomenal. While we often take it for granted, this ability is nothing short of miraculous.
For example, take the healing of a broken leg. First there is a trauma, a solid bone is broken in two and the shattered ends displaced. There will be torn muscles, probably internal bleeding—a lot of damage. Surgery is often required to stabilize the situation, and perhaps a steel pin is inserted to fix the broken bones together and keep them stable. Yet, once the right conditions are created, that bone will automatically reunite itself, the muscles will regenerate, and normal function return. In six months’ time an X-ray will show the bone to be healed, and actually often where the break was, the bone will now be even stronger. What an amazing process!
Relaxation, Balance and Healing
Let us see this process in perspective. First, the right conditions were created and then the body healed itself. The medical intervention was necessary to provide those right conditions. However, the doctors did not actually heal anything. What they did achieve is that by realigning the bones, they created the first requirement for the healing of a fracture to proceed. The patient then had to look after the leg and make sure the healing process could continue. The patient did not have to think of the intricate process of the bones reuniting. The body’s natural healing power was what returned the leg to normal. The body, given the right conditions, healed itself—automatically.
The body’s normal state is health. It has a tremendously varied and complex set of mechanisms to maintain it in good health. Whenever the body is out of balance, these mechanisms swing into action to re-create health. If those mechanisms are thwarted or unsuccessful, then we have disease.
So, what is the problem in cancer? Why does the body appear unable to cope? It is just the same as with the broken leg!
If we are able to provide the right conditions, the body has the potential to heal itself.
In the acute situation of a broken bone, the medical intervention is a very obvious first step. Surgery provides the right conditions by realigning and stabilizing the bones. The patient maintains those conditions by keeping the leg still and having a diet and an environment that permit the normal healing functions to proceed.
However, cancer is a chronic, multifactorial, degenerative disease. It takes a long time to develop and has a multiplicity of contributing factors, as we shall discuss later. While surgery and other medical treatments clearly have their place in treating cancer, correcting the causes of the disease is more involved; while providing the correct environment to allow the body’s potential for healing to proceed is also more involved. All of this requires consideration of far more than the body mechanics involved in surgically repairing a broken leg. It involves consideration of the whole person—body, emotions, mind and spirit.
What we are concerned with here is investigating the potential for each of us to be directly involved in re-creating our own health. What we seek is the ideal environment for healing in general and cancer in particular. What we know is that this all comes back to that simple principle of balance. Balance equates with good health, and good health does not include cancer. Balance equates with healing.
Again, a healthy body cannot have cancer. There was a man in America who had kidney failure and was given a kidney transplant. Unbeknown to anyone, the kidney he was given in the transplant was already cancerous. Naturally, he was placed on immune-suppressant drugs to prevent his body from rejecting his new kidney and this meant his body’s normal defenses could not operate properly. In a very short time, not only was the new kidney engulfed by the cancer, but it had spread throughout his lungs. With his life threatened, the immune-suppressant drugs were ceased, the new kidney was removed, and he was returned to a dialysis machine. What happened? The immune-suppressant drugs wore off, his normal bodily defenses rapidly reasserted themselves, and all the cancer in his chest disappeared—automatically, with no outside intervention. His body’s normal ability to heal itself did just that. His body, with its immune system working again, had the ability to recognize the cancer should not have been there and so eliminated it.
We want to create the conditions in our body so that it can do the same thing. We want to reactivate our own immune system and provide the right conditions where healing can take place. We can do it.
There is a very close link between the function of our body and the function of our psyche. That is, if we are relaxed and easy in mind and emotions, our body will be relaxed. If, on the other hand, we have anxiety or are affected by stress, our body will suffer from subtle but far-reaching changes in body chemistry and it will also show up as physical tension. I believe that this reflex is a key factor which we can use in the process of getting well.
Equate stress, anxiety and tension with immune-suppression and illness.
Equate relaxation and balance with health and healing.
If
