Cancer as Teacher CEU

When treating people who have a cancer diagnosis, unless we fully understand the message and mechanism of our chosen treatment strategies, even cancer treatment strategies which are “successful” for select individuals fail to fulfill the promise of true healing: not only recovery from the illness but a movement forward into a greater ecology within our bodies and in our lives. Traditional Chinese herbal strategies open doorways into essential healing insights for both practitioner and client.

Every illness has a transformation of virtue, and cancer is no exception. Cancer is a Water/Wood illness. The illness is characterized by growth that is malignant, and refusal to die—survival at any cost, including the cost of our own body’s health and integrity. Its virtue is the capacity for healthy mutation—the ability to grow beyond our own ability to recognize our former selves—and the willingness to “die” in order to survive, rather than sacrifice holism.

This lecture explores:

• The nature of malignancy, and how to work with it in ourselves and others
• Healthy and ecological ways of responding to what threatens our lives
• What happens when we are pushed too far and hit our “breaking point”
• The relationship between wei, ying, yuan and shen level identity in healing cancer
• Recognizing the role of latency vs. denial
• Facing our dark side with love—facing our deaths from the heart.

When the energetics of cancer are no longer a stranger to us—feared and unseen—we are able to support others in looking at and responding to their cancer diagnosis with strength and clarity.