Our Health Depends on Us (continued, by Dr. Fung Lee)

Other than physiological factors, we have to overcome the sickness demon. We also have to deal with the psychological aspects such smiling, not getting angry and being optimistic besides learning how to relax – which is one of the biggest reasons I am able to subdue my ailment over the years.

Learning to smile is a special kind of homework. Because I know when smiling, especially laughing, our cells are relaxed. When the cells are totally relaxed, they are plump and sleek with full energy that is sufficient to cope with external aggression.   When first learning to smile, I didn’t really want to smile but force myself to have a smiling face.  However, as time passes, our mind will naturally cooperate and we will be genuinely happy.  

After being diagnosed with cancer, learning to smile became one of my  daily assignments.  One time, a patient, who was frowning deeply, came to me.  I saw that she was very melancholic.  Therefore, I asked the little girl who accompanied the mother, “Is your mother ticklish?”  “Yes!”, she replied.  I told her quietly, “every time when your mother lays in bed, just tickle her.”  Consequently, the mother gradually loosened up her frown after laughing hard once everyday.  

Learning not to be angry is one of the hardest homework assignments. Due to my straightforward and righteous personality, whenever I see unreasonable or unfair matters, my spirit of defending someone against injustice rises.  Ever since I realized that the definition of being angry is to punish myself when I see others’ mistakes, I really tried hard to practice this.  However, engrained habits are rather hard to change.  This process took four to five years before I saw any result.  In the beginning, when others picked on me, I will respond instantly but regret immediately.  After awhile when others picked on me again, I would see myself almost getting mad, but then I would escape to where no one can pick on me.  By then I would adjust my emotions.  Eventually, after awhile I was able to suppress my temper without escaping the situation. However, I still think to myself, “You are so pitiable” in order to balance my emotions.  Up to now, I am able to see nothing and maintain my smiles.   

Having the positive attitude towards an illness has the greatest influence on treatment. During the early stage of my cancer, because of the on going setbacks, I had no faith towards the future or my life, which had negative influence on the treatments. Once I have regained faith towards life and the future, and although I didn’t receive any treatments, my health recovered gradually. Therefore, when my health was improving, the most delightful for me to do is to provide encouragement to cancer patients besides my profession.   Whenever there were cancer patients who thought that it’s the end of the world and were feeling down, they were referred to me. Often they will ask a lot of questions and have doubts. When they see my being a real life example standing right in front of them joyfully and lively, their faith and confidence are easily re-established. Patients who came in my office with their heads down and a sad face could end up walking out with joyful smiles and with their heads up.  What I have done is not miracles. I just showed them hope and helped them turn from being pessimistic to optimistic.

Even when the cancer patients come to see me, I would say “Congratulations for having cancer!”  When they hear that, they think it is rather odd. I explained, “If you do not have cancer, how can you change your eating habits? How can you start exercising? And how can you learn to smile? Furthermore, from today onwards, your life will improve everyday and its quality will be better and better daily.   So, isn’t it something worthy congratulating?” When they heard that, they feel better about their conditions.

When the patient’s emotions have settled down and are about to leave, I congratulate them once more. They feel even more bewildered hearing it again since they’ve heard it once. “You have congratulated me once, what else is worth of congratulating again? I would reply, “I have passed to you my thirty years of experience in fighting cancer and health tips to you all at once, so shouldn’t this be something worthy of congratulations?” From there, they leave feeling fulfilled and satisfied.

If we have a positive attitude in dealing with situations in our life, everything will turn out to be wonderful.  If we do the opposite and are pessimistic in our thinking, all matters will be terrible. For example, my husband would disconnect the phone at home for my own good, so that I would not answer a whole bunch of phone calls after work. Although it seems a bit inconvenient for me, yet from another point of view, I was able to use the time for doing yoga, exercising quietly.  Isn’t this more helpful for my health?  Additionally, if there are any important matters, people can call me at the office the next day.  Why should I worry?

Relaxing seems easy.  In actuality, it’s the most difficult thing to do because being relaxed must start from the mind.  Only when our mind is genuinely relaxed, our cells could then relax.  Besides, in order for the mind to be relaxed, we must put down much of our value systems of the mundane world including fame, self-benefits, emotions and so on. My method is to start from cleaning up the drawers, and throwing away things that I have not used for a long time.  Donate and let go of all things, including clothes and objects extending to our personal relationships with others. Therefore, when living simply and plainly, we will become very relaxed.

Back then the doctor told me that I only had six months to live.  Until today, I think I have “gained additional 30 years”. What’s the reason?  Smiling, not getting angry, looking at matters positively, and learning to relax are the essential dharma treasures!

Our Health Depends on Us (continued, by Dr. Fung Lee)

Exercise is a fundamental solution to changing our physique. Everyone’s body originally has the ability to fight external toxins or caner.  However, both internal and external environments that bodies are exposed to contain a lot of harmful factors, which obstruct the body’s immune system.  As a result, sicknesses or cancer become unavoidable. Exercise can help the flow of blood, bringing oxygen and nutrients to parts of the body and conversely increase one’s energy. Consequently, the body’s immunity can be improved.

After getting sick, the exercise I started doing was hiking. By hiking, I don’t mean climbing to mountaintops but rather walking on hilly industrial roads. At that time, I can honestly say I didn’t like hiking at all. I did so because my husband forced me to. Every Sunday, he would get a backpack, some dry food and a bottle of water ready and then he would drag me along with him.  Because my body was too weak, hiking on such a hilly road was actually painful to me. He said I was afraid of seeing the sun, afraid of getting wet in the rain and afraid of being exposed in the wind at that time. Actually, at that time when I was going through treatments, my body was very weak.  When I went out in the sun, my skin would itch. As to being afraid of the rain, I didn’t like catching a cold. At the time of treatment, my body was so weak that it cannot be compared to that of others. In ordinary weather, other people do not catch a cold, but I would always get sick easily. As to being afraid of the wind, there is also a reason to that. After treatment, the blood circulation in my body was poor, and my hands and feet were always cold. When hiking, other people would sweat but for me, even after hiking for half a day, my body would only start to get warm. If there was a breeze, I would feel colder and colder if I kept going, so I couldn’t stand it.

Even though I had to stop and go during hiking, I was able to taste how good it was as my health has slowly improved. Now, my skin irritation from the sun disappeared; the wind and rain were no longer obstacles. After going through a lot of training, my hiking and walking skills have improved as well. In the past, I would shed tears if I walked merely short distances, and would even get sick. Now, my strength has improved to a point that walking 20 kilometers is a piece of cake.  I even broke my own record of walking 40 kilometers. A few years ago, after two years of training, I went up Jade Mountain to test my strength.  In the end, I was happy with my achievement – I passed.

Two years ago, I changed my working environment. Every morning I went hiking first and inhaled the mountains’ essence for 2 hours prior to going to work after taking a shower. People who see me now, say I’m healthier than before and I tell them, “Hiking every day will bring greater progress next year.”

In the laboratory growing cancer cells, if oxygen is added, the cancer cells won’t grow, but if we add carbon dioxide, the cancer cells will grow well. This shows, when our bodies are low in oxygen, cells would have no alternative but to grow into cancerous cells to adapt to the environment. If we eliminate the factors causing the lack of oxygen and replenish oxygen, the cancerous cells would go back to normal.

In these 30 years, I have treated thousands of patients. Those who listened to my advice to go hiking or even go hiking everyday, they noticed obvious and positive changes in their bodies.

Now, every time I look under the microscope and see a patient or friend’s cells  being low in oxygen, I would remind them, “Your cells are low in oxygen, they look very tired, quickly go hiking.”

Other than hiking, walking, or jogging, I spent a quite a bit of time doing yoga, qi-gong and meditation.  With these kinds of training, I saw no results at the beginning.  However, after a period of time, my body became better. But most yoga teachers either encourage their students to bend a bit more, or just teach at a fast pace. Actually, if you want to do well in yoga, being slow and having enough time to warm up are two main factors.  In my case, I have the experience of spending an hour to just learn the “stretching - corpse style” and spending two years to learn warm up exercises.  As a result, my health not only got better, but my sense perceptions are keener.

 Almost everyone knows the importance of exercises toward health, but only a few actually practice personally.

Since I started yoga, hiking and meditation, I maintain four hours of exercise everyday.  Four hours!  To many people, they think it’s unimaginable.  However, if the four hours of exercise can make the rest of the twenty hours more comfortable, which option will you pick if you don’t exercise for the entire day and feel uncomfortable all over.