Practical challenges -- part 2

My one beef with the Bengston bioenergy healing method is the very real possibility that you can take a workshop, learn this wonderful thing that purportedly can be used to heal cancer, and then be set loose, with no follow-up and no supervision, to play. And chances are you won't have a clue what you are doing.

Bill reminds me of the man who used to own the keelboat sailing club where I was a member many years ago. This man had grown up around boats and everything about sailing was as easy and natural to him as walking or eating a sandwich. He just assumed that everyone else was the same way. We could do things with his boats no other owner would dream of allowing people to do. We took them out in storms, in fog, in six to ten foot waves. Heck, we were doing a sailing marathon the night the tail end of Hurricane Andrew came through town. We certainly learned how to sail in all conditions, but quite often we nearly killed ourselves doing it, and I recall at least one occasion where we almost sank a boat. At any rate, the reason Bill reminds me of this man is that healing comes so naturally to him that he imagines that once you learn his technique, it will be just as easy for you.

I would, however, like to put forward, ever so tentatively, the idea that it is not the same thing to go forth and play with boats as it is to go forth and play with cancer. Cancer is a teensy bit more serious than that. So a little bit of supervision would be good thing. Here in Toronto we have our monthly practice groups, which Bill for a while attended by speaker phone. This follow-up was very valuable. Now there are a number of us who know the method well enough to offer help or advice, but we could still use some supervision. I know of another location where there seems to be a similar kind of follow-up, but in another city they have set up "healing teams", which to me sounds a bit like the blind leading the blind. In the early days Bill was happy to offer his time to help or give advice, but I can see that as the workshops proliferate, this would be logistically more and more difficult to do.

The problem is that each and every one of us practicing the method has to reinvent the wheel. Things happen, and we have no clue what they mean, because we have never seen them before. Whereas if there were a body of learning, or evidence, that we could turn to, such as a textbook, we could say "aha, this is what this means -- this type of tumour often gets bigger before it becomes consumed." Or, "aha, this type of labtest result has been seen with this kind of cancer before". But instead, we grope around in the dark with no idea of what's happening.

For instance, with our pancreatic cancer patient, who had a ten week remission that included the reversal of most of the life threatening symptoms of his cancer, and a return to near-normal kidney and liver function (which is huge), we found that while he was getting better, which presumably meant that the cancer was going away, the tumours did not diminish at all -- in fact, they grew. So how is it possible that his body was behaving as if the cancer were in remission while it was still there? A skeptical MD acquaintance of mine, who followed the case, interpreted it like this: "That is amazing! The body is encapsulating the malignancy to protect itself!" There is a distinct possibility that what we are doing is counteracting the malignancy of the cancer by prompting the body recognize the tumour as something foreign and harmful, and barricade it for self-protection, so it can then deal with it in its own good time. Do we know this for a fact? No. Has anyone studied it? No. Does it need to be studied? You bet. Because when the patient then goes for a CT-scan or an MRI, all that will show is that the tumour has gotten bigger. But we will not know how the tumour has changed in composition, and what kind of tissue there is around it. There will just be a huge panic because clearly the tumour is growing, followed by loud calls for allopathic interventions such as radiation and chemo, and how can you blame anyone for reacting like that? What manner of reassurance can we offer, with no body of evidence to explain what's happening?

That is why I say we are dealing with something experimental here. A lot more work needs to be done. I hope someone comes forward to offer Bill the wherewithal to do the (many) experiments that need to be carried out. It might be also helpful for people from the various centres where there have been workshops to hook up to compare notes. That is one of the reasons for having this blog -- to give some of our experiences, and to hear back from others who also do the work.

In the meantime, if you go out to play on a boat in a windstorm, be careful, wear a life jacket, and have a good sail.

Here are some relevant links: Practical Challenges, Part 1, How effective is Bengston bioenergy?, Case study #2, Case study #1