When I understood the challenge ahead in my personal battle with a cancer still to find a cure, and a projected two year longevity prediction, it was time to dig in for answers—all while avoiding the world of quackery and misinformation.

There’s often news of such patients overcoming the incurable and substantially extending projected survival times. Admittedly, those patients hold infinite amounts of discipline that I’ve yet to achieve.

One story that held my attention I found in a book, Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds, by Kelly A. Turner, Ph.D.

A Japanese man was diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer, with less than a year to live without traditional chemotherapy and radiation (the exact diagnosis I first received for advanced uterine carcinosarcoma three years ago). Things did not go well for this man. From Turner’s book, he recollects a transforming night in the hospital:

At the beginning of March, I had a very strange dream that I was laying in a coffin. And I was looking from above it was a funeral. And when the lid of the coffin closed, I return to my body and shouted, “I’m still alive!” It was completely a dream but something changed afterward–my sense of smell increased very strongly.

This strong sense of smell grew unbearable within the hospital’s walls. He grabbed a blanket and made his way to the hospital roof where he could smell fresh air. The smell of fresh air inspired him to make changes in his every day life style. He began drinking mineral water, he went on a fast, and when he got home he writes:

When I woke up in the morning and saw it getting light outside I said “I’m still alive! Today is a new day.”

He marveled at how he felt the energy coming from the rising sun and how each new morning was a gift that went against the knowledge that he had little time left to live.

But, he writes: I noticed that my body was getting better by exhaling exhaling and automatically inhaling. And then one day I tried to put a tone with it like…a single note while exhaling. Before my disease a yoga teacher said to me your chakras are closed and your aura is very dirty.” So I tried using tones and when I touched certain parts of my body the tone got louder so that was the point of the chakra. I found seven main chakras by doing this kind of exhaling every morning just experimenting …(seven chakras are for a musician seven notes of a major scale). And so I tried to connect each chakra from bottom to top.

With his daily sunrise moments, he grew attuned to the timing of bird songs before and after the sun rose, his breathing, and his lifestyle. This continued for another 25 years after he was sent home for hospice care, according to the book published in 2014.

Why do I write about this man? He demonstrated the mind’s will and a connection to nature that can inexplicably heal each of us, if we let it into our hearts, souls and minds. In other words, interconnect with the natural world around us.

I’m not as disciplined as this Japanese man, so I continue to let medical personnel apply what is available for my condition while blending some alternative treatments and digging deeper into my interconnection with this universe. And that inspired this prayer for healing:

A Prayer for Healing

Solitude,
silence,
shelters me in the pre-dawn hour.
Wisps of air,
tease metal chimes,
to harmonic vibration,
that hums with the Earth as she breathes.
Each cosmic note awakens life
that flows through me
with a blessed morning song.

Let this holy air
ripple through my lungs,
ride the waves of flowing blood,
invigorate my flesh.
Let the holy song
send peaceful rhythms
that stimulates each chakra
and enlightens me for the miracle of
a rolling planet day.
Let this holy hour
bring forth the first daylight,
brighten a midnight blue sky,
awaken the trees above,
touch the sleeping flowers nearby,
kiss the soil where my naked feet rest,
and remove the night chill
as warmth returns to my
soul, heart, and mind.

This morning light
awakens my sense to heal.
Like a flower’s fragile petals,
I open to the light.