Save life through Qigong practices?

[Sal Canzonieri]

I spent a lot of time in the hospital in 2009. In October 2008, I ate some bad sea food, I spit it out but alas it was too late. Being pretty strong, I didn't get sick to my stomach like most people would have and that was the trouble. I went to the hospital a few days later with huge pain in my guts.The doctors didn't know what from because I didn't have classic symptoms of food poisoning. The thought I had pancritis and treated me for it, a scan showed I had some calcium and a small anyorism there. But, my weight kept going up and down, 20-30 pounds at a time. Which was very frustrating, and then every few weeks I would get a fever for a day.
Meanwhile I was still practicing and teaching my martial arts qigongs and routines.
They had missed that fact that there was some kind of powerful bacteria that went into my system, my pancreas was affected as well as my colon. By july of 09 I was back in the hospital with a huge fever and huge pain. This time they did more test and determined that this bacteria had bored a hole through my sigmoid colon. They said that they needed to remove about 10 inches of my sigmoid colon, but first I had to be in the hospital to treat the infection before they could operate. It took about 10 days to do this, which was worrisome.
Then I went home for 6 weeks to recover and then the were going to operate in September.

I was told that it was going to be quick procedure, laproscopic, only a few hours. But, when I woke up and saw it was many hours later and I had a huge bandage on my abdomen, I knew something was wrong. My surgeon said the once he installed the camera, he saw a minefield, it was way worse than the tests (scans, x-rays, etc) had shown and they had to open me up to operate there was so much damage from the previous infection. He said that the wound area had been at the brink of bursting all year and that at any moment I could have died from jumping or bumping (all this time I was doing full blast applications during my martial art practices!).
But, he said an unexplainable thing had saved me, my small intestine had moved somehow and adhered to my colon and prevented it from bursting. He said it was a miracle thing that it happened, otherwise I would likely have died at some point. So, now I have a huge Frankenstein scar going down my abs, cut straight down the middle. Very painful! After another week, I was back home.

Now, all this time that I was sick I had been practicing my neigong sets. Given the nature of these sets (Shaolin Liu he Gong, Chan Yuan Gong, Luohan 13 Gong, some Taoist spiral qigong sets, Dragon & Tiger qigong, and others), they move the internal organs and gently squeeze them (as does Bagua and TJQ). They gave me tons of energy and I felt pretty good considering how sick I was. I believe that the neigong sets made the small intestine move and adhere to the open wound in my colon. I discussed it with my surgeon and he feels that it most likely was what did it as well, since it was the only factor that was introduced.

Doing these neigong sets also made a speedy recovery from the surgery. With my pancreas and colon working right, my weight is finally normal, I gained much muscle and lost most of the fat. By December I had been able to start doing ab exercises (pilates and shaolin work) and now they are very strong again.


Also, 10 years ago I saved someone's life on the highway after they had a car crash using neigong procedures. This person was hanging upside down and had hit their face on the ground, with blood and teeth everywhere. I saw that the car was still passing gasoline and was starting to smoke, I ran under the car and turned off the engine and someone else used a fire extinguisher. No one knew what to do, since this person was hanging upside down from the seat belt and there as so much blood around, no one wanted to disturb things in case there was a broken neck, etc.
Then, this person stopped breathing! I suddenly just knew what to do, I guess years of training paid off, in that I told someone to hold this person's forehead still as best they could and I pressed various points on this person's leg, which suddenly made them gasp and spit out a clump of guck. After coming to and flailing around a bit, I calmed the person down by whispering into their ear and said what happened and that there was nothing to do except accept that it happened and to wait quietly until help came. A half an hour later a doctor arrived and 15 minutes after that the police (there was a huge traffic jam that made them get there slowly, they had to drive on the grass alongside the highway). The doctor asked me how the person was revived and I told him what I did and he said "good, no one would done that, it saved her life".
I won a Theodore Vail award for doing that. I never saw or heard from that person again, as the police said to just leave so that I don't get blamed for anything, as some Good Samaritans had been.

[Dale Dugas]

Great to hear how training nei gong has saved yourself and others.

Thank you for sharing brother.

[Lucas]

Yes, thanks for sharing. Ive known from reading your posts that you had some health issues that you were able to help relieve through your gongfu, not wanting to pry ive kind of been waiting for this post, , its great to hear your account. Definately inspirational.

[Scott R. Brown]

Thank you for sharing Sal and thank you for surviving.....you are a treasure here on the Board!

[Egg fu young]

good post......nice change. I went through a similar issue with bad pork. After almost dying it's taken me 8 years to get somewhat back to normal.

[taai gihk yahn]

first off, glad to hear that you came through it all and are feeling better, Sal;

interesting about the small bowels adhering to the colon, although I am a little surprised the surgeon was so shocked by this - I'm gonna ask around and see if that is as rare as he seems to think (it's just that it seems like one of the body's "natural" ways of dealing with dysfunction, propping itself up, so to speak);

that said, as such, it nicely illustrates how the organism can take somewhat non-specific input (I mean, Sal wasn't intentionally trying to get his guts to adhere to each other, he was just doing his regular qigong routine) and organize itself around it in whatever way it needs to; what this suggests is the generalizability of qigong practice and how the system takes it and runs with it as it needs to - in other words, it's this lack of excessive specificity that makes it more powerful - it's like giving the body a choice, in a way (one from column A, one from column B, etc.), and then the system takes what it needs accordingly - so it's like a dialogue between the practice and the body...

so, in the interests of full disclosure, I will now reveal my own "dirty little secret" : I am 5 weeks and a day status post hemilaminotomy and microdiscectomy of Rt. L5/S1; as to cause, my sense is a combination of about 4 or 5 different factors that finally combined to push it over the edge (can I get a "yay, complex systems!"); the symptoms started out very mild and intermittently, and were actually behaving more like a piriformis syndrome thing, which I was able to manage, until the neurological stuff kicked in about a month and a half later, and, well, there we were; basically, I had a disc extrusion that, when I looked at the films in my car in the parking lot right after getting the MRI done, I was like, "holy Sh1t, LOL, surgery time!"; pretty much confirmed what I had thought based on the symptoms I was having (pain / numbness / musce function loss aong S1 distribution); anyway, non-surgical options were tried (meds, PT, OMT), first but not surprisingly to no avail; although the one exception was that immediately after doing the taiji form, things would feel better by ~40-60%, but it wouldn't last, just in context of other sorts of things I had to do during the day (work, driving, etc.); anyway, yadda, yadda, yadda, I went under the knife (and no, the irony of it all is NOT lost on me )

so, my point of all this: one week post op, the pain was gone, the muscle weakness was a lot less, but the numbness was still present @ about 80%, which is pretty typical, in fact the neuro doc (who was excellent, if I may say so) said that could take months to a year to go away fully); so, with the incision healed up, I started in w/yi jin jing, albeit from a different perspective than I had ever done it; after only three days, there was a big difference in the numbness - in fact, I can practically pinpoint the precise moment during a given movement when the numbness changed dramatically, and afterwards went down to about 30%; it stayed there for another week, then went down a bit more;

about 2 weeks later (3 weeks out) I had an acupuncture session w/my sifu: felt great day one, days 2 - 4 felt like crap and numbness got worse again; day 5, much better, and since then the numbness has been steadily decreasing; seeing him again today for another session, so we'll see where we are...

so, as for the yi jin jing, my sense is that what it did was significantly decrease the local inflammation at the S1 nerve root, and all the way down the S1 distribution, which is basically the lateral myofascial chain, and which also follows the GB meridian / sinews, which really get targeted by several of the movements I was doing; and my sense is that it did it in a way that had I been specifically targeting the affected areas would not have been as effective; so again, yay yi jin jing!

ah, it feels good to finally "confess"

[sanjuro_ronin]

Great post Sal, thanks for sharing.

[Scott R. Brown]

ah, it feels good to finally "confess"

You got a lot of nerve buddy....going under the knife without telling your blood brother here, and then trying to cover it all up by saying you got a new water filter!!!!!

You should feel guilty!!!

Regardless, I am glad you are feeling better. Every time I received an acupuncture treatment I felt worse before I felt better too!

Are you able to train? Are you physically limited in anyway?

DO WE NEED TO SPEAK LOUDER TO YOU NOW????

or

Dooooooo weeeeeee neeeeeeeeed toooooooo speeeeeaaaakkkkkk ssssssllllllllooooooowwwwwweeeeerrrrr fooooooorrrrr yyyooouuuu?????

Did you get one of those handicapped window thingies so you can park in those SPECIAL spaces???

[taai gihk yahn]

You got a lot of nerve buddy....going under the knife without telling your blood brother here, and then trying to cover it all up by saying you got a new water filter!!!!!

You should feel guilty!!!

Regardless, I am glad you are feeling better. Every time I received an acupuncture treatment I felt worse before I felt better too!

Are you able to train? Are you physically limited in anyway?

DO WE NEED TO SPEAK LOUDER TO YOU NOW????

or

Dooooooo weeeeeee neeeeeeeeed toooooooo speeeeeaaaakkkkkk ssssssllllllllooooooowwwwwweeeeerrrrr fooooooorrrrr yyyooouuuu?????

Did you get one of those handicapped window thingies so you can park in those SPECIAL spaces???

"having a new water filter installed" is actually code for hemi-laminotomy w/microdiscectomy; I though you would know that

but yeah, I kept it kinda close to the chest, didn't really tell too many people, figured what's the point spilling it al over until it's taken care of, something like that (I was never much one for sympathy, whatever...); Parella said pretty much the same thing you did when I told him after the fact, but he's used to my hermit-like ways...

anyway, feel free to speak louder, more slowly, use semaphore flags, whatever you need to do, it's all good

as for feeling bad after acupuncture, Sat likes to say that when the disease leaves your body, it shakes your hand goodbye...(feel free to use that as a sig quote when you get bored of your current "homage" to me...)

oh, btw, we are "having the upstairs windows replaced" next week, so you can send cards and flowers as you see fit...

[Scott R. Brown]

"having a new water filter installed" is actually code for hemi-laminotomy w/microdiscectomy; I though you would know that

Well...I knew that, I just wasn't sure YOU knew that!!

but yeah, I kept it kinda close to the chest, didn't really tell too many people, figured what's the point spilling it al over until it's taken care of, something like that (I was never much one for sympathy, whatever...); Parella said pretty much the same thing you did when I told him after the fact, but he's used to my hermit-like ways...

Yeah I understand...that way if you died under the knife, you would just have mysteriously disappeared!! Kind of like ascending to heaven huh???

anyway, feel free to speak louder, more slowly, use semaphore flags, whatever you need to do, it's all good

And just where does one acquire a semi-spore flag?

as for feeling bad after acupuncture, Sat likes to say that when the disease leaves your body, it shakes your hand goodbye...(feel free to use that as a sig quote when you get bored of your current "homage" to me...)

I have NO idea WHAT you are talking about!!!!

oh, btw, we are "having the upstairs windows replaced" next week, so you can send cards and flowers as you see fit...

There you go with your secret codes again! You are clearly inviting more of my loving rocks wrapped in a threatening note!!!!

[Sal Canzonieri]

good post......nice change. I went through a similar issue with bad pork. After almost dying it's taken me 8 years to get somewhat back to normal.

Thanks.

That sucks about the pork food poisoning that happened to you.

We were in a Chinese fast food place once and my friend couldn't make up his mind what to get, and then the girl says to him "Get some poawrk, it is good for your plick".
Ha, we were all cracking up!

[GeneChing]

I, too, have medical issues, although not as severe as Sal or taai gihk yahn. It's most chronic pain issues, probably from a life ill spent. If I don't recite my qigong daily, my body will freeze up in a few days. It's ironic. I've studying traditional kung fu since the mid '70's, so naturally I've dabbled with the ol' qigong sidecar many times before. I've undertaken daily practice regimens many times in my life, including qigong routines. But I always fell off the wagon or moved on. Now I no longer have the freedom of choice. I live under the tyranny of my body. It's practice or suffer.

I'm so grateful that my traditional kung fu practice contains within it such medicine.

[Sal Canzonieri]

I, too, have medical issues, although not as severe as Sal or taai gihk yahn. It's most chronic pain issues, probably from a life ill spent. If I don't recite my qigong daily, my body will freeze up in a few days. It's ironic. I've studying traditional kung fu since the mid '70's, so naturally I've dabbled with the ol' qigong sidecar many times before. I've undertaken daily practice regimens many times in my life, including qigong routines. But I always fell off the wagon or moved on. Now I no longer have the freedom of choice. I live under the tyranny of my body. It's practice or suffer.

I'm so grateful that my traditional kung fu practice contains within it such medicine.

Amen! That's what great about CMA, more than meets the eye!