Chi Kung, Cancer and Homeopathy.
Writing this short article between Christmas and New Year 25/26 I sit in the deepest yin period of the year. I sit with the gentle hiss of the gas fire (yang) to my right and the sound of the waves (yin) outside the rather drafty windows and I’m reflecting on my almost 20 years of Chi Kung practise alongside my 28 years of Homeopathy. And I’m asking ‘why?’.
Let’s get the theoretical and practical descriptions out of the way first. Please bear with me – this bit’s only short! My first search brings an MDPI open-access scientific journal paper: Qigong in Cancer Care: Theory, Evidence-Base, and Practice by Penelope Klein. The Abstract states: ‘The purpose of this discussion is to explore the theory, evidence base, and practice of Qigong for individuals with cancer..’ and the Results show: ‘…Qigong is a gentle, mind/body exercise integral within Chinese medicine. Theoretical foundations include Chinese medicine energy theory, psychoneuroimmunology, the relaxation response, the meditation effect, and epigenetics. Research supports positive effects on quality of life (QOL), fatigue, immune function and cortisol levels, and cognition for individuals with cancer. There is indirect, scientific evidence suggesting that qigong practice may positively influence cancer prevention and survival. No one Qigong exercise regimen has been established as superior. Effective protocols do have common elements: slow mindful exercise, easy to learn, breath regulation, meditation, emphasis on relaxation, and energy cultivation including mental intent and self-massage.’
Now you have been introduced to the whole question - with an attempt at some evidence-based language - let me tell it from where I sit, and let’s get down to the nitty gritty of ‘why?’
As homeopaths we see the effects of continued, raised, stress hormones in our patients. Stress hormones running rampant make us ill. Our remedies do wonders helping the body remember its mechanisms for returning to a relaxation response state in both acute situations – eg panic attacks/night terrors – and also in more chronic states – eg insomnia, amenorrhoea, adrenal burnout, cancer. Also, as Homeopaths, we know how the ‘maintaining causes’ in any situation have to be rooted out and resolved before a full return to health can be noted. The ‘Maintaining Causes’ we know can be named, or finger-pointed, as myriad stressors and triggers: Bad marriages; impossible economic situations; sedentary lifestyles; high powered working in ‘sick buildings’; a life-time of eating habits which set the cortisol spiking, along with the blood sugars; a lack of contact with nature, or the sun; a surfeit of pharmaceutical meds, toxic agricultural residues, etc etc.
Homeopathy can act as a large life belt – I think of those big white ones you are supposed to throw from the quayside or beach – for a person in distress. They cannot remove the choppy sea, they cannot remove the difficulties that person is facing, they cannot even paddle them to the shore, but they can hold the person above sea-level and offer them breathing space from where they can see their way out of danger and onto dry land. The beauty of Homeopathy is just that – a breathing space filled with the revitalised Vital Force – from which the person, the animal or indeed the plant, can see their way clear and onto the next step in their level of health and their particular incarnation’s journey. The Vital Force is, as we know, the key.
Cancer can also act as a positive force for good. We see our patients raise themselves up from the chaos and muddle that caused the body to completely lose its ‘true North’ to put themselves onto a path of clarity and learning. They face their maintaining causes, change their lives in order to remove the stressors, disconnect the triggers, slough off their movement habits and revolutionise their eating and drinking - in order to continue on their journey towards health.
The two things that are needed by our cancer patients, indeed all those who are out of balance in their state of health, are: i) the ability to listen deeply to their system’s cries for help and ii) healthcare practises which encourage this very deep listening. Homeopathy encourages deep listening. We need to know what happens at the same time (concomitants), where exactly does it occur (location ), what triggers it (aetiology), makes things worse, or better (modalities) and exactly how does it feel? (sensation). We need to know what is happening on a spiritual, emotional and mental level in that person’s life as well. We ask all those extraordinary questions – because we need all the information we can possibly get. I have heard a GP say ‘well, if I had an hour to spend with each patient, I could get them better too.’ Really?
But many of our patients come to us completely unaware of their physical bodies. They know they have pain/symptoms but they have very little idea of how their mental, emotional and spiritual states impact their dis-ease, and often are at a loss to know what they can actually do to help themselves. Remedies, and the Homeopathic process play their part here, of course. They start the movement of the VF to shift the symptoms. They start the VF on its journey to bring understanding and clarity to the person, to come into more consciousness and self-responsibilty regarding their choices and habits. But here is where ancient systems of physical healing and exercise come in. Yoga and Chi Kung are not like going to the gym. These systems are intelligently linked to awakening the VF (the Prana or the Chi) and through a combination of breathing and movement (or postures) the practitioner becomes aware of their physical body as a conduit for universal light energy eg Chi.
Now, becoming a conduit for universal light energy is all very well – I hear you mumble – but how long does that take? If you have become an inveterate insomniac for years – how will being a conduit help me sleep? If I have grown a large tumour somewhere beyond the surgeon’s knife – how will it help me shrink it? If I have become addicted to my stress hormones running me ragged in a cortisol hamster wheel – how will I get off it? I’d say, in response, give it a go and see how you feel after just 45minutes of connecting to the forces of universal light energy, and times that by the number of years you’ve driven yourself into dis-ease and …who knows what might occur.
In the words of Marx and Engels – we have nothing to lose but our chains.
Just as in a homeopathic consultation, an hour of deeply enquiring and focussing on the details that make up the whole picture of that person’s manifestation of their particular dis-ease, so can an hour of deep inner enquiry and listening in a chi kung session. In a chi kung session though, the body is loosened and the joints are freed, the breath is balanced and lightened. The mind’s eye is activated and turned inward – as in all esoteric practises. In a chi kung session, as in Yoga, we connect the brain with the body via the breath. The change in the rate of breathing immediately takes us out of our ‘inherited breath’. That is the breath from our mother, from our time in the womb, the breath that keeps us in all our habits. The breath that keeps us unconscious of how stressed we are, how tired we are (yet cannot sleep) and how much we are in pain. The breath is the key. All the ancient wisdom traditions know this. First start with the breathing then see what changes can happen.
In modern understanding you could say the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPAA) is actually kept in play by our unconscious fast breathing which sends messages to the brain that we are in danger. The pituitary and hypothalamus keep firing off the adrenaline/cortisol stress hormones and lock us into fight-or-flight, as a constant state of being. IF we actively change the rate at which we breathe, when we are in this HPAA state, we are almost tricking the pituitary gland into no longer thinking we are in danger. The danger must be passed because the breathing has calmed, lengthened and balanced itself out. Indeed, the danger has passed because you are now becoming mistress of your own sympathetic nervous system by developing this mastery over your breath.
So, we have loosened the joints and balanced the breath. We have begun to listen in to our bodies from the inside out. We get to shake through our bones, muscles and through our whole fascial network, gently, as we are guided through this succussing of our very cellular make up. I love to quip to my class that we have just potentised ourselves after the 5-10 minutes of shaking, with which we often begin a class.
After the loosening of the joints, we can begin to experience our body from the inside out. The sense of spaciousness we get to envision and then actually to imagine. The brain, the breath and the body work together to bring about a changed state. If we change our state in this way, using our imagination, our felt sense and the guided meditation from the teacher - we are offering all the cells in our body the chance to become radiant with light and spaciousness. A breathing space in its fullest sense.
Why would filling the body with a sense of light and spaciousness have any effect on the hormones cascading out of our brains and ductless glands? One reason would be that we really are able to use our imagination to change our stress metrics. A study done in 2024 showed all markers were lower in people who were guided to visualise a calm, natural space, as opposed to an urban scene. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494424001191?via%3Dihub
In Chi Kung we can take this even further by filling the body with a limitless amount of universal light and visualising our body systems all bathed in that light. This means that we can get to understand our body systems in all their brilliant interconnectedness and at the same time bathe our organs and blood vessels in the light that brings about healing from within.
Even Cancer Research UK has a place for visualisation techniques: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/treatment/complementary-alternative-therapies/individual-therapies/visualisation
While medical visualisation techniques are now accepted widely and used in many cancer meditation systems, in chi kung there is an added dimension. We put ourselves in context with, not just the others in the room, or the space we are standing in, we put ourselves in relation to the ineffable vastness of the universe and our place in that vastness.
Just as our galaxy is made up of trillions of stars – so too is our own body’s galaxy of three trillion cells or more. Our healthy cells emit light – biophotons to be precise. Cancer cells do not.
In that context, in our state of focussed awareness and a balanced breath, we are able to visualise and move the light from the universe through our own, personal universe and send the biophotons of healing light into all our healthy cells, which in turn will be empowered to move out the cancer cells and clear the body of its dis-ease.
But hey! I hear you say – you haven’t even mentioned Daoism, Chinese Traditional Medicine or even so much as named a meridian or an acupuncture point. Is this deliberate cultural appropriation or is it the development of a sophisticated system of philosophy and healing and making it useful and relevant to our 21st century patients? I am willing to put my money on the latter, while at the same time honouring and revering the genius of the Ancients and the gifts they bear.
So I hope you will join me at the Conference in May – to experience yourself as a conduit of universal light. I hope you will feel the effect on your Vital Force as you journey through the 45 minutes we will have, sitting or standing, guided by the breath and the chi working together to make space for biophotons to light up and radiate into the Euston Road. Who knows – we might stop the traffic!
Rix Pyke December 2025.