Wanted: volunteer for alternative holistic cancer recovery program.

[theinnerlifeproject]

We would like to offer our utmost attention and healing skills to one local individual with cancer who has an intense and dedicated interest in being supported to undertake emotional and physical detoxification as core methods to cancer treatment. Six month commitment followed by evaluation.

Below is the philosophical mission statement of the program. We are interested in setting this up as a barter for food situation to make it as affordable as possible.

We are offering this mainly because we have observed, over our career as healers, that the native and natural approaches to healing ourselves have been hijacked by an overly complicated, money and technologically driven culture and we seek to reinstate and re-empower individuals to discover the genuine and real healing in the organismic processes woven into the fabric of our being. Tapping these inner resources is about lifting cultural taboos, knowing where to look and how; along with trusting and being honest with oneself.

If you've read this far, you are one of these people. Thank you.

Asher Lyman, MA and Being Life Team.
Please email [email protected] if you would like to be considered for this adventurous undertaking.


Being Life
A Cancer Recovery Program

Q What is the philosophy behind the cancer recovery program’s offerings?

This is a simple and complicated question.

Simple because, to a balanced individual tuned into the body and its natural healing processes, what the organism needs to reestablish itself in a condition of wellbeing is always obvious and clear. The way is sure and the principles are simple.

But for most individuals, there is learned dissociation from their body and a build up of toxins acting like static, so they cannot really tell what they need; a condition which leads to either frantic gathering of information or seeking guidance from medical institutions which are, ironically, radically dissociated from organismic wisdom. Anyone who is embodied would recoil at the current allopathic medical cancer program : cut it, burn it or poison it. On the whole, modern medicine is egregiously misinformed about what is healing.

A little straight talk is what we advocate. As a culture, we are highly removed from basic, intuitive knowing or gut level apprehension. Call it the wisdom of the physiology. From this perspective, any truly life-generative undertaking is essentially an unlearning of what is untrue, stripping away false notions around health and healing. And getting real with your healing encompasses getting real with yourself; the two cannot be conveniently separated. We advocate this kind of ‘grass roots’ movement away from the virtual, hyper-technological, information driven, detached cultural paradigm in favor of a movement towards (association) agency, self-awareness and a gut level apprehension and appraisal of your life threatening situation and what you genuinely need to recover. It doesn’t require information to bathe in the moonlight. But moonlight is never just moonlight either. The point we stress is your healing immersion, not gathering information about your healing immersion. Yet, what is really healing and how to heal are the first quintessential questions we need to ask ourselves.

These questions are the first step in taking responsibility for your own healing. Knowing you can only do it alone and that it is impossible to do alone is the second.

When, through the program, the physiology begins to awaken from the frozen layer of cultural numbness, there begins to appear an urgency distinct from fear, and precise insight into your condition, from the inside. Like an illumination or inspiration. We call this entering your healing process.

Once you are in this stream, there is no stopping you. You are no longer relying on outside authorities; now your total inner organism is informing you directly of what it needs. Step by step, the body-mind continuum communicates exactly what it needs to heal. The entire journey is revealed in each step, is one song, but you only know that at the end of the process. And only the body-mind process dictates when and how that will play out.

What the program offers isn’t some mysterious, esoteric event, but a return to a natural, primal and organic healing process native to our species. That’s why we named the program Being Life, to acknowledge the simplicity and healing potency of naturalness.


Q That all sounds very philosophical. Moving, interesting, but impractical. How do I “return to my roots when I work nine to five?”

It is hard to even ask the right questions, the ones which will lead to the process of healing. We are taught since an early age to focus on the so called authority figure and avoid asking ourselves the real and hard, but important questions. You are asking this because you have a life threatening illness and you want real help. I hear in your question a call for genuineness, authenticity and practicality.

I am saying that healing work is as real as it gets. Because it is essentially about asking yourself: how can I live this natural, healing lifestyle in an artificial, toxic society?

And the answer is, you cannot, at first, without support. Which is why we began this program. To educate you to think critically and for yourself, about yourself. Otherwise, the questions which dictate the directional course your healing will take are based on the very cultural paradigm which presumably made you ill.

The question is always the same: what is the next critical step in my healing? Which is a burning question and what all real questions amount to once in the stream; expressions of the detoxification process itself, itself a cleansing fire. If you are asking hypothetical questions there is a good chance you are wasting valuable time from the business of getting better.


Q I get the sense you are being evasive. I just want concrete responses. What is the method, what are the facts on the ground to your program? What is the success rate in remission and recovery. I don’t want to invest in something which will teach me to think but not lead to my eventual recovery.

Understandable, and I admire your persistence. The method of the program is deconstruction, minimization and simplification. Through juicing, fasting and cleansing; healing complex and incidental trauma, and deep bodywork (such as medical acupressure) we induce the natural process of autolysis (when the body digests excess toxins) - physiological and emotional detoxification. The body basically digests and absorbs the cancer and toxins, a process akin to composting. This is a very concrete, organismic and natural physiological event, yet it has a psycho-emotional basis. What arises for individuals as they pass through this detoxification process can be tricky, because each layer of tissue which is digested has an emotional and energetic component. In other words, the process is meaningful and needs to be delicately and carefully handled on the human dimension through a therapeutic relationship. Our body tends to constellate and quicken healing when in the presence of a trusted practitioner. The relationship acts as a kind of crucible, a space for all the layers of toxic living to be fully shed.


Q This sounds more concrete to me. Have you had any success?

Again, the question is other driven. Only you can know if this approach will have success for you, and learning to trust what you trust is part of the overall healing. Contrary to popular opinion, healing is not a numbers game or about gathering more information. It is an individual affair. If you cannot trust your inner knowing and gut level intuition that drives you to be here or that this somehow feels right or doesn’t at a core level, then it is doubtful that you will follow through to the very end of such a demanding endeavor. Mainly, healing is about endurance and the ability to tolerate not knowing and fear. Death isn’t fearful, it is our idea of death which is fearful. Which is what everyone with a life threatening illness needs, at some point, to face.

Q So you are saying my request to know about success rates is a way to avoid asking what are the chances this will work for me so I won’t die?

Exactly. And the answer is, you will die. Maybe now, maybe later. There are no guarantees. We all know that, but not many people know that. In this program we confront and associate with basic realities which are generally, conveniently left out of recovery. We associate with this taboo creatrix because hedging out basic realities of life means dissociating from the potency inherent in our native, instinctive being. Once what we all know to be apparent and true is truly faced and accepted it can be skillfully applied to your healing. We do not feel we can afford to overlook the natural physiological responses which assist people in getting better. Death happens to be a potent force in many individual’s healing process. Not in running from it, but in running towards it. Because death gives life, and the healing process, a broader meaningful context and increased drive. So here we have stopped turning to information and outside authorities and instead look to the healing responses, our allies hidden in plain sight.

Q For example?

Touch. We live in a touch phobic, and hence touch-starved culture. The capacity for regular, therapeutic touch to facilitate tremendous healing responses in the body is as obvious as rain. And yet, it is completely left out of the medical paradigm. As is affection, nurturing, and positive regard. Water and hydration. Conscious Breathing. Quality of Food. Intentional Community. Balance through Nature. Stillness and Movement. Tears. These are basic truths, yet overlooked and taken for granted. At the program, we simply stopped taking these powerful, obvious truths for granted and began capitalizing on them, bringing them from the back to the front. This is healing at the grass roots level, for the people.

On a physiological level, cancer is thought to accrue in locations where circulation of air, energy and blood do not flow. All of these natural methods restore these areas to balanced functioning.


Q So you are saying that sitting still in nature, drinking more water, eating regularly and well, getting massaged, dancing, having a supportive network of friends, taking deep breaths, and allowing more love will heal my cancer? I can see these as subsidiary and important supports to a cancer recovery program, but as the core program itself? Why would I pay for these services...they are so simple and human, I can have my friends perform most of them.

Yes, it’s true. That is the point. They are basic to our human condition. And yet, the rub is we are so far removed from our basic human condition that not a single cancer recovery program has ever considered these factors to be enough. We always need to add something else, another technological gadget, something to sell. But, to my knowledge, no one has followed these natural healing ways all the way to unlocking their full potential, in terms of mastery and application. Which isn’t rocket science, it is just being simple and not taking the obvious for granted anymore. It’s about learning to listen and move with life, instead of demanding, pushing and extracting something form it. The body is simple and elegant, why mess with it? Take away that which is messing with it, clogging it up, and you will get better.

So the answer to your question is no, or at least unlikely. Because done in a circumstance which is more of less superficial, unfocused and erratic, which is how our distracted society is arranged, it is unlikely that the intended results will occur. Having a piano doesn’t make you a pianist and even the best ingredients don’t make you a world class chef.
The secret’s in the sauce.

Undertaking this in a highly precise, focussed and skillful manner, though, is an entirely different consideration. The goal of the recovery program is to both help you recover as well as attune your organism to a pitch that can sense how, why and what will contribute to your total healing. Until that point, it is useful and intelligent to work with practitioners who have refined their gut level knowing / embodied wisdom, and can support you in this direction.

Basically, what I am suggesting is radical and simple. Nothing in the program is outside of anything in nature, and yet we take these organic truths to their most developed, mature and potent expression. It is the difference between drinking city water, filtered water or rain water. Not all water is created equal. And, the conditions under which you are drinking are important. If you are drinking for recreation, for pleasure, to quench your thirst, or for healing, therapeutic purposes. A therapeutic diet is different than a maintenance or experimental diet. All of these careful, artful and precise considerations, call them calculations, are taken into account on an ongoing individual basis.

Q What does embodied wisdom feel like?

I cannot answer that question because it is on an individual basis. Embodied wisdom is an experiential, self validating truth. But I can tell you it feels right, like there is a flow. It feels good and vital.