Harry came to us 2 days before opening of the program, referred by my friend, a medical doctor. A quiet man from Canada with stage four lymphoma, just finished chemotherapy and radiation 2 months ago, which proved unsuccessful. Although he was in constant pain (for which he had morphine) he was determined to attend as much of the program as he could. Right from the beginning his will to live was very apparent.
The results of test on the first day of program showed a lot of tension, depression and anger. I was not surprised – he was told he had only 6 months to live. Sujaya, one of the befriended co-participants writes: “We each had our stories but his was the most painful as his cancer had not been contained by traditional medicine. He was in debilitating pain caused by the spreading tumor. His eyes reflected the pain and hopelessness he felt and my heart went out to him. I could not imagine what it must feel like when you are waiting to die.”
Harry had great difficulties with yoga Nidra because of the physical pain. At some point I offered to help him with Healing Touch. He wrote later in his diary
Lee, was kind to offer her healing touch. Her touch was soothing and kept me calm throughout the yoga Nidra. Lee is a compassionate person and her compassion comes through her work with cancer patients trying to make a difference in their lives. I am sure her work has touched many lives in a positive way.
As we went on to second week of the program Sujaya wrote: “with each passing day Harry developed a definite sparkle in his eye and lightness in his walk. He was changing how he looked at his prognosis. We began to talk about the future”.
One day Harry asked me for counseling session. He talked about his life, about those he loved and hurt and about his regrets. I asked him to put this all on paper for the next session. We met again after few days and he read what he wrote on 8 pages. It was a difficult read for him and he stopped few times to hold the tears back. I then built a little fire and he burned page by page while we held hands chanting Trayambakam – his favorite healing mantra. The next day his smile became much bigger as he said – I left a lot of burden in that fire and I feel much lighter! Later on we heard him humming an Indian raga he remembered form his childhood.
By the end of the program the tests confirmed the improvement on all fronts: tension wend down from 17 to 8, depression went down form 22 to 9, anger from 13 to 5, vigor increased from 5 to 13, fatigue went form 16 to 10 and confusion went from 13 to 7. When we reviewed the results together Harry said:
Yes – that’s about how I feel. And one more thing… when I came to the program I was afraid of death – now I am not. I will live as long as I can and spend as much time with my sons as possible.
“At the end of the program I feel Harry left Kaivalyadham much more at peace with himself. I think somewhere along the way he unearthed a will to fight and acceptance to live as happily as he could for as long as he would” – Sujaya wrote.
Six weeks later we learned that Harry passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family.
The referring medical doctor commented “This Rejuvenation for Cancer Patients program was the best present we could give him before passing on”.