Jnani Chapman

An Interview by Rod MacIver

All people are wounded, but the people who come here can’t cover it up the way the rest of us do, thinking we’re the only wounded people in the world, right? Everybody has pain, everybody is wounded. And because the (Commonweal retreat) participants can’t cover up their woundedness, now that they have cancer, they can trust each other. I can trust another person only if I can sense that they, too, have woundedness, have pain, have fear.

(When you have cancer) you feel separated from the whole human race. You feel as though you’re looking at the world through plate glass. You can see other people, but you feel as if you can’t touch them or be with them, because you are different. They say that the sense of isolation, of being separated from people who are well, is as painful as chemotherapy, as cancer itself. . . .

Years ago, when I was associate director of the pediatric clinics at the Stanford Medical School, one of my colleagues, Marshall Klaus, did a study which at the time was extremely innovative. He was chief of the intensive care nursery, where all the babies were these tiny little people you could hold in your hand. Each incubator was surrounded by shifts of people and millions of dollars worth of equipment. Everything was high-tech. Of course, we didn’t touch these infants because we’d get germs on them. But Klaus decided to do an experiment in which half the babies in the nursery would be treated as usual, and the other half would be touched for fifteen minutes every few hours. You’d take your pinky finger and rub it down the little baby’s back. And we discovered that the babies that were touched survived better. No one knows why. Maybe there’s something about touching that strengthens the will to live. Maybe isolation weakens us.

Rachel Naomi Remen, cofounder and Medical Director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program as, interviewed by Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind

Jnani Chapman, Healer: How do we find a life within our crazy minds in the crazy world?

Jnani talks to the body as she works on it, and she talks especially to wounds. She coaxes wounded bodies and spirits out of pain and tension and into relaxation and a new peace. People who have associated being touched with pain for many months as they have been cut and injected and radiated and saturated with chemotherapy now experience some of the most healing touch of their lives. People who have not been touched with love in many years experience what it is to be touched again with love. . . . I remember the evening we talked about death and dying at a Smith Farm Cancer Help Program when a very young woman with metastatic breast cancer, married to a carpenter, with a three-year-old daughter, began to shake uncontrollably at the end of the evening. Jnani was stroking her, whispering to her, coaxing her through the psychic pain that had taken over her body. Jnani brought her back to peace.
- Michael Lerner, Commonweal Cancer Help Program Newsletter (The Michaelangelo of Massage)

I met Jnani Chapman at the Commonweal Cancer Help Program a year and a half ago. Each participant gets three massages over the week, and she was my massage therapist. Since my stay at Commonweal, she has often come to mind, and always in the context of wondering about what is behind that light she shines so brightly.

“Basically I am a happy person,” she said to me. “I didn’t used to be. I didn’t come into this world as a happy person. I didn’t know this peace when I was growing up, although I certainly was a nature child. We lived near a huge expanse of land owned by the rail system. It gave me somewhere to go and explore and see spiders and frogs and baby birds in nests.

Jnani entered college in 1967 and graduated in 1982. I asked her if she had been a hippie.“I am still a hippie,” she answered. “I was a part of a lot of movements. I marched and participated in sit-ins in Washington D.C., Connecticut, Hartford and New Haven. I took non-violence training and learned how to sit in front of the ROTC building and not get reactive when people say mean things to you.”

At the age of eighteen, her father died. A few months later, her mother, who had spent most of Jnani’s teen years in the hospital undergoing experimental kidney dialysis, also died. All her siblings suffer from kidney problems. She said to me, “I started doing massage to heal my own self. Yoga, massage, macrobiotic food – all that was for my own healing. As much as where we go after we die might look like a great place, I want to live to be a hundred. That seems to me a nice round circle.”

In 1986 Jnani moved to San Francisco, and that year began to work occasionally at Commonweal. She also held a variety of other jobs: mental health worker, natural foods chef, yoga teacher, accupressure and massage therapist, and had a gardening business in the Berkeley Hills. In 1994 she became a Registered Nurse. In addition to working at Commonweal, Jnani is a cardiac rehabilitation nurse, yoga teacher and stress management specialist at heart and cancer facilities in the San Francisco area. She said to me:

“The umbrella of nursing sustains all of the work I do as a healer, whether it is massage, accupressure or yoga. It is all part of an effort to be of service to people who are dealing with life-threatening illness in the context of their universe, their world. The commission of a nurse is to care. It all, in some way, has to do with natural systems within the body and how to counteract the negative effects of stress and the negative effects of the mind divided against itself.

“Yoga is a big part of that. Not yoga just in the sense of physical postures and movements or practices or exercises. For me, that is twenty percent of yoga. Yoga is a way of life. It is about learning an understanding of the nature of the mind and the nature of reality. How do we find a life within our crazy minds in the crazy world? It is the same state of presence that one has in nature. Being able to be still and silent. And ready and open for whatever is there. Often that means going through the shadow side, going through the darkness, going into whatever feelings we may label as unpleasant or uncomfortable. Being present for things without adding to them or taking away. That is innately healing. I think that that is what yoga gave me. The ability to trust, to be. . . . Slow and deliberate implies inner focus. Accelerated implies outer focus. . . . When I first started taking yoga classes, it was a gentle form of yoga, and they had a one minute meditation at the end of each class. One minute of silence. It was so painful to sit still with what was in my mind and my feelings and my body.

I asked Ynani what she had learned about finding meaning.

“We find meaning doing work we love. Being of service. To God. To humanity. There are many possible avenues for that. If the avenue you choose comes from deep inside you, it is innately healing. It restores and regenerates. Finding one’s expression of creativity leads to peace and happiness. Massage is my creative outlet. Massage helps people reconnect with themselves or with some part of their body – an arm that has lost the range of motion because of a mastectomy. Massage can bring that part back into being.

“In the beginning I obsessively took classes. I studied every form of massage that came through Boston. Different schools said different, contradictory things. It became a challenge. Is this hurting? I am doing this okay? In a meditation one day, I prayed, ‘God you have to help me. I was doing this because I loved it. It is something that cried out to my soul. And now, I am so worried whether or not I am doing the right thing that I have no peace.’

“When I asked for that guidance, an actual voice said these exact words, ‘Put your brain in your hands, and by-pass your mind.’ I realized what that meant. I had permission to let my hands do what they already knew how to do. I could just be present for another human being. Your body communicates with me in the massage. It is that communication that is therapeutic. I can put my mind aside to some extent and let it be dedicated to prayer and let the work happen. It is an opportunity to meditate, to be still, to be present for another human being. Communion. We are both witness to that; we are both better off for that. The side effect is great joy. I get to do something I really love. The fact that it serves another human being just adds to the joy.

I asked Jnani how she defined beauty, and about the role it plays in her life.

“My definition of beauty has a lot to do with nature. As far finding beauty in man-made things, for me beauty is in those things that are created out of a real care, attention and love. I see beauty in things that are a manifestation of love. And I think that if you want a lot of beauty in your life, you have to spread it around. The love you offer comes back to you.

“I see beauty in every being and in every aspect of the human body. I don’t use some standard that keeps me from seeing that. I work with people that have had to sustain losses that have disfigured them. We are all indoctrinated with the superficial beauty that is on billboards or television or in magazines and books. I had a yoga teacher tell me that if she didn’t have a body–beautiful man and woman in her yoga book, it wouldn’t have been published.

“Once, when I was massaging a woman, she said to me, ‘I don’t know how you can massage all these poor, tired, sick, diseased bodies.’ And I burst into tears. It was her poor, sick, diseased body she was talking about. Whatever the underlying emotion of that – shame, feelings of being wounded – it made me cry. I said to her, ‘I don’t see a wounded person. I see beauty.’

“I hold with her faith in limitless possibility. No matter what it looks like, and how it feels, we don’t know outcomes. We can stand in our truth and still hold on to the highest hope. Something is going to come along and knock that thing out of her body. If you want to keep fighting for life, then continue to hold that, and know that there is someone here who is going to hold that with you. We can’t shut off our compassion for ourselves. We can’t turn off our loving kindness, our ability to care for ourselves, and hold ourselves sacred.

“Often, when I work with people, I talk directly to a part of a body. I might talk to someone’s shoulder and say, ‘Oh, beloved shoulder, you are so tight. You had to protect Rod during that surgery. While Rod was unconscious, you were still on duty. And we want to thank you for that. For bearing the brunt so this body can heal. And now it is time for you to heal. Every cell in the body is so grateful to you for having taken the brunt, and borne that suffering. And now our joy is for you to come back.

“When I am teaching massage therapists or yoga teachers, I tell them that the two most healing phrases in the English language are, ‘I am sorry,’ and ‘I don’t know’. To be able to say those things to someone is to help that person feel safe and trust you.

“That is what I have to offer when I massage people. I don’t make the presumption that this person I am massaging is dying. It is not okay for me to think I know what is going to happen to you. That, to me, is central. That is my challenge to yoga teachers – you have to be there no matter what it looks like, holding the ‘I don’t know’ with them. If you can’t give that to someone, you shouldn’t put your hands on them. . . .

“In the yoga sutras it says even the wise clean to life. Even the beings who are the most connected to the Great Mystery – even they cling to life. That force of desire and will is so innate and strong. The physical body dies and decomposes. Our lives are richer and more meaningful if we live with an awareness of death. And yet I have had profound, unexplainable experiences that have led me to the realization that the soul survives that death. But it is not as if these experiences give me great comfort. I don’t think I am going to roll over blissfully and die. I want to live to be a hundred. Every cell in my body clings to life. My experience with people facing death has led me to believe that each being has a way of death unique to them and their journey. To be present for people who are dealing with life-threatening illness, takes a willingness to examine one’s own journey, one’s own mortality.

“Death is about loss. The process of death is about having things removed. Testing one’s character. People have said to me, ‘If I need someone to wipe my butt, I want to check out,’ or ‘If I cannot be up and moving, I just want to go.’ People have these stopping places. Often I see them come to them, and when they are there, they are not stopping places anymore. They have become a new self, and that new self has already given up that thing that represented dignity to them three months ago. Now it represents a deeper love. An ability be more profoundly and intimately connected to somebody. It is as if that work of love comes forward, and the process is one of letting go and surrendering. It is a lot of coming into a fuller self.

When we did the interview, Jnani had just returned from a week in Seattle teaching yoga teachers how to adapt yoga to the needs of cancer patients, followed by a week camping out in the Sawtooth Valley of Idaho.

Jnani said to me: “You are talking to me at the best possible time of my life. I just came back from a week at my favorite hot springs on the planet. I really did take care of myself. And now I am ready to go back in. Doing the work, and living in the world, is often draining. We have to stay balanced – to stay responsible to ourselves. So every so often I need to get somewhere quiet and beautiful where I can recharge the wellspring. As a caregiver, you need to give yourself the same kind of loving care you give other people. Your body needs to trust that you are not going to push it when it tries to tell you ‘Rest. I need rest.’ Or ‘Take it easy.’ Or ‘It is time for me now.’

“The other night, sitting in that hot spring, a dragonfly kept coming up close and looking at me, and then darting away. It had iridescent colors – a long, velvety rich body stem. I was willing to do whatever I had to for its presence. If I stayed still, it would come close. Somehow it brought me a pure joy.”

- Jnani Chapman can be reached through Commonweal at PO Box 316, Bolinas, CA 94924.

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
- Galway Kinnell, from Saint Francis and the Sow

Lenore Lefer: Guiding Cancer Patients Toward Wholeness

Lenore Lefer is a psychotherapist who works with cancer patients, among others. Each morning, the participants at the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, a one week retreat for cancer patients near Bolinas, California, gather for two or three hours to talk about life with cancer, and life in general. The week I was there, Lenore facilitated those discussions.

At the retreat Lenore didn't talk much about herself. As the week unfolded, I became more and more curious about her. She guided us with compassion and wisdom. Something about her dignity and quiet authority commands instant respect. When the retreat was almost over, she brought several hundred notecards to a morning session, and we spread them out on the floor. She asked us to choose two that somehow reminded us of something important, whether of the week or of our lives. Then she told us about the card she held in her hand. She had had three children, and the middle one, a son, died at the age of fifteen in a rock climbing accident. The quote on the card was by Aeschylus. It read:

“Pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our sleep,
against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

"We also need to express beauty in whatever way is our gift. My art is working with people who are dealing with loss. I came to this work carrying my own loss. I found my way back from a broken heart -- in spite of myself, in spite of my woundedness. My loss made me something different. In some ways, I became more myself than I had been before. Some of the fiercer parts of my personality were softened. I connected with the compassion in myself. I had compassion to a small degree prior to that, but my loss deepened it. And engendered a sense of humility in relationship to something larger. My loss eventually helped me find a greater sense of wholeness. But it took many years. Trauma, loss -- in my case losing a child -- bring us to the doorstep of learning. My experience, and what I learned on the road back, gave me something to offer others. There is a great joy now watching the opening, in watching the beauty come forth in people. It is affirming to me. It is healing. There is a coherence that happens inside of myself and in the room. Kind of like being in a beautiful place. Something is touched. Something resonates. And it makes you more yourself.”

I asked Lenore how she recovered from her loss.

"After the initial shock -- it was such a long time ago, my son died eighteen years ago, and my recovery happened over such a long period of time -- eventually I acknowledged what had happened. But it didn't happen right away. You need time to name it and claim it and to know what has happened, and how important the loss was. How important your connection was and is. How much of your own identity has been lost. And to grieve. To allow the sadness to be felt. I think that that is a necessary part of the healing. Eventually a chance may come to open to something more. First you have to claim that part of the loss that remains inside you. So if a person has been lost to you, you begin by claiming the parts of that person that were so important to you.

"My son was an artist and a musician. And he, of all of my children, had the greatest connection to beauty and nature. It took years, but eventually it became important for me to acknowledge and honor what he had given me -- a deeper connection to beauty. The music and art that we shared became things that I really needed to claim in myself. Otherwise they would have been lost forever.

"So part of the healing is reclaiming what is lost. In whatever ways you can within yourself. I don't mean replacing it. You cannot do that. But connecting to the qualities that were so meaningful to you. That is a piece. And the need to go on. That was something I didn't feel right after his death. I didn't want to go on. The grief was more than I thought I could bear. But for various reasons, I did go on. I think that there is something about the invincibility of the spirit that I began to feel. In spite of myself, or my frailty, or my grief, something in me was continuing to grow and to be alive. At some point, that became quite strong. I did reconnect with my will to live again. I reconnected with beauty again.

"It happens in short periods and it happens over time. And maybe major losses are never completely healed. The process always continues. For me, his loss went from being a singular event to something that was woven into the fabric of my being. I didn't have to visit it as a separate event. It was always present to me. That loss was part of my lived life. Part of my work, part of my experience. And so it was always with me. That was really how the healing happened."

I asked Lenore if in the beginning she was angry.

"I was angry at God for having taken this child from me. It seemed so senseless. It didn't seem to fit in the scheme of things. So yes, I was angry. I was very angry. It didn't last forever, but it lasted for quite a long time.

"One day I climbed a mountain at Big Sur. I went up to be by myself. I went up to get away. After I had been there a little while, I noticed myself shouting, screaming at the top of my lungs, 'God, this isn't fair. This isn't right.' And it was true. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right. The anger came up from some very deep, old place inside myself. With the anger, there were also tears. Many tears. And sadness and anger. Somehow, expressing the anger allows us to wash ourselves out. So I didn't stay angry forever. At some point, the anger receded and faded and other things came. I used the power that was in that energy to work with other people, to keep my own life going. In some ways, I had transformed the anger into a kind of power or strength or a fire, if you will.

"Having experienced that deep grief, that suffering, taught me something that helps me in my work. I am no longer afraid to go back there. I have been around it and with it and through it and come to know it very well. And I survived. I think that the people in the room at Commonweal or the group of women with cancer that I work with know that. They know I'm not afraid of that anger anymore. Because I've been through it. Somehow, it gives us permission to go to that place of grief or suffering, if that is where we need to go. So I think it brings a kind of safety to the room. When people sense that I have been there, and come back, it makes it safer for them to explore that place if they need to.

"It also is very affirming to return to that place because it is a place that has enormous meaning for me. Sometimes it is as if I get to be with my son again, sometimes in those moments when there is that grief in the room."

Visit here to subscribe to The Heron Dance Nature Art Journal