Even after many decades of being a physician, my work never gets boring, because I am constantly learning from my own patients. One of my greatest teachers was a woman I'll call "Samantha." My experience with her brought me into a far greater awareness of the power of dialoging with body tissues and cells as an extension of the work I had long been doing with my patients' Inner Physicians.

For CranioSacral Therapy or any other bodywork to succeed, I believe that the therapist must release all assumptions, blend with the client and listen intently - with the hands and all faculties - to the Inner Physician. This is the voice of wisdom; the part inside all of us that maintains complete awareness of our inner and outer workings.

Samantha came to see me about five days before she was scheduled for a radical mastectomy of her left breast. She had a malignant tumor that was about 2 cm by 0.5 cm on the mammogram. It was attached to a smaller tumor about half its size, which was interpreted as a spread of the larger tumor. Fortunately, there was no detectable spread to the axilla (armpit).

In the few days she had before surgery, Samantha wanted to see whether she could reduce the tumor and avoid a radical mastectomy by receiving CranioSacral Therapy and accessing her Inner Physician. As I worked on her, I gently placed my hand on the tumor tissues and silently asked the white cells to phagocytize (consume and digest) the tumorous cells. For about 30 minutes, I intentionally sent energy into the breast tissue while I visualized the two tumors shrinking. After awhile, I actually felt them getting smaller and melding into each other. The process finally stopped when the tumor felt as if it was about the size of a pea. When Samantha visited the surgeon a few days later, he was openly astonished at the change. Instead of having to perform a radical mastectomy, he did a simple lumpectomy and removed the pea-sized tumor through a small incision.

I saw Samantha frequently for some weeks after the malignant tumor was removed. All went well for about a year. Then one day, she came in with an ulceration in the same spot where she had the incision on the breast. Together, we put healing energy into the ulceration with positive, observable results. To my knowledge, Samantha has been fine ever since.

I had another teacher-patient I'll call "Joyce." She had breast cancer with axillary metastatic, highly malignant lymph nodes. Armed with pathology reports for both the breast and lymph nodes, she was scheduled for surgery a week later.

Joyce came to see me for three consecutive days. During our sessions, we did CranioSacral Therapy and dialogued extensively with her Inner Physician. From those experiences, Joyce came to believe that the cancer was her inner self desperately trying to get her attention. Through our conversations with her Inner Physician, it dawned on her that she had come into this life to fully experience being a woman; yet, by her own admission, she had not wholly embraced the roles of wife and mother.

A few years before presenting with cancer, Joyce had experienced endometriosis - another undeniable connection to her womanhood. Ironically, she had been treated with male hormones for the condition. Now, Joyce felt the breast cancer was a message that could not be ignored. She became aware that it could be lethal if she did not fully honor herself, and instead chose to continue being only a part-time wife and mother. Joyce agreed to make her female roles her highest priorities. In return, she asked the cancer cells to become benign. About a week after returning home, Joyce called to tell me her husband had insisted on the radical mastectomy. After the entire breast and its 22 lymph nodes were removed, both her husband and her surgeon were astonished to find they were all benign. The pathologist report showed no malignant cells.

I like to think this was undeniable proof to Joyce that she was on the right path to embracing her whole self. For me, I learned to be very careful about what we communicate to cells, tissues, organs, systems, bodies, aches and pains. For better or worse, they take our words literally.