David met me at the staffroom door & said, “Tim doesn’t look good. Can you press a few of his points for him?” I nodded. Tim was sitting there looking tired & worried. It was his last day with us. In a couple of days he would be off to do a fellowship for 18 months in Japan developing some sort of language curriculum program. It had been a tough year for staff & students with an incompetent principal & I thought he’ll be happy to get out of this place. I went up to Tim seated in his chair & placed my hands on top of his shoulders & pressed the points that my wife’s father always used as point of first contact. Apin, my wife’s father had been a masseur for wrestlers in India & had often done my back neck & shoulders over the years so I’d picked up some of the skill from him. I’d also done Shiatsu courses with Gloria, a Malaysia Chinese lady who had lived in India & studied homeopathy there. She was a Reiki Master & did Acupuncture & had various other skills too. And I’d done a course in Chinese Acupressure. Not too different from the Japanese techniques in many ways & based on the same ideas of the human body being a system of interrelated channels where the Qi flowed. This training overlapped with the tai chi training I had begun with Teo Ah Keng in Singapore in 1971. So there I was pressing my thumbs firmly down on Tim’s shoulders on the bladder points. I did the Shiatsu method using my thumb on the muscles running down both sides of the spine all the way down to the buttocks. I did the points at the back of the neck, temples & on the cheekbones just under the eyes. And I finished with the hand & elbow points. Tim said, “thanks.” I asked him if he had classes. He replied, “not until after morning tea.” So I said, “You’d better go & see a doctor.” Tim was over 6’ in height, had good erect posture & red hair. He’d lived in Japan for several years & his Japanese from all accounts was excellent, for a foreigner. He was well versed in correct cultural behaviour which is apparently very important to the Japanese people. He’d told me when he was in public transport & in crowds in Japan he could see above everyone. Tim left & I went to class & didn’t see him all day. He was in the staffroom waiting for me when I had finished the last lesson. He’d already sold his car & had tenants moving into his house as soon he vacated.
I said, “well, what did the doctor say?” He said that the doctor had a look at him & gave him something that wasn’t doing any good. He asked, “can I come home with you so Matilda can massage me?” I said. ‘OK.”
He’d never met my wife & he’d never been to our place before but that was no problem. My wife wasn’t working that day & as far as I knew she didn’t have any appointments.
My wife is a Masseur, Natural Therapist, Reflexologist. She originally trained as a hairdresser & beautician in Singapore & has done most of her further training here in Australia. She learned some skills from her father such as the neck cracking that Indian barbers do but she knew how to that skill properly by loosening all the muscles up for 15 minutes at least before doing the maneuver. Now she seldom uses the technique as there are better was to fix wry neck. So I introduced Tim & Matilda & went off into the den to give my regular vocal student a half hour lesson. Then I went & took a Yoga Nidra class for an hour but didn’t stay to drink tea as I wanted to see how Matilda had got on with Tim. When I got to the door Matilda was waiting for me. I asked, “how’s? Tim.” She said, “Terrible, I’ve never had anyone like this. He seems to be in pain all over his body. The kids can hear him groaning in the kitchen like he’s a woman in labour. We’re thinking you can do something with hypnosis.” I didn’t have much background in helping with people in chronic pain so I said, “I’ll ask Gloria.” Gloria, my Shiatsu teacher lives in Gladstone just over an hour from Rocky. I told Gloria what the story was & she immediately said, “you do Reiki.” I said, “but I don’t know anything about Reiki.” She said, “yes you do, Qigong.” OK, so I knew vaguely what to do. Matilda went off the kitchen & I went in to see Tim. He was lying on his back on the bench shivering. I stood at an angle near his right shoulder so that I was in the best position to hold my left palm over the baihui point on the top of the head & I held my right palm over his right hand& said to Tim, “tell me when you feel something.”
When I was in Singapore in 1988 training with Teo Ah Keng, my ‘taiji father’ I also went to train in Mr Chua Joo Ban’s evening classes at the Henderson Tai Chi Club, Bukit Merah View. Both Ah Keng & Mr Chua were students of Mr Sia Mok Tie, Grandmaster Taijiquan & White Crane. While I was there Mr Sia passed on his lineage sword to Mr Chua his senior student. I even had the privilege of holding that sword briefly. One evening I arrived early to Mr Chia’s class. He was standing with his back to me when I walked up & said, ”ni hao.” He said, “ here you do.” And he put me where he’d been standing with my left palm behind the lady’s shoulder blade & with my right middle finger just touching her middle finger. I was standing there holding that position & Mr Chua took off without any explanation. The woman who I was with was very large. Not obese, just big & strong like an athlete who does field events. Throws shot put or lifts weights.
I asked her, “what’s happening?” She beamed at me & said, “same as Mr Chua.” She spoke in Chinese to the small lady she was chatting to & they both smiled at me & the tiny lady said, “hen hao.” Standing holding my arms in standing qigong postures was quite familiar to me as I’d done that for hours a day for many years but what I was doing that evening puzzled me. The class started & Ah Keng arrived about half way through as he had business commitments.
After class Mr Chua, Ah Keng & I and a few others had a meal & drinks at the nearby stalls as usual. Conversations were interesting as there would be several dialects going most of the time. Cantonese, TeoChew, Hokkien usually. Ah Keng was Hakka, a minority group so he was quite a linguist because he’d had to learn everyone else’s language. When I met Ah Keng in 1971 he was a supervisor on concrete pours & he’d showed up my English conversation class. We became friends. Matilda & I married October 18 & the next year I got the Music job at ANZ High, Changi.
After class Ah Keng always drove me back to Hougang in his truck. I told him about what had happened before class. And I asked about the big lady. He said, “superintendent of Police, Singapore judo champion,” I asked why I was holding my hand in qigong positions close to her he said, “in English we call that ‘jumperlead.’ So I told him that when I asked her what was happening she said, “same as Mr Chua.” Ah Keng was surprised & said “wonderful, so you have very good Qi for healing people.”
I stood waiting for Tim to respond. After a minute or two Tim said, “my hand has gone numb,” so I slowly moved my right hand up his forearm & held it over his elbow. It seemed in a shorter Tim said, “my elbow’s gone numb.” So I moved my palm slowly up to his shoulder & held it there. Soon after Tim said, “my whole arm has gone numb.” Without thinking what I was saying I asked, “which arm?” He said, “the left arm.” I was stunned but thought that acupuncturists put needles on the opposite side of the body sometimes so had to accept his answer.
So I lowered my hands & moved over to do the same technique from his fingers to his shoulder along the left arm. Tim felt my hands as if I was doing his right arm. When both arms were numb I asked “Tim what is happening now. He said, “the numbness is spreading across my chest.” So I went & stood at his feet & held my palms facing the soles of his feet & asked Tim to continue breathing normally & to think of his feet when he was exhaling. I waited a few minutes & noticed that his whole body was calm & very relaxed. I asked him. “what’s happening now?”
He said, “ I can hardly keep my eyes open.” So just close your eyes then. Keep breathing to your feet. I’m going to go & have my tea. I’ll be back soon & I left him there to rest in a deep trance on the bench. As I was walking to the kitchen I reflected on what had happened & had a strange feeling that somehow some part of me had known all along how to use the skill as if it had been passed down to me somehow. I felt like I had been a conduit of some sort.
After the Chicken Curry I went to check on Tim. When I spoke to him he didn’t respond at all so I said, “Tim you are in a deep trance but you can still communicate with me.” Your left hand is yes & your right hand is no. Don you want to come out of trance now?” After a few second his left hand moved a little. I said, “OK but before you come out of trance I want you to go through everything we did here so that you can get into this calm relaxed state any time you want to or need to.” I waited for a few minutes.
Then I asked Tim to signal me when he was ready to return to full awareness. After about a minute or so he responded with a spasm in his left hand. I told him to imagine that he was in a pool & to drop to the bottom. Push off & gently float to the top opening his eyes when he reached the surface. I waited for him do open his eyes. Then I said, “wriggle your fingers & toes, stretch.” It took Tim a couple of minutes to respond & move off the massage bench.
I asked him he’d like some food. He did so we went to the kitchen. He enjoyed the chicken curry & I had a cuppa. During the conversation I said something that Tim thought was funny & he laughed, then grabbed his abdomen & his face fell. I said, “Pain?” He nodded I said, “keep very still. Breathe in & focus on the pain, hold. Now as you breathe out think of your feet.” He kept his eyes on me as I spoke. After he’d exhaled he nodded. “OK you know what to do. Now if you have trouble tonight. You know what to do. You can ring me if you’re in trouble.”
Next day before school I rang Tim & asked him if he was OK. He said that he’d had trouble but he’d done the technique & was OK. I asked if anything else had happened. He said he’d rung his father who had gall bladder trouble. His father said that his brother had had an operation for gall bladder.
I sent Tim to see a Chinese doctor, graduate from Dublin who also does Acupuncture to request every sort of test – which was done. Before Tim left for Japan he rang & said the doctor said all his tests were clear & that he had ‘wandering wind,’ which in Traditional Chinese Medicine means that his qi was moving here & there & not flowing smoothly. In western terms something like ‘phantom pain’ I guess. I have never seen Tim again in person but we have been in contact with Tim over the years since via email. I asked him if he’d ever taken Zen instruction or learned Aikido but he hasn’t. He says that he uses the technique that I taught him whenever he needs manage ‘the problem.’ He was teaching English at the University of Hokkaido & married a Japanese nurse. They have a son called Tucker. My brother Stuart rang from New Zealand a few days before I was leaving for Singapore in October 1988. I had planned the trip to train with Ah Keng over my long service leave. He said, “you better go & see your father.” I asked, “How is he?” Stu replied, “John says nobody survives this liver chart.” Our cousin was Head Bacteriologist in Dunedin. I said, “thanks, I’ll ring mum.” So I did & mum answered. I asked what dad looked like & whether he was lying down or sitting up. Mum said, “he looks yellow & he’s walking around.” She put dad on the phone. I asked dad how he was feeling & I told him about a qigong called ‘standing pole’ that is taught to people in China to help them recover from illness. Dad was interested so I told him to stand erect with his feet shoulder width apart & perfectly parallel. Bend is knees slightly so that he could see his toes in front of his knees if he looked down. I said it’s a bit like sitting high off the saddle & he understood that. Then I said to swing his arms up & hold his palms as if he was holding a party balloon in front of his belly. I said if he got a balloon & blew it half up that would be about the right size. If he stood in front of a mirror he’d be able to check that he was holding the correct posture.
I also suggested that once he was in position that he should keep absolutely still & breathe normally. Of course his body wasn’t absolutely still because his heart was beating & he was breathing & all of that. He passed the phone to mum & I explained the details to her while dad was trying to work how to stand. My father always stood well. Mum & dad were Salvation Army officers.
They had already been retired for many years. I asked mum to check dad’s posture & I asked him to stand for as long as he could manage. No more than 5 minutes at a time. If his whole body started to vibrate he was to conclude then by taking a focused breath & pressing his palms down on the exhale as if in water. I said I send some information including photographs & diagrams about the Qi flow & the meridians. Dad had always been interested in China would have liked to have been a missionary there. Left for Singapore a few days later & while I was there I learned a lot more about Qigong. During the 1980s for several years I had been doing a lot of Standing Pole training. The Chinese say it strengthens your root. The idea is that the Qi flows from the ‘bubbling well point’ kidney 1 in the balls of the feet & up to the ming men points in the small of the back & from there throughout the meridians/channels throughout the body. Acupuncturists insert needles at various points to reduce or increase Qi flow. I used to stand at the peak of my training this particular type of Qigong in double horse with the ‘balloon’ at chest height for one & a half hours & slide straight into standing 30 mins or the left leg & 30 minutes on the right leg, a total of two & a half hours. I stood on our timber floor usually in wool sox.
