Bob Ellal

A heron, bluish-gray and about four feet tall, stalks fish and frogs in the reeds on the other side of the pond behind my house. Deliberately it raises a reed-colored leg and carefully places it into the water a foot ahead of its other leg, barely disturbing the placid surface in the process. After many minutes of standing motionless it will raise the other leg and repeat the process.

Sooner or later a fish or a frog will mistake one of these legs for a reed and the eight-inch beak will pluck it from the water and effortlessly gulp it down its S-shaped neck. Then it will carefully move its other leg…

I mimic the crane, shifting the weight onto one leg while gently raising the other and placing it mindfully on the ground a couple of feet in front of me. Then I fill that leg with my weight and repeat the process with the other leg until I’ve done it fifty times.

This is the qigong exercise known as Fifty Steps. It’s designed to strengthen the bones and muscles of the legs and foster better balance. Chinese martial-arts masters had observed the movements of cranes in various provinces of China and patterned the exercise after the great bird’s patient actions.

Rami had shown me Fifty Steps to make the bones stronger in my cancer-ravaged hips. Luckily for me I had an equally expert, though unknowing, teacher to follow. The great heron would stop by our section of the pond about once a week or so and I looked forward to its visits. I admired its patience in hunting for food; instinctively I felt I had to adopt the same forbearance to continue living and fighting the cancer.

At the beginning of our first lesson, Rami had asked me about my emotions and my mind-set. How was I coping with the relapse of the disease? How deep was my discouragement? How strong was my will?

I told him about the heron and how it symbolized patience and endurance to me. “Then let’s be like the crane,” he said. Immediately he stood and began demonstrating a standing meditation exercise from White Crane kung fu.

The exercise was designed to imitate a crane that had just landed on a stalk of bamboo, balancing itself by slowly flapping its wings. Cranes, like other long-flying birds, initiate the flapping motion from the center of their bodies, which gives them the power and endurance to fly great distances.

A person could emulate this motion by standing straight, feet shoulder-width apart, gently rocking back and forth on the soles of the feet, arcing the spine, chest and shoulders. The hands and arms follow this motion, gently rising and falling in front and behind the body like wispy clouds of incense smoke. You inhale as the body arcs and the arms ‘flap’ forward, and exhale as the body expands and the arms descend behind the body.

Six feet tall, dark and lean, Rami performed the movements with the fluidity of a panther. His body moved like a soft whip. Six feet tall, pale and bloated, I executed the exercise with the grace of an overweight, arthritic stork. My body moved like a collection of rusty hinges. As I arced my spine forward, the vertebrae popped and creaked.

“Don’t worry. Practice. Just practice, it will come,” he’d say with encouragement. So I practiced.

The movements of this exercise stretch and relax the entire body, starting with the spine. The deep breathing oxygenates the blood. By focusing the mind on the combination of movement and breathing, you stop thinking. The continuous stream of thoughts that pass through the mind dwindles, and the exercise becomes a meditation.

As you perform this meditation, problems disappear. The cancer disappears. Time, or the conception of time as a linear vehicle divided into years, days, hours and minutes, disappears. Throw out clock and calendar. There is only the present; there is no past to ponder, no future to consider.

Sometimes even the present disappears; I lose awareness of myself, as a being consciously breathing and moving my body. It’s as though an outside agency has taken over and is breathing for me. Don’t worry, Corporate Bob, just relax. We’ll handle that demanding job of breathing for you.

Then, unfortunately, awareness pops back into my head. What was that all about? Where was I? Wherever I was, I want to go back.

I finish the meditation. My body is relaxed and stretched, my mind calm and refreshed. This feeling will last for a while, like the runner’s high that athletes experience after endorphins are released into their bloodstream during high-intensity, aerobic exercise. Except I feel calmer than that: I don’t feel gung ho, as if I could conquer the world for the next two hours—it wouldn’t even occur to me. I don’t want to conquer the world. I just realize that I can live in it without it conquering me.

Dr. N called me with the test results: No cancer in my shoulder, or anywhere else in my body. Tremendous news! Yet she and the UCONN doctors recommended I proceed with the second bone-marrow transplant. They felt it was the best shot for eliminating any remaining cancer cells once and for all. My euphoria faded at the prospect.

I glanced outside at the pond. The heron was on the other side, standing motionless on a small sandy beach, wings half-extended to allow the sunlight to penetrate fully to its steel-gray body. I had never seen it adopt this wide-open posture before. Don’t lose your nerve now, Bob. Stand up and be ready, it seemed to be saying.

Never was I one to believe in omens, especially from birds, or from the entrails of birds, but there was no room for doubt at that moment.

Carefully I opened the French door leading to the deck surrounding the back of my house and moved to a spot where I could face this magnificent creature. I extended my arms halfway from my body, holding my forearms at a forty-five degree angle to my upper arms, mimicking the crane’s posture. I closed my eyes in silent salute and focused on my breathing.

Twenty or thirty minutes later I opened my eyes. The crane was gone, and it had taken my fear with it.