In Japan, classical Chinese herbal formulas are prepackaged and standardized. Kanpo, the Japanese version of Chinese herbalism, has reported many successes in treating cancer. In Tokyo, many kanpo doctors work in conventional hospitals prescribing drugs but moonlight to pursue their private herbal practices. Kanpo doctors dispense with much of the conceptual framework of traditional Chinese medicine such as the division of the body into yin and yang parts.

Another component of Chinese medicine used in cancer treatment is chi gong a 3,000-year-old exercise that combines the slow, symmetrical, graceful movements of tai chi with meditation, relaxation, patterned breathing, guided imagery, and other behavioral techniques. The aim is to enable a person to regulate and direct the flow of chi, or vital force, within his or her own body. The student or patient is taught to focus his or her chi at a point in the center of the body, roughly two inches below the navel, called the dan tian, or vital center. From this center, the chi is said to emanate to distant regions of the body. Students reportedly learn to sense the presence of chi at the vital center in the form of localized warmth and then to direct the life energy to specific parts of the body. Based on the experience of students who take chi gong courses for self-treatment purposes, it usually takes about three months for the exercises to show their effect. In cancer therapy, the Chinese practitioner prescribes exercises geared to the individual patient.

Since 1979, "the Chinese have cured hundreds of cancer victims through chi gong," and many thousands have used this practice to prolong their lives, reports Paul Dong, a journalist and chi gong practitioner and teacher based in Oakland, California.10 Dong, who was born in mainland China, went to China in 1984 to investigate chi gong. Case histories of recovered cancer patients are frequently reported in chi gong magazines. This physical-mental exercise has aided remissions in many lung cancer patients who found conventional Western therapies ineffective. On December 2, 1986, the New York Times reported that the twenty-six chi gong clinics in China had successes in treating some cardiac diseases, paralysis, and neurological disorders.

The modern use of chi gong to treat cancer originated with Guo Lin (1906-1984), a Chinese painter who was afflicted with uterine cancer in 1949 and was treated by surgery. The cancer recurred in 1960, with metastasis to the bladder. After another operation, Guo Lin had another recurrence and doctors told her she had six months to live. Turning to ancient chi gong manuals left to her by her grandfather, a Taoist priest, she practiced chi gong two hours every day, and in six months, the cancer had abated. Convinced that chi gong was responsible for her recovery, Madame Guo, in 1970, began giving lessons in what she called New Chi Gong Therapy. By 1977, cancer patients from all over China were pouring into Beijing to take part in her chi gong therapy classes. Guo Lin reportedly helped hundreds of cancer sufferers attain remissions while prolonging the lives and easing the pain of thousands more.11

Among the first masters of chi gong were Taoist and Buddhist monks. China's great scholars and philosophers, including Confucius and Lao Tse, were also students of this discipline, which predates all the martial arts and gave birth to tai chi, kung fu, and tai kwan do. Today, millions of Chinese rise every morning at dawn to practice the ancient technique of chi gong to promote mental and physical well-being. Chi gong translates as "manipulation of vital energy" or, simply, "breathing skill" (since the character for chi means both "vital energy" and "breath").