This is a Guest Post from Dr. Craig D. Reid who was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis at a young age and is now beating the odds through the use of Chi Gong. Click here to read the previous article about him and his story.

Godonya mates.

You might have seen an article I wrote many, many moons ago that Evan posted on the site, which told about my adventures of learning chi (qi) gong as a way for me to control CF rather than have CF control me. Evan asked me if I would be interested in writing something for the site…well…seems like my answer is clear.

I guess this is as good as any time to share with you that at the end of this month (March), it will be my 53rd birthday. Eek, could it be that now I have to act more maturely…nope. Hey, and next month it will be my wife and I’s 27th wedding anniversary. Time is sure zipping by, feels like we’ve only been married for about five years.

I have now been doing chi gong for about 28 years and as Evan reported, I have been off all medication and therapies since August of 1980 (was on 30 pills/day, and two hours of therapy/day, and taking a crap on average 5-6 times a day for about 17 years or so prior to learning chi). Although I could not run much, I had plenty of the runs.

Pardon the crappy joke. I could have used the more common vernacular on that, but one never knows how young a reader might be.

I would also add that I do not condone others to come off their medication because many peculiar things happened to me, which led to that decision.

Who I am today, physically, emotionally and spiritually (not religious), I owe to martial arts and learning chi gong. It does not matter what style you practice because ultimately the goal of a real martial artist is to train not to fight and learn to heal rather than hurt.

So why are martial arts and chi so good for someone with CF?

For me, the answer began around age three or four.

As a kid growing up in England in a soccer family (my dad was a pro in Scotland and both of my older brothers were great players), I was barely able to run 20 feet before dropping from sheer exhaustion, which always ended up in me coughing my guts out.

But I wanted to be like my dad, so instead of him having me run around, I would stand in one place and kick a soccer ball to him. The best players in the world can kick with both feet so part of the training to prevent one from just using their strongest foot, was to go barefoot with that foot and wear a shoe on just the weakest foot. Back then, balls were made of leather and were heavy, so if you kicked the ball with your barefoot…ouch man.

So over the years, both of my legs and knees got stronger from just kicking the ball.
Influenced by watching a Bruce Lee film at the local drive-in theater, in 1972, I got bitten by the martial arts bug. It seemed a logical transition to take my soccer ball kicking habit and with a few tweaks here and there, begin to kick a punching bag or the air.

Traditional martial arts practice strengthens one’s legs and knees through stance training, where I would stand, for example, in a low horse stance (so named because it looks like your sitting on an invisible horse), for hours a day (not all in one go mind you).

The most I was able to hold that stance was about 20 minutes. Usually after one minute, it begins to hurt, and after two minutes, you want to stop, after three minutes you can’t breath, and after that…well, try it yourself and you’ll see.

The purpose of stance training is to not only strengthen your legs and knees but to also teach you discipline and push you to see how far you can go.

So meanwhile, I was now throwing about 1000 kicks per day as well as doing various, other excruciatingly painful and difficult stances. Although I was still taking heavy meds and therapies, I did notice that my lungs were getting stronger, and even though after long coughing bouts and coughing up blood, I was able to recover faster.

By the time I got to the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 1979, the doctors had already written me off (if you know what I mean), but I was there to find a chi gong teacher. To make a long story short, I found a teacher and you know the rest of the story.

For those of you who are wondering what is the point of all of this, here is the kicker. Over the years of going back and forth to Taiwan and learning about Chinese theories of medicine and other alternative healing methods, one of the first things I learned was that lung strength is directly related to knee strength.

So all those years of kicking soccer balls was helping me more than me or my father knew. Then after switching to martial arts and throwing 1000 kicks a day and doing all those knee strengthening stances, my lungs were subliminally getting stronger.

I would add that leg weight training is different. For example, a good friend and student of mine, although he was once a top ranked discus and shot putter in America and could squat 720 pounds, he was unable to hold a horse stance for more than 90 seconds.

Furthermore, chi gong, which is basically breathing exercises, teaches one to fill the upper lobe of the lungs with oxygen (normal breathing does not do this, even for those without lung problems). This is important because this is where a lot of infectious, anaerobic (oxygen hating) bacteria hang out.

When I walked across America back in 1986, I met a lot of folks with CF that had weak knees, many of which were arthritic, and it was those folks that had the most congested lungs. Sadly that makes sense, because if you’re knees are arthritic, very tough to do any kind of cardio-vascular exercises. Then it becomes a positive feedback loop, where the more you can’t exercise, the more congested one get, making exercise harder…etc.

So if I might proffer to you, for those willing to discover a different dimension of yourself, and to find a new kind of strength and therapy for helping your health and strengthening your lungs, I would propose you to investigate the martial arts as a way of life and living, and learning chi gong as a way of attaining things you never knew about yourself or your body.

What martial arts you might say? Something with kicks and stance training (just about most of them) and a teacher who is more concerned about the welfare of his students than the welfare of his pocketbook.

Just remember as in life and all of its challenges…walk on, walk on, you will never walk alone.