If you have been diagnosed with cancer, you will feel that your body and mind are under attack, as the physical aspects of the disease and the treatment will challenge all of your internal and external resources. However, the Chi Living teachings can help you create an integrated mind/body connection that will promote healing. Chi Living is a holistic approach to life, and as such, it becomes absolutely essential to gaining and maintaining health after a cancer diagnosis. Staying active while remaining injury-free and providing your body with clean, balanced food will fuel your recovery. As you teach your mind and body to communicate, you will get to know your body intimately, learn how to effectively respond to its needs, and remain centered as your whole being works to regain its health.



Regular exercise improves cardiovascular function, benefits your immune function and improves your mental health. When you have been diagnosed with a cancer such as mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer that develops from the protective lining that covers many of the body's internal organs, it becomes even more imperative that you maintain a regular exercise regimen. The pain-free and injury free Chi Walking technique and Chi Running technique are unique methods of movement that focus on proper form, injury prevention, and efficient breathing. Practicing these gentle fitness techniques can help you maintain a healthy lifestyle after your diagnosis, and will improve the functioning of your body as it works to fight the disease. Chi Walking and Chi Running focus on correct posture, a relaxed cadence and mindfulness of your body as you exercise. The concentrations on every aspect of your body as you walk or run is what sets this method of exercise apart.



Health and nutrition are also key components in your arsenal against cancer. The treatment (find out more at www.mesothelioma.com/treatment) for mesothelioma can rob your body of essential vitamins and nutrients. The tools for healthful nutrition include eating high-chi foods, which are natural and not processed. This nutritional approach focuses on organic fruits and vegetables, as well as legumes and lean meats. Eating foods that are pure and natural eliminates the preservatives and additives found in many food items in stores. When you eat unnecessary substances that your system can’t convert into energy, your body has to work hard to rid itself of them. By eliminating these substances from your diet, your body can function at its optimal capacity with little added effort.



Living mindfully is an aspect of Chi Living that is crucial to you after a diagnosis of cancer. It is easy to fall into despair and fear at this time and yet, the more centered you become, the more you are able to face this disease. The practice of living in the present and creating balance will help you to realize that although cancer hugely impacts your life, it is not who you are.





Whether you get going now or wait until 2012 has arrived, one program that is proving to be very “user friendly” for helping meet fitness and health goals is Chi Living’s new pain-free Chi Walk-Run approach. We all know that getting and staying fit is key to a healthy lifestyle and is the best prescription for healthy aging (view PBS video, Younger Next Year) . Why, then, do so many people have trouble getting going on a fitness program and why do so many stop fitness activities soon after beginning them? Motivation and personal commitment are important aspects but, again, it is critical to have a fitness activity that is both do-able and enjoyable in order to succeed to get moving and keep moving.

If you used to run but no longer do, or if you have always wanted to run, but have never done so, Walk-Run may be for you. If you think walking is not enough of a workout or you haven’t done it much, Walk-Run may be for you. If you just can’t seem to find a fitness program that attracts you, Walk-Run may be for you. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on your fitness undertakings, Walk-Run may be for you. If you want to move to the next level in your fitness endeavors, Walk-Run may be for you. How can Chi Walk-Run offer so much and meet such a myriad of personal needs and situations? Read on!

The pain-free and injury free Chi Walk-Run program offers a straightforward, understandable, accessible and interesting approach to aerobic activity. It offers variety and the opportunity for new and changing challenges. The benefits come quickly and are reinforcing and personal motivation is enhanced due to the option of mixing walking and running in do-able and changing ratios. Although any walk-run program has benefits, learning the basics of the Chi Walking technique and Chi Running technique, provides the foundation to implement the unique, awareness-oriented and collaborative approach of Chi Walk-Run. As you move into the end of the year holiday season, give yourself a present with lifelong value – read the book, view the DVD, contact a Certified Chi Running/Walking Instructor. Above all, get moving soon and mix up some walking with a little running and see what you think. Walk-Run, especially Chi Walk-Run, may be for you. Begin Fitness Now!

• Posture– Before you press the start button, establish your posture from the feet up - feet pointing forward and hip-width apart, spine lengthened, and pelvis level. In order to maintain biomechanical efficiency, keep returning your focus to your posture throughout your session. If there is a mirror nearby, use it to confirm your body alignment.
• Lean– Because movement on the treadmill is stationary, there is no engaging gravity for propulsion. Increase the machine’s incline by one or two degrees and lean into the incline slightly from your ankles. To prevent overworking your lower back, be sure not to bend at the waist. Keep your ankles relaxed and make sure you can get your heels comfortably down on your landing.
• Short stride and heel lift– Keeping your stride quick and short will minimize the impact transferred to your legs by the moving belt. Don’t let your feet swing forward into the oncoming belt. Instead, your feet should move in a rearward direction as you make contact with the treadmill with a midfoot strike. Make sure you land with a mid-foot strike to reduce impact to your lower legs, knees, and hips. 
• Pelvic Rotation- Practice pelvic rotation with each stride. Every time your leg swings out behind you, let your hip be pulled back with it. This will cause your pelvis to rotate along your vertical axis and absorb much of the shock of your feet hitting the treadmill.

How to get the most out of treadmill running:

• Don’t go too fast. Begin by setting the speed at a pace you can comfortably jog while practicing these Chi Running Form Focuses: posture, lean, picking up your feet and maintaining a quick cadence. The treadmill’s moving belt introduces more impact, which is magnified by speed. Running pain-free is only possible if you reduce the speed of your running.
• Maintain a cadence of 85-90 strides per minute. Use the seconds counter on your treadmill for setting up your cadence. Every three steps another second should elapse. If you can do that, your cadence is exactly 90 strides per minute with each leg, which helps keep your stride short.
• Keep the impact low. Exaggerate your heel lift, picking up your feet a little bit higher than you would when running outdoors.
• Switch it up. We often hear from runners who feel discouraged when they switch from the treadmill to outdoor running, complaining that they become winded quickly and can’t go as far or as fast as they perceived on the treadmill. This is perfectly normal, as the moving belt does a lot of the work for you. Avoid doing all your runs on the machine if possible so you don’t become treadmill-dependent. This will ease the adjustment to the outdoors when the time comes.
• Think of treadmill running as “maintenance running.” Don’t do prolonged speed work (intervals, tempo runs, etc.) on the treadmill. If you want a little more workout, slowly increase the amount of incline and use your arms more to simulate running uphill.

Whether you're maintaining your aerobic base or training for a marathon, remember to keep it easy on the treadmill. Use those runs as opportunities to strengthen your technique so you’ll be ready for Spring. It always arrives before we know it!

Here is a general guide for creating the best conditions to keep yourself running, walking and moving until springtime shows its face again:

Make Time for You
Holiday events, shopping and end of year business planning, as well as sick kids and a need for more rest may make pain-free running or walking the lowest items on your to do list. Move it back to the top right away and do everything in your power to keep it #1. You’ll be no good to others if you’re not taking care of yourself first.

Reduce the time and intensity of your exercise if you can’t get in a full workout, but keep your chi flowing with regular, gentle movement. If you don’t feel like running, walk-run or just walk. If you don’t even feel like a walk, do the Body Looseners or light stretches. Make it a priority to put on your exercise clothes and get moving. Once you start, you may find you want to do more than you thought. and you’ll be glad you made the effort.

Do get outdoors as much as possible. Fresh air will do you good, and you’ll warm up as soon as you get moving.

Practice Your Walking and Running Technique
You’ve gotten out the door or to a treadmill or a mall. GOOD FOR YOU! Now remember: Winter walking and running training is not about intensity. Your body does not need to be pushed to the max. It needs consistent, gentle, mindful movement. This is the perfect time to deepen your Body Sensing and running technique. It’s good to maintain your aerobic conditioning, but it is not necessary to do any strength training or speed work. Save that for springtime.

Specific Walking and Running Technique Practices for Wintry Conditions:

• If the terrain is tricky, cut back your time by 30-50% and cut way back on speed.
• Don’t use the metronome when walking or running on snow or ice…trying to keep the perfect cadence will distract you from keeping good footing.
• Shorten your stride more than EVER. For many people, wintry conditions may help you find just how short your stride really should be. A shorter stride will help you keep your balance in slippery conditions.
• Pick up your feet, keep your lower legs limp and use a midfoot strike. Most people have a tendency to tense up their lower legs when it’s slippery, which is the worst thing you can do. This is a great time to practice picking up your feet while relaxing your lower legs. Just let your feet dangle as they come up and place them back down in a midfoot strike.
• Use your core muscles to create balance. We’ve gotten lots of letters saying that running or walking in snow or ice has helped people find the true meaning of engaging their core and finding their balance point. Feel your C shape working, especially when it’s slippery.

Injury-free running includes BEING SAFE

• Don’t go running or walking on icy roads where cars may swerve out of control.
• Make sure someone knows where you are running or walking and have good identification on you.
• BE SEEN. Short days and wintry weather means you won’t be as visible to traffic. Wear lots of reflective patches on your clothes and bright colors. Cars need to see you clearly.

Wear Appropriate Running or Walking Clothes and Gear

When you have the right running or walking clothes, you’ll have no excuses not to get out. Have lots of layering choices for different temperatures. My cold weather running outfit consists of:

• Wool hat with flaps to really cover my ears
• Zip turtle neck (Smart Wool) so I can unzip to regulate my body heat as I warm up
• Nylon wind breaker over the wool layer
• Fleece or nylon vest over the nylon jacket if it’s really cold. These have pockets for either warming my hands or carrying gloves I’ve taken off.
• Running tights for moderate cold weather
• For extreme cold:
  • Disposable hand warmers in gloves
  • Duct tape over the toe area of my socks provides a great wind block for my toes.
  • Two layers of pants: long underwear and a top layer. Keep your legs warm - cold muscles are vulnerable to injury.
  • Trail running shoes are a good option for winter conditions. If you run in snow a lot, consider wearing gaitors to keep the snow out of your shoes.

Pain-free running and walking, on a treadmill
When the outdoors is no place to be, get on a treadmill and practice your walking and running technique as if your health depends on it, because it does!!

• Before you get started running or walking, set the treadmill at a slight uphill ramp.
• Speed is NOT the focus on the treadmill - maintaining aerobic conditioning is the name of the game.
• Practice your pelvic rotation. Start by warming up at a walk and feel your pelvic rotation. Mitigate potential injury by allowing your legs to swing rearward as your pelvis rotates. This will significantly reduce the impact the treadmill can have on your legs.
• If a mirror is available, use it to check all your form focuses: feet pointing forward, good alignment, arm swing, midfoot strike. Watch for and try to reduce side-to-side (Rocky-like) movements in your upper body.

Gentle, consistent movement is the key to good health in the winter. Make an agreement with yourself right now to take good care of yourself so you can enjoy all the season has to offer.

Additional winter running tips from past articles and blogs:
http://www.chirunning.com/search/results/d2ludGVyIHJ1bm5pbmc/
http://www.chirunning.com/community/blog-entry/more-winter-running-tips/
http://www.chirunning.com/chi-library/article/winter-running/

While many people who begin practicing Chi Running experience a natural increase in their speed right away, we de-emphasize speed as an immediate goal. True pain-free running mastery lies in the ability to set up the conditions for speed through proper running technique. That means cooperating with the force of gravity by leaning more while simultaneously holding your alignment and relaxing your hips, legs, shoulders and arms. Think of it in terms of physics: as you offer less and less resistance to the force pulling you forward, the faster you’ll go.

Running Technique First, Then Distance, Then Speed

Running Technique

Relaxed, pain-free running technique, whether fast, slow or in-between, is a goal we all share. Applying these Chi Running Form Focuses will improve your efficiency and allow you to build distance gradually:

• Posture – Create a straight line from the crown of your head to your feet. When you’re properly aligned, your body is supported by your structure, not your muscles.
• Lean from the ankles – Leaning slightly from the ankles allows gravity to pull you along as you fall forward.
• Midfoot strike – Land with a midfoot strike rather than a heel strike to decrease impact to your lower legs, knees, and hips.
• Stride length – Keep your stride short to avoid pulling yourself forward with your legs.
• Pelvic Rotation – As your legs swing out behind you, allow your hips to rotate around their central axis with each step. Make sure your core is engaged and that your pelvis isn’t moving laterally (side to side).
• Cadence – Maintaining a constant cadence, the rate at which your feet strike the ground measured in strides per minute, prevents your legs from spending too much time supporting your body weight with each step. We recommend running at a 170-180 spm (or 85-90 spm for each leg).

Running Distance

As your running technique improves, you’ll be able to begin running further with less effort. The way to determine when to increase your distance is by observing how long you can successfully hold your running technique. When you’re ready to add distance or time to your runs, do it in small increments. Even a couple of minutes or a few tenths of a mile extra will improve your conditioning over time. The key is to be mindful of how your body feels while you’re running this additional distance and after. The same stresses that, in moderation, help our bodies adapt and grow stronger can also cause injury if overdone. When your body can’t keep up with the adaptations, you may stop improving, become overtired, or even injured. Steadily build your distance through persistence and patience, and enjoy the process.

Running Speed

Finally, what you’ve been waiting for! As you are able to hold your running technique for longer periods of time over greater distances, you will develop increased speed at a lower exertion rate. As you get faster, you’ll notice that your strides automatically lengthen. To prevent yourself from over-striding, make sure your feet stay under your center of mass with each step. Also, make sure your cadence remains between 170-180 spm, even as your stride length increases. Again, this limits the time each leg has to spend supporting your body weight when you take a step. The metronome is a very useful tool that will help you keep a sustainable pace as you increase your speed – we don’t recommend many gadgets for running, but this one can benefit you enormously.

The second title to the Chi Running book says: "A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-free Running", which is a bold statement. But, turning your pain-free running technique into a "practice" with the goal of becoming effortless means that every time you go out for a run, you're working on what you can do to create better results by doing less. That's the real work!

In October 2011, I was able to use my Chi Running technique to give back to my local community of Ottawa, Canada. I organized an event where I ran 7 marathons in seven consecutive days (www.7marathons.ca) to raise awareness and donations for a mental health prevention and intervention program for youths called YouthNet that is delivered through the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. YouthNet helps youth develop and maintain positive mental health as well as healthy coping strategies for managing stress, while decreasing stigma around mental illness and its treatment. They do this through education and intervention. I was excited to support this cause -- although, I would have never completed the 295km of running in a single week if not for the incredible energy efficient and injury prevention benefits of the Chi Running technique!

As of May 2010, I had been running for six years and had six marathons under my belt. I had recently been certified as a Chi Running instructor and my running technique was improving to the point that I felt ready to try running ultra distances. In June of 2010, I set the goal of running the 2011 Marathons Des Sables (MDS), a seven day, 250km foot race through the Sahara desert in Morocco. Fortunately I was able to enlist the coaching services of world ultra runner and founder of Impossible2Possible, Ray Zahab. Ray is a person who knows no boundaries and was responsible for helping me dispel my own ingrained marathon-based distance running boundaries (i.e., longest weekly training run of 32km and 42km on race day). Ray is no stranger to coaching long distance runners. For those of you familiar with Marshall Ulrich’s epic 2008 run across America, Ray served as Marshall’s running coach for that event. Danny Dreyer, Ray and Marshall all know each other well and even taught together at one of Marshall’s “Dreams in Action” Death Valley training camps.

With the winning combination of Ray’s coaching and Danny’s pain-free Chi Running technique I completed the MDS in April 2011. The idea of running 7 marathons in seven 7 days was developed during a peak weekend of training for the MDS. That weekend involved a 42km run on Saturday followed by another 42km run on Sunday, both while wearing a 20 lb. backpack. At the end of the Sunday run, I felt I could run another 42km the next day if I had to, and decided at that point a week of marathon running would be my next event.

In June of 2011, I pitched the idea to Ray while studying his face intently to gauge his response. If Ray would have been hesitant at all I would not have pursued the idea any further. But he wasn’t. In fact, he was very enthusiastic. This was a great confidence booster as Ray had coached me for a year at that point and knew what I was capable of running better than I did myself.

The four months that followed involved many weekends of back-to-back running maximum distances of 42km on each run. My girlfriend, Trish Liddle, ran all the Saturday runs with me regardless of the running distance. This was amazing in that she only runs a maximum of three times a week and has never trained for, nor signed up for, a marathon. However she has run the marathon distance numerous times with me in training. How does she do it? Have you guessed it? Trish is my best Chi Running student and is a constant reminder to me of the effectiveness of this great technique.

The running of the event itself went better than expected. I maintained a low comfortable gear for the week and finished all seven marathons at an average time of 4:11. The only issue was a progressively inflaming achilles tendon resulting from a trigger point that developed just prior to the start of the event. Interestingly, the week was more about the post-run recovery and logistics than the running itself. In fact, I would finish each day’s run around 1:15 pm but only finish the day’s activities (eat lunch, drive home, ice bath/hot tub intervals, answer emails, answer Facebook messages, update web site and fan page, pack for next day, eat supper, massage therapy, etc.) around 8:00 pm.

The event was a novelty within Ottawa, and as a result received significant media attention from the local newspaper, radio and television stations. Every news piece was used to raise awareness of the existence of the YouthNet program and the great service it provided to the Ottawa youth. Financially, the event was a success as well, raising over $10,000.00 to fund future YouthNet initiatives. The success of this event and its positive contribution to the YouthNet program was made possible by the Chi Running technique!

Read Michael Stashin's Bio

View some of the media around YouthNet and the 7 marathons in 7 days:

Ottawa Sun Article

CBC News Finish Line Video

CTV News Finish Line Video

Resources to help you master the Chi Running basics:

• Chi Running Book: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless Injury-Free Running
• Chi Running DVD: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless Injury-Free Running