Jin Shin Jyutsu at the UK Markey Cancer Center

VO: Jennifer Bradley’s life changed when two family members with cancer were dramatically
helped by Jin Shin Jyustu. She studied this ancient form of touch therapy, opened her
own JSJ practice and began seeing patients at the Markey Cancer Center.
Jennifer Bradley: Nobody really understood what I was doing but finally Dr. Evers called
me in and he said, massage, right? No. So I explained to him what I was doing and he
got very interested and he was interested in an integrative program here at Markey.
So I wrote him an integrative medicine program using JSJ as the method, and he took that
information and applied for a grant with the Lexington Cancer Foundation. And they said
yes. So in 2011, I was the biggest recipient of Lexington Cancer Foundation funds.
VO: That $49,000 grant allowed Bradley to offer JSJ therapy at Markey three days a week.
She treats patients in a special therapy room or in their chair while they receive chemotherapy.
Jennifer Bradley: We think of energy moving very, very specifically through the body.
And from time to time, because of illness, lifestyle, various things that happen to us,
it gets a little disharmonized. We use 52 main points on the body. We hold fingers and
toes and various other areas, and we hold in very particular ways. We call these flows.
What I’m listening for with my fingertips is, I can feel, we say ‘hear’ but it’s
with a touch, the energy of the body, kind of like a heartbeat pulse. I wait until I
feel that energy harmonize. And I feel it rest and relax and open. When people are on
the table what they describe is they can feel their whole body start to relax and they sink
into the table, but to me the most important thing is the mind relaxes.
Jay Hayslip: Some patients have reported improvements in their nausea, some in pain, some in stress
and anxiety. Others have found it to be a useful adjunct in terms of coping with the
stress of the treatment, or the stress of the experience of needing treatment for cancer.
Pat McGrath: there’s a lot of patients that once they’re confronted with the diagnoses
of cancer that in and of itself is overwhelming and the therapy at least allows them to pay
attention to their diagnosis and allows their body to be able to deal with the onslaught
of what we’ve brought to them through traditional medicine.
Mahesh Kudrimoti: Radiation treatments are seven-week-long treatments, and we see these
patients fairly often. We see them on a weekly basis. You start seeing them stress. That’s
when you decide how at what point you’re going to intervene. Sometimes adding more
pharmacological options may not be the best in the patients’ interest because they often
come with side effects.
Mark Evers: There’s been bias by western physicians who think that drug therapy is
absolutely the best and you shouldn’t even consider alternative forms of therapy, which
I think is entirely wrong. That’s a very good alternative to some of the drugs that
we routinely prescribe. It allows patients who may be only managed by strong narcotic
agents for their pains to actually be eased of their pain without any narcotics or as
many narcotics.
Pat McGrath: I even have a patient, she was able to visit as an inpatient, postoperatively,
after having had a mastectomy, and the patient’s pain was significantly reduced through this
work and she didn’t require any significant amount of pain medication.
Mahesh Kudrimoti: I have had patients come back and report to me this is the first time
they’ve had a good sleep in a long, long time. They often are more relaxed. You can
see a change in their demeanor.
Pat McGrath: I’ve had surgery in the past and have been plagued with a lot of back pain.
But I sought out Jennifer and received treatments and I was amazed. I’m a believer. This is
more than having faith in it, you know. You can tell the actual differences that are occurring
as you are getting the treatments.
Jere Sellers: I didn’t have any idea what it was going to be like. Just laying there
and relaxing, it fit in real well. Nothing scary about it, and I felt better. I have
trouble with my mind and my hands and my feet. I don’t have any cramps in my legs anymore,
and I had the worst cramps you’ve ever seen in my shins when I started coming here. I’ve
had one, I think, in the last three weeks, and it was just a small one. She showed me
something to do if I start feeling a cramp coming, and what to do, and it’s working.
Liz Weyer: This really seemed to I’m going to use the term “align” everything, my
energy, physical and mental energy. I couldn’t seem to get motivated to get my schoolwork
done, but this treatment really helped me tremendously with that.
Mary Gay Lake: When you’re taking chemotherapy, you are given a steroid. It opened up a world
of anxiety, sleeplessness, just feeling very hyped up. And JSJ was very instrumental in
keeping me calm and centered, focused. Jennifer taught me the finger attitudes.
Jennifer Bradley: The fingers each have a representation for worry, fear, anger, sadness,
and the shoulds or the pretense.
Mary Gay Lake: The one that I love the most is where you take your forefingers and hold
your thumb. Ten minutes later I’m sleeping like a baby, so it’s a big help to me, a
very big help.
Jennifer Bradley: We’ve done JSJ self-help our whole lives. When we were babies we sucked
our thumbs, when we’re upset we might hold our arms, you know we lean our hand on our
chin or our cheek when we’re thinking. It’s for a reason. It’s because we’re working
to harmonize the energy.
Mary Gay Lake: I’ve learned to deal with the neuropathy a lot better. Just simply by
applying the JSJ practices.
Jennifer Bradley: Neuropathy in the cancer world happens in the fingers and the toes.
It can be as slight as a little bit less ability to feel things in the fingertips, and it can
be as strong as full-out numbness.
Mary Gay Lake: When your feet are numb you have to have a second sense as to where you’re
going. But with the JSJ, and flowing that energy through my feet, it’s certainly not
hurting.
Liz Weyer: Once it starts to receive the treatment, it’s almost like if you don’t go for a
while, your body kind of cries out for it.
Jennifer Bradley: I did hundreds of sessions over 450 sessions over almost 160 patients
that first year. We found people were in general in every session receiving benefit. Even with
people from every area of the cancer spectrum ovarian, breast, prostate, lung, everyone
received benefit. Despite their age, despite, really, their belief.
VO: Using a ten-point scale, Bradley recorded the stress, pain and nausea levels for her
patients before and after JSJ treatment. Based on this pilot data, her next study will examine
if belief in JSJ, or spiritual beliefs in general, play a role in patient outcomes,
as well as the therapy’s impact on specific radiation side effects.
Mark Evers: What separates the Markey Cancer Center from other cancer treatment centers
is that we have a very active research unit. Doing what Jennifer is doing to rigorously
assess this is extremely important, because it will allow us to take it from the subjective
of the patient feeling better and knowing that they feel better to really doing some
rigorous tests to really show that in a quantitative fashion.
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