Health: Kids Kicking Cancer, overcoming pain, at Hewlett YI

Pain may be one of the realities of cancer treatment, but an organization founded to empower children undergoing cancer care by using martial arts techniques is making great strides in alleviating and controlling their pain.

Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg of Detroit, who founded Kids Kicking Cancer in 1990, will speak at the Young Israel of Hewlett on Shabbat Parshat Korach, June 8, and will present his technique that Sunday.

The program deals with “any issue of childhood pain,” said Goldberg and teaches children how to use Tai Chi breathing techniques to deal with their pain. The method, called Breath Brake, uses breathing “to stop stress and take control of your life,” he said.

A student of Rav Joseph B. Soleveichik and longtime member of the YU kollel — as well as a black belt in Karate — Rabbi Goldberg’s epiphany came while he was director of Chai Lifeline’s Camp Simcha.

When an “adult screams (in pain) the doctor finds another way to do things, with a kid they hold the kid tighter,” When a child was screaming when the nurse was accessing his mediport for treatment in Camp Simcha, Rabbi Goldberg yelled, “Wait!” Everything stopped, he said, and he asked the nurse to “give me a second.”

He told the child that he was a black belt and asked if he wanted ”me to teach you karate. He almost jumped off the table.” Rabbi Goldberg taught him breathing techniques. When the nurse removed the needle after treatment, the child was unaware and felt no pain. “I began a pilot program at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan in 1990, a Kids Kicking Cancer program using martial arts, breathing work, meditation and empowering children to know that they can deal with pain.”

But Rabbi Goldberg’s knowledge of cancer and children began earlier and was personal. “My wife and I lost our first child to leukemia 32 years ago,” he said. He was a Rebbe at Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles at the time. “Kids didn’t heal well then.”

They got the first call on Oct. 24, 1980 that they had to bring their two-year-old daughter back to the doctor. She had been diagnosed with a “bad virus.” The call came before the Shabbat of Parshat Akaida, the binding of Isaac. He was told that Shabbat morning that the hospital was “short staffed” and he had to help fasten his daughter’s arms and legs to the table. “Avraham didn’t use Velcro,” he said, “but everything else felt the same.”

“She used to say ‘no meds please’,” he recalled, “and she would tell five year olds not to cry. She was very powerful.” Sarah Basya passed away at the age of two, in 1981.

Seven years later, Rabbi Simcha Scholar was raising funds for Camp Simcha and wanted Rabbi Goldberg to be the camp’s director. Goldberg protested, “Every little girl will be our daughter!” He was camp director there for 12 years.

The breathing technique works because “children believe in the power of martial arts,” he said, noting that “88.1% of our interventions significantly lowered the pain level of children who were experiencing pain of disease or therapy. This is a very significant number without drugs.” He said that the technique is “extremely spiritual — it’s not by accident that the Hebrew word for breath is neshima” similar to the word for soul — neshama.

Rabbi Goldberg has been teaching pain management and end of life care to doctors in the pediatric medical world since 1990.

Three days after they taught Pfizer in New York he was asked to teach in Pfizer Italy. “Ninety-seven percent of adults we’ve trained at major companies describe as having profound impact on their lives,” he said.

One year ago, he began a program at Vatican Children’s Hospital in Rome, and that it is now spreading through Italy. The first pilot program in Israel began at ALYN Hospital last year, and last month, he began the program at Hadassah Ein Kerem.

Adult martial artists are taught the techniques for several months to teach the children. The children, ages 3 to 20, learn the techniques and they in turn teach adults.

“The power of the program is that when children become teachers, it changes their perception,” giving them “more empowerment and decreases their pain.”

“The kids always get a standing ovation,” he said, and then they “go back to the clinics (for treatment) and know that there is a purpose to what they do.”

He cited one child who was given a week to live and after training was able to leave the hospital and survived another six weeks.

“Most of our kids survive,” he stressed. “They do great today.”

On one occasion in Minneapolis, he anticipated only 20 people at his lecture, but about 120 came. “People are so thirsty to know techniques to deal with life. The responses are so tremendous. It really impacts, it’s kind of a life changing process.” He noted that he is the only person to appear on the covers of both People magazine and Ami magazine.

The course is an hour and is done while seated. “In one hour there is such a transformation,” said Goldberg. “People end up laughing and crying. It really makes an impression.”

His goal in speaking in the Five Towns is to rebuild the program in this area. It had been anchored at seven New York Hospitals but lost $600,000 in funding from earmarked appropriations in 2010, he said. He noted that Sloan Kettering, Columbia Presbyterian and the Ronald McDonald House “pulled back from the programs; others copied our work.”

Dr. Carolyn Fein Levy, head of the Pediatric Oncology Rare Tumor and Sarcoma Program at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York, said she has known “Rabbi G” for 15 years. “I have watched this program grow from a local program in Michigan to an international phenomenon. Rabbi G modified the program when I was working at The Brooklyn Hospital Center to a Kids Kicking Sickle Cell Program. Children with sickle cell often have painful crises and require narcotics for pain control. With the power breathing method the children were able to reduce their narcotic use. These adolescents felt empowered to fight against their disease and were no longer the victims. I hope that Rabbi G can find the local support to bring the program to the Long Island area. I believe that Kids Kicking Cancer can truly help our patients and families with cancer manage the stress and pain of their illnesses. This unique martial arts program supplements the medical care we can provide and helps children battle their illnesses with power and perseverance.”

Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg is clinical assistant professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine and Rabbi Emeritus of the Young Israel of Southfield, Michigan, where he was the Rav for 20 years. He just completed a book, not yet published, “Power, Peace, Purpose: Life’s Lessons from Kids Kicking Cancer.”

For more information, contact Marc Cohen at 313-557-0021 or mcohen@kidskickingcancer.net