The Big C

It’s a word most of us tiptoe around; and when we do deal with it, we usually get it wrong.

- Seema Goswami

YOU EXPECT gurus to give gyan on how to live our lives and perhaps, how to prepare for the afterlife. What you don’t expect them to do is to hold forth on medical science and tell us how to remain disease free. So, you can imagine the consternation when the ‘Yogi, Mystic and Visionary’ (that’s his Twitter bio; I kid you not) who goes by the name of Sadhguru tweeted this to mark World Cancer Day: “#Cancer is no disease but unknowingly touching the Self-Destruct button. Needs deeper exploration…”

Needless to say, accusations of insensitivity and ignorance flew around and among the most offended were people who had survived cancer and could not believe they were being told that their ill-health was because they had ‘unknowingly touched the Self-Destruct button’.

Intrigued by this throwaway remark, I went on to the venerable Sadhguru’s website to read more about his theories on cancer. And among the reams of prose about the ‘energy body’ the ‘food body’ and the ‘mental body’, I found this little gem about breast cancer: “Today, some women do not conceive at all, or for most women, childbearing is over before they are 30 years of age…the necessary hormones and enzymes are still being produced but are not made use of…that part of the body becomes low energy, which attracts cancerous cells and becomes a place for them to accumulate.” So, there you are, ladies. You better push a couple out before the Big C gets you.