A Personal Journey
Dr. Edgars Vasilevskis' Story of Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis
My own experience started in the first year of anaesthesiology residency, after a hard night on duty in the intensive care unit. My leg became numb and it seemed that it was all due to overwork, sleep deprivation... I didn't attach great importance to it at the time...
After a similar recurrent episode, when the recovery was much longer, the neurologists raised the alarm, and one of the examinations was an MRI of the brain, which unfortunately showed scattered foci typical of the early stage of multiple sclerosis (MS). I can now retrospectively conclude that at that time I had combined in my lifestyle several possible risk factors for multiple sclerosis and every autoimmune disease that we will discuss in the book — stress, sleep deprivation, poor diet and tobacco, to which the hepatitis B vaccination added the final chord.
The Turning Point
But the real trouble started two years later, when I experienced blurry vision after my shift and the vision completely disappeared during the day. MS had manifested itself with its most common first major symptom, retrobulbar neuritis, which attacks the optic nerve and temporarily stops its function due to acute inflammation.
It is difficult to describe the feeling of lying in hospital and being aware of the possible scenarios of the next few years, knowing the possible progression of the disease as described in the literature. There was a lot of fear, but also a determination to fight and do as much as possible before the physical body imposed its limitations.
Discovery of Qigong and Energy Medicine
That's how I ended up in France, where I had hoped to be and perhaps work sometime later, but events forced me to take decisions without waiting any longer. I got there to educate myself, to discover the world and myself. At the same time, I was slowly learning health systems that I had heard were universal for strengthening the body.
At the very beginning of my illness, I took my first steps in tai chi and qigong under the guidance of my older brother. That's how I gradually started to learn about holistic medicine and the basics of Chinese medicine. Qigong and tai chi gradually became more and more a part of my daily life, although temporary exacerbations of the illness still recurred.
The Breakthrough Moment
And then the most important episode in my fight against the disease happened:
During another acute temporary deterioration of my vision, which then happened frequently during work, I managed to stop the flare-up with a qigong exercise, the essence of which is to restore the flow of energy through the channel that surrounds the spine and abdomen and the correct flow of which nourishes all organs, including the brain and the optic nerve.
"It turned out that the substrate of the exacerbation is also a disturbance in the energy flow, which can be restored with the exercises we learn to strengthen our health."
From that moment on, my fears about the future disappeared and my confidence was strengthened that this health system would be my lifelong companion. The following steps slowly led to teaching the method to my patients and also to learning osteopathy, Chinese medicine and acupuncture.
Now I give my patients, who mostly come to me with all kinds of health problems, the opportunity to look inside themselves and build a health plan based on methods of Chinese medicine that have been used for thousands of years.
"In this book, I would like to share these methods with you!"
— Dr. Edgars Vasilevskis