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Failure of surgery and pills drives healing quest
A quest for healing
It takes three airplanes, two taxis, and a full 24 hours to reach tiny, dusty Abadiânia. My dad and I arrive at the Jardim dos Anjos, the Garden of Angels, one of the dozen or so spartan pousadas (a cross between a hotel and a hostel) packed in John of God's side of town. The manager, Mauricio Tagle, 64, is our host. He lived in Denver for 20 years but came to Abadiânia with a bad hip about 5 years ago. His pain left, but he stayed.
"Hello, my friends," he greets us. "How are you? You must be hungry... . "
The next day, the streets are flooded with hundreds of hopeful pilgrims limping, staggering, and wheeling their way down to the Casa. The vast majority of visitors are Brazilian — people who believe in miracles like Americans believe in death and taxes.
The Casa itself consists of a half dozen single-story buildings spread out over a few acres. The main hall seats about 100 people. Everything is painted either pure white or sky blue, so even during an anesthesia-free surgery you have the feeling that you're floating among the clouds. The Casa also houses a pharmacy that dispenses herbal medicines; a store that sells books, videos, and large crystals from a mine John of God owns; and a room for spare crutches and wheelchairs cast off by their owners.
I know what you're thinking: There is a certain amount of money churning through the outfit. The crystals sell for $10 to $100; the pharmacy charges $20 for 5 weeks' worth of herbs. But the healing attention from John of God is free, as is the "spiritual soup" served to each visitor after every morning session. The Casa provides about 75,000 bowls every year. From all this activity, the Casa takes in approximately $500,000 annually, which pays the electric bills and upkeep, plus the salaries of 15 to 20 staff members.
John promises to see every individual who shows up Wednesday through Friday — 300 to 500 people a day. During the weeklong festival celebrating Saint Ignatius in June, those numbers swell well into the thousands. Awaiting him are children with cerebral palsy and old men with glaucoma, beautiful Brazilian women with HIV, and pink, sunburned men with failing livers.
And, my dad and me.
We are here because Western medicine has failed us, as it has so many of the people who pass through these halls. Many of us have spent our lives filling and emptying prescriptions, taking stethoscopes to the chest and needles in the arm, answering the same questions until they feel like a catechism, and following the advice of fine doctors and the findings in the very latest medical studies.
But these measures don't always add up to a cure. Surely, not all our answers can be pinpointed on x-rays, bottled in blood tests, or expunged on the cold, sterile tables of the O.R. So where else do we turn?
Immersed in meditation
By 8 a.m. the morning after I arrive, the hall is packed. Each person can approach John with three questions, called "intentions." I'm holding mine, translated into Portuguese:
1. Can you help protect my small intestine from further damage?
2. Can you restore vision in my left eye?
3. Can you help strengthen my spirituality?
An old, hunched-over Brazilian man steps up onto the stage and tells the crowd about the two types of surgeries John performs: visible and invisible. Visible surgeries are by request only and are performed onstage for all to behold. Invisible surgeries take place in a separate room, where a group of patients sit, eyes closed, as John focuses healing attention on each individual. Throughout the morning, people crowd the stage to tell their own healing stories or to lead the group in prayer. And always, videos of past surgeries play. After 2 hours of this, the first-timers are called forward. My dad and I fall in line behind 50 others.
Meditation, it turns out, is serious medicine. "In 20 minutes, just once or twice a day, you gain potential far-reaching effects that a single pill can't grant you," says Maura Paul-Labrador, Ph.D., a researcher at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles. How serious is the science? Check out these results: A 2006 study at the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, in Iowa, found that practitioners of transcendental meditation (TM) had a 40 to 50 percent drop in pain response in the thalamus and prefrontal cortex. In a recent study at the University of Calgary, cancer patients enrolled in an 8-week meditation and gentle yoga program. Six- and 12-month follow-ups showed significant decreases in stress symptoms, including drops in systolic blood pressure and heart rate. In a study led by Paul-Labrador at Cedars-Sinai, researchers found that TM could stabilize insulin levels and heart rate, providing a double defense from two of the biggest man-killers in this country: diabetes and sudden cardiac death. Other studies have found meditation to be effective in lowering LDL (bad) cholesterol, fighting cirrhosis, and fending off the adverse effects of autoimmune diseases. You don't need a prescription, heavy machinery, or a roomful of whitecoats to take advantage of meditation. Once you learn the basic techniques, all you need is a quiet place and 20 minutes a day, says John Orr, a former Buddhist monk and a meditation and yoga teacher at Duke University. Here are strategies that can help you make meditation more than just a passing thought. Choose your time wisely: Routine is important, says Orr, so choose a time you know you'll have free every day. "Meditation is about being alert, so if you have more energy early in the morning, make that your time to meditate." Align your spine: Bad posture will make those 20 minutes feel like 2 weeks. "Sit on the floor or a chair and keep your head, back, and neck aligned but not tight or holding tension," Orr says. Take deep, slow breaths from your diaphragm. Think away the pain: "The biggest misconception about practice is that you're not supposed to think," says Orr. "The point is to be aware of any fear or anxiety that's arising but not to get lost in it." Don't force thoughts out. Instead, Orr tells his students to repeat a simple phrase in their head: "Breathing in, I am aware of this anxiety. Breathing out, I smile at this anxiety." For more on the art of om, Orr suggests "Mindfulness in Plain English," by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana.
Inside the Casa are two large, rectangular rooms joined together to form an L. Seated in each room are more than 75 people deep in meditation. We pivot left at the L junction, and there, at the end of the second room, is John, sitting calmly in a wooden rocking chair. He is 60, maybe, and sturdy as a tight end; his barrel chest strains against the buttons on his gauzy shirt. To his left is a crystal the size of a dishwasher; translators crowd around. The line moves quickly; John gives each person 5 to 10 seconds before a volunteer sweeps him or her away.
My turn.
I step forward, and he gently takes my hands in his. The translator reads my intentions, and John pauses for a moment. "Sit in my current and come back to see me Friday," he says.
The current rooms play a fundamental role at the Casa. According to some seminal sitters, the area is as important as John of God himself. I gave meditation a shot in college after my dad promised it would slow me down. I never meditated for more than 15 minutes, which was my functional definition of eternity at the time. But as I look around the current room today and see 85-year-old men and 9-year-old girls doing it without any apparent trouble, I figure it's time to dig deep. Over the next 2 days, I log 10 hours of deep meditation interspersed with the occasional power nap.
Research shows the technique can be effective in treating epilepsy, and mood and anxiety disorders. The benefits can extend beyond the brain, including treatment of autoimmune illnesses like Crohn's. And a recent study from the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, in Iowa, found that long-term practitioners of meditation can dampen response to pain by 40 to 50 percent. Could it be that all these perfectly still, silent people are healing themselves? Or are they just feeling their pain less acutely?
'Nothing to lose'
If you go to the Casa today, Matthew Ireland will probably be the first man you'll see, helping a newcomer or bringing water to people in the current room. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor when he was 29. He was working in the Rockies, building ski trails, until persistent migraines drove him out of the wilderness and into a hospital. The tumor advanced quickly, from stage II to an inoperable stage IV glioblastoma multiforme. At that late stage, survival rates hover around 2 percent.
"The doctor told me to go see my family," he tells me. "He was sending me home to die."
Not long after, a neighbor called. "She said, 'I've been to John of God, and I think you should come over to talk,' " Ireland says. "A few hours later, I had a pousada reservation in Abadiânia."
He said his goodbyes to friends and family and headed for the Casa. John told Matthew to sit in the current. He did so for months, inching ever closer to his forecasted death day, in this tiny, unfamiliar town thousands of miles from his loved ones.
"I wasn't even a spiritual guy," he says. "I stayed because I had nothing to lose."
After his death date had come and gone, he returned to the States for an MRI. The tumor had shrunk. His family and friends, former skeptics all, pushed him back onto the first plane to Brazil.
He went straight to the current room. One day, deep in meditation, he felt a hand on his head. He opened his eyes and found John standing above him. "You are cured," he said. "Go to the hospital and have the tests." So Matthew went into Goiania, to the largest hospital in the region, and had his final MRI. "The brain tumor was gone," Matthew says. "All that was left was a bit of scar tissue."
"This place gave me my life back," he says. "I have all the proof I need: me, walking around, not dying of a brain tumor."
Dr. Oz reviewed another kind of proof and came away impressed: "I took Matthew's MRIs to our radiology department and reviewed them. The tumor had shrunk significantly. If I had that diagnosis, I would make my way down there to see what João could do for me."
World's most underqualified surgeon
I wake up late Thursday night with acute stomach pain; I'm shivering under two blankets. It's 80°F outside and hotter in my room. It's a Crohn's attack, my first in several months, and it's still riding me when the sun comes up. I should stay in bed, but John told me to come back Friday, so I must. I hobble out to the road and find a cab to the Casa.
I'm hoping for a speedy path to John, but this is his morning for physical surgeries. First up is a plump German woman, swaddled in white from sandals to shawl. She stands serenely before us, eyes half-closed, her breaths deep and rhythmic. Seven people surround her on the stage, holding trays of knives, forceps, and stainless-steel bowls filled with water.
After a few moments of agitated silence, John appears from behind a side door, chanting in a smoky baritone voice. The crowd parts as he makes his way to the stage.
He delivers a few words to us in thick, slow Portuguese and then fixes an intense gaze upon the woman. As he grabs a scalpel from a tray and dips it into one of the bowls of water, the hall breaks into the Our Father. His eyes never leave the patient. There are no plastic gloves or anesthetics, nor is there even a glimmer of recognition in the woman's heavy, sunken eyes that she is about to be cut by the world's most underqualified surgeon.
The prayer comes to an end as he unbuttons her blouse. He slips his hand underneath her bra and gently pops out her left breast. As he slices into her flesh, her fingers hang loose; her brow is undisturbed. My gut burns like hellfire.
After making the 2-inch incision, he places the scalpel back onto a tray and, with his naked index finger, digs through the gash and removes a small, fleshy pebble covered in blood. Then he uses an oversize needle to make two rough sutures before returning her breast to the bra.
She is left with a wound on her left breast, a small trail of blood running down toward her stomach, and hope that her breast cancer has been cured. A roomful of observers gape at her composure.
Next John grabs a set of 6-inch, stainless-steel nasal forceps from one of the trays, clamps down on a piece of cotton with the ends, and twists it into a tight ball. He turns to a young Italian man — he has a kidney complaint — and in one swift move jams the length of the forceps into his nasal cavity. John drops his hand and lets the forceps dangle from the man's nostril for a 10 count as he makes a few laps around the stage, looking stoically out over the crowd. He grabs hold of the forceps again, twisting them three or four times before ripping them back out with one dramatic sweeping motion. The man rolls off in a wheelchair. (The other common surgery John performs involves sitting a patient down in a chair, cocking the patient's head backward, and scraping the cornea with a kitchen knife.)
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