Kicking cancer with karate: Rabbi G visits Calgary

​Elimelech Goldberg still remembers where it started.

Some years after his daughter passed away from leukemia, Goldberg was directing a summer camp for kids with cancer. He came across a young boy who was screaming, held down by nurses as another nurse tried to give him a needle. 

"I just yelled, 'wait,'" Goldberg recalls. 

"And they all stopped and looked at me and I didn't have a clue what I was going to say next."

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He approached the boy, explained that he was a black belt, and asked the boy if he could show him some karate.

"I explained to him that in the martial arts, pain is a message you don't have to listen to," Goldberg said.

"You can breathe in this amazing chi — this energy — and push out the pain."

"Five minutes later, we're doing a simple tai chi breathing technique, and 20 minutes later, they took out the needle."

That's how Goldberg started Kids Kicking Cancer — which now helps 2,600 kids a year get through their cancer treatments using breathing techniques and the lessons of martial arts.

The black belt, professor of pediatrics, and rabbi — affectionately known as Rabbi G — spoke in Calgary this weekend about what he has learned. 

"Kids believe in the martial arts and they're trained by disease that they have no power, that they become victims," Golderg told the Eyeopener on Monday. 

"We teach them that they are victors and that they can reach inside. The power of the mind is so effective as a tool in therapy that we've been able to spread this to 41 hospitals in four countries."

Empowering children

But don't expect to see young kids breaking boards or fighting.

"We really teach the children that they have this power," he explained. "It's meditative, it's movement, it's imagery."

We give black belts to children before they pass away- Rabbi Goldberg 

"When they have to move, rather than walk down the hall with just their IV pole, it allows them to walk down the hall doing their breath work as martial artists."

"Changing that image changes the therapy of the child and we've been able to evidence that it actually lowers their pain," Goldberg added. 

Goldberg said the kids who go through his program take what they've learned and then teach others.

"We give black belts to children before they pass away and their name is embroidered with the words 'master teacher,'" he said.

"Allowing every child to know, no matter what they're going through, that there's a purpose to what they're going through, that they're teaching the world... changes absolutely everything."

With files from the Calgary Eyeopener.