Breast Cancer Survivors Celebrate Courage           
By Linda Y. Brown

Women adorned themselves with pink hats, shirts, hair, and even a pink cast for a tea at the Cherry Creek Mall in September. Photos of the 100 breast cancer survivors were part of the “Celebrate Faces of Courage!” exhibit at the mall. Various photographers who donated their time had taken the photos of the survivors.
Kim Christensen, from KUSA Channel 9, whose sister is a breast cancer survivor, addressed the gathering.
Standing in back, a tall regal woman, dressed in purple – not pink – was Myrna Crawford, a 14-year breast cancer survivor. Her photo from the exhibit, along with the others, was tied with a pink bow and presented to her at the end of the program. The black and white photo showed her in a full-length gown, outlining her svelte figure in a sassy pose.
“She’s a very great woman,” says friend Esliva Hiltongilbert. “She kept this to herself for a long time. She’s a very strong woman and she’s been so encouraging to others. She has so much Godly force.”
Crawford had a reason for keeping her discovery to herself. Just five months prior to her own diagnosis, her mother died from breast cancer at age 68.
“I told my children immediately,” Crawford recalls. “But I was concerned about the rest of my family, thinking, ‘Here we go again.’”
Crawford had her brother tell the rest of the family. Her children, still in mourning for their grandmother, were in shock. In time they became her biggest supporters. Years later, her son would participate in a Race For the Cure walk with his mother and children.
Crawford had been used to giving herself breast exams and having regular mammograms well before her cancer diagnosis. Doctors had fund lumps in her breast before. In 1986 she even had a lumpectomy, a surgical excision of a tumor from the breast.
“Various doctors I went to over the years told me I had lumpy breasts,” she remembers.
When she discovered another lump in her breast she did not become alarmed but made an appointment to see her doctor. The appointment was cancelled upon her mother’s death. It wasn’t until five months later that Crawford rescheduled her appointment.
“The cancer was in my left breast,” she says. “My doctors told me it was a slow-moving cancer and that I should go home and think about what I wanted to do. With my history I knew the likelihood of the cancer returning was great. So when he asked me to think about it, I said, ‘There’s nothing to think about.’ Within two weeks I had a double mastectomy, along with reconstruction.”
Crawford tried to remain strong. “However, one to two months afterward it slapped me upside the head, and I realized that I had to deal with my own loss. I was trying to be uplifting to others and not considering what I just went through.”
Crawford credits her support system of close friends known as the “Motley Mama’s” for helping her to be strong.
“They don’t give me time to be down,” she says. “I told them, ‘Don’t cry until you see me cry.’ By them being strong, it helped. Of course when I was by myself I cried a lot.”
A 1964 graduate of Manual High School, Crawford also gets support from friends in the Thunderbolts Sun Club, which is still active.
Today, Crawford is cancer free and volunteers her time to support various causes for breast cancer education and support. She advocates breast self-exams and encourages women to know their own bodies and not be afraid to follow-up with their doctor if they discover anything abnormal. 
“Always be positive,” she says. “Surround yourself with positive people. Keep the faith and always trust in God.”

Editor’s note: “Solving the Puzzle, One Piece at a Time” is on display at Cherry Creek Mall. For more information, go to www.raceforthecure-denver.com.

October: A Time To Think About Breast Cancer
Submitted by doctors and nurses from Denver Health

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, which makes it a perfect time to remember friends and family that have been affected.
All women can be at risk of developing breast cancer. Familial, hormonal and lifestyle factors can make a difference in whether a woman will ever suffer from breast cancer.
Familial Factors
Breast cancer has been linked to specific genetic factors. If your mother, sister, or daughter has been diagnosed with breast cancer or ovarian cancer, or if a more distant relative has had one or both of these cancers, you may have inherited genes associated with breast cancer and are considered at-risk.
Hormonal Factors
Research has shown that changes that affect a woman’s estrogen levels also affect her risk of breast cancer. Her age at first and last menstrual cycles, whether she was ever pregnant or breastfed, her age at her first pregnancy, and her body weight, are all factors that can influence estrogen levels.
Lifestyle Factors
Research suggests that maintaining an ideal body weight may protect against breast cancer. Adopting a low-fat diet and exercising regularly may also reduce risk. Also, women who drink multiple alcoholic beverages every day are at higher risk.
Women should report any change in their breasts to their care providers right away. Monthly breast self-exams should start at age 20. Women should get clinical (hands-on) breast exams by trained medical professionals every three years between the ages of 20 and 39, and annually after age 40.
Women 40 and older should have annual mammograms. It’s the easiest way to detect breast cancer early so that treatment can be most effective.
To schedule a mammogram at a Denver Health facility, or in Denver Health’s mobile mammography clinic, the Mammo-van, call 720-956-2035.

An Eye on Africa
Motherland Of The Mind, Body And Spirit
By James Ainsworth

Maurice Haltom has never set foot in Africa, but he carries the “Motherland” in his heart and mind, and throughout his whole being. Indeed, it seems his life is dedicated to exploring the profound wisdom and cultural connections underlying African music, movement and dance. As a musician, Kung Fu and Tai Chi master, yoga instructor, psychotherapist and healer, Haltom has mastered an extraordinarily wide range of disciplines.
At Cornell University, the Omega Institute and in countless seminars and workshops from New York and California to the Caribbean, Haltom has taught students from all racial backgrounds and walks of life about health, healing and spiritual consciousness through African-based traditions. After more than 30 years of teaching, the Ithaca, N.Y. resident runs the Cayuga Center for Wellness and Healing Arts and has developed distinctive innovations synthesizing spiritual practices from India and China with fundamental aspects of African culture.
Perhaps his journey was sparked in the late 1950s, when Haltom was a high school student in Berkeley, Calif., and his family lived a few blocks from the coffeehouses of beatnik poets, who at the time were sowing the seeds of the radical social movements of the 1960s.
“The beatniks were vital and interesting to me because they appreciated the bongo drum. They would have the bongo drum playing behind their poetry and that’s where I got my first stage appearances – behind the beat poets,” Haltom explained. “In the meantime I’d be at the coffeehouses really getting my mind opened up. I could pop in there and find a whole different reference point. My own peers were no longer my reference point.”
After graduating from high school, Haltom enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed in England. There he met a man named “Aubrey,” an African American drummer and flutist who also practiced Karate. Haltom was intrigued by Aubrey’s ability to bridge the avant-garde world of jazz and martial arts; his new mentor introduced him to salsa music and Latin and Caribbean drumming styles, as well as the discipline of Oriental fighting techniques. But as Haltom delved further into Karate, he felt there was a natural connection between African dance movements and the martial arts, and he kept trying to create a more fluid fighting style, which ran against the grain of Aubrey and his other Karate teachers.
“There was a certain grace and a certain rhythm I was trying to get to and they couldn’t stand it,” Haltom says.
From 1964 to 1969, Haltom played music while immersing himself in the exciting social scenes in London, New York City and San Francisco. He played for a variety of bands in California – including the Loading Zone, Kwandidos and Tower of Power.
Haltom soon began studying with Kung Fu master Steven Hou. He also witnessed the Chinese Dragon Dance, and saw a cultural connection between China and Africa that he had intuitively sensed. He noticed that even the movements of the Dragon dancers themselves resembled African dance styles.
With time, Haltom became more aware of fundamental, archetypal expressions of African movement and dance, seeking to integrate these movements into his own martial arts and fitness practices. When he decided to pursue a Master’s degree in psychology at Cornell he found students who were drawn to his multi-dimensional approach. He taught his first Tai Chi class in 1973 with one student, and by the next year the class ballooned to 70. In 1982 Haltom opened the Aquarian School of Movement Therapy. 
“I never really thought that I was evolving something, but by about 1982, I was pretty aware that there was something going on here between Africa and China and India, with the yoga postures,” Haltom explained. “Atlantean Yoga involves the idea of taking postures which appear to be still, but because you’re breathing there is an opportunity of engaging in small, spinal flexing movements. You can find ways to keep the posture intact but at the same time undulate the spine and thighs.”
Haltom says that his work with the intensified breathing and movement innovations of Atlantean Yoga develops a particularly powerful sensitivity and connection to the Life Force, and presaged some of trends that would occur with the widespread popularization of yoga in the ‘90s. In particular, the practice of “Power Yoga,” a form of athletic yoga with enhanced cardio-vascular activity developed by Rodney Yee in California, and Sanyasin Yoga, are both similar to Haltom’s Atlantean Yoga system.
Haltom said African traditions and practices are generally not appreciated for their potential contribution to health and healing because they involve a mind-body orientation that is quite unlike standard Western thinking. But developing these practices are well worth the effort, because they can lead one to a new awareness of inner knowledge and the “collective unconscious” that is not accessible through conventional education.
“I think that Africa comes with a unique plan for adapting right now, in the current moment – and to each and every moment – in a very spontaneous and fluid fashion,” Haltom said. “Each and every moment in life is a mystery, and the mystery is solved when I come to the mystery myself, connected to my inner lawfulness, and I can relinquish control and give over to this trust of there is something within myself that can adjust perfectly and adequately to a certain moment.”
Editor’s note: James Ainsworth is a freelance writer in Denver. He can be reached through his Web blog, www.eyeonafrica.blogspot.com.