MOSHE DOVID: You Are Not Your Brain
The tumor could send the message of anger. Moshe Dovid discovered that he still had the power to decide who would answer.
Moshe Dovid Mermelstein was a large eleven-year-old with an angelic smile. No one looking at him could see the dangerous tumor growing in his brain. At school, however, something had changed. A boy who had once been gentle and considerate began exploding in anger and fighting with other children. The school understood that the tumor was affecting his behavior, but it also had to protect his classmates. Moshe Dovid was repeatedly sent home.
The label hurt almost as much as the illness. He knew that he was not a bad child, yet he felt as though his own body had taken control of him. His parents were frightened and helpless. Moshe Dovid was becoming trapped not only by a tumor, but by an identity that did not belong to him.
He loved the idea of learning martial arts. I began by telling him that the anger was not the deepest part of who he was. "It isn't you," I said. "It is your tumor."
He looked directly at me and asked a question that took my breath away: "But aren't you your brain?"
I answered him as honestly as I could. "Your brain is an organ of your body, just like your liver, your lungs, or your kidneys. You are not your brain. You are your soul - the light inside you. Your task is to reach into that light and respond to what is happening with your soul, not only with the messages coming from your body."
We gave the tumor a name: "Tom." Every martial artist must learn to recognize an attack before it lands. Moshe Dovid began studying the moments when Tom the Tumor was preparing to strike. He noticed a tightness in his throat and chest just before the anger erupted. That physical sensation became his warning bell. Instead of discovering the attack after he had hurt someone, he could now meet it at the door.
His first defensive technique was not a punch or a kick. It was a breath.
As soon as the tightness appeared, Moshe Dovid inhaled slowly through his nose, lifting and expanding his body. At the top of the breath, he took in a little more and held it for three seconds. Then he exhaled through his mouth, allowing his shoulders, chest, and every tightened muscle to release. With the next breath, he imagined a beautiful light flooding his body. He kept the light and blew out the anger, fear, and darkness.
During the two weeks of camp, I watched him work. Things did not always go as planned, and Tom continued trying to push him into a rage. But Moshe Dovid was learning to recognize the attack and take control. By the end of camp, he was correcting his counselor for becoming angry and demonstrating the breathing technique to others. The child who had been sent away as a danger returned to school as a teacher.
His new skill also changed the way he faced painful medical procedures. After one treatment, his parents asked whether it had hurt. "My body was physically there," he told them, "but I wasn't. I didn't feel anything." His neuropsychologist and learning specialist were so astonished by the change that they asked to videotape a session. They had expected two weeks of camp to give him a pleasant vacation. They had not expected it to restore his sense of self.
Moshe Dovid's tumor continued to grow, and he did not live to reach adulthood. Near the end of his life, the pain became severe and medication kept him confined to bed. One evening he called to his father, "Ta, please bring me my Gemara." His father brought the volume of Talmud and asked hopefully, "Are you feeling better?"
"No," Moshe Dovid answered. "It is worse. But I remember learning that when you study even though it is hard, the reward is greater."
He had learned to master far more than anger. He had learned that pain could affect his body without defining his soul. The tumor could create impulses, limitations, and terrible suffering, but it could not make the final decision about who he would be.
Most of us will never face Moshe Dovid's battle, but all of us receive messages from our brains that do not represent our best selves. Anger says, "Strike back." Fear says, "Run." Despair says, "Give up." Moshe Dovid taught that we can pause, breathe, and answer from a deeper place. We are not every thought that enters our minds. We are the light that chooses what to do next.