Square-jawed and silver-haired, tribal tattoos on his arms, Tommy Tucker doesn’t look like the kind of guy who would begin his morning with a deep, meditative breath and a moment of peaceful solitude.

But it’s what Tucker sees that matters.

As he fills his lungs with air, the 42-year-old pictures that air entering his body, rushing to heal the cancer afflicting his liver and pancreas.

Related: The Top 10 Cancer Signs You Should Not Ignore

He holds his breath for a few seconds before exhaling, imagining the disease leaving his body, while repeating a simple mantra: Om Shri Dhanvantre Namaha—another way of saying that the healing we receive may not always look the way we thought it would look.

It’s a popular mantra, frequently used in India, when people are cooking and want to bless the food with healing power.

That routine—and the realization that it brought—is part of what centers Tucker and gives him what he needs to start his day working as a security contractor protecting government embassies around the world—even while living with cancer.

“Every day I wake up carrying a life-threatening disease inside me,” he says, “but now I use it as a reminder to focus on the present, everything that’s good in my life.”

Related: 19 Ways to Live a Stress-Free Life

Not all men could take such a chill approach to being given a CT scan that revealed inoperable stage IV neuroendocrine cancer. He spent six months undergoing chemotherapy in Finland, where he was working at the time he was diagnosed.

Then Tucker took his treatment from West to East and now follows a variety of Eastern and alternative therapies, including acupuncture, meditation, exercise, and a diet that emphasizes vegetables.

Related: 5 Ways Acupuncture Can Help Your Health

Tucker’s mindset—and his motto—has evolved since his diagnosis. His motto used to be “I will not become a victim of cancer. I will make it my victim. Cancer has fucked with the wrong Marine!”

It was an inspiring line that stirred people to give him high-fives and hearty slaps on the back. But after a few months, Tucker realized that this adversarial mindset was getting in the way of something he thought was more useful: simple acceptance.

“Most patients describe themselves as cancer warriors, and that’s fine if that works for you,” he says. “For me to move on, I had to give it love, crazy as that sounds. I actually had to say, ‘Thank you for being inside of me and for forcing me to realize I was not on the right path.’ It’s made me stronger.”

That resolve faced no bigger challenge than last July, when in a dark turn of fate Tucker’s father died of cancer. “They caught it late. It started in his lungs and spread,” he says. “He went from 180 pounds to 120 pounds in two months. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried, but that’s when I finally lost it.”

Related: Why More Younger Guys Are Getting Diangosed With Late-Stage Lung Cancer

Even in the face of the deepest personal tragedy, however, Tucker became determined to stay optimistic and to serve as an inspiration to others dealing with struggles of their own.

He’s getting back into training others to be fit, and recently launched a website, workoutwithtommy.com, where he posts instructional fitness videos and offers personal outreach to people living with chronic illness.

“There are a lot of things that happen in our lives that can take us to a dark place,” he says. “But you can take that struggle and turn it into triumph. That’s how I’m growing. I fought it, I accepted it, and I thanked it. And now I’m on a true path to healing.”

Mike Darling Mike Darling is an executive editor at Men’s Health where he assigns and edits coverage around the brand’s core subject areas, including fitness, style and grooming, sex and relationships, and technology and gear. The Editors of Men's Health The editors of Men's Health are your personal conduit to the top experts in the world on all things important to men: health, fitness, style, sex, and more.

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