You Can Conquer Cancer: The ground-breaking self-help manual including nutrition, meditation and lifestyle management techniques

Copyright

The advice in this book is designed to complement medical advice. Always consult your doctor. The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any techniques as a form of treatment for physical or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your action.

Thorsons

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First edition published in Australia 1984

Revised edition published 2001

Second revised edition published 2004

Third revised edition published 2013

First published in the United States by Tarcher/Penguin 2015

This UK edition published by Thorsons 2015

FIRST EDITION

© Ian Gawler 1984, 2001, 2004, 2013

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015 Book design by Tanya Maiboroda

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Ian Gawler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008117603

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2015 ISBN: 9780008117634

Version: 2015-01-05

This edition is dedicated to the health, healing and well-being of all who read it. May you all live long and happy lives!

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction | The Big Picture—What Is Possible and How

1 The First Step | How to Begin

2 Keeping Hope Alive | Prognosis and Looking into the Crystal Ball

3 What Treatments Will I Use? | Attending to Individual Needs

4 Meditation | The Principles Behind the Silent Healer

5 Meditation | The Practice

6 Meditation in Daily Life | Calm, Clear and Relaxed

7 Mind Training 1 | Positive Thinking: The Conscious Mind at Work

8 Mind Training 2 | Habits and Beliefs, Affirmations and Imagery: The Unconscious Mind at Work

9 Mind Training 3 | The Mind-Body Connection: Using the Power of the Mind for Healing

10 Pain Control | It Is Only Pain!

11 Nutrition 1 | The Principles: A Logical Approach

12 Nutrition 2 | Foods That Heal: Clarifying Your Choices

13 Nutrition 3 | Healthy Boundaries: The Wellness Diet

14 Nutrition 4 | Eating for Recovery: The Healing Diet

15 The Causes of Cancer | It Is All in the Mind—Or Is It?

16 Healthy Emotions 1 | Feeling Well, Being Well

17 Healthy Emotions 2 | Transforming the Negative, Accentuating the Positive

18 Death and Dying | How to Live Well, and Die Well

19 Your Healing Choices | Principles, Practicalities and Spirituality

20 The Sealed Section | The Special Case of Subtle-Energy Medicine

21 Recommendations | An Action Plan

Appendices

References

More Information on Ian Gawler

List of Searchable Terms

About the Publisher

Introduction

The Big Picture

What Is Possible and How

It is a great feeling to have recovered from cancer—to have been through it all and to be living a full, happy life again. I have done it. I have seen others do it and know many more will repeat the process in the future. This book, then, is offered with a sense of excitement and joy—the joy in having done it and the excitement of being able to help others to do it.

We all share a common goal. We all want to enjoy good health along with long, happy and meaningful lives. And we can. However, when a diagnosis of cancer comes into a family, all this is severely threatened. There is the real threat of life cut short, along with fear, distress and potential suffering.

Good news. We can turn all of this around. I have done it myself and I have seen many, many others do it as well. You can conquer cancer. That is a fact. It is possible. There is a process by which you can combine your own resources with those of the medical and allied health professions so that you can transform the experience of cancer and recover. This book examines the patient’s role in disease and healing. It is intended as a self-help manual that provides the signposts along the path to well-being and long-term health.

Currently, of all the people diagnosed with cancer, Western medicine helps around 65 percent to be alive five years later. For someone whose prognosis predicts they are likely to be in that 65 percent, this approach will mobilize your own inner resources, along with those who support you, and give you every chance of becoming a long-term survivor.

For those with a poor prognosis from the medical point of view, take heart. You too can do it. I did. At my lowest point in 1976 my surgeon thought I would only live for a few weeks. So it is wonderful not only to still be alive, but to have raised a family, had the good fortune to be able to help many thousands of others and, importantly, to have seen many, many others recover using these methods.

For more than thirty years now, people have continued to ask me the same question. It is a good question and it is as relevant to the start of this book as it is to every person who asks it.

“When it comes to cancer, what is the most important thing that will help me, or the person I love, to recover?”

I never tire of this question. Is it the food? Is it all in the mind? Is it some new medical breakthrough or some ancient herb? Is it the meditation? What is it? What is the thing that helps the most?

Well, in my experience it is a combination of things. You need the best of all that is available.

You can conquer cancer. But you do need to work at it. This is not a casual business. You need to learn what to do and you need to do it. And when you do, you are bound to feel better in ways that right now you may not even imagine. There is the real prospect of becoming cancer free and enjoying a whole new phase of your life.

Where There Is a Rhyme, There Is a Reason

My right leg was amputated with osteogenic sarcoma (bone cancer) in January 1975. While there were no signs of the cancer anywhere else in my body at that time, I was told that only 5 percent of patients could expect to be alive five years after such surgery. If my cancer reappeared, it would be expected to be rapidly fatal. In those days, most people died within three to six months of developing secondary growths of this form of bone cancer.

In fact, my cancer did reappear in November 1975. By March 1976, my specialist thought that I would live for only two more weeks. My subsequent recovery ran the full gamut of available treatments and, in June 1978, I was declared free of active cancer.

Over the next few years, my former wife, Gail (who later changed her name to Gayle and then Grace), and I had four children. I began a new veterinary practice, took up a thirty-seven-acre farm, developed vegetable gardens and orchards, and built a new house.

In 1981, Grace and I initiated the Melbourne Cancer Support Group. This lifestyle-based support group was one of the very first of its kind anywhere in the world. It began with an initial urge to pass on the benefits of my own rather extraordinary experience of recovering against the odds. Having been through it all myself, I understood the problems cancer patients face. Furthermore, being a rather pragmatic veterinarian, I had enough medical knowledge to understand my own position at the outset, evaluate my progress, and assess critically the wide range of treatments considered. Fortunately, I was blessed with an open mind, so I was ready to consider anything that worked toward my aim. That aim was to create the right environment in which my body would heal itself. To think that the body can play a major part in healing itself was a novel approach way back in the mid-seventies, but is one that we now know to be full of possibilities.

When my cancer had recurred and the situation looked hopeless from the medical viewpoint, I remained confident that there was another way. Already I had been introduced to the idea that cancer involved a state of immune deficiency, a weakness in the body’s healing defense system. To explain: it is known that throughout the lifetime of every healthy person, cancerous cells develop in their body. This is a medically accepted fact. It also is accepted that the body normally recognizes these abnormal cells as a potential threat to its health and acts quickly to isolate and destroy them. It does so before any physical symptoms become apparent. However, in people who go on to develop cancer this does not happen and the growths continue unopposed. The body offers no resistance and symptoms of cancer are the result.

So I began with the attitude that it was possible to restimulate the body’s natural defenses—in particular, the immune system. This being so, it followed that the body itself could destroy and remove all traces of the cancer. As an extension, if the immune system remained intact and functioning properly, there should be no worry about the cancer reappearing. An exciting prospect!

That attitude was my starting point, my basic premise. All I did was directed toward that end. So, while I explored many avenues of treatment, every one was a part of the process of finding the right balance for me. Now more than thirty years later, and having worked with many thousands of people intent on dealing with their own cancer challenges, what this book is able to present are the key principles that will be helpful, as well as exploring some of the more peripheral options.

This attitude of being empowered and learning how to overcome the many challenges cancer can present is so very different to the fear that normally surrounds the word.

Fear and the Four Misconceptions of Cancer

Probably no other word strikes as much emotional fear in the community today as does cancer. While over the years the intensity of this fear may have lessened to some degree as more people have come to realize there is something constructive they can do in response to cancer, for most the fear is still very real.

When You Can Conquer Cancer was first published in 1984, it was regarded as somewhat provocative and revolutionary. First, there was the title, You Can Conquer Cancer. Conquer? Maybe “get help with,” maybe “manage,” maybe “live with” would have fitted the expectations of the day better. But “conquer” and “you can” in the same sentence? You can conquer cancer? Is that for real?

Actually the title was quite deliberately chosen to confront what many people believed back then and what some people still do believe: you get cancer and you die. This of course is the primary fear cancer engenders. But there is more to it. The fear of cancer is based on four basic misconceptions:

1. The cause of cancer is unknown.

2. Cancer is generally associated with pain and an untimely death.

3. There is nothing patients can do to help themselves except hand over responsibility for their well-being, and indeed their lives, to a doctor.

4. Treatments are unpleasant and probably will not work anyway.

It is the work of this book, of the Gawler Foundation and of other like-minded practitioners and groups to dispel these fears, to replace them with a positive attitude, and then to show how people can make a decisive contribution toward restoring their own health. Supporting the mind and body when undergoing treatment prescribed by a medical practitioner is a step we can all take.

Good News • Cancer Is a Process That Can Be Reversed

This book presents the good news on cancer. It is not a book about dying gracefully with cancer. It is about a process of living—living to the fullest.

The starting point is seeing cancer as a process. We must realize that most of the causes of cancer are now known and that cancer is not a chance happening of random fate. Once the causes are identified it becomes possible to plan appropriate action. To do this satisfactorily we need to expand our horizons. We need to consider the roles of those three aspects of our human condition that we know as physical, psychological and spiritual.

While personally I recognize the overriding importance of spiritual factors, I do not confuse these with religious issues. Religious preference is something different and personal to the individual, and therefore I talk little of this. Some prefer to leave religion alone, others take their religion seriously indeed, and it is my experience that whatever their choice, people explore that avenue for themselves. The techniques talked about in this book have no religious loadings, nor do they interfere or impose on patients’ preferences in any way. However, the majority of people do find the techniques an aid in their search for their own spiritual reality.

Most people, and people diagnosed with cancer in particular, are concerned with the basic questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? These fundamental spiritual questions are often prominent in the mind of someone diagnosed with cancer and are certainly worth exploring later in the book.

In these pages we shall consider also the role environmental and psychological factors play in the causation and treatment of cancer; for herein lies the key to success. We can identify the majority of the causes of cancer. I contend that there are techniques which provide effective antidotes to those causes. The techniques center on appropriate diet, exercise, positive thinking, stress management and meditation—all in conjunction with suitable specific therapies. By utilizing all these means, the body’s natural healing urge can be helped to reassert itself.

A body with properly functioning defenses cannot have cancer.

What Is Possible?

I have experienced the pleasure of working with other people who have been able to repeat the process I went through and become free of a supposedly terminal illness. But just as exciting and pleasing is the fact that these techniques have consistently produced a deeper love for life coupled with a profound acceptance of the outcome of that life.

So, while I have seen and continue to see many recoveries, I accept that not everyone is going to become free of their physical problems. Sadly, some may die of their illness. But it has been part of my joy to know that the great majority of those who used these same techniques and did not recover were able to die with great dignity, and a poise that often surprised and always impressed themselves and their families. In this way, too, cancer was truly conquered. So, although the aim is always first and foremost to help people back to full health, this approach is of great value to those who face dying.

While in general the earlier in the course of the illness a person begins using this approach, the easier they will find it and the better their result, for those making a later start there is still the real prospect of overcoming cancer. There are always genuine grounds for hope, plus the bonus of overcoming fear and the problems associated with the disease. For many others there is the exciting prospect of using this approach to prevent cancer. I have found that, indeed, you can conquer cancer.

A Commitment to What Works

This is a book about what works. The essence of this book has been distilled in the cauldron of major disease. People faced with cancer take life seriously—very seriously. They want answers. They want to know what works. They need to know what works.

What you are reading in You Can Conquer Cancer represents the accumulated wisdom of thousands of people over several decades who were all focused on these question: What are the best things to do? How best to respond to the many challenges cancer presents? How to recover physically? How to transform what for many at first diagnosis was shock and fear? How to transform the potential suffering of this illness into good health and long-lasting well-being?

The reality is that between the thousands of people I have worked closely with, we have tried many things. In fact, between us, we have tried most, if not all, the things you could think of, and probably quite a few you could not! My job has been to collect, distill and communicate the lessons learned from all this experience—this experience of what works. It is presented here in the hope that you too will benefit from the experience of so many others, and from the knowledge that comes out of it.

Of course, both myself and the many people I have worked with as group participants and colleagues value science and its evidence base. I love research, read lots of it, take it into account, and highly value it. But then science needs to be tested in the real world. So in this book, the focus is on what works in practice, what I can share with you based on so much practical experience. As such, I have deliberately chosen not to attempt to document what I present with more than rudimentary research evidence. This book is not intended for research scholars it is intended for practical use.

I first wrote this book back in 1984, and have thoroughly rewritten it in 2012. On both occasions I had in mind what I would say if I was speaking personally to the most valued person in my life. What follows is the best I can offer. It is informed by research; much of the book is validated by research. But unashamedly I suggest its real strength is that it is the product of shared human experience.

The accumulated experience of all the people I have been blessed to work with, gathered together here in this one book, can save you a lot of time. It may even save your life!

This book, then, focuses upon the principles of self-healing. What you can do to restore natural health, what you can do to help someone you love and care for. As a bonus, for those still well, the book can guide you directly with how you can prevent illness and experience lasting good health.

You Can Conquer Cancer presents an integrated approach, a guide to health and well-being.

Gratitude

There is nothing like sitting and talking with a room full of people whose lives are on the line to clarify what is important and what works. This book is a tribute to all the thousands of people affected by cancer who over three decades have helped to test, trial and debate the possibilities. The strength of the book resides in the fact that what it presents has been tested in the crucible of human experience, intense human experience, the intensity of aiming to overcome cancer and all the challenges it presents. So my gratitude, and respectfully I would suggest, your gratitude as the reader, needs to go to those people whose experiences the book reflects. This book stands as testament to their commitment and achievements.

There is a need to acknowledge and thank my two main meditation teachers, Dr. Ainslie Meares and Sogyal Rinpoche. It is useful to be aware that it was only a few decades ago that medical innovators like Dr. Meares began to identify the health-promoting possibilities of the ageless forms of meditation and adapt them to modern, everyday problems. Dr. Meares’ first major contribution in this area was popularized in his international best seller Relief Without Drugs, first published in 1967.¹ I was fortunate indeed that at the time when my cancer recurred in 1975, Dr. Meares was putting forward his hypothesis that intensive meditation may help people with advanced cancer to recover. I was then equally fortunate to meet the great Tibetan lama Sogyal Rinpoche in 1985 and I continue to learn from him. Rinpoche, as he is known, is the author of the international classic The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying² and has been at the forefront of bringing the ancient wisdom of the Tibetans into a vibrant, modern context. What I can offer regarding meditation stems largely from these two great teachers, Dr. Meares and Sogyal Rinpoche, along with the many people who have taught me as I attempted to teach them.

You may be able to imagine that working in this field has its challenges. I have so much gratitude to my wife, Ruth Gawler, for all that she does to support me both professionally and personally. Ruth is an extraordinary doctor, a wonderful meditation and yoga teacher, and she has had a profoundly positive impact on so many people she has counseled. She has taught me what real love is and it is a delight to be married to her.

I have also been fortunate to work with many extraordinarily talented and compassionate colleagues. I think of the many people who volunteered to sit on the Gawler Foundation’s board and the many staff I have worked with. Of course things go up and down a little when you work with lots of people, but one thing that has been a constant is the clarity of purpose all the staff have taken to their work which manifests as their unfailing capacity to work together for the interests of those attending programs and to create a caring, nurturing, transformative environment. This capacity is truly wonderful.

As to the book itself, I am deeply grateful to the Brady Foundation for supporting me in a very direct way and providing the opportunity to concentrate on the writing. Particular thanks is due to Ross Taylor, himself a long-term remarkable cancer survivor, who has encouraged and inspired me personally, as well as a multitude of other people dealing with cancer.

Then to thank my publisher, Michelle Anderson, who has been a tireless advocate for the book and become a very supportive friend in the process. Robina Courtin brought her formidable skills as an editor to bear on the book and contributed significantly to the end result. Pam Cossins did great work transferring my handwriting into type, while David Johns did his best with his photography to make me look good for the front cover. Great photography at least! Ruth also made a significant contribution reading and assisting with many drafts, and thanks to Maia Bedson, Michelle Anderson, Professor Gabriel Kune and Rohan Erm for reading some or all of the book and offering useful feedback and suggestions. As with the first edition, John Simkin contributed the index.

Finally, a thank-you to the critics. Criticism provides the opportunity to reexamine what you take to be correct, to reconsider how you can express things more clearly or in a more accessible way, and to check how what you say resonates with others. While destructive skepticism has little merit, constructive criticism is always welcome.

The Benefit of the Years

Given the years since the first edition back in 1984, I now have even more confidence in these principles because I have observed them at work for so long. They can transform your life! For many people, they have been lifesaving. For others they have sustained and prolonged life, then helped them with a dignified, honorable death. For all who do use them, these principles bring more inner peace, more joy, more happiness.

One of the personal delights in writing this new edition has been to reaffirm that the essence of what worked over thirty years ago is very similar to what it is today. While this new edition represents a very thorough rewrite when compared to the original, there is a fundamental truth here. Your lifestyle affects your health. Your lifestyle can produce disease and your lifestyle can produce healing. So while this new edition is updated, the language more current, the stories often more recent, the basic principles have stood the test of time and remain constant. The reason for this? What is presented here is how you can use your own resources to get the best from your body’s potential to heal. These things are constants: good nutrition, exercise, sunlight, healthy emotions, the power of the mind, meditation—your lifestyle. Do not be confused by the simplicity of the theory. What we will be talking of here are things you can control for yourself and apply in your own healing journey. They can be highly therapeutic. The book will explain how!

A Final Word

There is no magic bullet in this book. No wonder drug or herb that can be taken three times daily and which, leaving all else unchanged, will offer you a cure.

You can conquer cancer using a process—a healing process that takes effort, perseverance and does require changes to be made. It is a process through which our natural state of health can be regained. For those prepared to walk this road, I know that cancer can be prevented or overcome. My wish is that more and more people will do it.

For the benefit of others, I offer this book.

Ian Gawler

The Yarra Valley, 2013