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
What you do will make a difference. There is a compelling logic to this. If you, or someone you love, have been diagnosed with cancer, it makes good sense to get all the outside help you can. But then, as with everything else in life, how you respond, how you react, what you actually do—all this will affect the outcome significantly.
For those willing to take up the challenge that cancer has put to them, there is a road back to health.
What to do? There is so much information available these days. Advice from friends, opinions from medical and other health professionals, lots of great books and so much information on the Internet. This book will distill the benefits of years of experience and gathered knowledge, present it in logical, sequential form, help you to evaluate the many choices available, and then support and guide you along the way.
We will begin in the first two chapters by working through the options, from first diagnosis to long-term survival. Then come the details you will need to convert a good idea into a practical reality. You can conquer cancer. What follows spells out the process of how to do it.
Hope Is Real
The starting point is having hope. And hope has a compelling logic to it. No matter how dark it may seem as you start on this road, you need to be assured recovery is possible. It may not always be easy, it may well take a good deal of planning and commitment, but it definitely is possible.
At my worst I was expected to live for only a few weeks. That was early in 1976! After I recovered, Dr. Ainslie Meares said a very important thing: “It only has to be done once to show that it is possible.” But these days there are many documented cases of people who have recovered against the odds. I have helped to publish two books recounting the lives, the methods and the recoveries of some of these people. The first, Inspiring People,3 gathered the stories of forty-four people who had attended groups I ran in the early years and went on to become long-term survivors. Out of print now, that book was replaced by Surviving Cancer,4 which recounts the remarkable journeys of twenty-eight people. Written by Paul Kraus, himself one of the longest-known survivors of mesothelioma, his is a wonderful book to read and then dip into from time to time whenever inspiration is needed.
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