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.
Features of Long-Term Survivors
There are two important features I observe in the many long-term survivors I have worked with and come to know well. First, they really applied themselves—they did many things. Second, the main things that they did they had in common, while many varied some of the minor details.
Let me explain. Some years back, I surveyed thirty-five long-term survivors. These were all people who had been given short-term prognoses by good medical people. But they went on to turn their difficulties around and were alive many years later. In the survey, they were asked to consider all the things that may have helped them to recover and to rank their importance on a sliding scale. They were asked to reflect on the importance any medical treatment had played, any natural therapies, overcoming fear of dying, forgiveness, nutrition, meditation—all the options you could think of.
The first thing that stood out in this survey was that most people valued most things highly. What this indicated was they did do a lot. Turning around a major illness is not a casual affair. It does take work. These people were committed. They did a lot, and they rated highly the value of many things that they did do.
These people were then asked to think back over their recovery and to identify what they considered to be the three most helpful things they did. Interestingly, quite a number took the trouble to write on the survey that they did not like the question! They had done so much, and found so many things to be helpful, that choosing just three was quite challenging.
Anyway, they did choose three, and the results were fascinating and important. Three things stood out way and above the others. They were the diet, the meditation and the development of their spiritual life.
Now, many of these people were alive ten years after they had initially been predicted to die. So next I asked them what they would recommend to people newly diagnosed. Here four things stood out. The diet and meditation again, but then the advice was to attend a well-run, lifestyle-based self-help group (presumably to learn these techniques and be supported in applying them) and to aim to find meaning and purpose in life.
So what is it with the spiritual life and the meaning and purpose? What our survivors are pointing out is the importance of the mind and its key role in all we do. What inspires you? What motivates you? Why do you want to get well? How important is getting well to you? How much are you prepared to do? How much effort do you want to make? What can you learn through this illness? What meaning and purpose does it clarify for your life? What will you do with your good health? What will you do with