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You Can Conquer Cancer: The ground-breaking self-help manual including nutrition, meditation and lifestyle management techniques
Ian Gawler
“People faced with cancer take life seriously – very seriously. They want answers; they need to know what works. I know the feeling. For over twenty years now I have sat in groups with thousands of others going through cancer. Between us we have tried many things. We have worked out what works. My job has been to collect these experiences.”A revolutionary book when first published in 1984, You Can Conquer Cancer has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide and it’s earlier editions have been translated into numerous languages including German, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Korean and Hebrew. A must-read classic on the topic of cancer it has become one of the most widely read books on the subject emphasising the importance of nutrition, the power of the mind, meditation, family, social support and the spiritual dimension of life.This new edition contains important additional material, as well as whole new sections of updated information. The book highlights the difference between “positive thinking” and “wishful thinking”, shares stories of remarkable survivors of cancer along with an extensive chapter on the theme of “good death” and dedicates whole chapters to the subject of nutrition, explaining how it can affect – for the better – entire families. Remarkable for it’s clarity and conciseness, this new edition of You Can Conquer Cancer enlarges upon what is a truly integrated, holistic approach to cancer.
Copyright (#u4ca9a771-fa69-59f8-86c9-6f06d3711a23)
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 (http://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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Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/green)
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 (#ud0e41b5d-d2e0-5295-920d-a174c709b47c)
Title Page (#u228fc3fc-2985-5b29-b10b-f4ad58993963)
Copyright
Dedication (#u735e0cd2-f548-5086-a47a-09d70ac61e8d)
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? (#ubeddb47b-c375-507f-b20a-8aee3efb4d59)
16 Healthy Emotions 1 | Feeling Well, Being Well (#u3f031aef-296b-5059-abfc-a2c44be27bd1)
17 Healthy Emotions 2 | Transforming the Negative, Accentuating the Positive (#u6e7f08a6-a3b7-5607-a328-7725e5cb99b3)
18 Death and Dying | How to Live Well, and Die Well (#u5ee66e63-c0a1-523e-95b1-f6a142bf1960)
19 Your Healing Choices | Principles, Practicalities and Spirituality (#u3d77b01c-5ff4-58a3-8648-e2f90c553d88)
20 The Sealed Section | The Special Case of Subtle-Energy Medicine (#u04ae9768-4349-542c-a2ec-8a1f3b45e311)
21 Recommendations | An Action Plan (#u100335f3-7079-5f62-8000-e54766298018)
Appendices
References
More Information on Ian Gawler
List of Searchable Terms
About the Publisher (#uee732abe-a909-5e7d-987b-8e5c5e05b3bf)
Introduction (#u4ca9a771-fa69-59f8-86c9-6f06d3711a23)
The Big Picture (#u4ca9a771-fa69-59f8-86c9-6f06d3711a23)
What Is Possible and How (#u4ca9a771-fa69-59f8-86c9-6f06d3711a23)
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.
