Dr Ian Gawler Benalla presentation - June 8

Dr Ian Gawler OAM MCouns & HS, BVetSc Founder and Therapeutic Director of the Gawler Foundation, is coming to the Benalla Bowls Club Inc, Arundel St Benalla 8th June 2006.

Tea & Coffee provided.
Drinks available at bar prices
Bookings are essential and are to be made through
Peta Clark Ph W 5762 2100 H 5762 5262
Tickets on Sale at
Dr Bill Sykes Office, 2/55 Carrier St, Benalla
Benalla 31 Primary School, Waller St, Benalla
Violet Town Community House
Wangaratta Oncology Unit 2nd Floor, Wang Base Hospital
Green St, Wangaratta
$10.00 per ticket
All proceeds from this event will be donated to
The Gawler Foundation and local community support services.

Dr Ian Gawler is one of Australia's best known cancer survivors and advocates a healthy lifestyle. His story offers hope and inspiration to people across the country.

The self-help techniques that he developed have helped many to convert hope into sustained health and peace of mind. A pioneer in Mind-Body Medicine, Dr Gawler is known for his clarity and good humour.

With a gift for translating ancient wisdom into a modern context, and having appeared widely in the media, Ian has played a major part in popularising meditation and other Mind-Body Medicine techniques in the western world.

Ian is the author of four bestsellers and has edited another seven books on Mind/Body Medicine. He has produced a series of tapes and CDs to support his writings.

In 1987 Dr Gawler was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his services to the community. In 1998 Ian completed a Masters degree in Counselling & Human Services.

As Pritikin's name became synonymous with a particular approach to eating, so the Gawler name has become well known and respected throughout Australia and overseas as representing a particular approach to health, healing & wellbeing.

Extract of Bulletin article 06/05/02

Ian Gawler was a 24-year-old veterinary surgeon and decathlete when the Grim Reaper first appeared. The doctors had just told him the swelling in his right leg was a highly malignant cancer of the bone (osteogenic sarcoma) and he had little chance of being alive in five years’ time.

As a young vet working in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Gawler had sometimes been forced to amputate the legs of dogs with osteogenic sarcomas to stop their cancers spreading. He could see now from the X-rays that his own femur was a splintered and bony mass, like a hand grenade in the early stages of exploding. He knew, therefore, he was in big trouble, and that amputation was his only option.

Two days after his diagnosis, and just before he was wheeled into surgery, he wrote the following farewell letter:

To my leg,

How well you have served me for nearly 25 years. I remember long treks through the mountains of Gippsland and how you led the way to jump over six feet four. That soaring feeling you gave rise to as you swept up into the air, leading the rest of my body into flight. Just the joy of running was so dear I was fortunate you were so strong and co-ordinated. I guess I shall never again feel my mobility to be normal …

My mind wanders over the many happy times. There are no complaints as the only time you fell short of my expectations was when my pride and ambitions were too great.

That you are to be lost to me in a few hours leaves me feeling empty. I feel drained of feeling. I hope I can still go forward with expectation. I am apprehensive and fear I may shrink before the challenge …

The challenges were far from over. In less than a year he was diagnosed with secondaries in the lymph nodes. Curiously, even though he was told he now had probably three to six months to live, Gawler took heart. The secondaries were not in the lungs, the first place they would normally have travelled to, indicating to him that the meditation was probably working.

Following his amputation, Gawler had taken up meditation in the belief it might mitigate against the cancer. Upon being diagnosed with secondaries, he visited the pioneering Melbourne psychiatrist, Ainslie Meares, who reinforced that view.

A world expert in hypnotherapy, Meares was at the time positing the novel theory (to westerners) that meditation could restore the body to its natural state of health. He believed that from a point of stillness, the body could correct the chemical imbalances brought about by stress and disease. Heart rates, blood pressure, indeed the entire immune system, could be altered by regularly practising meditation.

Gawler embraced his practice with renewed vigour. He also accepted the proposition that his preference for a high meat diet and frequent takeaway meals had been detrimental to his health. For the next three months, with daily meditation and a rigorous vegetarian diet, his cancer stopped growing. Then, suddenly, he went into decline again. His kidneys became blocked, his weight fell away and his face turned jaundiced. Later the cancer began spreading to his pelvis and lungs. He began coughing up shards of bone.

In desperation, but still clinging to alternative therapies, he went to the Philippines in search of a faith healer, or “psychic surgeon”, as he calls them. “I was more than three-quarters dead,” he says now. “The [western] doctor didn’t think it was even worth operating on me because I was so sick. He thought I would only live for a couple of weeks.”

That was 25 years ago and Ian Gawler’s story has since become the stuff of legend, written up in the Medical Journal of Australia, reported on A Current Affair, trumpeted far and wide as a shining example of a man’s victory over a dreaded illness. ... full Bulletin article here

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If you would like further information contact Peta Clark on this email address. Leave your phone number a I will give you a call with further details as they come to hand. Please forward this information to any other groups in your area that may be interested.

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