Wellness News Autumn 2013

Vol. 29 No. 1

autumn print edition 2013

“May your heart open.

May joy emerge. May love flow through you. May you heal and help others.� Charlene Costanzo

wellness, support services and healing 24 Hour Cancer Support Line (08) 9384 3544

www.cancersupportwa.org.au

wellness news

Wellness News is published by Cancer Support WA and distributed free to members. Wellness News is dedicated entirely to publishing informative, inspiring and helpful articles related to wellness and healing.

The magazine is for people with cancer and other serious health issues; for people who want to maintain their good health naturally; and for integrative and natural health professionals who are looking for a deeper understanding of wellness.

editorial & production...

how asking yourself a simple question could save your life

Editor & Designer Mandy BeckerKnox mandy@cancersupportassociation.org.au

Dear members and friends,

Marketing & Promotion Talia Hagon talia@cancersupportassociation.org.au Distribution To our dedicated volunteers – thankyou, your efforts are sincerely appreciated!

contact...

e info@cancersupportassociation.org.au ph (08) 9384 3544 f 9384 6196 a 80 Railway St Cottesloe WA p PO Box 325 Cottesloe WA 6911

social media...

www.cancersupportwa.org.au Follow Cancer Support WA on Facebook: Cancer Support WA

disclaimer The contents of this magazine do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Cancer Support WA and should not be construed as medical advice. Cancer Support WA encourages readers to be discerning with information presented and make treatment, dietary and lifestyle choices in consultation with a team of health-care professionals. © Copyright of all articles and images remains with individual contributors.

A wise friend told me about a very simple method she used for healing herself of secondary melanoma 25 years ago. She was in a difficult predicament, given a few months to live with no medical treatments available to her. Not ready or willing to die, she realised her life was in her own hands.

Willing to do whatever it took to be well again, she asked herself a profound question before eating or drinking anything. She asked the same question of her thought processes, of her relationships, before undergoing any treatment, and in fact before she did anything.

The question was simply, “Is this life-giving, or life-taking?” If the answer was life-giving, then she would wholeheartedly embrace that choice. If the answer was life-taking, she found the strength and willpower not to follow through on that choice.

There were only two possible answers to this question...there were no maybes, buts, just this times or I don’t knows – it was either yes this is lifegiving or no, this is life-taking.

In addition to following through on her life-giving choices, she was willing to explore as many healing modalities as possible, to make sweeping lifestyle changes, to meditate, to develop intuition and give it a voice.

It was her soul’s journey to survive cancer and to become a healer and facilitator herself, inspiring and giving hope to many other people facing the same devastating prognosis.

In case you are wondering who this wise friend is, it is the wonderful Cathy Brown, Cancer Support WA’s wellness facilitator. Cathy and our team of wellness and healing professionals understand what it takes to be well and have developed a program and many resources to support you on your healing journey. Our team are here to guide you through the program and to help you find the inner resources to be well and to heal.

We wish you all the best and hope to see you soon!

Mandy BeckerKnox Chief Executive Officer

INTRODUCTION

wellness, support services and healing Cancer Support WA is the only cancer wellness organisation in WA which directly supports people through every stage of every type of cancer.

For almost 30 years, Cancer Support WA has helped and supported thousands of West Australians with cancer to achieve wellness and healing. Cancer Support WA is a pioneer of the “wellness approach” to cancer which integrates wellbeing therapies such as nutrition, exercise and meditation with mainstream treatment.

Cancer Support WA

During 2013 and 2014 major works will occur on the Wanslea site and will see many of Cancer Support WA’s core services conducted at the nearby Cottesloe Civic Centre and also our Armadale venue, Kookaburra Creek Yoga Retreat Centre.

Information & Resources • Library & Resource Centre • Cancer Wellness Handbook • Cancer Care Packs • Wellness News magazine • Moss Reports • Referral Network

Wellness Program • • • • • • • •

5 Week Wellness Courses 1 Day Cancer Wellness Workshop Emotional Wellbeing Workshops Guest Speaker Program Inspired Living Series Regular Classes and Sessions Bali Wellness Retreat 1 Day Retreats

Support Services

• Support Groups – Cancer Wellness Support Group – Grief & Loss Support Group • Wellness counselling for emotional wellbeing • Mentoring • 24 hour cancer support phone line • Financial counselling • Advance care planning

Community Events

• Annual Concert • Healthy Habits Week • Reiki and Meditation Outreach Program • You Are Beautiful Exhibition • Adventure Travel Program

the healing gift No matter who we are, where we live, what we look like, the circumstances of our birth or the situations we face; each of us has gifts within us.

Strength, beauty, courage, compassion, hope, joy, talent, imagination, reverence, wisdom, love and faith are among them. They are not like material presents we unwrap and hold in our hands. We can’t see these gifts with our eyes. But they are real and powerful. When we open ourselves to them, they can enrich every aspect of our lives. They can help us transform challenges into opportunities and tragedies into triumphs. They can help us make a difference in the world.

Healing is a gift you were granted at birth, just as you were granted others. Use your gifts. Use the beauty, the courage, the hope and the love that is in you. Call upon your strength. Use compassion and faith. Even during sad times joy is within you.

Bring it forth. Wisdom is there to guide you. Use any one of your gifts and you will rouse the power of your healing place. Use all of them and you will sustain it.

Charlene Costanzo, The Twelve Gifts for Healing

Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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about Wellness News mind-body healing integrative therapies lifestyle & environment inspiring personal stories current news & information nutrition & recipes inspirations Welcome to the Autumn 2013 Print Edition of Wellness News. This season’s magazine is inspired by the healing power of nature and includes some great content to help you achieve optimum wellness and healing.

Wellness News is unique in that it is an extremely positive, uplifting, intelligent and beautiful publication focusing on wellness, healing and the environment. Wellness News is designed to offer hope and life-enhancing wellness strategies for people who may be seriously ill, and a broad spectrum of information for people interested in maintaining good health.

Wellness News articles are commissioned or sourced from highly regarded international journals, publications and websites and are divided into seven key areas for complete cancer wellness and healing: mind-body healing; integrative therapies; nutrition and recipes; inspiring personal stories; lifestyle and environment; current news & information; inspirations.

Topics covered are spirituality, healing modalities, complementary therapies, integrative medicine – balanced with inspirational stories, recipes and the latest nutrition and wellness trends, and also information on how the environment can impact on health and wellbeing. We place great value on personal cancer stories for their insight into how people manage in challenging circumstances. Also important to our balance of content is poetry and art for the healing potential of words and images.

Visually, our magazine is designed to inspire the healing spirit. Please enjoy this edition!

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Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

news & information What’s on at Cancer Support WA in 2013. . . . . . . . . . 6 Cancer Support WA Timetable . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. 7 Cancer ignorance isolates women . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . 8 Better odds of beating cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Is epigenetics the future of cancer medicine?. . .. 9 A few minutes of daily exercise alters DNA to help prevent disease. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Lifestyle therapies work for cancer patients . . . . . 11 New titles in the Cancer Support WA library. . . . . 28 The 24 Hour Cancer Support Phone Line. . . . . . . . 48

integrative therapies Cancer is getting harder to avoid. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .12 Healing Illness: a natural anti-cancer protocol . . 14

mind-body healing Bali yoga and meditation retreat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 Questions that matter: stories of courage and grace. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. 30 You can heal anything: you are the new medicine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 The emotional healing power of yoga. . .. . .. . .. . .41 Sitting in the wind of Spring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 The 5 minute meditation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

lifestyle & wellbeing Healthy Habits Week. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .23 Positive habits of happy people. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. .24 Exercise could be the key to successful cancer treatment. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. 26 Grief: cancer in one word. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 4 practices to transform your morning. . . . . . . . . . . 46 Where are you on the Wellness Scale?. . .. . .. . .. . .57

CONTENTS

contents nutrition & food Diet and cancer: the 16 important rules . . . . . . . . . .50 Miso soup: the ultimate anti-cancer food. . . . . . . . 52 Peaceful Miso Soup 7 day detox. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. 53 Why you should be eating ancient grains. . . . . . . . 54 Cancer doctor explains how cooking with turmeric leads to amazing health benefits . . . . . . .56

inspirations The healing gift . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. 3 I will live. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .11 An opportunity to heal. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .38 Top 5 regrets of the dying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 You are Beautiful. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

recipes Farrotto with greens, pine nuts and currants. . .. 54 Sprouted grain bread. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Nut and dill hummous. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55

personal story Cara Kimber – A cancer healing journey that led to a beautiful new life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

thankyou to our magazine sponsor

Christmas Island Charities Association

what’s on

at Cancer Support WA Cancer Support WA’s 2013 program comprehensively covers important areas of wellness and wellbeing. All of the activities, services and resources in our program are designed to be relevant and inspiring for people with cancer or other chronic illnesses and their carers and families. Many activities and courses are also suitable for anyone in the community interested in supporting their health and learning more about optimal wellness.

Download Cancer Support WA’s 48 page 2013 Program from our website www.cancersupportwa.org.au or phone our 24 hour Cancer Support Phone Line (08) 9384 3544 to have a copy posted to you.

beautiful christmas island

“Thanks to our wonderful volunteers, Christmas Island Charities Association has the opportunity to play a small part in assisting Cancer Support WA to produce the Wellness News magazine, which is so beneficial to many people with cancer in Western Australia.”

Christmas Island Charities Association

Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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reiki community clinic Monday evenings 7pm-8.30pm The International Institute for Reiki Training (IIRT) and Reiki Association (WA) Inc. have partnered with Cancer Support WA to provide reiki as a community service to our members and the broader West Australian community.

Cancer Care Pack The Cancer Care Pack is a new initiative of Cancer Support WA and is a valuable resource for people in WA diagnosed with cancer this year.

Thanks to generous donations received from our supporters, the Cancer Care Pack valued at more than $200 is available for free to anyone newly diagnosed with cancer.

Each Cancer Care Pack contains: • Gift Card for major retailer to help ease the financial burden of cancer.

• Beautiful plain dyed 100% silk scarf to wear during the period of hair loss associated with chemotherapy or to simply bring colour and comfort.

• Book: Living Simply with Cancer by Ross Taylor. An invaluable resource written by an author who beat a diagnosis of terminal melanoma.

• Cancer Wellness Handbook for People Diagnosed with Cancer.

• Relaxation and Meditation CD by Cathy Brown. An aid to help restore peace and wellbeing.

• Gift Voucher to attend 1 Day Cancer Wellness Workshop for People Newly Diagnosed.

• 2 Wellness New magazines.

• Cancer Support WA Program & Information.

• Information on West Australian cancer resources If you have been diagnosed with cancer recently, please get in touch to receive a Cancer Care Pack. Call our 24 hour Cancer Support Phone Line or order on our website www.cancersupportwa.org.au

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Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

Reiki is an energy based therapy which promotes healing and overall wellness. A trained, accredited reiki practitioner uses his or her hands to transmit energy to the recipient. Reiki has been proven to help with pain management, relaxation and the side effects of cancer treatment.

Reiki healing sessions are also available to people with cancer, who are unable to travel, in their homes or hospital through our Reiki Outreach Program. Reiki in this context can be profoundly relaxing and help the recipient to be at peace. Please phone to enquire or make a booking.

Bookings essential for Monday Clinic. Two 30 minute timeslots available: 7pm-7.30pm and 7.45pm-8.15pm. Initial consultation is free, subsequent bookings $15. Book online. Tuesday afternoon sessions are for 15 minutes and there is no charge.

healing & reiki outreach home or hospital visits Reiki is a gentle healing art which brings peace and calm to the recipient.

At the end of life, reiki can potentially help with the process of healing, forgiveness and acceptance.

In partnership with the International Institute for Reiki Training, reiki and meditation practitioners are able to visit homes or hospitals to provide a reiki session or guided meditation for people who are terminally ill and/or their family members.

While this is a free service there is a $15 call out fee to cover the costs of practitioner’s transportation. Please phone the 24 hour Cancer Support Phone Line or see our website for more information.

Please check website before attending as venues and times ocassionally change Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

8-9am Wellness Walking Group Free

10am-12pm Cancer & Carers Support Group Free

9.30-11am Meditation Made Easy $5/$10

12-1.30pm Reiki Clinic Free

11am-12pm Tai Chi $5/$10 12.30-2.30pm 5 Week Meditative Arts Healing Circle $60/$75 7-7.30pm Reiki Clinic $15 7.45-8.15pm Reiki Clinic $15

9.30am-4pm Counselling (Individual, Family, Group) $50/$75 9.30am-11am Healing Yoga $10

1.30-3.30pm 5 Week Journey to Wellness $100/$150* 1-4pm Counselling $50/$75 4-5pm 5 Week Absolute Beginners Yoga $50/$75*

10.00am-12.30pm 12 Week Gawler Foundation Program $350/$400* 1.30pm-3.00pm Qi Gong $5/$10

Thursday 9.30am-4pm Counselling (Individual, Family, Group) $50/$75 9.30am-10.45am Gentle Healing Yoga $5/$10 1-3pm Grief and Loss Support Group Free 1.30-3.30pm 5 Week Eating for Recovery Course $100/$150*

Friday 9.30am-4.30pm 1 Day Cancer Wellness Workshop – Meeting the Challenge 1st Friday of each month Cottesloe.

See monthly program for Armadale, Mandurah and Joondalup dates.

Free/$50* Sessions from 10am Reflexology $50

4-5pm 5 Week Introduction to Meditation Course $50/$75*

4-6pm Sound Healing $18/$25 3rd Tuesday of each month 6-8pm Special Guest Speaker 1st Tuesday of each month

Cancer Support WA 80 Railway St, Cottesloe

Cottesloe Civic Centre 109 Broome St, Cottesloe

Located centrally in Cottesloe, Cancer Support WA is on the grounds of Wanslea, also housing North Cottesloe Primary School.

Located 2 minutes from Cancer Support WA, the Cottesloe Civic Centre is located in tranquil grounds overlooking the sea.

Nearest main intersection: Eric St. Nearest train station: Grant St 15 minutes from Fremantle 25 minutes from CBD (by car)

Nearest main intersection: Eric St. Nearest train station: Grant St 15 minutes from Fremantle 25 minutes from CBD (by car)

Kookaburra Creek Yoga Centre 210 Carradine Rd, Bedfordale

Kookaburra Creek Yoga Centre is a serene and peaceful centre in the hills outside Armadale.

Nearest intersection: Albany Hwy. Nearest train station: Armadale 5 minutes from Armadale 40 minutes from Fremantle 40 minutes from CBD (by car)

Cost: members price / public price * = 1 full year membership included in fee Other venues. Check program.

Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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TIMETABLE

weekly timetable

Cancer ignorance ‘isolates women’

Better odds of beating cancer

Many women with secondary breast cancer

Two-thirds of Australians who get cancer can expect to be alive at the all-

in the news...

feel isolated because the disease is widely misunderstood, a UK charity says.

Women will not receive the support they need until there is better understanding of the disease, Breast Cancer Care said on Friday.

Half of Britons admit they do not know what secondary breast cancer is or mistakenly think it is not life threatening, according to a poll of 2000 adults.

important five-year mark after diagnosis, figures show.

An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report confirms what doctors have told many cancer patients in recent years – they have a good chance of beating the disease.

From 1982 to 2010, the five-year survival rate for cancer jumped from 47 per cent to 66 per cent, with several cancers having survival rates over 90 per cent.

Some of the biggest progress was in kidney cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and prostate cancer.

About 36,000 people in the UK have secondary breast cancer.

AIHW spokeswoman Anne Bech said cancers with the highest chance of survival included testicular, prostate, thyroid and melanoma, all having five-year survival rates of 90 per cent or more.

The disease occurs when breast cancer cells spread from the primary cancer in the breast to another part of the body.

Pancreatic cancer and mesothelioma had the worst rates with five-year survivals less than 10 per cent.

Samia al Qadhi, chief executive of Breast Cancer Care, said: “We know from the many women we support and talk to that so many living with secondary breast cancer continue to experience a very real sense of isolation and do not get the level of support offered to those with a primary breast cancer diagnosis.

“Many are trying to lead their lives as normally as possible, whilst also managing side-effects, living with uncertainty day to day, thinking about their family’s future and making difficult decisions about treatment and care.” F

From: West Australian, October 2012.

Women generally had slightly higher survival rates across all cancers at 67 per cent compared with 65 per cent for men.

Younger people were more likely to beat cancer than older people and lower socioeconomic groups fared worse.

For the first time, the national figures show that once people survived five years after diagnosis – known as conditional survival – their prospects of living five more years were more than 90 per cent.

That has contributed to more than 775,000 Australians being alive today after surviving cancer, mostly of the breast, prostate and bowel and melanoma. F

From: The West Australian, September 2012. By: Cathy O’Leary, Medical Editor, West Australian, au.news.yahoo.com.

1 Day Cancer Wellness Workshop for people diagnosed with cancer

Our powerful, informative 1 Day Cancer Wellness Workshop is the first step on your cancer wellness journey. The workshop is suitable for anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer and their partners or carers looking for balanced, holistic information on how best to meet the challenges of cancer and integrate wellness strategies, nutrition and natural healthcare into your cancer care plan.

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1st Friday of each month at Cancer Support WA, Cottesloe.

Check website for Armadale and Mandurah dates.

Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

IN THE NEWS

Is epigenetics the future of cancer medicine?

DNA

provides the instructions to make us how we look and contributes to our life expectancy. Identical twins have exactly the same DNA, so why are slightly different in many ways? The answer is epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the name given to the science that studies the way in which cells package DNA so that only certain genes are used in one tissue, and other genes are used in other tissues. “Epi” means above, so epigenetics means “above” genetics. It provides instructions about how to package DNA to tell our cells what sort of cells to be, for example skin, brain, or heart cells.

All of the different cells in our body contain the same DNA (the same genes) and epigenetic factors determine which genes become either silenced if unneeded, or active if needed to make cells. Epigenetic factors are chemical tags on the DNA or on proteins called histones. These chemical tags attach to the DNA and are responsible for providing the DNA-packing signals inside cells. There are lots of different epigenetic factors and the number of new chemical tags discovered are increasing.

The chemical tags on the DNA are inherited during embryonic cell division, but they can change during normal developmental processes, such as puberty and pregnancy. Importantly, epigenetic factors or the chemical tags can also change due to environmental factors (diet, stress, toxins) and in certain diseases, such as cancer.

We now understand that epigenetic changes commonly take place when cancer develops and that they’re intimately involved in switching “off” critical cancer genes that should be “on” in normal cells and vice versa. This process results in a normal cell turning into a cancer cell.

Laboratories, such as Garvan Institute, are focused on understanding the epigenetic changes that occur in different types of cancer, including prostate cancer. Our current finding identifies a critical epigenetic chemical modification that occurs on a single histone when prostate cancer develops. This epigenetic change appears to lock and unlock genes that prevent and trigger cancer.

ti

Epigenetic factors are ideal drug targets in cancer management, as they don’t change the DNA sequence but change how that sequence is packaged. The aim is to switch or reverse the epigenetic chemical modifications to potentially turn cancer cells back into normal cells.

There are currently drugs for the treatment of cancers, such as leukemias, that can reverse epigenetic changes approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These are showing promising results with minimal side effects.

The next challenge is to develop epigenetic drugs that can treat patients with solid tumours, such as lung, breast or prostate cancer. To achieve these goals, we need to fully understand all the epigenetic changes that lead to cancer and identify new epigenetic drug targets.

We have demonstrated that, in prostate cancer, when one of the histones (a variant called H2A.Z) is chemically modified (or acetylated), cancer genes are activated and tumour suppressor genes are silenced. We propose that the enzyme that leads to chemical acetylation of H2A.Z could be an ideal drug target for prostate cancer.

A more detailed understanding of what is controlling the packaging of DNA inside our cells will not only get us closer to understanding what determines how we look and what contributes to our life expectancy, this knowledge will also give us new exciting approaches to treating diseases, such as cancer. F

By Susan Clark, Principal Research Fellow at Garvan Institute. From: theconversation.com, 17 January 2013. The Conversation is funded by CSIRO, Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, UTS, UWA, Canberra, CDU, Deakin, Flinders, Griffith, La Trobe, Massey, Murdoch, Newcastle. QUT, Swinburne, UniSA, USC, USQ, UTAS, UWS and VU. Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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A few minutes of daily exercise alters DNA to help prevent disease Many people think the genes they inherited at birth are static and predetermine their

fate for the remainder of their life. Extensive research into the science of epigenetics is providing startling evidence that this thought process is grossly outdated, and our individual DNA is dynamic and continually influenced by multiple lifestyle factors including diet, environment, stress and physical activity.

“Exercise is medicine ... and it seems the means to alter our genome for better health may be only a jog away.”

Researchers publishing the result of a study in the journal Cell Metabolism provide evidence that when healthy but inactive men and women exercise for a matter of minutes, it produces a rather immediate change to their DNA. While we cannot change our core DNA code, exercise does influence the DNA molecules within our muscles.

Scientists have found that DNA is chemically and structurally altered or expressed in very important ways that affect a myriad of metabolic processes that protect us from chronic disease.

The scientists found that DNA modifications signal precise genetic reprogramming in muscles that determine overall muscle strength as well as structural and metabolic benefits derived from physical activity. Study leader, Dr. Juleen Zierath noted “Our muscles are really plastic ... muscle adapts to what you do. If you don’t use it, you lose it, and this is one of the mechanisms that allows that to happen.

Short bursts of moderate intensity exercise positively influences DNA expression Epigenetic modifications involve the addition or deletion of chemical markers on the DNA strand that change rapidly based on environmental influences such as the nutritional composition of your last meal, pollutants in the environment or the intensity of an exercise workout. Researchers found that DNA within skeletal muscle examined after a short burst of exercise bore fewer chemical markers (specifically methyl groups) than it did before exercise.

The study team specifically determined that the DNA modifications occurred in stretches of DNA that are involved in expressing genes known to be important for muscular adaptation to exercise. This research clearly provides more evidence that our genetic constitution is continually evolving in an effort to protect us, and is positively influenced by short, moderately intense bursts of physical activity. These alterations allow us to adapt quickly to the changing environment that surrounds us.

Dr. Zierath concluded “Exercise is medicine ... and it seems the means to alter our genome for better health may be only a jog away.” The finding of this study may explain recent research showing that the best form of exercise works our musculature in short bursts of moderate to full intensity (as measured by attaining maximum heart rate for your age range) for several minutes in duration, followed by a rest period and then another energy burst. Combining this evidence with an organic whole food diet will positively influence your genes toward optimal health. F

From: naturalnews.com. By: John Phillip

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Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

IN THE NEWS

Lifestyle therapies work for cancer patients

i will live.

In the world of modern therapy and medical technology, patients

often neglect what they can do for themselves at home to bolster their immune system and decrease the chances of ever getting cancer.

Studies have shown that for men who radically change their lifestyle and eating habits, switching to an ultra-low-fat vegan diet, prostate cancer patients can significantly inhibit prostate cancer growth by as much as 70%, compared to 9% inhibition experienced by those who only underwent conventional treatment.

In a recent study by the Harvard Medical School, patients began a diet regimen that “provided less than 10% of calories from fat and contained only trace amounts of cholesterol.

The menu consisted mainly of fruits, vegetables, whole grain products, legumes, and soy products. Additionally, a set of nutritional supplements that consisted of “58 grams of powdered soy protein, 3 grams of fish oil, 400 IU of vitamin E, 2 grams of vitamin C, and 200 micrograms of selenium every day.”

Daily exercise and relaxation techniques included walking for “30 minutes at a moderate pace, six days a week, yoga-based stretching, breathing, meditation...for a total of an hour a day.”

By following the above regimen over the course of one year, study participants experienced significant results. The results lead to the hope that by adopting “lifestyle therapy”, patients can inhibit their prostate cancer....possibly even reversing the effects of cancer. F

I will not live an unlived life.

I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance: to live, so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.

by Dawna Markova

http://hms.harvard.edu Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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Cancer is getting harder to avoid

By Tony Isaacs

According to the WHO’s World Cancer Report, considered to be the most comprehensive global examination of the disease to date, cancer rates could further increase by 50% to 15 million new cases in the year 2020.

In recent years, statistical cancer death rates have been showing decreases for some cancers in some parts of the world, which has led some people to optimistically report that cancer is getting easier to beat.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The statistics which tell the real story are those which clearly show that the incidence of cancer continues to grow alarmingly. Between one in two and one in three people are now expected to encounter cancer in their lifetimes.

Many people, including this author, believe that a great deal of the credit for declining death rates is a result of more people looking outside the failed mainstream therapies’ box and relying on natural and alternative means to address their cancers. As the aforementioned WHO report also noted, there “provides clear evidence that healthy lifestyles and public health action by governments and health practitioners could stem this trend, and prevent as many as one third of cancers worldwide.”

The good news is that an increasing number of people are learning about, and turning to, natural and integrative therapies – despite alternative, non-mainstream, non-toxic and noninvasive therapies continuing to be repressed and misrepresented in mainstream studies.

Though this article is primarily about cancer, the same is true for heart disease and other major chronic illness, and for pretty much the same reasons: we continue to become exposed to more and more toxins and pollution, live unhealthy lifestyles and eat diets that are less nutritionally sound. As a result, our immune systems and our vitality continue to decline and regardless of any treatment, herb or therapy, mainstream or otherwise, it is our immune system, nature’s first line of defense against illness, that is the most important key to beating and avoiding cancer.

People do not beat and avoid cancer nor get other illnesses due to a deficiency in chemotherapy or deficiencies in mainstream medicine. They get cancer and become ill because toxins and diseases beat their immune systems. As data from the CDC and others have shown, our immune systems are becoming progressively weaker. In 1981, Dr. H. F. Pross did a study of the average Natural Killer (NK) count of average Americans. NK count is measured in lytic units (LU), and Dr. Pross found that the average LU count in 1981 was 152. In 1991, Dr. R. B. Herberman did a similar study and found that the LU count had dropped to 135. In 1997, Dr. Gerald See did another study and found the count had dropped to 108. In other words, we are dropping at about the rate of 1 LU per year.

The average LU count in 2009 was 96 which was an alarming drop of 37% in less than three decades!

Other than earlier detection and including some easily treated forms of cancer that were once considered simply pre-cancerous conditions, little progress has been made to reduce cancer. Cancer treatments continue to be highly toxic and can potentially compromise our immune systems. It is important to be aware that most chemotherapy drugs are Class 1 carcinogens and radiation potentially destroys bone marrow that is the heart of our immune systems.

A strong immune system from proper diet and nutrition, a healthy lifestyle, elimination of stress, and proper supplementation and nutrition, is still the best way to avoid cancer

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Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

One problem, and a very big one, is one we will likely have to live with for centuries: the amount of radiation now found in virtually every square inch of the earth’s surface as a result of the atmospheric atomic bomb blasts that spewed millions of tons of radioactive material into our environment. Two time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling warned of millions of deaths and injuries that could be expected as a result of atmospheric bomb tests. A pre-eminent Russian scientist and later Nobel Laureate himself, Andrei Sakharov, predicted between half a million and one million deaths for every 50 megatons of atmospheric bomb tests (ultimately the tests of the United States and Russia combined to produce fallout equivalent to 40,000 Hiroshimas).

In addition to the radiation from nuclear bomb tests, we are increasingly being bombarded with microwaves and high power transmission lines.

Add to that the fact that our industrial age has added no fewer than 80,000 unnatural chemical compounds to our environment, less than 1,000 of which have been tested individually in any way for safety and almost none of which have been tested in combination with one another.

Next, you have about 20,000 FDA approved medications (both prescribed and over the counter) which have been mostly poorly tested for safety individually, scarcely tested for carcinogenic/ mutagenic short or long term dangers, and almost none of which have been tested in combination with each other. Over 95% of all FDA approved medications have known side effects by themselves. In combination, one can only imagine what short and long term side-effects could result and one is reminded that many chronic conditions are years in the making. Some cancers, for example, take eight years after they have gained a foothold to grow to the size of a pinhead (after which, the doubling rate increases their size much faster).

Then there are the foods and nutrition we tend to consume (or not consume as the case may be). The food products on the grocers shelves have by and large had the nutrition processed out and additives processed in for added shelf life, flavour, colour and texture. The ones that claim to be “enriched” with vitamins and minerals are enriched mostly with synthetic petrochemical vitamins and crushed rock minerals – not natural ones or ones that have been predigested by plants to be bioavailable for human benefit.

Our fruit and vegetables are picked early and artificially ripened/preserved with chemicals – plus they often contain pesticides and/or herbicides and come from over-farmed soils which severely lack the major and trace minerals needed for optimum nutrition. Increasingly, our major food crops are being genetically modified to enable them to withstand more and more of such pesticides and herbicides. Increasingly, vital enzymes and other natural compounds are being destroyed by irradiation to “protect us” from natural crops.

Our mineral depleted and over-farmed soils usually have just a few petrochemical synthetics added back to the soil which produce the best growth, but lack the best nutrients. Pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals have killed off the vital soil micro-organisms needed to convert what minerals do remain to usable forms to be taken up by the plants. Those microorganisms which do remain seldom have adequate time to perform their vital roles thanks to over-farming and lack of proper crop rotation.

Today, most of us are deficient in most vital trace minerals needed for optimum health and many major minerals and vitamins as well. Most of us are woefully deficient in Vitamin D due to insufficient sun exposure. Most of us are similarly lacking in iodine and selenium which is an important co-factor for iodine to be properly utilised. While many people diligently supplement with calcium via milk or supplements, as many as 95% of us are deficient in magnesium – and without magnesium being consumed/supplemented on a 1 to 2 or 1 to 3 ratio with calcium, the calcium does not work.

In great part, cancer is a defense mechanism where the cells mutate to protect themselves from a heavy metal, chemical compound, or other irritant/toxin. One of the things they do is form an outer protective shell which prevents the body’s natural immune system from recognizing and killing off the cancer cells. Some have observed that this protective layer is getting thicker in many forms of cancer, possibly as a result of all the added toxins and other factors listed above. The end result is that cancer is more hardened against attack and is harder to recognize and defeat by immune systems that are most often in less than optimum condition to begin with.

In addition, the body’s great toxin removal organ, the liver, is also often compromised and operating at far less than peak efficiency. Instead of a toxin removal organ, many people have developed fatty livers which are fat and toxin storage organs and which have bile ducts that fail to eliminate toxins but instead serve to recycle them through the bloodstream.

With declining immune systems in an increasingly polluted, poorly nourished, overmedicated and toxic world, cancer is not getting easier to avoid. Cancer may be easier to beat than most people think, if they were to adopt a good diet, nutrition, herbal supplementation and complementary treatments. F

Sources included:

“Lessons from the Miracle Doctors” by Jon Barron “The Secret History of the War on Cancer” by Devra Davis “Politics in Healing” by Daniel Haley “The Root of All Disease” by Elmer.G.Heinrich

From: www.naturalnews.com. Tony Isaacs is a natural health advocate and researcher and the author of books and articles about natural health including “Cancer’s Natural Enemy” and “Collected Remedies”

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and essential to help beat cancer, especially when buttressed by herbal immune boosters and cancer fighters. But it takes diligence and effort – more so now than ever before.

Healing illness A Natural

Anti-Cancer Protocol

By Tony Isaacs

Nature gives us an array of tools to beat cancer and the underlying causes that lead to cancer, which includes foods, vitamins, minerals, supplements and lifestyle choices. The key is not merely addressing the tumours and cancer cells that are the symptoms of cancer, but addressing and eliminating the root causes that led to cancer to begin with.

Tony Isaacs suggests a protocol to eliminate cancer cells by either killing them or restoring them to normal function based on what we know about cancer and what nature and lifestyle choices have to offer...

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In the instance of cancer, instead of addressing the causes of cancer – toxins and a weakened immune system which result in a loss of proper cellular communication and oxidation and the cells mutating to cells that form a protective coating and replicate without dying – we see instead treatments that either slash, burn or poison away the tumours and cancer cells, which further weakens an immune system cancer has already defeated and only worsens the conditions which led to cancer to begin with.

As a result, the way is paved for the return of the cancer or the introduction of another cancer or serious condition. Even worse, the road to further illness is often made easier due to the damage to the immune system and major organs caused by harsh treatment.

Nature, on the other hand, gives us an array of tools to beat cancer and the underlying causes that lead to cancer, including foods, vitamins, minerals, supplements and lifestyle choices.

The key is not merely addressing the tumours and cancer cells that are the symptoms of cancer, but addressing and eliminating the root causes that led to cancer to begin with and prevent it from being eliminated.

Here are some ideas to include in your cancer healing protocol to eliminate cancer cells by either killing them or restoring them to normal function and to address the root causes of cancer based on what we know about cancer and what nature and lifestyle choices have to offer:

CLEANSING As soon as possible, cleanse your body to get rid of built up toxins like heavy metals and pesticides, as well as the undigested food, faecal matter and gallstones that build up in the body by cleansing your colon and liver and by chelation to rid the body of heavy metals. Such contaminations are breeding grounds for, and causes of, disease and illness. A toxic and unclean body weakens the body’s immune system that should be your first line of defense. Plus, once cleansed, the body is much more receptive to the good measures you take to rebuild your immune system and fight disease.

It cannot be stressed enough how vitally important it is to cleanse, restore and protect the liver before, during and after your anti-cancer and disease battle. As the great cancer pioneer Max Gerson observed, cancer cannot develop unless the liver is impaired to begin with. An effective cancer fighting regimen can severely tax an already weakened liver because it will result

INTEGRATIVE THERAPIES

estern medicine treats the body as a collection of parts instead of as a synergistic organism. When it comes to treating broken bones and injured body parts, mainstream Western medicine is unequalled. When this same approach is used to treat chronic disease – fixing or repairing the parts where the symptoms of underlying illnesses manifest themselves, modern medicine doesn’t provide a complete solution.

in the release of a cascade of toxins that are released when cancer cells die. Such a release can overwhelm an already impaired liver and can even be fatal if measures are not taken to protect and regenerate the liver. On the following page is a suggested liver cleanse and suggested further measures to take to cleanse, detox, protect and help regenerate the vital liver.

Other things to do for the liver: Coffee enemas help open the bile ducts so bile and toxins can be released properly.

Coconut oil a wonderful item everyone should take, it helps maintain a good bile flow.

Beetroot juice is also good for the liver and bile flow.

Turmeric is a cancer fighter itself, especially for smokers, and it helps regulate bile flow.

Milk thistle helps protect the liver and actually regenerate it Alpha lipoic acid liver supplement that helps fight cancer Selenium a third liver supplement that is good against cancer.

In the Berkson Clinical Study, three women who were facing liver transplants or chemo with interferon (a horrendous treatment with very low success rates for hepatitis and cirrhosis), took milk thistle, alpha lipoic acid and selenium, modified their diets a bit and got some daily exercise and restored their liver functions to normal.

Besides cleansing and detoxing your body, also cleanse your environment to the greatest extent possible of pesticides, herbicides, household cleansers, air fresheners and other man-made chemicals. In an ideal world, you would move to a location where there was plenty of fresh air and sunshine and less stress. In the real world you may not find that possible, so eliminate common toxins in your household, workplace and other places you spend time.

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To fail to embrace proper diet, nutrition and lifestyle and look for answers in supplements alone is akin to putting a new roof on a house that is falling apart from a broken foundation.

ELIMINATE ROOT CAUSES OF DISEASE IN YOUR MOUTH If you have mercury amalgam fillings in your teeth, have them replaced. In many instances, this step alone has led to elimination of cancer. Cilantro and chlorella can help eliminate heavy metal accumulations in the body.

Immediately eliminate bad habits and begin building good ones so that you will make sure that you no longer have habits that weaken your immune system and that you will be able to build your body to fight and conquer illness. A sedentary lifestyle with a poor diet, lack of pure water, sunshine and fresh air, and constant exposure to toxins will in time lead to bad health conditions. On the other hand, also be sure to get an abundance of sleep and physical rest to conserve energy for healing and cleansing. Remember, bad health habits are open invitations for illness and disease to enter your body.

Perhaps worse than amalgam fillings is root canals. According to Bill Henderson, author of “Cure Your Cancer” and “CancerFree”, root canal is “the big elephant in the room”. Bill reports that “it has been proved by many dentists and oral surgeons I respect that virtually all degenerative disease starts in the dentist’s chair and points to the book “The Roots of Disease”

by Robert Kulacz, D.D.S. Bill goes on to say, “I have worked with hundreds of people who have struggled with all kinds of conventional and alternative treatment. Nothing seems to work to heal them. When these people finally wake up to the above and get their mouths cleaned up, they get well in weeks – not months. Almost everyone (8590% of the people I work with) has root canal-filled teeth. One lady had 13 of ‘em. They are ALWAYS related to the cancer.

No exceptions.”

Dr. Thomas Levy, one of the world’s experts on dental toxicity, told me he had done a study with Dr. Hal Huggins from 19942000. They removed “over 5,000 root canal-filled teeth.” He said they took every one of them to the lab and tested it. Every one of them had toxins coming out of it “more toxic than botulism.” His exact words. You can see on a thermogram the root canal tooth with its inflammation on the exact same meridian as the cancer tumour in the breast, colon, prostate, etc. There are over 40 million root canal fillings done in the U.S. alone every year. Is it any wonder we are all getting sick?

DIET, NUTRITION, NATURAL HYGIENE & LIFESTYLE No matter what supplements or treatments you may choose to combat cancer, you must first establish a good foundation.

While vitamins, minerals, herbs and other supplements may help you beat the symptoms of cancer and help boost your immune system, the diet and lifestyle you live will be the ultimate keys to beating cancer and keeping it at bay once and for all because in the end it is your own body which will beat cancer.

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Begin and maintain a healthy immune-boosting and cancer fighting diet. A good balanced diet, pure water, fresh air, sunshine and mild to moderate exercise are some of the essentials. You will find that a good diet does not have to be a bad tasting diet – far from it! However, it should be noted that the very best and most healthy diet is one that is close to the diet our ancestors evolved to utilize: lots of fresh and uncooked vegetables, fruits, nuts, roots and tubers, and fish and free range meat not subject to factory farming or feed lot practices and uncontaminated by growth hormones, artificial fertilizers or pesticides. Granted that is a tall order for fish and meat, but it is strongly recommended to consume ONLY such healthy non-toxic fish and meats and to limit meat consumption period when fighting cancer. It is also best to consume little or no grain or dairy products. It should be noted that of all the foods, essentially only raw vegetables and fruits contribute to an alkaline pH. Juiced vegetables and fruits are an excellent form of nutrition (Note: eat much more vegetables than fruit due to the high sugar content of fruits).

Take the time to chew each bite thoroughly – as many as 50 chews if possible – to help aid digestion and take maximum advantage of the available nutrition.

* Safely stopping tumour growth, not destroying tumours (the only effect that conventional medicine recognizes), but stopping growth. * Preventing cancer by stimulating the body’s vitamin D production. * Preventing influenza like the bird flu also by vitamin D production.

Fasting So long as you are not physically wasted, fasting is an excellent way to begin virtually any disease fighting protocol. It helps the body eliminate wastes and toxins and reset itself to optimum health levels for healing and fighting cancer and other illness.

Many people are able to beat disease and illness of all kinds, including cancer, simply by fasting.

After an initial fast of a few days or longer where you provide only the water needed to satisfy thirst, continue with a oneday-a-week fast. It will help keep your body cleansed and, if you are overweight, also help you reach and maintain your optimum weight.

Two good daily fasts in addition to water only fasts when fighting cancer would be 1) a dark grape fast where you eat all the dark grapes and seeds you want but nothing else other than water (the concord grape is probably the best choice and seeds are a must!), and 2) a juiced vegetables fast.

Don’t overdo the sunshine, but sunshine is essential to the production of vitamin D, and, strange as it may sound, has been found to be essential in warding off melanoma as well as other cancers. Be sure to get full body sun exposure for at least a few minutes avoiding the heat of the day and not allowing oneself to become sunburned. You can gradually increase exposure time from a few minutes to more each day depending on your skin type.

In 1959. Jane C Wright, directing cancer research at Bellevue Memorial Medical Centre in New York City, instructed fifteen cancer patients to stay outdoors as much as possible that summer in natural sunlight without wearing their glasses, and particularly without sunglasses. By that Autumn, the tumours in 14 of 15 had not grown, and some patients had gotten better. It was discovered that the one patient that didn’t have good results had not fully understood the instructions – while she had not worn sunglasses, she had continued to wear her prescription glasses. This blocking of UV into her eyes was enough to stop the benefits enjoyed by the other fourteen.

Proper Food Combining It is important to practice proper food combining as this prevents the putrefaction and fermentation of foods within the digestive system, and therefore toxicity, caused by mixing a predominantly protein food with a predominantly starchy food at the same meal. For example a poached egg on wholewheat toast. Fruits should not be combined with vegetables for the same reason. Proper food combining requires far less digestive energy which is then released for other important bodily tasks.

The Importance of Sunshine From the very first days that man walked upon the earth, sunshine has been a key to health and survival. The importance

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of the synergistic relationship between health and regular sunshine cannot be over-emphasized for both physical healing and mental health (which is itself a key to physical healing for cancer and any other illness). Contrary to popular beliefs about the harmful effects of over exposure to the sun, abundant sunlight has extremely high success rates for:

Exposure to Nature and the Good Earth From the good earth did life spring and mankind lived for eons in close contact and relative harmony with the good earth.

Mankind developed for eons in harmony with nature. It is beyond mere theory that regular exposure to soil organisms and the good earth provides both physical and mental healing. Many believe that there is an actual healing synergy from exposure to the earth itself. Today, far too many of us are shut off from nature in the artificial and closed environments of offices and closed in dwellings. To remedy this: Take frequent walks in yards, fields and woods. Of course, seek out areas that are likely to be as free as possible from pesticides, herbicides and other chemical contamination.

As often as possible, take off your shoes, socks and sandals and go barefooted in the soil and grass.

Plant vegetable and flower gardens (and use only organic products!). If that is not possible, use pots and other containers for patio, balconies and indoors. Working with your hands (and feet) in the soil is one of the most physically and mentally healthy things you can do. Those who have not had the pleasure will be amazed at the peace and tranquillity you will experience. Indoor plants bring the added benefit of adding extra oxygen and removing toxins from you air. Everyone should have plenty of them!

Rebuild and strengthen the body’s natural immune system. It is very likely that a weakened immune system contributed to your illness in the first place. It is absolutely certain that a rebuilt and strengthened immune system will help you beat your illness and keep it at bay.

Again, good diet, nutrition and habits are all important – they lay the foundation for a strong and healthy immune system.

However, they are not enough by themselves. You should build a good foundation and then make your body a healthy fortress against disease and illness. Quite simply, disease and illness hate healthy hosts. The stronger your immune system is, the harder it is for disease to survive and grow. And, to be the very strongest you can be, you need extra measures in the form of supplements as well as the healthiest foods. An oleander extract very much like you get when you make oleander soup was tested in Europe in 1986 – 87 and found to have six times the immune stimulating activity of the most powerful immune stimulators known to man.

Maintain an Alkaline pH and Get Plenty of Oxygen to the Cellular Level Once cancer has gained a foothold, it does not survive well in the presence of an alkaline cellular pH level, nor in the

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presence of highly oxygenated cells. As Nobel Laureate Otto Warburg discovered, low cellular oxygen is a primary causal factor for cancer. His protege, Dr. Johanna Budwig of Germany, continued his work and found that in order for proper cellular utilization of oxygen to take place, our diets must contain adequate amounts of unsaturated fatty acids.

Although many people use food grade hydrogen peroxide to obtain extra oxygen, perhaps a better option without the concerns some have with hydrogen peroxide is the product OxyGen. Each capsule contains oxygen and the equivalent of 12 drops of 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide derived from a combination of magnesium peroxide and pure anaerocidal oxygen.

Be Sure to Take These Cancer Fighting Minerals Make sure you have plenty of iodine, selenium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, vitamin C, calcium and Vitamin D. All have been proven to be essential in beating and avoiding cancer.

As mentioned above, cancer cells have lost the ability to be shut off by the body in what is called cellular apoptosis. These cancerous cells simply become abnormal and outlive the other cells in their normal cell life/replacement cycle and end up crowding out a territory over time. Iodine goes in and both does away with the surrounding cyst where cancer has set up residence and then also goes in and allows the specific shut down of the individual cells that are abnormal, diseased, or beset w/ pathogens to make room for new cells.

Many people who take iodine and selenium take far too little for maximum therapeutic benefit. Both elemental iodine and potassium iodine should be taken and the total amount of iodine should be 100mg or more, perhaps beginning at 50mg and working up.

Magnascent is a good form or elemental iodine. Lugols is also widely used.Selenium MUST be taken with iodine in order for iodine to be effective.

The recommended form of selenium, methyselenocysteine is found naturally in some vegetables including garlic, brassicas, leeks, and onions, especially when these are grown in high selenium soil. Methylselenocysteine is easily converted to methylselenol which has been demonstrated to be an effective anticancer form of selenium. Rather than killing cancer cells by necrosis, methylselenol kills cancer cells through apoptosis.

Apoptosis is an orderly process of cellular self-destruction that does not provoke inflammatory responses. Methylselenol is also known to inhibit angiogenesis in beginning cancer tumours. Angiogenesis, the creation of new blood vessels, is necessary for cancer cells to grow into a tumour. For cancer prevention, doses of 200 to 400 mcg of methylselenocysteine are generally considered safe without medical supervision.

Nutritionally-oriented physicians may use as much as 900 to 2,000 mcg selenium from methylselenocysteine daily as part of a comprehensive cancer treatment protocol.

Exercise in Moderation

INTEGRATIVE THERAPIES

The best form of supplemental selenium for fighting cancer appears to be methylselenocysteine. The most common form of supplemental selenium is selenomethionine whose general proteins have no anticancer activity. Another form, sodium selenite is more frequently metabolized to the toxic metabolite hydrogen selenide (H2Se), which does have anticancer effects but is more toxic than selenomethionine. Its primary mode of killing cancer cells (and at high levels, normal cells) is through the process of cell necrosis. Cell necrosis provokes inflammation and may kill healthy cells along with cancer cells.

sedentary lifestyle lacking in exercise. It is not a coincidence that studies have shown up that those who exercise only a few hours each week have up to 50% less chance of developing many different kinds of cancer.

Drink Lots of Healthy Clean Water Water is essential for all healthy life; however, regular tap water contains trace amounts of hundreds to thousands of pesticides, carcinogens and other industrial pollutants. For that reason, the author recommends only the purest drinking water, such as reverse osmosis filtered water.

Do Not Neglect the Vital Trace Minerals

Regular exercise does not have to be gruelling, but it is essential. Exercise stimulates the immune system, stimulates the production of natural human growth hormone, stimulates the production of hormones and pheromones that make us happier and healthier, and simply leads to a longer and happier life period. Innumerable studies have demonstrated the overall health benefits of exercise and the negative effects of a

Trace minerals are essential in beating cancer and are in fact essential to virtually all of the body’s important processes when it comes to utilizing vitamins, minerals and enzymes for good health. Two hundred years ago, the top layer of our soil contained up to 80 or more different minerals. Today, overfarming and the chemical destruction of soil micro-organisms has stripped soils the world over of all but a handful of bioavailable minerals, and even those remaining minerals are at levels that are only fractions of what were in the soil 100 years ago and continuing to decline.

Man’s body is designed to utilize at least 60 or more trace minerals on a daily basis, and did so for thousands of years by eating the plants that processed such minerals (and the animals that ate the plants with processed minerals. Quite simply,

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without minerals nothing else works as designed, and every mineral deficiency, whether major or trace minerals, results in the body compensating in one or more ways which are often unhealthy. The only way to get an adequate supply now is to supplement, and the very best supplementation is from plant derived minerals, such as those that come from the famous plant prehistoric vegetable deposits in Utah and contain 75 trace minerals. Those who take them regularly report remarkable improvements in their health (and the author himself takes them religiously each and every day).

The head of the National Cancer Research Foundation, Fred Eichorn, asserts that mineral deficiencies lead to changes in instructions to the DNA to make adjustments for alternate ways to produce hormones and amino acids – and that these changes lead to cancer. Eichorn believes that correcting those deficiencies leads to rebalancing that will eliminate cancer and his foundation’s website has some impressive testimonials: http://www.ncrf.org

Get Plenty of Healthy Omega 3’s Good natural sources include extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, avocados, and organic butter, or better yet grass-fed organic butter. An excellent supplement is Doctor Mercola’s Krill Oil, which also contains a healthy ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids and has been shown to help ward against cachexia (the wasting of non-fat body tissue, especially skeletal muscle tissue).

Things to Avoid Remember, what you avoid can be just as important as what you consume: Avoid sugar to the greatest extent possible. Sugar feeds cancer and other illnesses and causes a myriad of other health problems. Refined sugar is also the number one single cause of health problems in the entire world! Likewise avoid bread and other items containing bleached white flour, which is essentially empty and harmful calories that convert to sugar once ingested. Other items to avoid include non-fermented soy, pork, MSG, ALL charred foods and foods cooked at high temperature, aluminium and coated cookware, micro-waved food, food in plastic containers and styrofoam.

GO ON THE ATTACK The next element of beating your disease and keeping it at bay is to go on the attack. As a matter of fact, all of the elements of the this anti-cancer and disease protocol are elements of attack, because they make the body strong and inhospitable to disease.

What I am talking about here is more than just making the body inhospitable to your disease. In the case of cancer, there are many very potent anti-cancer supplements, including the ones listed below and several others.

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Before taking any supplements consult with a naturopath, and if you are taking chemotherapeutic drugs consult with a physician. Information provided here is a guide, and it is not recommended that you self-medicate if you have a serious or complex illness such as cancer.

One such supplement, named Sutherlandia OPC (not to be confused with the European anti-oxidant named OPC) has been used for the past five plus years in South Africa to treat HIV and cancer. Several thousand HIV patients have taken Sutherlandia OPC now and all are reported to be still alive and well with their symptoms either reversed or stabilized. Of the hundreds of cancer patients over the past five plus years, only 8 have been reported to not survive (5 were in their very final days and could not hold down the supplement and another three succumbed to organ failure as a likely result of prior traditional Western treatment via chemo). All the rest, save two who stopped taking the supplement once the tumours were gone and returned to their old lifestyles (and had the cancer return) are now alive and cancer free or else have their cancers in remission and tumours continuing to shrink. Compare that with the results of any mainstream medicine or treatment!

Dosage: The supplement comes in either an extract or capsule version and instructions call for five to 15 ml of extract three times daily or 1 to 3 capsules twice daily depending on the stage and aggressiveness of one’s cancer.

Iodine (see above) is an absolute must for anyone fighting cancer, especially breast cancer.

A supreme cancer tumour destroyer and cancer fighter for many forms of cancer is Inositol/IP6, such as is found in the product Cell Forte Max3. According to several users interviewed by the author, it often seems to just melt away tumours in a very short time period, and works well to normalize the PSA readings in prostate cancer sufferers. One caution – Inositol/IP6 may deplete minerals and/or interfere with mineral absorption, especially calcium and magnesium.

Be sure to get plenty of Calcium and Magnesium (a good thing

to do anyway) and take a good mineral supplement, preferably plant derived minerals (a second good thing to do in any event).

Intensive cancer fighting dosage calls for 8 to 16 capsules per day. Note: intensive use of Inositol/IP6 is not recommended for more than a few months at a time, with lesser maintenance doses of one to two capsules the rest of the time and occasional breaks from the maintenance dose of up to one month (to guard against mineral depletion).

Curcumin is a potent and highly proven cancer fighter and preventive. Curcumin has been particularly effective against cancer with smokers and helps prevent cancer in general from spreading. Independent research studies on the anticancer properties of turmeric suggests that Curcumin has the potential for treatment of five top cancers in the U.S. – colon, breast, prostate, lung and skin. An added plus is that turmeric is a wonderful anti-inflammatory, and thus would be a vital addition for those who have brain cancer, where swelling is always a concern. To fight cancer, 2500 to 3000 mg per day is recommended, divided into two to three doses and taken either with meals or with bromelain as described below. Curcumin is can also be obtained by taking the common spice turmeric, though turmeric and most curcumin supplements are not very bioavailable. Coconut oil or milk may help absorption and some studies have indicated that absorption may also be increased with 5-10 mg of bioperine (or else black pepper).

A good blood tonic helps cleanse the blood and the liver and makes the body inhospitable to cancer cells.

Cayenne Pepper tincture is a very effective cancer fighter, especially so for prostate cancers and when used in combination with the flaxseed oil and cottage cheese elements of the Budwig diet.

Black cumin oil, also known as black caraway seed oil and blackseed oil, has been shown to be a potent cancer fighter and, along with oleander, it is one of the very few natural cancer fighters that have had good success against pancreatic cancer.

I mm u ne boosting and cancer fighting mushroom products, such as RM-10, a proprietary blend of 10 mushrooms by Garden of LIfe and available at the best price iHerb.com. This formula is so potent that the naturopath who developed it used it to save his mother from stage IV Ovarian Cancer.

Vitamin B-17, also known as laetrile, is a very potent and proven cancer fighter that is highly recommended although difficult to find (the best source is apricot pits). Note: laetrile by itself, or even as the primary element of a cancer fighting protocol, is best used by people who have been given 12-18 months or longer survival estimates, as it normally works best when taken for a prolonged period of time.

Colloidal Silver is another must in my opinion – it has been shown to be deadly to single cell organisms and pathogens, and various cancers have been shown to have viral and/or

fungal qualities, at least after they have become established.

The caution with Colloidal Silver is that it may also eliminate beneficial bacteria when taken in amounts large enough to fight cancer and so it is a good idea when taking colloidal silver to also supplement with probiotics (yet another good thing to do anyway – especially after cleanses). Many recommend that colloidal silver be taken with Colloidal Gold because gold appears to enhance the silver’s actions when cancer is present.

Take one to two ounces or more daily while actively fighting cancer.

Bromelain Several studies have indicated anti-cancer and anti-tumour properties of the enzyme bromelain, which comes from the pineapple plant. One of the primary anti-cancer properties of bromelain may be it’s ability to help prevent cancer from growing and spreading. Bromelain is also a powerful binder which can greatly increase the absorption of other supplements and medications (for that reason, a qualified medical professional. Preferably a naturopathic one, should be consulted before taking large amounts of bromelain with other medications where increased absorption might be a cause for concern). Take 500 to 750 mg capsules thirty minutes before meals or two hours after meals. Good when combined with bromelain.

Shark Cartilage and Bindweed Besides attacking cancer, preventing it’s spread and tumour growth by the process of angiogenesis is critical. Many of the items in this protocol work against angiogenesis; however there are also two powerful angiogenesis inhibitors that should be included for maximum effect: Shark Cartilage and Bindweed. Studies have indicated that shark cartilage is effective at preventing cancer tumours from growing and spreading and bindweed was shown to be 100 times more effective by weight than shark cartilage.

Pancreatic Enzymes/Digestive Enzymes, especially those that contain chimotrypsin, have been very effective against cancer, especially pancreatic cancers. Digestive enzymes help in getting tumour response to treatments by disintegrating fibrinoprotein covering of tumours and make easy targets for the immune system to kill cancer cells by natural autophagy means. Also there are studies to show proteolytic enzymes mitigate tumour-induced and therapy-induced side effects, as well as indications that the enzymes are anti-metastatc.

Grapeseed Extract has also been a very effective cancer fighter and a supreme antioxidant with many proven health benefits.

STRESS REMOVAL AND A POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE The final key to winning your battle is your mental attitude.

Remove as much stress from your life as you can and believe

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maximises the benefits of a healthy diet by supporting normal absorption and assimilation of nutrients in the gut. (available on iHerb.com)

FINAL NOTES Some in the field of natural health will tell you that you can beat cancer through diet alone, or through diet and detoxing.

A healthy diet and lifestyle is without a doubt an essential foundation for any cancer fighting program; however, our depleted soils and the introduction of modern industrial toxins and contaminants makes it hard to build a strong enough immune system through diet alone. Our immune systems were not designed to handle the multitude of modern toxins they now face, which is a reason why cancer is largely a modern disease. that you are going to win. Stress and worry accomplish nothing – worse, they are actually allies of illness and disease. You have surely heard the term “stress, the silent killer”? It’s true!

So you must do whatever it takes to remove stress from your life and make your mental attitude your ally. Meditate, take yoga, change jobs, retire, go fishing, find a pleasant hobby do whatever you must to remove stress and have a positive mental outlook.

Equally important, if not more so, is addressing any emotional issues from the present or the past which may be contributing to stress and preventing the body from optimal healing – may even have contributed to your development of cancer in the first place. There have been many reports of cancer going into spontaneous remission after people successfully addressed emotional issues and stress.

Remember, anyone or any issue which introduces or keeps worry and stress in your life is neither a friend nor an ally during your healing journey. You need as much support and positivity from your loved ones as possible t beat cancer. Think it, believe it and live it.

CACHEXIA (Wasting/ Rapid Weight Loss) Cachexia is loss of weight, muscle atrophy, fatigue, weakness and significant loss of appetite in someone who is not actively trying to lose weight, and is frequently seen in cancer, especially advanced cancers, HIV/AIDS and other conditions.

N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC), can help prevent cachexia and is considered an essential complementary supplement to oleander in general. Other items that may help combat cachexia are coconut oil and especially Garden of Life’s Primal Defense, a natural blend of 12 species of probiotics and Homeostatic Soil Organisms (HSOs). It helps support normal gastrointestinal balance of good and potentially harmful bacteria, and

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Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

In my opinion, the more weapons you have in your natural arsenal which are compatible with one another, the greater your chances of success will be. That is why I advocate including several of the powerful natural supplements that have been shown to beat cancer and boost the immune system, and which address the underlying causes of cancer.

Live long, live healthy, live happy! F

Notes: For ovarian cancer, see also: Ovarian Cancer (http://www.tbyil.com/ Ovarian_Cancer.htm) To better understand why many of the above elements are included in the All Natural Anti-Cancer Protocol, see: Modern Medicine versus Nature in Treating Cancer – Part One (http://www.tbyil.com/MMvsNature.htm) Modern Medicine versus Nature in Treating Cancer – Part Two (http://www.tbyil.com/MMvsNature2.htm) Oleander References: Oleander Case Reports and Studies (http://www.tbyil.com/ Oleander_Case_...)

An Amazing Discovery in Turkey (http://www.tbyil.com/oleander1. htm) The Father of Oleander Soup (http://www.tbyil.com/oleander2.htm) The History of Oleander Before 1960 (http://www.tbyil.com/ oleander3.htm) Success Against Cancer and HIV in South Africa (http://www.tbyil. com/oleander4.htm) Oleander Induces Autophagy – Exclusive Story (http://www.tbyil. com/autophagy.htm)

From: www.naturalnews.com. Tony Isaacs is a natural health advocate and researcher and the author of books and articles about natural health including “Cancer’s Natural Enemy” and “Collected Remedies”

1st-7th September. It’s a snap to get sponsored to give up your bad habits and be healthy for a week, be super-healthy and raise funds for Cancer Support WA!

n s a p!

n o i e s stress utrit ctivity o p a r n u p

Do you want to give up chocolate, staying up too late, drinking too much coffee, working too hard, watching too much tv, checking your email too frequently or any other bad habit? Why not challenge yourself to give them up and be super-healthy – just for a week.

All of us have habits which aren’t conducive to good health. What we may not realise is that in the long term these habits can contribute to disease, particularly cancer. It’s never too late to make lifestyle changes and it’s never too late to be healthy. In fact it can be fun to be healthy if you get your family, friends and colleagues involved.

At Cancer Support WA we promote healthy lifestyle choices which lead to a long life, good health and happiness. We have seen many people recover from cancer through making changes to their everyday lives which address stress levels, diet, exercise and emotional wellbeing. We understand that it is hard to change, which is why we have developed a program of activities and services to support people on their wellness journeys.

By participating in Healthy Habits Week you will be supported to be as healthy as you can possibly be for 1 week (and hopefully longer!) We encourage workplaces, schools, institutions and individuals to get involved. Participants can seek sponsorship from their community to help them reach their goals to make this the healthiest week of their lives so far and to raise funds for Cancer Support WA. Lots of great events are planned during the week.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, but by the end of the week you will feel fantastic and very proud of having overcome years of bad habits and committing to a healthy, new you.

Healthy Habits website to be launched June 2013. See www.cancersupportwa.org.au Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

23

LIFESTYLE/WELLBEING

healthy habits week

problems

dream

are

big!

challenges

Live in the

present

Positive Habits of Happy People Many people spend their lives waiting to be happy. The secret of happiness though is that you can be happy right now. It’s not always easy, but you can choose to be happy, and in the vast majority of circumstances there’s no one to stop you except for yourself.

Happiness doesn’t come from a perfect life or perfect health – it comes from within which is why you need to work on yourself first if you truly want to be happy.

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What’s the secret to being happy? You can learn how to do it, just as you can learn any

other skill. Those who are happy tend to follow a certain set of habits that create peace in their lives; if you learn to apply these habits in your own life, there’s a good chance you’ll be happy too.

Let go of grudges Forgiving and forgetting is necessary for your own happiness, as holding a grudge means you’re also holding onto resentment, anger, hurt and other negative emotions that are standing in the way of your own happiness. Letting go of a grudge frees you from negativity and allows more space for positive emotions to fill in.

Treat everyone with kindness Kindness is not only contagious, it’s also proven to make you happier. When you’re kind to others, your brain produces feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters like serotonin and you’re able to build strong relationships with others, fostering positive feelings all around.

Regard your problems as challenges Change your internal dialogue so that anytime you have a “problem” you view it as a challenge or a new opportunity to change your life for the better. Eliminate the word “problem” from your mind entirely.

Express gratitude for what you have People who are thankful for what they have are better able to cope with stress, have more positive emotions, and are better able to reach their goals. The best way to harness the positive power of gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal or list, where you actively write down exactly what you’re grateful for each day. Doing so has been linked to happier moods, greater optimism and even better physical health.

Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

Go ahead and dream big, as you’ll be more likely to accomplish your goals. Rather than limiting yourself, when you dream big you’re opening your mind to a more optimistic, positive state where you have the power to achieve virtually anything you desire.

Don’t sweat the small stuff If the issue you’re mad about will be irrelevant a year, a month or even a day from now, why sweat it? Happy people know how to let life’s daily irritations roll off their back.

Speak well of others It may be tempting to gather around the office water cooler to get and give the daily gossip, but talking negatively about others is like taking a bath in negative emotions; your body soaks them up. Instead, make it a point to only say positive, nice words about other people, and you’ll help foster more positive thinking in your own life as well.

Avoid making excuses It’s easy to blame others for your life’s failures, but doing so means you’re unlikely to rise past them. Happy people take responsibility for their mistakes and missteps, then use the failure as an opportunity to change for the better.

Live in the present Allow yourself to be immersed in whatever it is you’re doing right now, and take time to really be in the present moment.

Avoid replaying past negative events or worrying about the future; just savour what’s going on in your life now.

Wake up at the same time every morning Getting up at the same time every day (preferably an early time) is deceptively simple. Doing so will help regulate your circadian rhythm so you’ll have an easier time waking and likely feel more energised. Plus, the habit of rising early every day is one shared by many successful people, as it enhances your productivity and focus.

Surround yourself with positive people The saying “misery loves company” is entirely true. That’s why you need to choose friends who are optimistic and happy themselves, as you will be surrounded with positive energy.

You don’t need others’ approval It’s important to follow your own dreams and desires without letting naysayers stand in your way. It’s fine to seek others’ opinions, but happy people stay true to their own hearts and don’t get bogged down with the need for outside approval.

be

honest

Take time to listen Listening helps you soak in the wisdom of others and allows you to quiet your own mind at the same time. Intense listening can help you feel content while helping you gain different perspectives.

Nurture social relationships Positive social relationships are a key to happiness, so be sure you make time to visit with friends, family and your significant other.

Meditate Meditation keeps your mind focused, calms your nerves and supports inner peace. Research shows it can even lead to physical changes in your brain that make you happier.

Eat well What you eat directly impacts your mood and energy levels in both the short and long term. Whereas eating right can prime your body and brain to be in a focused, happy state, eating processed junk foods will leave you sluggish and prone to chronic disease.

Exercise Exercise boosts levels of health-promoting brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which may help buffer some of the effects of stress and also relieve some symptoms of depression. Rather than viewing exercise as a medical tool to lose weight, prevent disease, and live longer – try viewing exercise as a daily tool to immediately enhance your frame of mind, reduce stress and feel happier.

Be honest Every time you lie, your stress levels are likely to increase and your self-esteem will crumble just a little bit more. Plus, if others find out you’re a liar it will damage your personal and professional relationships. Telling the truth, on the other hand, boosts your mental health and allows others to build trust in you.

Accept what cannot be changed Everything in your life is not going to be perfect, and that’s perfectly all right. Happy people learn to accept injustices and setbacks in their life that they cannot change, and instead put their energy on changing what they can control for the better. F

From: mercola.com Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

25

LIFESTYLE & wellbeing

Dream big

meditate eat well

Exercise could be key to successful cancer treatment

By Dr Mercola

There is growing research and evidence supporting the notion that lifestyle changes, such as exercise, have a profound impact on human health and on diseases of both the mind and body.

M

ounting evidence continues to show that exercise may be a key component in successful cancer prevention and treatment. Studies have also found that it can help keep cancer from recurring, so it’s really a triple-win.

Yet not surprisingly few oncologists ever tell their patients to engage in exercise beyond their simple daily, normal activities, and many cancer patients are reluctant to exercise, or even discuss it with their oncologist. Hopefully, you will not be one of them.

Most recently, research announced at the 2013 International Liver Congress1 found that mice who exercised on a motorized treadmill for an hour each day, five days a week for 32 weeks, experienced fewer incidents of liver cancer than sedentary mice.

Exercise may also be absolutely crucial in the treatment of depression, according to recent research.2 I’ve often stated this, and the science continues to support this advice.

Meanwhile, mounting evidence condemns the “evidence-based” drug paradigm, as reviews keep finding that large amounts of published drug research is either seriously flawed or outright fraudulent – motivated of course by the financial interests of the funding party.

Might Exercise Be a Key to Cancer Recovery?

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a cancer that originates in your liver cells, and is one of the most common types of cancers. According to the featured article in Medical News Today,3 HCC accounts for just over five percent of all cancers worldwide, and causes an estimated 695,000 deaths annually.

According to the reported research,4 the first of its kind for this type of tumour, regular exercise may be the key to significantly reducing your chances for developing liver cancer.

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Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

The study involved two groups of mice: One group was fed a high fat diet, and then divided into two sub-groups – one that exercised and one that did not. The second group was fed a controlled diet, and also divided into sub-groups of exercise and non-exercise. According to the featured article: “After 32 weeks of regular exercise, 71 percent of mice on the controlled diet developed tumours larger than 10mm versus 100 percent in the sedentary group.

The mean number and volume of HCC tumours per liver was also reduced in the exercise group compared to the sedentary group.”

In the high-fat diet group, exercise decreased the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Professor Jean-Francois Dufour told Medical News Today: “We know that modern, unhealthy lifestyles predispose people to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease which may lead to liver cancer; however it’s been previously unknown whether regular exercise reduces the risk of developing HCC. This research is significant because it opens the door for further studies to prove that regular exercise can reduce the chance of people developing HCC. The results could eventually lead to some very tangible benefits for people staring down the barrel of liver cancer and I look forward to seeing human studies in this important area in the future. The prognosis for liver cancer patients is often bleak as only a proportion of patients are suitable for potentially curative treatments so any kind of positive news in this arena is warmly welcomed.”

Exercise Needs to be Part of the New Standard of Care for Cancer The benefits of exercise are not limited to prevention alone. It can also help you recuperate faster and help prevent recurrence of cancer. A report issued by the British organisation Macmillan Cancer Support5 just last year argued that exercise really should be part of standard cancer care. It recommends that all patients getting cancer treatment should be told to engage in moderate-intensity exercise for two and a half hours every week, stating that the advice to rest and take it easy after treatment is an outdated view.

The organisation offers helpful information about the benefits of exercise for cancer patients on their website, and also has a number of videos on the subject, available on their YouTube channel.6 According to Ciaran Devane, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support:7 “Cancer patients would be shocked if they knew just how much of a benefit physical activity could have on their recovery and long term health, in some cases reducing their chances of having to go through the grueling ordeal of treatment all over again...”

Indeed, the reduction in risk for recurrence is quite impressive. For example, previous research has shown that breast and colon cancer patients who exercise regularly have half the recurrence rate than non-exercisers.8 Macmillan Cancer Support also notes that exercise can help you to mitigate some of the common side effects of conventional cancer treatment shown in the table at right.

Exercise Can Also Benefit Your Mental Health

Common cancer treatment side effects mitigated by exercise...

Reduce fatigue and improve your energy levels Manage stress, anxiety, low mood or depression Improve bone health Improve heart health (some chemotherapy drugs and radiotherapy can cause heart problems later in life) Build muscle strength, relieve pain and improve range of movement Maintain a healthy weight Sleep better Improve your appetite Prevent constipation

Many recent studies have shown that exercise provides a level of protection against stress-related disorders and depression. But could it still work if it was prescribed and forced upon you, by doctor’s orders, for example; or if part of a mandatory

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Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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New titles in the Cancer Support WA Library When did you last visit the Cancer Support WA Library? Even with the siteworks happening onsite the library is open and we have some great new titles for our members to borrow...

program, such as high school students or military, who are required to participate whether they like it or not?

To find out, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder devised an animal study to determine whether rats that were forced to exercise would experience the same stress- and anxiety-reduction as those who were free to choose if and when to exercise.

The rats exercised either voluntarily or forcibly for six weeks, after which they were exposed to a stressor. The following day, their anxiety levels were tested by measuring how long they froze when placed in an environment they’d been conditioned to fear. The longer the rats remained frozen, like “a deer in headlights,” the greater the residual anxiety from the previous day’s stressor. According to the lead author:9 “Regardless of whether the rats chose to run or were forced to run they were protected against stress and anxiety. The sedentary rats froze for longer periods of time than any of the active rats. The implications are that humans who perceive exercise as being forced – perhaps including those who feel like they have to exercise for health reasons – are maybe still going to get the benefits in terms of reducing anxiety and depression.”

Your Lifestyle has Tremendous Influence Over Your Health & Cancer Risk...

In light of the evidence supporting the notion that lifestyle changes, such as exercise, have a profound impact on human health and diseases of both mind and body, it would be foolish in the extreme to ignore such advice.

If you have cancer or any other chronic disease, you will of course need to tailor your exercise routine to your individual circumstances, taking into account your fitness level and current health. Often, you will be able to take part in a regular exercise program – one that involves a variety of exercises like strength training, core-building, stretching, aerobic and anaerobic – with very little changes necessary.

However, at times you may find you need to exercise at a lower intensity, or for shorter durations.

Always listen to your body and if you feel you need a break, take time to rest.

But even exercising for just a few minutes a day is better than not exercising at all, and you’ll likely find that your stamina increases and you’re able to complete more challenging workouts with each passing day. In the event you are suffering from a very weakened immune system, you may want to exercise at home instead of visiting a public gym. But remember that exercise will ultimately help to boost your immune system, so it’s very important to continue with your program, even if you suffer from chronic illness or cancer. F

Buddha’s Book of Sleep by Joseph Emet All is Well by Louise L. Hay and Mona Lisa Schulz Deepening the Dimension of Stillness (CD set) by Eckhart Tolle Body and Mind are One (CD set) by Thich Nhat Hanh Inviting Grace (Harp CD) by Hayley Erin You Can Conquer Cancer by Ian Gawler

28

references

1 C Piguet, EFFECT OF REGULAR TRAINING ON HEPATOCELLULAR CARCINOMA DEVELOPMENT IN HEPATOCYTE-SPECIFIC PTEN-DEFICIENT MICE 2 Medical News Today April 21, 2013 3 Medical News Today April 29, 2013 4 European Journal of Neuroscience 2013 Feb;37(3):469-78 5 MacMillanCancerSupport.org 6 Macmillan Cancer Support Youtube Channel 7 BBC News Health August 7, 2011 8 Medical News Today August 31, 2012 9 See ref 3

From: fitness.mercola.com. Dr Joseph Mercola is widely regarded as one of the world’s leadin advocates of natural health.

Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

October Retreat in the spiritual heart of Bali An opportunity to take your healing to a deeper level In a private healing sanctuary in the hills outside Ubud, miles away from the stresses of everyday life, your senses are soothed, your body relaxes and begins to heal, your energy is restored and your worries and fears fall away. There is nothing to do but surrender to the beauty and tranquility of the moment...

Sometimes it is necessary to physically retreat from the busyness and stresses of life for a short period of time so that healing and recovery become your main and sole focus. Our retreat program is uniquely designed to support you while you go deeper on the healing journey than you could otherwise go, in the company of like-minded souls.

The October Retreat is hosted by Kookaburra Creek Yoga Centre and is facilitated by Mandy BeckerKnox and Robert Becker. The focus is on the transformational and subtle practices of yoga and meditation which bring about peace, happiness and healing.

The retreat program is gentle and supportive. No experience of yoga or meditation is required and all practices are suitable for beginners.

Retreat Facilitators Mandy BeckerKnox is Cancer Support WA’s CEO and is also a Yoga and Meditation Instructor and Retreat Facilitator with more than 20 years experience. She has studied Yoga and Meditation with some of the world’s most renowned contemporary masters in India and Australia.

Retreat program includes • Individual sessions: – personalised yoga therapy – traditional Balinese massage • Daily group sessions: – healing yoga & breathwork – guided meditation & relaxation – energy balancing & sound healing meditations • pure, organic vegetarian meals, juices, smoothies, herbal teas & herbal tonics daily • visit to traditional Balinese healer • tailored sessions at nearby ashrams with remarkable spiritual teachers & healers • meditation in an ancient lost temple • time for rest and rejuvenation Robert Becker is the founder and director of Kookaburra Creek Yoga Centre. Over 30 years, Robert has taught and inspired thousands of students. Robert’s early experience with the masters and lifelong practice are embodied in his teaching and practical wisdom.

Yoga & Meditation Retreat 5th-12th Oct, 7 nights. Cost: from $1,700 (earlybird when you book by 1st July and pay by 1st August). More information, full program and registration details on the Events page of our website: www.cancersupportwa.org.au.

Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

29

WELLNESS RETREAT BALI

Bali Yoga & Meditation Retreat

Questions

that Matter

Moraine Lake, Canada by QT Luong

Imagine...

taking a hefty spoonful of salt and stirring it into a cup of water. It would be very unpleasant to drink. But if you took that same hefty spoonful of salt and stirred it into an enormous, clear-blue mountain lake and drank a mouthful, it would be sweet. The problem is not the salt; it’s the size of the container.

As a therapist and minister, I’ve spent more than 20 years in the company of people who suffer. As I listen more deeply in each encounter, I notice something happens in a moment of suffering, something that can be quite precious, a moment that simultaneously breaks us down and also breaks us open.

At such times, we can respond to suffering by bringing everything we have-body, heart, spirit-as a sacramental offering into the company of others, be they friend, child, parent, lover, family member, or community member.

If we allow ourselves to be awake, an almost inevitable fountain of grace begins to open. Certain questions begin to arise in our hearts and our minds. One of the first questions, of course, is, “Why did this happen to me?” But beyond that other, deeper questions arise: “What does this all mean about the nature of life? What do I hold to be sacred? What can I touch, that when I hold it in my hand will make me feel safe?”

Over the years, I and others have wrestled with some deep questions, questions that don’t have pat answers and whose answers change from year to year, often from hour to hour.

The questions are like mantras or koans; they’re something to hold in our hearts as we make our way through life...

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Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

Stories of courage and

grace

By Wayne Muller

Who Am I? Most spiritual traditions begin the process of pilgrimage with this question, whether it is in the form of a vision quest, a naming ceremony, or some other way of beginning to listen to the names we call ourselves. This is because our identities color everything we do. Whom I believe myself to be will influence the paths I choose to walk, the friends I take as mine, and the enemies I choose.

For example, if I wake up in the morning and call myself a Christian, then I will look with Christian eyes at a world that seems to be moving from sin to salvation, and perhaps I will remember the teachings of Jesus about the lilies of the field: “They neither toil nor spin, and yet I tell you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these. . . and therefore I tell you do not worry about tomorrow.” And maybe I heed his prescriptions to feed the hungry,clothe the naked, and visit the sick and those in prison.

If I wake up in the morning and think of myself as a Jew, then perhaps I feel my life aspart and parcel of an enormous sweep of history from slavery to liberation, and I recite the covenants that God has made with my people. I vow to do those things that are necessary towalk humbly and do justice.

If I wake in the morning and see the world through Buddhist eyes, then perhaps I’ll be thinking about the Four Noble Truths, the nature of suffering, the origin of suffering, alleviation of suffering, and escape from the wheel of birth-death-rebirth. Perhaps I take the vow as a Boddhisatva to alleviate the suffering of all beings.

And so it is with every name that we take: sisteer, brother, mother or father, employer or employee – every name we use as our identity colors and shapes the way we walk and the way we feel about ourselves and the people we meet.

I’ve noticed a distressing trend in this regard during the last 20 years or so wherein people have named themselves using psychological terminology or diagnostic names such as “adult child of alcoholic” or “manic-depressive” or “multiple personality” or “incest survivor.”

Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.” The Buddha said, “You are saturated with Buddha nature.” Jesus did not say “You are the light of the world as long as your parents were really nice and you lived in a nice neighborhood and you got a red wagon every year for Christmas and you go to church every Sunday.”

He simply said “You are the light of the world.”

This means that regardless of what sorrow or suffering or ache or loss or fear that travels through your body, there is this light of the world, this Buddha nature, this still small voice, this kingdom of God that will not leave you uncomforted.

Where I live in New Mexico, Native Americans often take their names from nature, perhaps from the color of the sky, the way an eagle seems to defy gravity as it makes its way into the air, or the way an animal exhibits its power as it walks across the face of the Earth.

And so, when they speak their name, they remember their strength or courage or wisdom even when frightened, lost, or confused. Their name calls forth what doesn’t break; it keeps them company. However, if I take as my name Adult Child of Alcoholic, for example, it doesn’t touch that place that can’t be named even though it may be true of some aspects of my experience.

Telling stories about the way people treated us may be useful up to a point, but there is another way of looking at this. A wonderful parable by the Buddha expresses it so well: Imagine coming to the edge of a river, and you need to get to the other side. You take grasses, sticks, and branches; lash them together to make a raft; and paddle across the river. When you get to the other side, you’re so grateful to the raft that you carry it with you for the rest of your life.

This would be rather silly, wouldn’t it? Of course, what you would do with such a raft is tie it on the bank and let someone else use it or just let it float down the river. So it is with the story of our life, and even with the Buddha’s teachings certain things have usefulness to a point; to carry them on our back for the rest of our life, however, is just silly.

As circumstances change, what we need and what is useful in life also change. Curiously enough, our names actually change as we grow because as we ourselves become deeper and more spacious, our names get larger. Another wonderful Buddhist parable captures this insight: Imagine taking a hefty spoonful of salt and stirring it into a cup of water. It would be very unpleasant to drink. But if you took that same hefty spoonful of salt and stirred it into an enormous, clear-blue mountain lake and drank a mouthful, it would be sweet. The problem is not the salt; it’s the size of the container.

And so as you take your name, when you say who you are, I invite you to begin to investigate what kind of name can be large enough to hold the truth of who you are.

What Do I Love?

The Chinese say that when a teapot has been in use in a family for over a hundred years, after a while you need only pour hot water into the pot and the pot itself will make you tea. In other words, if we do something day after day, year after year, generation after generation, our lives will come to hold the fragrance of that thing. If we hold something in our hands, day after day, year after year, our hands will come to hold the shape of that thing.

And so it is that if we do what we love, day after day, year after year, generation after generation, then we become what we love. This is not magic, of course; this is simple “spiritual physics.” So, like our names, it is important to know what we love. What do you love? If God is love, as most of the spiritual traditions seem to suggest in one form or another, then if we follow what we love we will be led inevitably up the steps and onto the doorstep of the divine.

Many of us have spent perhaps quite a bit of time getting rid of the things we don’t love-part of our histories, our stories about the aches and struggles we’ve carried. This is useful work. Yet at a certain point it will bring us back up only to zero. All of the poets and mystics and saints of the world have indicated that a human life can go higher than zero. And what star we choose to follow is the star of what we love.

What opens our hearts? What excites our spirit? What galvanizes our passion and our curiosity? “Curiosity,” of course, shares the same root as “cure,” so in a way what we love and what captures our curiosity draw us forward into some place of great destiny.

Another reason to pay attention to what we love is that it will live in our eyes: What we love will actually change what we see. I’ll give an example. A couple of years ago, in the Santo Domingo Pueblo, I joined a family of close friends on an Easter-egg hunt in the hills. Now, when you picture Easter-egg hunting in northern New Mexico, it’s not at all like it is on the White House lawn. Wind and dust blow into your eyes and on your teeth, and you’re also competing with cactus, gophers, and rattlesnakes. It’s a different sort of Easter experience.

I was with my son Maxwell, who was about 3, and we had found a few eggs. Timothy, the son of our host family, had quite a few more, obviously having much greater success. We asked him where he found the eggs and whether there were any left. All of sudden, Tim looked down and said, pointing to some yellow sand on the ground, “You know, I need that yellow sand for my pots.” Tim’s a potter, from generations of potters, and loves making pots. His family, of course, doesn’t go to “Clays-R-Us”; they get their clay from the earth. Tim’s eyes know to look for those colors that he loves, and because he loves that particular color yellow, he stopped in the middle of a conversation about the egg hunt and said, “I need to go get a plastic bag and the pickup and bring some yellow clay back for my glazes.”

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Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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MIND/BODY HEALING

Although these terms may apply to some aspects of our lives, they’re not names that are large enough to hold the true nature of who we are.

How Shall I Live, Knowing I Will Die?

in the back seat, and both were killed-her only two children, along with her father, who was in the front passenger’s seat.

Forrest’s mother somehow survived.

I was blessed to be in the company of Forrest’s parents for quite a period after that, trying to listen along with them for what doesn’t break, for what still lives in the midst of such unspeakable grief.

Knowing what we know, now, about Forrest’s life and death, pay attention again for a moment to some of the things he had to say: “I love dinosaurs, I love ‘em, love ‘em, love ‘em. I want to go to the rainforest sometime.”

Because Tim loves pots, he could see that yellow in a way that I, standing right next to him, could never have seen: What we love lives in our eyes. What we love actually changes what we see.

It is important, therefore, to be mindful of what we love. Do you love dance? Do you love God? Do you love colour? Do you love beauty? Do you love justice? Do you love children?

Those things that you love will guide your steps, and they will also live in your eyes.

How Shall I Live, Knowing I Will Die? What kind of people shall we be, knowing that we have only a short period left here on this Earth? Shall we be courageous?

Shall we be playful? Shall we be loving? Shall we be quiet people? How shall we live, knowing that we will die?

A friend of mine had a son, Forrest, 4 years old, who used to keep a journal. He didn’t actually keep the journal, of course.

His mother would sit down on his bedside every evening and ask him, “Forrest, do you have anything you would like to say about how it was for you today?” And she would write down what he said, so as he got older he could have this journal as a memory of his childhood. She read me some of Forrest’s entries when he was 4: Thursday, May 5: “I love dinosaurs, I love ‘em, love ‘em, love ‘em. I love sharks. T. Rex is the most fierce hunter. It’s Thursday today. My days are getting different now because we’re doing different stuff. I don’t know why my pterodactyl’s sick for 3 days. I love my dinosaurs.”

Sunday, June 12: “I’m happy today. I wish we’d go out on a hike. I wish there were butterflies in rainforests. Is there a rainforest in Micronesia? I played on my tricycle. I slipped and almost fell, but I didn’t. I ran over Sissy’s tail and hand.

Sissy growled, I said I’m sorry. I want to go to the rainforest sometime.”

On June 24, Forrest was killed in a car accident. His mother was driving. Forrest and his brother Bryce, who was 1, were

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Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

We listen to Forrest’s words differently when we feel his life framed by his death. I would like to suggest that the difference between Forrest and ourselves is really quite small, that our lives, like Forrest’s, are also brief and also framed by death.

There’s a kind of poignancy that weascribe to Forrest’s life because it seems somehow unnaturally short. And yes, our lives as well are simply naturally short.

When I’m in the company of people dying of cancer or AIDS or other terminal illnesses, one of the things that happens, not always but often, is that people begin to feel the preciousness of what it means to breathe and to be able to love one another, to be able to put one day at the service of someone who is in need or to be able to be in the company of other beings in love or kindness.

Every touch of the hand becomes a miracle; every word of kindness shared is a symphony; every day that the sun rises miraculously and bathes the Earth in sunlight is an epiphany because this could be the last time I see this unspeakably magnificent event.

Those of us who believe we will live for a very long time tend to get sloppy, and we live by accident. Yet every breath we take, every prayer we speak, every conversation we have can be a moment of great healing, or grace, or creation, or birth.

Can we be that awake? How do we live, knowing that we will die?One of the things that happens, paradoxically, to people who are close to death is they become grateful, which makes no sense from the outside.

Yet from the inside there is sometimes this deep pool of gratefulness. Thank you for coming to see me. Thank you for this cookie that you baked for me with your loving kindness.

Thank you for sitting with me on this bed.

I remember sitting with a man close to death who said, “You know, I’ve done an awful lot of spiritual practice; I’ve prayed, I’ve meditated, I’ve taken vows, I’ve taken initiations, and I think I’m ready to die. But to be perfectly honest, I wish I had just 10 years of cancer-free life, just 10 years.” So I said, “If I could grant you that boon, if I could give you those 10 years, what would you do with them?”

And without skipping a beat he said, “I would be kind. I would teach children everything I’ve ever learned about how things work, and how to be strong, and how to be courageous, and how to be loving.”

MIND/BODY HEALING

What Is My Gift to the Family of the Earth?

All of the practices we do-every prayer we speak, every meditation, every invocation, every vow, every ordination-is not for our own healing alone. We do this work for the healing of all beings.

One of the most painful things for me as a minister and therapist working with people who have been given some suffering or some illness, some poverty, some injustice, or some violation is that they feel so hurt or broken-down or ripped open or defective because of the depth of the ache they carry in their body. They believe they have no gift at all to bring to the family of the Earth. And this, to me, is a suffering perhaps even greater than the one caused by the original abuse or illness.

What is your gift to the family of the Earth? One of the first things that happens to us when we think about our gift is we think that it must be something large and magnificent. “If we’re going to be truly spiritual saviors of the planet, we must have something terribly impressive and dramatic to offer to the world.” But our gifts need not be dramatic or magnificent. In point of fact, they can be quite small and unobtrusive.

Sometimes we wait until we’re quite certain that our gifts will be useful. And this of course is a trap because we never really know whether our gifts will be useful. We cannot wait until we know the results of our gifts before we offer them. The Buddha in the Eight-fold Path speaks quite passionately about right understanding and right mindfulness and right effort and right action, but the Buddha never speaks of right result. We do not know what will happen to what we bring, and we can’t hold the world hostage waiting for the promise that what we bring will do some good. As a matter of fact, sometimes our gifts will at first blush seem as if they do nothing at all.

A good friend of mine, Sharon Salzberg, wrote a book about 8 or 9 years ago. She was studying with a particular Buddhist teacher, and she and some friends decided to collect his meditations and teachings into a book. Wisdom Publications published it, and it sold a couple of thousand copies.

Many years later, Sharon was reading about Aung San Suu Kyi, who was imprisoned in Burma for her work trying to lead her people to freedom and democracy. She was placed under

What Is My Gift to the Family of the Earth? house arrest for many years. She was alone and frightened and mishandled. When she was eventually released, some people asked her, “What sustained you during that time?”

And she said, “Well, I learned how to meditate.” They asked her how she learned. She said, “I had this little book, and it taught me everything I needed to know in order to survive my imprisonment.”

And, of course, it was Sharon’s book.

We don’t know where our gift will bear fruit, but we do know that our gift is required. All it requires is for you to listen to the impulse that arises, as it does in each and every one of us not because it’s dramatic, not because it’s particularly spiritual, but just because it’s yours. You are the light of the world. What permission are you waiting for before you feel as if you could offer your gift with ease and playfulness and grace? What is your gift to the family of the Earth? F

This essay by Wayne Muller is narrated on the DVD which accompanies the book Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine published by Elsevier, Inc. Some essays from the book can be found on the IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences) website at www.noetics.org. IONS is a nonprofit organisation that conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potential and power of consciousness – including perceptions, beliefs, attention, intention, and intuition. The Institute explores phenomena that do not necessarily fit conventional scientific models, while maintaining a commitment to scientific rigour. See their website at www.noetics. org for more information.

The Daphne Grobicki Bursary The Daphne Grobicki Bursary Fund was established through a generous bequest made in 2013 by Ted Grobicki in honour of his beloved wife Daphne.

The Daphne Grobicki Bursary Fund is the legacy of Daphne’s selfless wish for others, and will cover the entire program costs for five eligible Cancer Support WA members to attend the Gawler Foundation Residential Program in Victoria. Cancer Support WA members who wish to attend the program, but are unable to afford it, are invited to apply for one of the five $2,000 bursaries.

If you would like further information about the Daphne Grobicki Bursary Fund or wish to apply please talk directly with a Cancer Support WA Facilitator, or call (08) 9384 3544.

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By Dr Joel E. Brame

For eons now, mankind has searched for ways to heal the many ailments that continue to plague millions of people in all parts of the world. The advances in both conventional and original forms of medicine, although contradictory for the most part, have unintentionally brought us to the birthing of an entirely new system of medicine. The emerging “New Medicine� system has the potential to eradicate disease, frailty and aging as we know it.

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MIND/BODY HEALING

The Origin Of Healing Systems

The division of medicine into traditional/conventional and alternative/complementary did not occur by accident. Mankind as a whole needed to experience both of them before it was ready for a system of medicine whose purpose would be of a higher nature than is currently available. The new medicine, although it is so unlike the conventional and alternative models, is being birthed by both of them.

Other than the Lemurian and Atlantean approaches to healing, it is clear that the ‘medicine of nature’ has been the most influential in recorded history. Nobody created this form of medicine; it was simply there to be re-cognized or discovered by those who had direct access to the language of nature called Veda, which means knowledge or science. The first written records of nature’s medicine appeared about 6,000 years ago. They were channeled messages written down by Vedic sages in direct response to the first occurrences of illness on the planet. This system, which kept illness and suffering at bay for hundreds of years, became known as Ayurveda, or ‘Science of Life’.

Although Ayurveda only survived the passage of time in India and in some areas of Brazil and China, it remains a universal form of medicine. Today it stands revived to some of its original form. It greatly contrasts with the western approach to modern medicine in that it seeks to address the underlying imbalance responsible for the symptoms of illness rather than trying to alleviate or remove the effects of the imbalance.

Outsmarting The Violation Of The Laws Of Nature

Before Ayurveda became a textbook science of healing, people knew how to live in harmony with the laws of nature. As a result, sickness, pain and poverty weren’t part of life. But as time progressed, we began to replace some of the laws of nature with our own laws; in other words, we violated natural law. To try to address the consequences of this transgression from natural living, a system of healing (Ayurveda) was developed to treat the physical and mental effects resulting from the deviations from natural law. A new set of natural laws needed to be employed to undo the damage that was caused by the violation of the original laws of nature.

When you dam a stream of water and it flows over its banks, the flooding caused by this action requires a different approach than just letting the stream flow in its own course. We needed to employ new laws and insights to help us deal with the damage once done. The first violations of the laws of nature on Earth created the need for a natural system of healing, one that would give us access to those secondary laws that would reduce the damage caused by violation of the primary laws. This system would show us how to release the obstruction that hinders the flow of the stream in its natural direction. Without anyone violating the primary laws of nature, such healing systems would otherwise be unnecessary.

“At first, that deep feeling of energy only comes in brief moments, sometimes at the most unexpected of times.

But eventually it resonates for longer periods, and begins to deeply uplift and transform our life, until we yearn to feel that resonance each and every day.” Joel Brame

Hippocrates was perhaps the most enlightened father of nature’s medicine in the more recent history of our species. He understood that the need for healing (applying secondary laws) resulted from the loss of alignment with one’s inner wisdom and intuition. The more humans distanced themselves from their own inner wisdom and the rules of the natural world, the harsher were the corrective measures needed to be taken by the force of nature. So killer diseases such as the plague began to decimate the population, which then generated the urge for a new kind of medicine, which would combat disease-causing germs and stop each new one dead before it became an epidemic. This approach is what has become known as the conventional system of modern medicine. Of course, all of this was part of the master plan – to throw much of humanity into the other end of the spectrum of duality for the purposes of greater learning and growth in consciousness.

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Breeding Illness

Just like Ayurvedic medicine, modern medicine, too, was unable to prevent the escalation of disease on the planet.

Modern medicine was so concerned with the effects or symptoms of disease that it lost sight of the reasons why people fell sick, most of which weren’t even physical causes. The discovery of the first antibiotic medicine (penicillin) caused euphoria among the medical circles and general population.

Years later, the enthusiasm of developing an effective drug for almost every infectious disease became dampened by the fact that the side effects generated by the poisons contained in the drugs were so severe that they often outweighed their benefits.

In fact, they actually contributed to the emergence of an entirely new class of diseases now known as chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and arthritis. At the beginning of the twentieth century only 10% of all diseases fell into this category. The rest were acute problems, including fractures, infections, burns, etc. By around 1980, over 90% of all diseases had reached a chronic stage, meaning they couldn’t be cured by modern medicine. They also became known as the killer diseases of the modern era. Since our genes haven’t changed a bit over the past hundreds or thousands of years, genetic errors cannot be held responsible for such a sudden and dramatic escalation of diseases, especially when most of them occur only in the modernized world. What’s more, having defective genes doesn’t mean an affected person is going to get ill. Research on the blood disease thalassaemia, for example, has shown that patients who have exactly the same defect in the gene may be extremely sick, mildly ill, or completely healthy. This applies to most other ‘genetic’ illnesses, too. There may be just as many people with healthy genes who suffer from diabetes or asthma as there are those who have defective genes.

The symptom-oriented approach of modern medicine became synonymous with the revival of the old epidemics that so scared and scarred humanity less than a hundred years ago. The wide use of antibiotics and steroids have forced the targeted microbes, blamed for causing infectious disease, to resist the drugs’ action and mutate into what is termed ‘antibiotic resistant organisms.’ The germs, following their natural survival instincts, are now outsmarting one drug after another, which means that there are now very few effective ‘treatments’ left for diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. Millions more people each year are dying from these ‘new’ infectious diseases than ever before and the current trends suggest it will get worse. Unless medicine takes a complete u-turn in its approach, or healing is practiced in a different fashion, mankind will be greatly decimated once again.

It is highly unlikely, though, that modern medicine is going to save humanity from self-destruction. The side-effects of drugs and treatments are breeding so many different diseases and causing so many deaths every minute of the day that it is virtually impossible to even remotely win the battle against disease as long as people believe they depend on any form of medicine, even an alternative one. Since the current medical system is primarily controlled by financiers who have a vested interest in keeping it going and even expanding it further, it is not in the investors’ interest to find a real cure for the most

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common illnesses, for this would mean the end of medicine.

Modern medicine is not designed to make people healthy; it is designed to make and keep people sick.

Many voices among doctors, patients and alternative practitioners denounce the exploitation of ‘innocent’ people.

However, they have not yet realised that the same medical system that is misleading and enslaving mankind and robbing millions of people of their sense of sovereignty and self-empowerment is also instrumental in birthing a new medicine, one that will make everyone their own best healer.

The government, health care agencies, medical associations, insurance carriers, and drug companies are unaware that they are key players in the cosmic game of transformation.

They have helped a major portion of mankind to feel helpless and powerless against microbes and other disease-causing factors. The extreme denial of the infinite power of healing and rejuvenation that lies inherent in everyone is forcing the pendulum of time to swing back and allow the masses to gain complete and unrestricted access to this power within. Without the hazards of the old medicine, the new medicine could not come about.

The perfection of all this lies in the fact that no person can fall ill, regardless of whether it is through a microbe or a medical drug or treatment, without having (unconsciously) agreed to this. The Universal Law of Non-interference makes certain there are no victims and no perpetrators. Each person’s Higher Self knows exactly what lessons are needed to move on and evolve toward greater wisdom, love, compassion and self-empowerment, however hard and painful the learning process may appear to be. The final lesson of each individual is to discover and produce the New Medicine, the medicine of one’s Higher Self.

The New Medicine

The return of old diseases and the emergence of chronic illness divided mankind into two camps: One that continues to uphold the trust and confidence in modern medicine, and one that takes recourse to natural methods of healing. Although alternative (complementary) medicine is still battling to make its approaches available to the masses, in some countries of the world such as Australia, Germany, England, New Zealand and now also in the United States, it is becoming more and more common sense to try the natural route, either along with or without conventional medicine. Now both approaches are well represented in the overall scheme of things and can be accessed by almost anyone. Medical doctors still risk prosecution and loss of their license to practice medicine if they dare speak out in favour of alternative health modalities or even apply these in their practice. But before long we will find that both approaches of medicine will intermix or merge together. Indications for integration are already subtly there; when it happens in a more obvious way, a New “Integrative” Medicine will be born, one that will be entirely different from that which existed before.

It will work according to the principle, “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

Both the alternative/complementary and conventional systems of medicine are incapable of eliminating disease on this planet. Both of these systems are expressions of duality; therefore, their scope of influence remains very limited and incomplete. They each have their value in upholding their particular expression of duality; some of it is effective, and some of it is not.

To find the eternal fountain of youth and healing, however, we must return to the origin of both these streams, that is, human consciousness. Now is the time to move collectively into the Divine moment where the consciousness of spirit and the physical matter of the body meet, and are recognised as one. It is in the gap of the moment where the two spirals of duality find their common origin. Of the two approaches neither is better or more important than the other. Both are capable of taking us to the desired place of wholeness. Here in this gap of simple existence we activate our creative intelligence, the intention of desire that becomes instant manifestation. The power surge emanating from the Divine moment of being within our own awareness creates the instant and automatic healing of that which is without.

In The Gap Of Non-Judgment

Healing does not need to take long. In fact, if it does it is likely to be incomplete. According to Japanese research studies, spontaneous remission and complete cure of cancer occurs when those afflicted with the disease move into the gap of non-judgment or non-duality, i.e., when they relinquish all needs or desires to have it one way or the other. This cannot be accomplished by will or by use of the rational mind. It may occur when someone faces death and, oddly, loses all hope for survival. Giving into death may take someone into the gap of their eternal spirit self, provided this is in the person’s highest interest. Thus, consciously losing the fear of dying and stepping into one’s essence may instantly stimulate the body’s immune system into a powerful response that can dismantle egg-sized malignant tumours in the brain, bladder, intestines, etc., within less than 24 hours, in some instances within as little as 15 seconds. There are thousands of documented cases like these.

What is most interesting in these cases of spontaneous remission is that the healing merely (if that is not enough) consisted of gaining freedom from judgment, of accepting one’s situation at that moment. Fighting for life doesn’t get you to this magical place of the Divine moment, for effort and struggle are born out of fear. Giving up one’s desire to live, on the other hand, is born out of resignation, frustration and merely represents the other end of duality awareness. However, accepting death without trying to avoid or enforce it moves you into the Divine moment where miracles take place.

MIND/BODY HEALING

The New Medicine will be less concerned about what is wrong with the body or mind; it won’t need to be. Instead, it will focus on unleashing the creative power of the individual as the principle source of health and youthfulness. The New Medicine will recognise that disease is ultimately the result of disconnection from our Source intelligence and Source energy. It will give health care back to the people. Miracles will take place as frequently as operations take place today. Reconnecting with our spirit Source will be the most important thing that can be done to improve one’s health. It’s like switching on the light that dispels darkness.

Mankind as a whole will realise that trying to find out everything about the symptoms of disease is like trying to investigate all the possible problems that darkness could cause to a person who has no light to see the path along which he is walking. Although switching on the light is a very simple act, it can solve some of the most complex problems arising from being in the dark. Imagine if there was no light. What could you possibly do in your life except sit, think and worry? Fixing diseases is similar to fixing darkness; there is no end to the fixing.

According to Japanese research studies, spontaneous remission and complete cure of cancer occurs when those afflicted with the disease move into the gap of non-judgment or non-duality, i.e., when they relinquish all needs or desires to have it one way or the other.

Of course, we don’t all have to face death, either our own or someone else’s, in order to find the opening to slip into the Divine moment. Life provides us with plenty of other opportunities that can serve in the same way. All we need to do is to keep our eyes, ears and hearts open to receive and accept these opportunities, many of which may show up in the disguise of problems and misfortunes. In due time, our polarized duality consciousness becomes anchored in the singularity of Self. The body simply follows suit. Once we lose our

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polarity thinking, that is, our mode of reference to what we believe is right and wrong or good and bad, the DNA of our body begins to lose its polarity mode as well. As soon as we are able to accept whatever is, which means all our strong and weak sides, our successes and failures, fears, anger, and guilt, etc., our body will move, automatically and spontaneously, out of its polarity mode.

You Can Make Your Body Do Anything

When you are under the strong emotional influences of fear, anger, or even excessive joy, your body is out of balance, too. The stress of sudden joy can cause a heart attack just as easily as the stress of sudden rage. Being ‘good’ is no antidote to disease. We need to remember here that being or expressing one quality also means that its opposite is not far away; in fact, it lurks in the invisible shadow part of our consciousness known as the subconscious mind. True healing begins when we can be both qualities and have no judgment about which one is better or worse. Shadow and light serve each other well and co-exist all the time. The reason we have ‘weak’ spots in our attitudes and behaviour is to bring out and develop their opposite, ‘strong’ counterparts. Accepting both creates oneness or balance, and balance is the key to healing.

Preferring one quality to another generates discord in the body and mind. For example, even if we choose happiness over sadness, it counts as an imbalance. Consequently, the body has no other choice but to develop a physical imbalance, too.

Everything in life is valuable, and once we see that we then become graced with the perception of oneness. Since the body does nothing of its own accord but simply follows instructions, the new perception of oneness and acceptance of whatever is becomes the new blueprint reference for DNA. The genetic codes in your body’s DNA adjust to the ‘new you’ and copy that information into a new RNA which subsequently alters the functioning of your body, making complete rejuvenation not just possible but unavoidable. When the adjustment is complete, the DNA structure will go off like a time bomb in order to accommodate the light of oneness. The time for genetic detonation is now.

Our body is nothing but soft clay, shaped and molded on a minute-by-minute and day-by-day basis. If you tell your body that something is good for you, it believes you. It has no other choice but to serve one master, you. If you tell your body it cannot heal itself and requires help from outside it will believe this too and you will find yourself in need of a doctor, a drug or surgery.

On the other hand, your body can walk on fire if you can convince it that it can. You can even pierce your body with knives and needles and suffer no injuries if you can make it believe that this won’t hurt it. If you persuade your body that it can live without air for several days while being buried under the earth, then it can even do that for you. Levitating in mid air or walking on water are other so called impossible feats the body can accomplish if it trusts its instructor enough. Sri Chin Moi, the well-known peacemaker and musician from India living in the United States, repeatedly lifts 1,000 pounds of weights in front of camera crews. He claims that the power is coming from his mind. Numerous ‘miracle performers’ have been scientifically studied and show that the above abilities have actually nothing to do with the body but come from the power of the mind. Likewise, your body can remove a tumour that has metastasized (spread) everywhere. But for this to happen you need to step outside the awareness of the body (duality) and move into the awareness of the spirit (oneness). F Dr. Joel E Brame is an expert in coaching and motivating others to achieve their health and energy goals. Trained as a physician, counselor, and life coach, Dr. Brame helps energy-seeking clients rediscover their passion and purpose, identify and overcome energy and weight loss obstacles, and create a stronger body with renewed confidence and power. He has personally experienced the radical transformations that come with an energised and healthy lifestyle, overcoming several chronic ailments through lifestyle changes alone.

Joel’s messages of creating positive energy and precise action extend through his seminars, books, articles, and personal weight loss coaching. He serves as a professor in biological sciences, psychology, and nutrition at local colleges. Joel has contributed articles to many local and online publications and has given award-winning radio interviews. He is also a sought-after speaker on holistic approaches to energy, weight loss, and cancer prevention.

an opportunity to heal If a culture treats a particular illness with compassion and enlightened understanding, then sickness can be seen as a challenge, as a healing crisis and opportunity. Being sick is then not a condemnation or a moral judgment, but a movement in a larger process of healing and restoration. When sickness is viewed positively and in supportive terms, then illness has a much better chance to heal, with the concomitant result that the entire person may grow and be enriched in the process. ~ Ken Wilber

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Top five regrets

of the dying A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

While there is breath in your body it is never too late to change your life. F From: guardian.co.uk, April 2013 Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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grief.

cancer in one word

By Tambre Leighn

Let’s face it, when you are faced with a cancer diagnosis, you learn a lot of new words – and old words take on a whole new meaning.

It’s not news that our modern culture still has not integrated strong tools or processes for grieving. We often don’t know what to say or do when someone is grieving. We hope they’ll get over it quickly and mostly the concept of grief is related to losing someone we care for.

But grief is also often experienced with times of change as well – graduating from school, moving to a new home, starting a new job, etc. Even “good” changes typically mean leaving something behind. It’s not uncommon for cancer survivors to experience grief over the losses that occur as part of the experience. Some areas where you may experience loss include:

It’s not uncommon for people with cancer to experience grief over losses that occur as part of the cancer experience.

The gifts of grief are the deepening of relationships and support.

• Finances • Relationship • Physical abilities • Mental abilities

• Future plans including having a family • Parts of your body • Energy to engage in life • Career

Being aware that feelings of grief are normal and identifying areas where you feel cancer has cost you something is an important step in the healing process. It’s normal to feel angry, let down or sad about your losses. But long term anger or sadness that goes unaddressed ultimately has a negative impact on the mind and body.

One of the gifts of grief is the opportunity to get present to those feelings and then choose how you want to approach healing those losses. Another gift of grief is that we can use this energy to invite others to show us some care and give us some support. When we come from a place of “I got this”, there is less room for others to participate. When we open up and share our feelings of loss, others get to ask “how can I help you” and in those moments we create community and connection. Grief is the opportunity to not feel like you have to go it alone.F

Tambre Leighn, MA, CPC, ELI-MP is a certified professional coach helping cancer survivors and caregivers find the energy to go from surviving to thriving and beyond. Her personal experience caregiving for her late husband inspired Tambre to become a coach, a trained facilitator for the American Cancer Society’s “I Can Cope” program and to found Well Beyond Ordinary .

Cancer Wellness Support Groups You are not alone on your journey with cancer. Cancer Support WA is here to support all West Australians with cancer...you are welcome to attend our weekly support groups for people with cancer, their families and carers. Bookings not required.

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Cancer Support WA

Open Cancer Support Group: Tuesdays 10am-12pm Carers’ Support Group: Tuesdays 10am-12pm Grief & Loss Group: last Thursday of each month 1pm-3pm www.cancersupportwa.org.au

MIND/BODY HEALING

the emotional healing powers of yoga

By Donna Helm Yost

Yoga, a practice of uniting body, mind and spirit, is a process of opening up to

all aspects of ourselves. And when we practice yoga, I believe that we are the most open to change. So what we hear and what we think can be amplified and can assist in emotional healing. We hold emotions, beliefs, ideas, experiences, and trauma within our bodies...and when we practice yoga, we begin to open ourselves and create possibilities for releasing that which causes us pain.

Memories and experiences can be held in the connective tissue of the body, so when we practice long holds in yoga, we may begin to experience the memories associated with the trauma. Sometimes, what we notice isn’t so clear – maybe a sense of stagnation, nausea, a headache – all signs that toxins are trying to escape. We frequently think of toxins as being associated with the air that we breathe, the water we drink, the food and beverages that we consume. But toxins are also related to our thoughts and emotions.

When we practice yoga, we can begin to release the toxins and to create space for healing. And the practice of yoga can even be used to deal with current emotional challenges. Ten years ago, my father had surgery and things went terribly wrong. For three months, he remained in the hospital and his condition was far from stable. My day included work, my yoga practice, and visiting him in the hospital. I warned my yoga teachers that if I turned into a puddle, that it wasn’t them – that I was going through some challenges and that although I might be crying, yoga was providing me with the therapy that I needed to maintain some sense of balance and to be there for my mum and dad during that very difficult time.

On my mum’s birthday, I took a Viniyoga class. This style of yoga incorporates a gentle repetitive pattern of movements – going in and out of the same pose several times. During this practice I had a vision of my dad surrounded by light and I knew that everything was okay. I felt that he had connected with me.

Following the practice, my mum, grandmother and I went to the hospital and we learned that nothing could be done to save him – that the only thing keeping him alive where the machines. At first, I was confused because the message had been so clear – then I realised that he had been trying to communicate to me that all was well – even with his passing.

Yoga Courses & Classes at Cancer Support WA 5 Week Absolute Beginners Healing Yoga Course Our gentle yoga course is designed for absolute beginners and people with cancer or other health issues requiring a gentle, healing therapeutic approach in a safe and supportive environment.

Tuesdays 4pm – 5pm. 2013 Start Dates: 4th June; 27 Aug; 29 Oct. Cost: $50 members / $75

Healing Yoga Weekly Classes Taking inspiration from Iyengar and Vinyasa, the classes emphasise relaxation, breath awareness, gentle movement and meditation.

The clarity that comes from yoga allowed me to feel his energy and the peace that he felt in his transition out of this life. I’m so grateful for this experience.

Sequences and practices are designed to be suitable for people with cancer, and are taught with great care and compassion.

My students also tell me of similar situations where they’ve experienced an emotional release during their practice. That they’ve found an answer, made a decision, opened their hearts because of the practice of yoga. I’ve seen transformation from anger and uncertainty – anxiety and depression – to hope and a sense of peace.

Thursdays from 9.30 -10.45am at Cancer Support WA. Cost: $5 members / $10. Facilitated by Madeline Clare.

Yoga is a beautiful way to find emotional healing – to connect with our true self – that place within each of us that is content, wise, and peaceful. That place that connects us with our source – the Divine. F

Wednesdays from 9.30 -11.00am at Kookaburra Creek Yoga Centre. Cost: $10. Facilitated by Raje Deva.

From: yogaommagazine.com. Donna Helm-Yost is a registered yoga teacher, licensed psychologist, and certified school psychologist and the Founder and President of Karma Yoga Project. Her website is: www.karmayogaproject.org Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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sitting in of spring A Dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh was born in central Vietnam in 1926 and joined the monkhood at the age of 16. He has since become the world’s most well-known living Zen Master, poet, peace and human rights activist.

He is the author of many books and travels the world leading retreats at which he talks on topics relevant to the upliftment and healing of humankind.

While we’re sittign still, sitting peacefully, there are three elements that we need

to harmonise. The first is the body, the second is the mind, the third is the breath – mind, body, and breath.

Sometimes our body’s there but the mind has run off somewhere else. It runs off to the future, to the past. It is caught in worries, sadness, anger, jealousy, fear. There is no peace, no stillness. If we want to sit still we have to bring the mind back to the body with its sadness, anger, jealousy, fear. With these things, normally there is no peace, no stillness. If we want to sit still we have to bring the mind back to the body. How can we bring the mind back to the body? The Buddha taught in the Sutra on Mindfulness of Breathing that we need to know how to use the breath.

When we breathe in, we bring the mind back to the breath. I am breathing in, and I am aware that I am breathing in. Instead of paying attention to things that happened in the past, things that might happen in the future, we bring the mind back so that it can pay attention to the breath.

This sutra has been available in Vietnam since the third century. Zen master Tang Hoi was the forefather of Vietnamese Zen and this is one of the most basic sutras in meditation practice. Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I am breathing out. This is the first exercise of the sixteen exercises in the Sutra on Mindfulness of Breathing, which I have translated from Pali to Vietnamese and from Chinese to Vietnamese; it has been published in many languages.

The day I discovered the Sutra on Mindfulness of Breathing I was so happy! It is a wonderful sutra for our practice of meditation. If we practice wholeheartedly, in a few weeks we can bring peace and happiness back to our bodies and to our minds.

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MIND/BODY HEALING

The Practices of the Buddha In Plum Village we have a gatha, a short poem that we memorize. It has only a few words.

The first one, “in, out,” means breathing in, I know that I’m breathing in. Breathing out, I know that I’m breathing out. The second one is “deep, slow.” Breathing in, I see that my inbreath has become deeper. Breathing out, I see that my out-breath has become slower.

In the beginning our breath is very short, but if we continue to follow our breathing for a while, naturally our in-breath becomes slower, deeper, and our out-breath also becomes slower, more relaxed.

This is our practice. Just as when we want to play the guitar, we have to practice every day, or if we want to learn to play tennis, we have to practice to be a good tennis player, we also have to practice our breathing. After one hour of practice we already feel better.

Then slowly we’ll be able to sit still like the Buddha, and be worthy to be his disciples.

Perhaps for a long time we have been going to the temple only to do offerings. But that’s not enough. We have to learn the teachings of the Buddha, the practices that the Buddha wanted to transmit to us.

Breathing for Our Mothers and Fathers We practice not to be happy in the future; we practice to be happy right in the present moment. When we’re sitting, we should have happiness as we are sitting. When we are walking, we should have happiness as we are walking. We sit with our breath so that the body can be calm and the mind can be calm; that is called sitting meditation. When we know how to walk, to take steps in lightness and gentleness, that’s called walking meditation.

“I am taking each step in freedom for you, Father.”

“I am breathing gently, peacefully for you, Mother.”

In practice centers that practice in the Plum Village tradition, we walk peacefully as if we were walking in the Buddha Land. We do not talk as we are walking. If we need to say something, we stop to say it, and then we continue walking. If you visit Plum Village or Deer Park or Green Mountain or Prajna or Tu Hieu, you will see that the monks and the nuns in these centers do not talk when they walk. They pay attention to each of their steps, and the steps always follow the breath.

When you come to live with the monks and the nuns, even for just twenty-four hours, you can learn how to walk and sit like the monks and nuns. Peace and happiness radiate as we are sitting, as we are walking. When we practice correctly, there’s peace and happiness today; we don’t have to wait until tomorrow. Lay practitioners who attend our retreats learn to breathe, to sit, and how to pay attention to their steps right in the first hour of orientation.

“In, out, deep, slow. Calm, ease, smile, release.” That’s the fourth exercise: “Smile, release.”

Breathing in, I feel calm, I feel such a sense of well-being. Breathing out, I feel light. This is what we call the element of ease – one of the seven factors of enlightenment. When we practice through the third exercise we feel calm and ease. When we breathe like that it’s not just for us, but we are continuing the career of the Buddha. We are breathing for our fathers, our mothers in us. When we practice like that it’s so joyful.

continued on next page...

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The Healing Power of Total Relaxation We accumulate so much stress! This can bring a lot of illnesses if we do not know how to practice total relaxation. That is why the Buddha taught us: breathing in, I relax my whole body; breathing out, I smile to my whole body.

In Plum Village we have the Dharma practice called “total relaxation.” We can do total relaxation as we are sitting or as we are lying down. I ask you to learn this practice. If you practice total relaxation each day for about twenty minutes, you can avoid a lot of illnesses. If you hold in too much tension and stress in your body or your mind, it can generate illnesses in the future, such as high blood pressure, cardiac diseases, or stroke.

“when the teacher and the students sit together and exchange their experiences in the practice and teach each other and support each other, there is this happiness as if we were sitting in the spring. We benefit from the wind of the spring that is like a nourishing breeze.”

If we can practice as a family each day, with a time allotted so that the parents, the children, can lie down and practice, that is a very civilized family. In Plum Village we have produced CDs that can help people to practice total relaxation, available in English, French, Vietnamese, and German. At first when we don’t know how to lead total relaxation, we can listen to the CD and the whole family can practice. After a while we can take turns leading total relaxation for our family.

In the West there are hospitals that apply these breathing exercises to save patients when there are no other ways to help them. In an article in the Plum Village magazine, Brother Phap Lieu [a former physician] wrote about a doctor who learned about the sutra and the practices of Plum Village and then applied what he learned to help his patients.

Peace and Freedom in Each Step There are people in the West who are from the Christian tradition yet they know how to take advantage of Buddhist wisdom to help themselves. We call ourselves a Buddhist country, but many of us only know how to worship and make offerings.

We do not yet know how to apply the very effective teachings transmitted to us by the Buddha through the sutras such as The Four Establishments of Mindfulness or Mindfulness of Breathing.

We have this temple – Phap Van (Dharma Cloud) – as well as Prajna, Tu Hieu, An Quang, and other temples. We can go to these temples to learn more about the teachings of the Buddha.

We learn about breathing meditation, sitting meditation, walking meditation, total relaxation meditation, so that we can apply them into our daily lives.

Over the centuries when people have been in deep despair and have come in touch with the wonderful teachings of the Buddha, they have been able to transform their lives. We are children of the Buddha – for many generations. Buddhism has been in our country for over two thousand years. If we have not learned these basic practices of meditation, it is a shame.

We have to be able to sit still. We have to know how to breathe in such a way that we feel comfortable, peaceful, and we need to know how to walk so that there is peace and freedom in each step. We’re not doing this for ourselves only, but for our fathers, for our mothers, for our children, and for our country.

In the Anapanasati Sutra on mindfulness of breathing, the Buddha taught us to use the mindfulness of our breathing to heal our body and our mind. When there is relaxation in the body, our body has the capacity to heal itself and medication becomes secondary.

When stress is so great, we can take a lot of medication, but it’s very difficult to heal.

So while we’re taking medication, the most important thing is to relax the body. When the nurse is about to give us an injection we tense our body because we are afraid there will be pain. When we tense up the muscles like that, if she gives an injection it

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will be very painful. So she says, “Now take a deep breath!” And when we’re breathing out and we’re thinking of the out-breath, then she sticks the needle into our arm.

While we’re driving, while we are cooking, while we are sweeping the floor of the house, while we are using the computer, we can also practice total relaxation.

Do not think that the monks and the nuns do not work a lot. They also work a lot, but they practice to work in a spirit of relaxation.

That is why they’re able to maintain their freshness, their smile, their happiness. We can do the same as the monastics.

The Secret of Zen After we bring our mind back to take care of the body, we can bring our mind back to take care of the mind. In our mind there’s suffering, fear, worry, irritation, anger. Often we want to suppress these feelings but each day the tension and stress grow greater and greater. Eventually they cause us illnesses of the body and mind. The Buddha teaches us to bring the mind back to the body to take care of the body and to bring the mind back to take care of the mind.

Among the sixteen exercises of breathing, there is one exercise that aims to relax negative mental formations, such as anger and worry. Breathing in, I am aware that there’s irritation in me. Breathing out, I smile to my irritation. Breathing in, I am aware that there are worries in me. Breathing out, I take care of my worries. Our irritation or worries are like our baby. We use our breathing to generate the energy of mindfulness in order to embrace our worries and our fear.

Right mindfulness means we know what’s going on. For example, I am breathing in, and I know that I am breathing in. That is right mindfulness of the breath. When we take a step and we know that we are taking the step, that is right mindfulness of the step.

When we drink a cup of coconut juice, in that moment we have mindfulness of drinking. We bring the mind back to the body so that it’s present as we are sitting, standing, lying down, putting on our robe, taking off our robe, brushing our teeth. Our mind is always present. That is the secret of Zen.

When the body and mind are relaxed, we have the capacity to listen to the other person and to speak gentle words. Then we can re-establish communication between us. The other person may be our spouse, our partner, our daughter or son, our friend, or parents. That practice is deep listening and loving speech.

If there is no peace in the body and the mind, we cannot practice loving speech and deep listening. When we are able to practice deep listening and loving speech, we can help the other person to suffer less. Joy can be re-established in the family.

After just five days of practice, people can reconcile with their families, with their parents. If they practice, they invest a hundred percent into their practice because they want to succeed and not practice just for form.

Wings of Spring This morning our delegation had a chance to visit An Quang Temple. We offered to the abbot of An Quang a calligraphy that said, “To sit in the wind of the spring.”

I explained to the abbot that in the old teaching, when the brothers and sisters sit together in this love on the path, when the teacher and the students sit together and exchange their experiences in the practice and teach each other and support each other, there is this happiness as if we were sitting in the spring. We benefit from the wind of the spring that is like a nourishing breeze. So that’s why this morning I wrote the calligraphy, “To sit in the wind of the spring.”

I have a feeling that tonight as the teacher and students sit here together, we also sit in the wind of the spring. We have the good fortune to meet each other to exchange our knowledge and experiences. This is a great happiness that I would like all of us to be aware of. F

From: The Mindfulness Bell magazine. www.mindfulnessbell. org.This isfrom a Dharma talk Thich Nhat Hanh gave on a tour of Vietnam, at Phap Van Temple in Ho Chi Minh City in February, 2007.

To hear this talk in full, go to www.dpcast.org. Look for “Mindfulness and Healing in Vietnam”.

meditation made easy Meditation is a powerful self-healing tool with profound benefits. Learn simple, effective meditation techniques in five weeks at Cancer Support WA’s Introduction to Meditation Course held on Thursdays 4pm-5pm.

Only 2 more courses in 2013, starting 27th June and 26th September. Register early to ensure you don’t miss out. Casual meditation sessions every Monday at 9.30am.

Book online: www.cancersupportwa.org.au

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4 practices to transform your morning After 35 years of daily spiritual practice, if I’ve learned anything at all it’s this: it doesn’t

work if you don’t do it. What we seem to need, especially when we’re just beginning, is something simple that we can do anywhere. Here’s my recipe for an easy, rivtalising morning practice.

Choose Your Space

“I promise if you do this practice every day it will change your life. Why? Because it has a way of loosening up the knots in our physical and mental bodies, giving grace the space it needs to find its way into our hearts. And with grace, anything can happen – even miracles.”

Identify a quiet corner in your home. If it is a corner that will let in a slice of sunlight, streetlight, or moonlight, all the better. Be creative – for some, the bathroom might be ideal. In this space, arrange a comfortable kitchen chair and light a small candle.

Stretch Do a couple of minutes of stretching. I suggest starting out with head-to-toe wiggling, the kind you did when you were a little kid and were too excited about something to stand still. If you can’t wiggle all of you, move the parts of you that you can. Follow this with a couple of “holding up the sky.” Reach as high as you can with both arms, keeping your hands flat as though you are balancing a tray. Hold the stretch for a count of 10, then let your arms and head hang down toward the floor. Finish up with some waist twists, letting your arms swing.

Sit With your eyes slightly open, sit on the chair with your back straight, feet flat on the ground, and hands in your lap. Take a few deep belly breaths and wish the world well– allow images of people, places, and things to randomly flit across your thoughts, and with each image simply think, Take good care of yourself.

You’ll find that there is a slight pause after the initial rush of images. When that happens all you have to do is to breathe quietly and deeply, listening to whatever sounds are filling the space around you.

If you find yourself worrying or cranky about something just tell yourself, It’s OK, and go back to listening. This is not a time for problem solving or for mentally writing that rebuttal to a tweet that upset you. Instead, let yourself feel how good it feels to be taken care of by the world, which has given you this chair to sit on, the beauty of light from the candle, and the energy of the sounds around you. Sit like this for a few minutes, or longer if you feel like it.

Give Thanks To segue into the rest of the day, it helps to take a moment to identify at least three things you are grateful for. Obvious choices: your body, the chair, a mind that can think, music. Then, when you are ready, take a deep cleansing breath and head into the day.

By Geri Larkin. From Spirituality & Health magazine, January-February 2013. www.spiritualityhealth.com

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MIND/BODY HEALING

the meditation A meditation practice doesn’t have to take hours. If you’re busy or new to meditation then start with our simple 5 minute meditation...

Spend the first minute just listening to your body. Ignore the mind and focus on the messages you are getting from the physical. Pay attention to all sensations, any pain, any tightness, any discomfort.

Those are mini-signs asking you to give a little, extra attention and love to those areas of your body.

For the second minute, start focusing on your breathing. Just pay attention to the gentle flow of air filling your body and slowing leaving your body. Allow your consciousness to filter out everything except for the flow of life force (air).

For the third minute, deepen your breathing. Long, slow breaths in and out. Feel your lungs filling and releasing.

For the fourth minute, continue to deepen and slow your breathing. Focus exclusively on the air entering your nostrils, traveling to your lungs, and exhaling out of your mouth.

For the fifth minute, let your consciousness move back over your body. Notice any changes, any tension that has been released, any change in feelings or mental states.

Congratulations! You finished a five-minute meditation. Give yourself some time to integrate back into regular life. It can be a shock to the system to go from a meditative state to instant action.

Give yourself at least a few minutes to transition back.

Now it’s time to make a commitment to tomorrow. Can you spare five minutes somewhere in your day? Then you’re already half-

way there to a regular meditation practice. With the right easy meditation techniques for beginners you’ll be feeling calm, cool and collected in 5 minutes a day.

Meditation is widely known to reduce stress and anxiety, but now science has proven that it may even help prevent illness.

In a study at the University of Wisconsin, researchers found that mindfulness meditation produced lasting positive changes in both the brain and the immune system. The research team found that mindfulness meditation produced biological effects that improved the subjects’ resiliency. Meditators demonstrated stronger immune function than those in the control group.

Mindfulness meditation eases the stress and pain of chronic disease, as it can help practitioners accept thoughts and feelings as they occur and deepen awareness of positive emotions.

Meditation calms the mind and the body. It produces a state of being all of us can learn and apply to our daily lives. As a part of a healthy lifestyle, meditation can add energy, focus and enjoyment to our personal experience. With as little as five minutes a day, significant mental and physical improvement can be gained.

Meditation is a great and simple way to deal with life’s stresses. Meditation calms the mind and the body. It produces a state of being all of us can learn and apply to our daily lives. As a part of a healthy lifestyle, meditation can add energy, focus and enjoyment to our personal experience. With as little as ten minutes a day, significant mental and physical improvement can be gained.

As we age, our bodies and minds begin to show the signs of long-term stress. Meditation strengthens us and promotes continued health and vigour. It is an invaluable tool that balances our minds, bodies and spirits. Regular mediation practice creates a marvelous integration physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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the 24 Hour Cancer Support Phone Line

By Mike Sowerby

In 2013 Cancer Support WA has trialled a 24 Hour Cancer Support Phone Line with a grant from the Brady Cancer Support Foundation. The service has been offered to members and continues to provide invaluable emotional and practical support for people in their immediate time of need.

I

t’s Saturday afternoon and a text message comes through from our call centre “please ring a sole carer mum Norma, she has rung distressed, her daughter Helen has a brain tumour and can’t stop vomiting”.

I ring Norma back immediately reassuring her she has done the right thing in seeking help, and that she is not alone. We discuss the immediate medical needs for Helen ad ensure she is referred to the appropriate medical care.

I then ring Norma back once the immediate crisis has been dealt with to listen and take in the story that Norma is a sole parent and carer for her daughter, looking after Helen at home. She is not fully aware of the sorts of community support that could help her with the demanding and at times distressing role of mum and carer to the daughter she loves and who is seriously ill.

Being a primary carer at home is exhausting, the need for care and attention often extending into the night hours, broken sleep, no weekends off, this creates a huge toll personally and can strain the best of relationships.

Norma was in need of respite for herself, reassurance that Helen would be taken care of, and more quality time to be mum and daughter. She was assisted with organising ongoing help with a team of community service providers who each did an assessment and commenced working with Norma and Helen.

As part of our service Cancer Support WA continues to make contact with Norma and make home or hospital visits and calls to let her know we are thinking of them both and to ask how things are going.

This story is one of the many types of contacts we receive via our 24/7 Cancer Support Phone Line, be it the needs of carer, that person who has just had a diagnosis and is feeling frightened or confused, someone who is feeling alone, isolated by the changes cancer treatment has brought to their life, feeling exhausted, or despondent at the intensity of their treatment regime, often feeling this way at the vulnerable times when services and care are not so readily available.

The vision for a 24/7 emotional and practical support service came out of the requests by our members for home or hospital visits, a want to talk something through when they were feeling alone and unsure or unable to attend the support group they had felt so much apart of and where they had felt so care for.

We do feel most vulnerable at night or at times when services are not fully available, ie weekends or public holidays, and this is the time when being able to talk to an experienced

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What began as a trial has made us aware of the tremendous value of being able to get back to people quickly, ie “I am so glad you rang back, I didn’t expect you to get back to me so soon, so thank you,”and with what is often a 10-20 minute telephone call that person feels heard, less alone and more able to face the concern they have in that time. This conversation often helps people become aware of community health services they were unaware of, the ongoing nature of our services and the reassurance that they can make contact anytime they need.

The caller is assured that it’s okay to call when they feel the need and that there are other services and programs offered by Cancer Support WA to help them develop greater coping strategies, provide ongoing support, and the opportunity to meet others whom are going through the same or similar times and for whom this group support provides a sense of belonging, care and compassion.

We met with Western Australia’s Health Minister the Hon. Dr. Kim Hames a couple of weeks ago to discuss the 24 Hour Cancer Support Phone Line and our intention to make it available to all West Australians with cancer beyond the trial period. Dr. Hames reiterated the importance of a wellness approach by cancer care services, and that a service which helps ameliorate the more immediate suffering in the cancer community was a needed and worthwhile service. F

24 Hour Cancer Support Phone Line We are here for you, even when our centre is closed. Cancer Support WA members and families are invited to utilise the 24/7 Cancer Support Phone Line for practical and emotional support at any time the need arises.

Your call will be put through to our qualified cancer counsellor. The 24 Hour Cancer Support Phone Support is available as a free community service.

phone (08) 9384 3544

Become a Cancer Mentor The Cancer Support WA Mentoring Program provides training in basic group and counselling skills, as well as providing a model for ongoing supervision and support for people seeking to run cancer support groups, regionally, remotely and within the Perth metropolitan area. The program is orientated towards developing skills specific to cancer support, including meeting the challenges of cancer diagnosis, carer support, and working with grief and loss.

Provided by Mike Sowerby and Cathy Brown.

Wellness counselling Ongoing counselling sessions with a caring, compassionate professional could help you deal more effectively with the many issues, fears and emotions which arise on the cancer journey; gain clarity to make treatment decisions; give you the insight to grow from your experiences; and the peace of mind and heart needed to heal. Sessions are available at our Cottesloe centre, your home or hospital.

Sessions with Fully Qualified Counsellors Mike Sowerby and Sue Etheridge.

Sessions available by appointment.

Counselling Fee Schedule Counselling session (one hour duration)

$50 members $75 public

Home/hospital visit

+ $15 travel fee

Counselling sessions are available free to any Cancer Support WA member who is experiencing financial hardship due to cancer. Please mention this at time of booking.

Free counselling sessions are limited to one session (1 hour) a week per family.

Supported by the Brady Cancer Support Foundation Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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LIFESTYLE & wellbeing

cancer counsellor can make a huge difference to the levels of distress and uncertainty that can arise on the cancer journey. Meeting such a need in the moment and being reassured is such a relief and most often leads to a much better sense of self, greater peace of mind.

Cancer Support WA provides mentoring and counselling for people dealing with cancer at every stage of the journey including survivorship

The 16 Important Rules Can a diet help you recover from

1. Take your vitamins

cancer? The 16 points below come

Here are some tips on consuming adequate vitamins (best sources in order): ◦Vitamin E: sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, almonds, wheatgerm, soya oil, Betacarotene: carrots, sweet potatoes, apricots, cherries, spinach. ◦Vitamin C: red peppers, broccoli, papaya, oranges ◦Lycopene: tomatoes, especially cooked ◦Selenium: brazil nuts in shells, wholemeal, sunflower seeds, eggs ◦Zinc: oysters(!), sunflower seeds ◦Omega 3: salmon, herring, mackerel, flaxseed ◦Vitamin K: greens and broccoli ◦Then there are known anti-cancer fighters in garlic, onions, apples, dark red and black fruits, nuts – think reds, yellows, greens and blues.

from research studies published

by Cancer Watch – in fact, all have appeared in several different research studies from several expert sources and the findings are very consistent. This diet-

2. Eat Fresh

cancer-research list is a starting

Eating processed and packaged food (plastic or tinned) not only increases your salt and sugar consumption but may provide lower vitamin levels. There are also concerns about packaging toxins. Freshly prepared food maximises your nourishment. Lightly steam, grill, avoid frying and microwaves.

point for you to use in your cancer nutrition plan.

3. Eat Whole Whole grains, whole foods. Low Glycaemic Index foods that release their energy slowly. Foods full of nourishment for your undernourished body. Eat fresh – especially avoiding those processed and packaged foods which often contain nutritionally worthless refined ingredients and large levels of salt which can poison your cells.

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Don’t stuff. One or two massive meals play havoc with your insulin levels and disrupt all your hormones. You should snack, or graze, ensuring a slow but steady stream of nutrients to your body, especially as some vitamins are water soluble and can flush through in just a few hours.

5. Eat oily fish Salmon, herring and mackerel provide omega 3, proven to reduce cellular inflammation levels. They also provide a little vitamin D, a known anticancer compound (also ensure you get adequate sunlight for Vitamin D production. If you cannot do this, supplement)

and beneficial fatty acid levels all decline. And these ‘good guys’ help eliminate toxins like heavy metals and oestrogenic compounds, they stimulate the immune system, digest/ eliminate microbes and yeasts, and new research shows they produce butyrate which can kill cancer cells! Your cancer treatment may very well have left you depleted. It’s a fact: antibiotics and certain drugs kill the ‘good guys’.

12. Guard a correct weight

Shown to have all manner of anticancer benefits from a reduction in cellular inflammation levels (along with aspirin, curcumin, ginger and aloe vera) to limiting blood supply to tumours.

Being overweight increases your risks of cancer, and shortens survival times. But the good news is that research shows that if you correct your excess weight it will increase your survival times. Equally, do not lose too much weight, a severe occurrence in about 7 per cent of chemotherapy patients – cachexia – will cut survival times. Eat properly, not fattening foods, dairy and empty calories, but good foods that don’t feed your cancer at the same time. Hydrazine sulphate has been shown in research, including clinical trials, from the USA to Russia to reduce the dangers of both high glucose and cachexia.

7. Eat less calories than you need

13. Avoid Glucose

6. Eat garlic

Research from Harvard and UCLA shows benefits in cancerfighting hormones where people consume 5% less calories than they need. Some of these benefits can be replicated by the natural compound resveratrol.

8. Drink clean water The best is clean mountain water in glass bottles. You can try an ionizer or a Reverse Osmosis System with a remineraliser/ alkalizing system. The issue is that in big cities where the water is recycled you can find levels of oestrogenic compounds and even the latest drugs in the water. Plastic bottled water may also release phthalates (xenoestrogens) into the contents, especially if they have been exposed to heat or the sun.

9. Eat more herbs Herbs have very beneficial cleansing and immune-stimulating properties. It is often said that they conflict with certain drugs but there is very little research on the truth of this. Four of the best are astragalus, cat’s claw, echinacea and turmeric (curcumin). MD Anderson says astragalus doubles survival times for certain patients.

10.Take natural supplements If you feel you cannot get your nourishment fast enough naturally, or feel you are suffering shortages, then you can supplement – but avoid the cheap, mass-market, synthetic vitamins that often do not contain all the natural forms of the vitamin, and look for natural compounds – like whole/total vitamin E, resveratrol, Indole 3 Carbinol

11. Take Probiotics More than 80 clinical trials have shown that without friendly bacteria in your gut you cannot get the full nourishment from your foods. For example, vitamin K, folic acid, vitamin B-12

Glucose is the favourite food of a cancer cell. Cancer patients with high blood levels of glucose have shorter survival times. Fact. Remember, not all sugars are glucose. Some are extremely beneficial polysaccharides (like those in garlic, aloe vera, apples and brown rice) which can stimulate the immune system, some are fruit sugars, others have intra-cellular communications benefits. No, here we are talking common or garden glucose (found in soft drinks from Coca cola – 10 spoonsful in one can – to Ribena and smoothies, sticky buns, cakes, ice cream, fast food, packaged food). Avoid it all!

14. Avoid Dairy You simply do not need more Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF1) in your body making your cells divide faster when you have cancer. The studies linking dairy consumption with cancer are numerous (cervical, breast, prostate etc). And lactose (milk sugar) can be a negative factor for cancer patients too, especially where they have yeast or microbe infections.

15. Avoid Alcohol No one is saying the occasional glass of red wine in an evening won’t be beneficial and relaxing. But it is proven that alcohol consumption can drive cancers, both directly and by feeding any yeast infections.

16. Avoid bad fats No refined oils, no trans-fats in your anti-cancer diet. They increase levels of ‘free-radicals’ in the body and are linked to increase cancer risk. Avoid animal fats where possible. Try extra virgin olive oil or walnut oil on your salads. Eat oily fish, or take fish oil supplements. Eat flaxseed on your home-made mueseli.

Don’t fry your food or eat greasy fast food. F

From: canceractive.com Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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FOOD & NUTRITION

4. Eat smaller meals

Miso Soup – the ultimate anti-cancer food M

uch more than the proverbial apple, a daily bowl of miso soup made with shiitake broth, wakame, onion, carrots, kale and garnished with scallions will not only keep the doctor away, but will add vitality to your life.

A bowl of miraculous miso soup a day could make a world of difference to your health.

This flavourful combination of ingredients not only supplies the body with a good source of several important vitamins and minerals, they also work synergistically to help prevent cancer, coronary heart disease (CHD), diabetes, heavy metal poisoning, reduce blood pressure, and even aid in weight reduction.

It is beyond the scope of this book to go into all the benefits of eating a bowl of miso soup every day, however, let’s focus on one of the world’s deadliest degenerative diseases, cancer.

The many ways miso can help reduce the risk of cancer were explained in detail above, however, in their ancient wisdom the Japanese have traditionally combined miso with other important medicinal foods to maximize its healing potential.

In rural Japan, where we lived during our miso apprenticeship, miso soup was frequently made with shiitake broth. Shiitake have been called the “healing mushroom,” and the scientific literature supporting this view is prolific. In the last three decades scientists have confirmed what traditional healers have known for centuries; shiitake are one of nature’s most potent natural medicines.

Scientists now believe that a polysaccharide called lentinan and virus-like particles found in shiitake trigger the increased production of various serum factors associated with immunity and inflammation. These so-called lymphokines, such as interferon and interleukin, stimulate the defense system, spurring the proliferation of phagocytes, including macrophages and other immune fighters that attack cancer cells. The immune boosting power of shiitake is also effective in fighting bacterial and viral infections.

Cancer aside, shiitake have also been shown to lower cholesterol quickly and effectively, especially when combined with miso. On two occasions we have seen friends lower their total cholesterol from over three hundred to less than two hundred in just three months by drinking a bowl of miso soup made with shiitake stock twice a day. Studies with humans have shown that only three ounces of shiitake (five to six mushrooms) a day can lower cholesterol twelve percent in a week.

Brown sea vegetables, such as wakame, are traditionally included in miso soup, and they also provide protection against some forms of cancer. Diets high in brown sea vegetables have been associated with a lower risk for colon, rectal, and breast cancers. A Japanese animal study

Eating for Cancer Recovery 5 Week Course Join Cancer Support WA’s inspiring nutrition educator and Angelina Carli on this life chaging nutrition course which includes detailed information on healing foods which assist recovery from cancer, and help prevent cancer from recurring, as well as practical demonstrations on how to prepare them.

Sessions include: juicing, sprouting, raw food preparation, organic gardening. Includes juices, sprouts, recipes & great food.

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Cottesloe Civic Centre, Thursdays 1.30pm-3.30pm. Cost: $100 / $150.

Only 2 more courses in 2013: 27th June; 26 September. Book early so you don’t miss Cancer Support out!

WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au Book online: www.cancersuppotwa.org.au

According to researchers, more than half of the animals studied showed complete regression. The report also showed promising results with leukemia. Besides their anti-cancer attributes, sea vegetables contain high concentrations of calcium and iron as well as several trace elements that are now often missing in the earth’s depleted soils.

Sea vegetables have also been found to reduce blood pressure and serum cholesterol and help the body eliminate toxic heavy metals.

Along with shiitake and brown sea vegetables, traditional Japanese often include allium vegetables such as onions, leeks, and scallions in their miso soup. Allium vegetables are known to contain a variety of organosulfur phytonutrients, which inhibit both the induction and growth of cancer. Another traditional favorite is carrots, which are rich in carotenoids. Carotenoids are powerful antioxidants that can neutralize the free radicals that play an important role in cancer development.

Although they are usually not included in authentic Japanese recipes for miso soup, brassica family vegetables, such as kale, collards, and cabbage, are often included in western-style miso soups. These hardy and nutritious plants contain phytonutrients called glucosinolats, which are broken down by the vegetable enzyme myrosinase during the process of chewing into several phytonutrients that help activate the body’s mechanism for detoxifying cancer-producing substances. Several population studies have shown a link between the consumption of these vegetables and a reduced risk of lung, stomach, colon, rectum, ovarian, and prostate cancers.

Miso soup made with the ingredients suggested above (see Miso Recipes) may be the best protection nature can offer for the prevention of cancer. Moreover, the phytonutrients, minerals, vitamins, amino acids, fatty acids, and fiber provided in this medicinal cocktail may be nature’s panacea for life in the twentyfirst century.

Miso’s Brown Pigment Is Effective Against Cancer As miso ages soy proteins are broken down and react with sugar to produce the dark pigments that give some varieties of miso their characteristic brown and russet colors. When scientists at AichiGakuin University Hospital, in Nagoya, Japan, isolated the brown pigments in miso and soy sauce, referred to as melanoidins, and mixed them with human colon cancer cells, the cancer cells’ growth rate was cut in half. Moreover, closer examination showed that brown pigments disrupted cell growth during very specific phases of cell reproduction. In another study with animals, brown pigments showed a strong scavenging activity against free radicals. F

From: www.mitoku.com. By Akiyoshi Kazama, founder and president of Mitoku Company, Ltd. in Tokyo. Mr Kazama strongly believe that the diet that developed in Japan over the past several centuries can make a great contribution to the Western world in its search for foods that are not only wholesome, nutritious and health-promoting, but also delicious, attractive and satisfying.

peaceful miso soup 7 day detox I drink it all day for up to 7 days, depending how I embrace it. This formula is peaceful so make sure to refrain from controversy and stress. Take long walks and contemplate all of the positive things in your life and environment. If you can’t think of any, it is time to make changes and create harmony and tranquility.

Detoxing is so much more than cleansing your body, it cleanses your mind and introduces spiritualism in your heart. I reflect on my health, family, lost ones and new ones. I think about less fortunate and take action in some way no matter how small to heal another soul besides my own.

The first day or so is tough but after a couple of days I feel like Superman, my mind is clear, my body feels clean and vibrant and I am not hungry at all. I have plenty of energy and can’t stop telling people how great I feel.

After the cleanse I make a wonderful soup with only organic beets, carrots, celery, garlic, onions, kale and broccoli. Very simple recipe – cut the vegetables coarsely, place them in a large pot and add plenty of water (the water is important as you want to benefit from the broth). Bring to a very low heat and make sure not to boil or even come close. Allow the vegetables to simmer very low for about half an our or so, then serve with fresh squeezed lemon. I use no seasonings at all, just the natural flavours from the vegetables.

Make sure to add plenty of the broth to the soup. I have the soup in the morning and the evening. In between i will drink organic green tea, fresh organic squeezed grapefruit juice and vegetable juice with a lot of parsley, red cabbage, kale, beets and carrots.

You will experience a remarkable change in your mood, mental clarity, skin, energy level and over all health. F www.vegan.com Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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FOOD & NUTRITION

showed that consumption of sea vegetables inhibited the growth of implanted sarcomas by eighty-nine to ninety-five percent.

recipes...

Why you should be eating ancient grains Kamut, farro, spelt, quinoa, millet, barley, amaranth – this isn’t a magical incantation. Or maybe it is. The words are names for ancient grains, whole grains that have been around for centuries. For centuries, whole was how we ate grain, too. Then we discovered milling.

Farrotto with Greens, Pine Nuts and Currants Traditional risotto gets its luscious, chewy, creamy texture from shortgrain arborio rice and constant stirring. This dish gives you the same terrific result with less effort and whole-grain goodness, too. Call it farrotto – a cheaty version of risotto made with farro.

Milling, or grinding, grain removed the husk. It rendered the grain softer, easier to chew, easier to digest.

Milling was originally done by hand, a difficult job that made processed grain expensive. It became a food of the privileged, a status symbol – refined grain for refined people.

Ingredients 2 cups whole farro ¼ cup pine nuts 4 teaspoons olive oil 3 cloves garlic, minced 1 dried red chilli, crumbled, or a couple of good pinches of chilli flakes 1 bunch Swiss chard, spinach, kale, or other hearty winter greens, chopped into bite-size pieces 5 cups vegetable broth or water ¼ cup currants Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Over the centuries, it became more affordable, more available, and still we processed. It’s only been within the past half century that we’ve realized just how nutritionally neutered refined grain is. Whole grain has its kernel and bran intact, and that’s where the hard-core nutrients are. That’s where the fibre, the funfor-the-mouth chew, and the nutty, earthy flavour are too.

Instructions 1. Pour the farro into a sieve, rinse with cold water, and drain. In a large bowl, soak the farro in enough cold water to cover overnight.

We’re so taken with foods that claim on the label to be natural and healthful, we overlook foods that really are. Give ancient grains a try.

Excerpted from: Feeding the Hungry Ghost: Life, Faith, and What to Eat for Dinner by Ellen Kanner.

New World Library, 2013.

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2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Pour the pine nuts into a shallow ovenproof pan and toast until they just turn golden, about six minutes.

Transfer the pine nuts to a small bowl to cool.

3. In a stockpot, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and red pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the garlic and red pepper sizzle and are fragrant, a few minutes. Add the chard, a handful at a time, and cook until it just wilts, four to five minutes. Transfer the chard to another large bowl.

4. Drain the farro and pour it into the pot. Stir until the farro toasts and gets a little luster from the residual oil, about two minutes. Add the broth or water, stir, and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer until most of the liquid is absorbed, about 30 minutes. (The farro will continue to soak up liquid as it cools, becoming thick and creamy, with a risottoesque consistency.

5. Stir in the chard and the currants. The currants, which start out tiny and wrinkly, will plump up. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Gently stir the pine nuts into the farro, reserving 1 tablespoon for garnish. To serve, mound into a serving bowl or spoon onto individual plates. Sprinkle the last of the pine nuts on top.nutmeg, and ground ginger to taste.

From: Feeding the Hungry Ghost: Life, Faith, and What to Eat for Dinner by Ellen Kanner. New World Library, 2013.

Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

RECIPES

nut & dill humous sprouted grain bread gluten and yeast free Ingredients 1 cup mixture of raw oats, quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth, millet – preferably sprouted (or just soaked overnight) and dehydrated. You can use any combination of these, or other gluten-free grains. You can also use just one kind, or even store-bought flours.

1/2 cup golden flax seeds 1 cup sunflower seeds – preferably sprouted and dehydrated 1/2 cup hemp seeds 1 cup psyllium husks – you can find them in bulk at any health food store 1 cup purified water juice of one lemon 1/4 cup Irish moss gel 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon honey (or maple syrup, if yo are vegan) 1/4 cup olive oil Instructions In a high-speed blender, combine the grains and flax seeds, grind into a flour, and pour into a food processor. Next, grind sunflower seeds into a flour in a high-speed blender, at a lower speed, taking care not to turn them into butter. You can also use a coffee grinder and work in batches. Add the sunflower flour to the food processor, followed by hemp seeds and psyllium husks.

Combine water, lemon juice, Irish moss gel, salt and honey in a high-speed blender until smooth. With the motor still running, add olive oil to incorporate. Turn the food processor on, mixing your dry ingredients together, and start slowly pouring the wet mixture into the dry one through the tube. When the mixture becomes completely incorporated, your dough is ready. Make a loaf, or several loaves of the desired shape, spread with honey and sprinkle with seeds. To make sure that your bread bakes evenly, use a pizza stone if you have one, or just place an oven-proof dish with water on the rack underneath your bread. Bake at 350F for 40-60 minutes, or until it looks brown and ready.

The perfect accompaniment to your homemade bread! This hummous is rich, creamy and just a little bit decadent. This dish can be used in so many ways, adding a bit of creamy richness to any meal. Add a couple of spoonfuls to a wrap, stuffed full with lots of greens and sprouts...maybe a side of kimchi or raw sauerkraut. It can also be used as a salad dressing, a dip with raw chips/crackers, or spread it on a juicy sliced apple.

Ingredients 3/4 cup cashews 1/2 cup sunflower seeds 2 Tablespoons pistachio nuts 1 Tablespoon Black Sesame Oil (or olive oil, coconut oil, etc) 6 Tablespoons water 2 Tablespoons fresh dill, chopped 1/8 teaspoon sea salt Instructions In a blender mix all ingredients. Add more water as necessary to achieve desired thickness.

Use spatula to scrape sides of blender and blend until creamy.

Number of servings (yield): 6

Recipe from: www.rawfullytempting.com

Cool down on the wire rack before slicing.

Recipe from: www.rawfullytempting.com Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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Cancer Doctor Explains How Cooking with Turmeric Leads to Amazing Health Benefits

By Elizabeth Renter

It’s one thing to read all the studies, to keep informed through breaking news and

research about natural health, but it’s another to hear it from the people who put it into practice. When you can combine the practical applications of natural health with the scientific background, the evidence can be awfully convincing. This is where Johns Hopkins medical oncologist Dr. Saraswati Sukumar comes in, explaining how you can get the most out of the amazing spice turmeric.

The Power of Cooking with Turmeric Dr. Sukumar is a cancer doctor, but she is also a frequent user of turmeric. She knows first-hand how curcumin (the active component in turmeric) can provide health benefits and how it can easily be incorporated into your daily life. She uses it daily in her kitchen and has built a good portion of her professional reputation on touting the benefits of this powerful root.

We’ve known for sometime about the active ingredient in turmeric’s cancer healing and anti-inflammatory properties. With it’s vibrant colour and smoky flavour it is the perfect spice to cook with everyday...

“The health benefits are many. For example, for those who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, who have painful swelling in the knees, turmeric is a great way to suppress the inflammation,” says Dr. Sukumar.

We have close to 300 publications (that cite turmeric) for its anti-cancer effects.

Many diseases, such as colon cancer and other types of cancer, are being traced to inflammation.”

She can point to the research that shows how curcumin can not only regulate inflammation which leads to certain types of cancer, but also the other types of cancer where curcumin “actually seeks out malignant cancer cells and alters the regulation of DNA in order to kill them.

As Dr. Sukumar said, the benefits of turmeric are many – from inflammation of the joints as is common in arthritis, to reduced cancer risk and the treatment of diabetes.

But, not all sources of curcumin are equal. As Dr. Sukumar points out, your body can get the most benefits when you add it to your cooking.

“The problem with the pill is that it is very insoluble in water,” said Dr. Sukumar. “The better way to take it, I feel, is to use it in your cooking very extensively. If you have any sauté, just sprinkle it in. The moment you heat oil and add turmeric to it, it now becomes completely bio-available to you.”

Fortunately, turmeric is versatile. It has a mellow, smoky flavour despite its bright color.

It tastes great in sautéed veggies of all kinds and if you are a meat-eater, you can use it in a rub. Dr. Sukumar says she uses as little as one-quarter to one-half teaspoon in her cooking, depending on the dish. But there is nothing wrong with using more in intensely flavoured dishes like curry. F

From: naturalsociety.com, April, 2013

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Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

FOOD & NUTRITION / LIFESTYLE

where are you on the Here is a quick quiz that will help you see how healthy your lifestyle really is! The statements here are about practices that directly boost your health and wellbeing.

Circle the ones you are already doing, and give yourself one point for every point you answer yes to. Then add up your score.

NSW. is an accredited naturopath based in Quiz compiled by Olwen Anderson who Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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you are beautiful

we are still looking for 30 participants...

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

‘You Are Beautiful’ is a photographic exhibition and book project set to celebrate the strength, resilience and beauty of West Australians who have been touched by cancer. ‘You Are Beautiful’ is organised by Cancer Support WA in partnership with celebrity photographer Robbie Merritt, Panther Graphics and other local sponsors. The aim of the exhibition is to bring awareness to the untold stories of cancer survivors and to raise funds for Cancer Support WA. The exhibition features large-scale portraits of 100 West Australians who have been touched by cancer either directly or as a carer to a loved one. Each portrait reveals the unique beauty and emotion within each person. Accompanying the portrait will be the personal story of each person featured.

The portraits will be launched at a gala event at the Perth Town Hall in June 2013, and in premier locations in the Perth CBD in November. If enough sponsorship can be found Cancer Support WA will produce a beautiful artbook featuring the portraits and stories to help raise funds for the organisation’s cancer support services.

All our YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL participants have a unique story to share and have experienced the full spectrum of shock, fear, pain, loss and sadness which comes with a cancer diagnosis, and also the hope, resilience, strength, acceptance and inner peace which comes with the continuing journey. This exhibition uniquely captures this spectrum of emotion and reveals the inner world of these remarkable West Australians.

You can get involved by sponsoring a portrait such as Cara’s featured on the next page. Once fundraising targets are met each portrait is given to the participant featured. All funds raised support the work of Cancer Support WA. If you have or have journeyed with cancer directly or as a carer, you are invited to participate by having your portrait taken and sharing your story.

Please get in touch with our Events Manager Katie Payne at Cancer Support WA to participate: katie@cancersupportwa.org.au. The portrait gallery and full details are on the Cancer Support WA website.

www.cancersupportwa.org.au In loving memory of those who have shared part of their life journey with us...

Kay Bond Carolyn Martin Mary Ferrie Bob Priris Paul Feaver Denis Coster Eileen Foley

Karen Blackwell Sonia Fullin Dawne Larkin Carol Wells Bronte Phillips Jonathan Rampono when my voice is silenced in death, my song will speak in your living heart

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Cancer Support WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au

~Rabindranath Tagore

PERSONAL STORY

Cara’s Journey

By Cara Kimber

Every journey of someone who is diagnosed with or survives cancer is

different and what we all get out of the journey, is as individual as we all are. I was 32 when I was diagnosed, I was emigrating from the UK to Australia and I was looking forward to my new life. I was young and healthy – or so I thought...then I found it, the lump in my breast that stopped my world from spinning! It was unbelievable news to my ears, there was no family history of breast cancer and I was only 32. Even my Oncologist, when she met me for the first time, was surprised at my young age. But my body had made its decision at this stage and I had to make mine to claim my body back. I had no choice but to swap flights and new lives for hospital beds.

It was a lot to come to grips with but I had people who supported me.

Everyone had different levels of acceptance but there were those (and there were a few :-), who were my rocks! They made a huge difference to my journey and gave me strength, courage and something to fight for.

I endured Chemotherapy and Herceptin for two years and was in and out of hospital. It was arduous and painful but I was determined to beat it. I even showed it I wasn’t going to be beaten easily by completing a 5 km run to raise money for Cancer Research a few days after a chemo treatment and riding my horse Oska when I could. The strong days were good days, the days where I wasn’t going to be beaten but I still had days when I struggled, days I couldn’t or wouldn’t go and see my horse or walk the dog. These are the sort of days that you need support, these are the sort of days you really appreciate the services and choices that a support group like Cancer Support WA can offer you.

We all choose to take our journey differently. I chose to have Chemotherapy. I chose to have Herceptin. I chose not to wear a wig when I lost my hair (and quite frankly I look good bald!). I chose to remove the breast with the lump and I chose to have the second breast removed to strengthen my chances of never having to go through this again and in the end I chose to have reconstruction and a lovely job they did too!

“Cancer is one of those things that will touch all of our lives, so organisations like Cancer Support WA become more and more valuable.

I hope that you and your loved ones never have to meet this battle but if you do, I hope that Cancer Support WA will be your first choice of support.”

It has been a tough battle but I have managed to get through it with a belief that with the support you get from family and friends as well as organisations such as Cancer Support WA you can. I have lived in Australia for 4 years now and love my new life and am so lucky to now have my new business doing what I love with horses – www.equineinfluence.com.au.

It has been tough doing this photo shoot, as I was always uncomfortable showing my scars but I now realise they are evidence of my journey and the love and support I received. It has also been tough for me to write this, to share my journey with new friends and old, with colleagues, acquaintances and strangers. It is tough because I lost my step-brother to cancer only 5 weeks ago. It is tough because my journey continues and cancer doesn’t discriminate, leaving his loving wife and beautiful children to journey without him. All of these things highlight that early detection, the best treatment for your journey and the best of support are the corner stones to that journey, wherever it takes you.

Cancer is one of those things that will touch all of our lives, so organisations like Cancer Support WA become more and more valuable. I hope that you and your loved ones never have to meet this battle but if you do, I hope that Cancer Support WA will be your first choice of support. F Autumn 2013 wellness NEWS

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you are beautiful: sharing the cancer story Preview Exhibition: 2nd to 14th July, Perth Town Hall​. Main Exhibition: 2nd to 15th November exhibited in landmark venues across Perth CBD​ This moving exhibition of portraits by Robbie Merritt features candid images reflecting each individual journey and the often untold stories of West Australians who have been touched by cancer. Go to our website to sponsor a portrait or get involved as a participant: www.cancersupportwa.org.au. Also view the online gallery of stunning portraits. Funds raised support the work of Cancer Support WA.

24 Hour Line (08) 9384 3544. www.cancersupportwa.org.au Cancer SupportSupport WA www.cancersupportwa.org.au 60 Cancer