Donna Feaver's Cancer Healing Retreat

To describe the retreat I take to writing this blog. I found out about Ian and his retreat through a friend Lorraine who put me onto a contact and with one thing leading to another I was booked on the retreat financed entirely by so many of my family, friends and even strangers. I would like to tell you about it. It was entirely for cancer patients and their support partners. Ian and Ruth together with their two other facilitators Stew Burt and Liz Maluschnig (get your laughing gear around that name) set out to introduce us to a daily diet of vegan, meditation, juicing, exercise and supplements in a nurturing environment with so much humor, integrity, love and outstanding professionalism. Every morning started with a lemon juice drunk in warm water prepared by Stew then on to a meditation (45 mins) lead by either Ian, Ruth or Liz. We were made warm by the open fire as we meditated by scanning our bodies, noticing our thoughts , letting them go and continuing to achieve that mind body stillness spacec Breakfast was after meditation, herbal teas and Stews Dandelion tea which affectionately got know and asked gdo you want a dandyh. Down to the workshop we would amber a brief meditation again and then Ian would share the amazing wealth of knowledge he has acquired over the decades. He himself recovered from a very aggressive bone cancer where the doctors gave him a couple of months to live. He had his leg amputated from the hip in 1976. He started the Gawler Foundation in 1981 where he has worked with 1000fs of cancer patients. He covered over the week Meditation, Mind training ? Positive Thinking and Creative imagery, Therapeutic Nutrition, Understanding life and death, while Ruth took a session on pain management and Liz a session healthy emotions. After lunch we could choose to do yoga with Ruth, Qi Gong with Liz or bush walks with Stew. Another workshop in the afternoon saw us split up into different groups dependent on the type of cancer we had had or other days we would do this exercise gDynamic Contemplationh were we would pair up and one would ask the questions and the other would answer without interruption from the question asker, this went on for 5 mins then you would swap. The questions would change from day to day, very powerful and would provoke quite a lot of emotion. Then off to a vegan dinner and after tea we would have topic related movies, amazing guest speakers who shared their stories and question and answer times. Off to bed ready to do it all again the next day. Donna Feaver July 2014