Recently, we held a competition to win two tickets to the UK’s first holistic health and cancer festival. Philip Booth, an attendee, explains what makes this festival so special.

Cancer and Festival don’t seem to naturally go together? Indeed eyebrows raised when I shared with friends that I was planning to join the weekend. And yet, this is exactly what the world needs. A Festival of health that looks to change the way we treat cancer, think about cancer and speak about cancer. A Festival about empowering people and sharing knowledge and connection. A Festival that celebrates integrative medicine – in other words the very best of all medicines, orthodox, complementary, psycho-spiritual and self-help, for the treatment of illness and the prevention of illness. A Festival that is full of hope and fun.

When I was first diagnosed with prostate cancer last September I was uneasy with the language of battling cancer. Yet I was so engulfed in confusion and fear, even terror, and trying to unpick treatment options in those first weeks, that I found myself also adopting that language. ‘I will beat this. I will win. I will conquer it’. The subtext of course, is that we are either cancer’s attackers or its victims. If you survive, you have ‘beaten’ cancer; if you die you have ‘lost your battle’ – however bravely you fought.

I thank Sophie Sabbage for helping me see it differently. In her wonderful, inspiring, life-changing book, ‘The Cancer Whisperer’ with the wonderful subtitle ‘Finding Courage, Direction and the Unlikely Gifts of Cancer’, she wrote about how she had cancer, but cancer did not have her; how cancer brings us an invitation to look within ourselves and decide who we are and how we wish to live. So rather than seeing cancer as the enemy we can see it as a teacher or guide (see article by Sophie here). To fight it, felt like going to war with myself. Cancer is in us – and rather than a war, it is a chance to work at putting things right.
Sophie asks: ‘What if cancer is the body’s last attempt to save its own life? What if its purpose is not to extinguish us but to heal?’ And wow, Trew Fields was all about that…

A full review by Philip Booth can be read here. Alternatively, you can watch the below video to see what he thought of Trew Fields 2018. 

You can read more about Philip’s beliefs on mind and body and how they work together here, where he touches on his visit to Penny Brohn UK and our Living Well Course.