Dean Hall | Healing Two Cancers with Nature’s Bounty
Dean has been a licensed clinical therapist and coach for over 30 years. Astonishingly, in that time he has conducted over fifty thousand face-to-face, one-hour sessions.
Besides being a best-selling author, and highly sought-after speaker, Dean is also a two-time cancer survivor, widower and two-time world record-setting extreme distance swimmer. He is the first person to swim the entire 187-mile length of Oregon’s longest river, the Willamette River, (which he did as an active cancer patient) in 2014, and Ireland’s longest river, the River Shannon (180 miles), in 2017.
This much time spent immersed in the flow of mighty rivers has changed Dean’s life in many dynamic and miraculous ways. His Willamette River swim threw Dean into radical remission unexpectedly healing his leukemia without chemo or radiation while easing his trauma and grief from losing his wife fifteen days before their thirtieth anniversary. Buoyed by his firsthand experience of the healing power of nature when his lymphoma worsened and doctors once again pushed him to do chemo and radiation Dean chose to try Forest Bathing first. Dr. Qing Li’s research on the proven efficacy of time spent in forests and how it boosted NK (Natural Killer) cells and the immune system by over two-hundred and fifty times for a period of two weeks gave Dean the courage to decide instead for a weekly regimen of forest bathing instead. In May of 2015, he started spending all day once a week forest bathing deep in the Mt. Hood Wilderness and by March of 2016 he was declared cancer free.
These gifts of natural healing pushed Dean to make it his organization, The Wild Cure Way, whose mission is to encourage the world to get out of concrete jungles, manmade boxes and away from digital devices and dive into wild waterways and venture into deep forests as a form of authentic deep healing and, oddly enough, environmental protection. He believes it’s impossible to swim in wild waters or amble through ancient forests without falling in love with them and like Jacque Cousteau used to say, “You protect what you love.”.
During our conversation, Dean shares what he feels led to his leukemia diagnosis, why he chose not to do chemo and radiation the first time, what he chose to do instead, the interesting answer he got when he asked “the leukemia” why it was present in his life, how a year and a half after his wife’s passing he was diagnosed with a secondary cancer, and the turning point that led him out of despair and into true healing.
The Cancer Liberation Project is sponsored by thekarlfeldtcenter.com
