S17, Ep4 Dr Gladys McGarey: a 102-year-old doctor shares the secret to health and happiness

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1:16Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. My guest today is 102 years old, and yet, as you'll come to discover, her extraordinary longevity is quite possibly the least interesting thing about her.

1:58Because Dr. Gnades McGarry is an utterly unique and wildly inspiring individual. A conventionally trained medical doctor, her innate curiosity led her to explore different approaches towards healing. She was an early pioneer of natural birthing, was the first physician ever to use acupuncture in the States, and is now internationally recognised as the mother of holistic medicine. She has had a family practice for more than 60 years in Scottsdale, Arizona, and alongside her work also found the time to raise six children. At the age of 84, she travelled to Afghanistan to teach rural women safer birthing practices, resulting in a 47 % decrease in infant mortality rates.

2:45She is the daughter of two doctors who devoted their lives to treating underserved populations in India, where Dr. Gladys was born in 1920. As a child, she travelled through the Indian outback on medical safaris with her parents. And in 1935, she came to America to attend college and medical school. Her new book, The Well-Lived Life, reveals her six secrets to health and happiness at every age. It is an astonishing piece of work containing so many light bulb moments it could power the national grid. In it Dr Gladys writes, focusing on the positive does not mean denying the negative. We allow what hurts to hurt while continuing to search for the lesson in it and be grateful for the teaching.

3:38Dr Gladys McGarry, it is my honour to welcome you to How to Fail. Thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you for letting me speak on these subjects, which I think are pivotal to all of our lives. I could not agree more. And that idea of focusing on the positive, not meaning eliminating the negative, is integral to the whole premise of this podcast and to life, really, because life is texture, isn't it? You can't appreciate the positive without the negative. Well, you know, it's like if you have a scratch or something happened to your arm and you have a scab and you spend your time looking at that and saying, oh, that hurts good.

4:21You know, it keeps on hurting. You have to stop scratching it and stop picking at it and just put it down, let it be. And then ultimately you look at it and say, well, hello, Scar. I know who you are. It's our focus on what we want to focus on or what we need to focus on. And you write a lot in the book about this thing that you call juice, which is another way of explaining life force, energy, chi. And you also talk about the overriding power of love. And you start off with this extraordinary encounter that you had with Mahatma Gandhi. and I wonder if you could tell us that story. Yeah, you know, you have certain things in life that are pivotal and somebody else may not even understand them or even care about them.

5:18I was 10 years old. We were on the train leaving India for my parents were coming to the States for a furlough. They'd be here a year and a half and then come back. But as the train was going along, this happened so often in India, Huge crowds of people gathered very quickly, and this was happening alongside the track as the train was beginning to slow down. And in front of this whole group of people, there was a man walking with his toti on and his staff. And I thought, that could be Gandhi. And I'm staring out the window looking, and he bends down to have a little girl hand him a flower. and as he comes back up, he looks up and looks straight into my, I'm in the train, I'm 10 years old, looks straight into my eyes and reconnected.

6:14Now, that means nothing to anybody else probably, but to me it was like a wow, what a wonderful thing and it stayed with me. It was that light of love and acceptance. And, you know, I call it my spirit meeting his spirit. It was a connection. And these things happen sometimes in life when we're looking for them or when we're not looking for them. They do happen. But if they happen, recognize them and cherish them. Yes. And a lot of your work does go back to this theme of transcendence, that idea that our souls exist again and again and again and are brought into contact with other souls for a reason.

7:00Right. Have I said that accurately? How would you explain it? Very well. Very well. Do you think that your soul and Gandhi's soul were on some level always meant to intertwine? Well, it happened. So I think it was meant to be. So when it started and it hasn't ended yet. So take me back then, when you go to medical school in the United States, it must have been quite a culture shock. I started medical school in September of 1941, and the war started in December. So my whole medical career was about war, our enemies, And the whole field of medicine picked up the theme of being at war. And we have since that time been at war with disease and with pain.

7:55And a lot of my work has been to take the concept of healing beyond just killing and getting rid of. fascinating because as you say to this day people talk in a slightly misplaced fashion about battling cancer fighting cancer for the idea that somehow you're making an enemy of your own body and you stand absolutely in a much more holistic space can you define to us what holistic means to you i could go on and on but we started the american holistic medical association because there were a group of us physicians who knew that there was something missing. We were taught a lot about the body. We knew a lot about the body.

8:42We were learning a lot about the mind. But where was the spirit in all of this? It wasn't. That was considered woo-woo and who knows what. But there were a whole group of us who were beginning to communicate with each other about this essential part of medicine which we knew in our hearts was the real healer. Bill McGarry, my husband at the time, was writing a newsletter that went out around the world to people who were interested in this kind of thing called Pathways to Health. And so we shared a lot of different ideas and we came up with the understanding that there really was something missing and that we could do something about that.

9:28So we, a group of us, actually there were five of us, I was the one woman, but there were five of us who gathered one weekend and created the concept of the American Holistic Medical Association. Of course, it took us two years to decide how to spell holistic. We finally realized that the word we were looking for was the base word was health, healing and holy. So bringing that into it, it had to start with an H. So our use of the word holistic had to become one that was written with an H. And this idea of your soul and your body being fundamentally connected, it's something that you talk about and write about, not in a vacuum, because you are someone who has lived through two bouts of cancer.

10:22And there was a very interesting bit in your book where you talk about the second time that you had cancer and the visualization involving the suitcase. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, I am very aware of how important the total connection and it's how we use our mind in the whole process of healing. Had the diagnosis of this breast cancer and it was a lump and I had the option to do a lot of great holistic things or conventional medicine. Well, I was really busy at the time and I really didn't have time to take time off and go into a sort of a retreat and to do the healing. And in this time, the ability of the medical community to do some really amazing work, I thought I need to find out about that.

11:20So I went to the surgeon and we talked about it. And when I was finished with that, I didn't tell people I had cancer. Like I didn't say, well, I've got breast cancer. I said, well, I have a lump. And what I'm visualizing with that lump is that I'm going to have it removed. It doesn't belong in my body anymore. So I'm going to take care of the way in which it could be removed that would be most available and practical and so on. And in that process, I began visualizing a little suitcase that was hand tooled and it was really cute, little suitcase. And I talked to that lump and I said, now, I want you to understand that there's going to be a time you're going to have to pack your suitcase.

12:05You're going to have to get in that suitcase. But in the meantime, call any cancer cells that are in my body and you have a family reunion so that you gather up all of them. Then you're going to have a while of the time and you're going to be sent off to a family reunion. Go and have fun, but you need to leave my body. And so I had conversations that went on like that. And then so that when it was removed, that was gone. But then radiation. In the early years, breast cancer was a horrible thing. The whole process of medicine, the way that the breast was removed, the whole thing. And then the radiation was so unsophisticated, I guess I'll call it that way, because it hindered other organs of the body and it was terrible.

12:56So my experience with the radiation from the work that I had done coming along was brutal. But I knew that progress had been made. So I researched it, went in and talked about it and found out that it was a completely different process. They can now pinpoint where the radiation is to the cells exactly and not do all the rest of the damage. So it's a whole different world when it comes to how it can be treated. So in my mind, it's not a matter of either conventional medicine, which is all bad, and holistic medicine, which is all good. but I don't think of it that way. In fact, I have a story about my eldest son, who is a retired orthopedic surgeon.

13:45And when he came through town to go to his practice in Texas, he said, Mom, I'm real scared. He said, I'm going into the world. I'm going to have people's lives in my hands. I don't know if I can handle that. And I said, well, Carl, if you think you're the one that does the healing, you have a right to be scared. But if you can understand that your training is so great in orthopedics to help people and you do your work the best that you can and then support the patient as they do their own healing with the help of the physician within them. I said, that's the colleague that you look for within each patient.

14:26With each patient that we have has within them what I call the position within, which is that healing power which takes over the work to make it real in the body. I can do all I can to bring things to you, but if you don't want to take them, that's okay. But if you do want to take them and you take it into your body, then I have no control over it. Then it's your job to do the healing with the work that I can do and that you can do. That's so interesting. And I wonder if I could ask you a question that comes from a very personal place, which is a question about my own recent history. I am someone who has tried and failed for 12 years to have her own baby.

15:17And I had an experience at the beginning of this year where I have been working with an incredible therapist who you remind me a lot of actually. A lot of what she teaches me is what I recognised in your book. And she said, I think you should start talking to your body and having positive visualisations about receiving this embryo and it growing and it having a happy and healthy outcome. and I did all of that and I felt so positive about it and I felt all of the signs were there universally and physically and then it didn't work and after that I think I've come to the realization that perhaps it is part of my purpose on this earth not to have my own biological child for various reasons and I suppose I just wanted to bring that to you and ask what you thought about that, that when these visualizations don't work, what does that mean?

16:14Well, it's part of our personal life story. And each one of us has a personal life story. And sometimes we aren't meant to do what we think we would like to do. And sometimes we are. So sometimes you don't know what is really going to work at this point, because it's maybe not the time. There's a universe of soul interactions. And maybe a soul that would come in at this time would be uncomfortable because it should be another, you know, we don't know about time and space and all of that. But it's part of what we deal with. But our soul knows and our body knows. I have so many questions I want to ask you, but I'm very aware we need to get onto your failures.

17:07And your first one is your dyslexia. So tell us your experience of dyslexia and why you chose it. Well, up until I started school, I thought everything was fine. I knew the alphabet and I knew numbers and all that stuff. But when I was asked to read, I couldn't do it. The numbers didn't stay put. The letters went all over the place. For two years, I was the class dummy, really. The teacher thought I was stupid and just didn't understand. And so the other kids thought I was too. Fortunately, I had a home where I could go home and be the person I really was. But school was horrible. It was just a nightmare.

17:55And I fought all the time in school because they'd call me a name and I'd punch. you know, I didn't take it very well. So that went on for two years. But in third grade, I had a teacher who saw something in me that the other had not. And so she appointed me class governor, because she realized that I might not be able to read and write, but I could talk, and I was organizing games and stuff and doing things. So she made me class governor. And so that was a starting point to realize that I had other attributes besides this. But the interesting thing, oh, there's so many interesting things about that.

18:41But one of them is that when we started the American Holistic Medical Association, and there were 10 of us sitting around the table talking about our ideas and concepts. And we realized that of the 10 of us, six of us were dyslexic. Fascinating. And we looked at each other and we said, well, that's why we started this, because there's an alternative way of doing this, because I can't tell you how I learned to read. A lot of them can't tell you. Get it so that you can read, because you have to be able to read to be able to get through medical school. I mean, somehow I did it and I learned. And they said the same thing.

19:19I said, well, how did you learn? Well, it's a very interesting thing. Do you think it's given you a different way of looking at the world? Yes. Yes. I think so. What do you think your unique gifts are? Because you encourage the rest of us to find out what our purpose is, what our unique gifts are to offer the world. What do you think yours are? Well, I think I have a mission. And at this stage of my life, I'm very, very passionate about creating a village for living medicine, where this concept of life and love and working together with each person is part of the actual village that we have. And it would include having a birthing center because I'm so concerned about the way we're birthing our babies.

20:17Part of extension of that is what I'm calling aging into health. And that's the part that says to us, OK, well, now I'm five years old. I'm going to be seven. I'm going to be nine. I'm going to be 100. You know, it's part of the process of what am I going to do as I'm going along here? because every moment I have choices. And every moment those choices are vital. And life has to live. It has to move. If it can't move, it dies. So we all have to have a purpose. And my purpose has always been to share whatever I could share with the people I'm with. And that could be a meal. It could be clothes or something.

21:04You know, it could be anything. But the part that I really like is my understanding of how healing works. That phrase, aging into health, is such a powerful one because we have been taught for so long, and particularly if we are women, that age in some way diminishes our value. And as someone who grew up during the course of a century where there were so many embedded stereotypical notions of what women could and couldn't, should and shouldn't be. How did you manage to fight against that idea, that pervasive idea that age diminishes our power? Well, because I kind of didn't like to think about what was diminishing my power, I thought it was more important to put my energy into what was increasing my power.

21:55I mean, it was a conscious choice. If I was wanting to, I could sit down and say what a lot of my colleagues do. In fact, my son, who is 76 now, when he went to see his doctor, gave him a list of things that he would probably have going on in his life that would diminish him. And he let his doctor know that he didn't accept that. My parents were conscious and functional in their late 90s. It's not just a genetic thing. It's also what you believe you still have to do. And I still have work to do. If there is still something there in our lives that have not been completed, then we'll get the energy and the strength to do it and go on until it's done.

22:48it's not something that is going to be depleted because we're going to be feeding that, not depleting it.

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24:44I read in an interview that you gave that you didn't really find your voice until you were 93. Yeah. Why did it take you that long? There's a concept now about ambiguous loss. Oh, tell me more. That's losses that you don't understand. You live past and so on. You think you've accomplished that and it's all done. Well, this whole business of my dyslexia was one of those things. because I wrote a book, but I had Bill actually go through and redo it. Your late husband. Yeah. A patient or somebody would say something to me, thank you for what you said, and I would say something like, well, you know, so-and-so is really the one that came up with.

25:32I was constantly deflecting the words that were coming out of my mouth. And then when I was 93, I woke up one night in a dream and out of a dream. So it was, you know, there are times like that. I knew it was a Sunday morning and I knew that this dream was important because I was laughing and I was singing at the same time as I woke up. And what the dream was that I saw myself, I'm watching this dream. I saw myself as nine-year-old Gladys in the tent in the jungle where the family was. And on Sundays, we were not allowed to sing anything but hymns or bhajans, Indian hymns. As a nine-year-old, I thought that was stupid and I didn't like the rule.

26:23And I wanted to sing what I wanted to sing. But if my brother saw me, he would tattle on me and then I'd be in trouble. So I see myself looking out to make sure he's not there. He's not. So I climb right up to the top of the mango tree. And I'm sitting up there and I'm singing. I'm singing a caterpillar song. I'm singing anything I wanted to sing. And I thought I was, you know, just great. And every so often I'd look over my shoulder and Jesus was up in the tree with me. And I look at him and I say, Jesus loves the little children, right? right and he's laughing and he says yes so I go back to my singing and all of a sudden I think I don't know and I look again and I say Jesus loves a little children I'm still a little children right and he says yes and so I go back to sing so that's when I woke up and I realized that every time I diminished what I said, I was denying it.

27:29In reality, what Jesus was saying to me, you have a voice, and no matter what other people say about it or who or what or where it came from, use your voice. And that set me free to begin to claim, and if a patient said, thank you for saying that, I would say thank you. I'm glad that helped. And I think a lot of us have these ambiguous hurts and pains that we don't really understand. I didn't understand. I was 93, for crying out loud. You know, I didn't understand how deep that was a wound until that time. In spite of the fact that I had American Holistic Medical Association and the other guys and all this, we'd all talked about it.

28:15Oh, gosh. I think that's so powerful for people to hear. not only that someone as accomplished as you feels that sense of secret fraudulence or kind of imposter-like thoughts but that you can get to a point in your life it's never too late to get to a point in your life where you can claim your power and your voice so thank you for sharing that your second failure goes back in time and your second failure concerns a play involving a frog jumping over a pool. Can you tell us about that, please? Absolutely. And it fits right in with this other part. So I was in third grade now. And because I had been kept back, I was bigger than the other kids.

28:59So we had a play for the whole student body. And it was a frog jumps over the pool. And we had a pan of water on the stage. And my mother had made me a green frog suit and she dyed it green and all that. So I stepped out on the stage with great confidence and I walk across, but my two older brothers were in the front row of the audience and I missed my step just a little because of that. And instead of jumping over the pond, I landed in it. So I'm standing in that pond. My suit is beginning to fade. I'm crying. I don't know what to do. I'm totally disgusted. You know, I've ruined everything and I just, everything was bad.

29:48And I'm standing there crying and the teacher has to come and lead me off the platform. So we come home and we're at the dinner table and my brothers are just having the best time telling my mother what happened and I'm giving the death eye, you know. And so finally, my mother says, all right, boys, now you've had your fun. What can we as a family do to help Gladie so that if this happens anytime in the future, she will have people laughing with her and not against her. And I can't tell you how many times that's helped me. How many times something has happened and I've been able to start my lecture or do something with something that takes what happened and puts a twist on it so that it's not bad.

30:41And it's funny. I mean, it's transformed my ability to give lectures. Will you also write about the importance of turning your face towards love as opposed to fear. And in a way, it's very similar because when we're humiliated, there's a fear there, isn't there, that we've embarrassed ourselves. Absolutely. Well, let me tell you another story that fits right along this. I just had my 99th birthday. Oh, this is my favourite story in the book. Carry on. Well, I went to the grocery store and I was putting things in my carton, getting ready to take them and put them in my car. And this elderly gentleman comes along and he says to me, oh, may I help you?