Ruth Gawler

Dr Ruth Gawler, MB BS MGPPsych FACPsyMed FPA (Cert),
Managing Director of Insight Health Services

Dr Ruth Gawler is a GP with a specialised interest in Mind-Body Medicine and psychiatry.

As well as working as a GP and therapist in the residential programs at The Gawler Foundation since 2001, Ruth has been teaching yoga and meditation in these groups. She is particularly enthused to teach the use of meditation therapeutically - for health, healing and wellbeing. Her other work is through Insight Health Services where she organises much of the interstate workshops and travels with Ian in his work.The vision Ian holds for helping people with their health and states of mind is big and Ruth uses her skills to facilitate the realisation of all these possibilities. She can be contacted through the Contact form on this website.

As Ruth Berlin, she graduated from Sydney University, and spent 2 years as a Resident Medical Officer at Sydney Hospital before working in Kenya at the Nairobi Hospital and Tumu-Tumu Hospital (a Presbyterian Mission Hospital in the Kikuyu Highlands) for 2 years. She came back to Australia in 1985 to work and study at The Rozelle Hospital as a Psychiatry Registrar for a year, then completed her training with the Family Medicine Program to become a vocationally registered GP.

From 1990-95 Ruth worked at the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress (Alice Springs). Also, she was Medical Director of the Family Planning Association of Central Australia from 1991-1997.

Prompted in the early nineties by personal difficulties with a debilitating, chronic back condition and severe depression which were both resistant to conventional medical treatments, Ruth began to expand her way of thinking about medicine. From then on, she combined her work as a rural GP with a new interest in psychotherapy which she studied under the supervision of Drs Leon Petchkovsky and Craig San Roque (Jungian Analyst). In 2001 Ruth completed a Masters in General Practise Psychiatry at Monash University. Currently, Ruth is a fellow of the Australian College of Psychological Medicine, a member of the Australasian Integrative Medicine Association, and on the Board of the Australian Meditation Teachers Association.

After 10 years in Central Australia, Ruth moved to Victoria to marry Ian Gawler in 2000, and has been working in Insight Health Services and The Gawler Foundation since 2001.

Ruth believes that healing and full health involves a process of integrating the physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of life into a cohesive and vibrant whole. She is a strong advocate of the therapeutic value of lifestyle factors, being convinced that they provide the fundamental tenants to prevent disease, foster long term good health and to powerfully promote healing. A key technique in this regard is meditation, which Ruth has been studying and practicing since 1986, initially through Hatha Yoga and in the last 20 years using Mindfulness-Based Stillness Meditation and Imagery. Ruth has studied extensively the teaching of her husband Ian Gawler, and been trained by him directly over many years. Also, she is a long term student of the great Tibetan Meditation teacher Sogyal Rinpoche.