Begin Healing Before Your Surgery

Around our physical body we have an emotional, mental and spiritual body. Together they make up the wholeness of who we are. Energetic healers, such as Barbara Ann Brennan, have taught for years this healing principle: the physical body is the last body to experience dis-ease. If something is out of balance on the physical realm, it’s out of balance on the emotional, mental and spiritual realms first.

Surgeons are experts in the physical realm, cutting away what seems to no longer serve us. Even the finest surgeons however cannot avoid causing trauma to the body. The nature of their work is without a doubt, intrusive. Still, when you need surgery, you need surgery. You can however take steps to make the surgery less intrusive and help it to go as well as possible. Here are three steps that anyone can take to help decrease the time in surgery and to encourage a quicker recovery time.

PRAYER OR FOCUSED INTENTION – Most of us are aware of the power of positive thought, using focused intention or saying a prayer. Visualizing ourselves healed is generally encouraged. In fact, spiritual teachers will tell you that if you cannot imagine something, you cannot achieve it. So focusing on the outcome we desire is important.

It’s also important to consider all the people – from surgeons, technicians, nurses and nutritionists – who will have a part in your surgery and/or recovery. Remember them when you are sending prayers, positive energy or focused intention. If they are at their best, you will have a better experience. Send them love, prayer, courage, ease, etc.

Our friends and loved ones often ask what they can do for us when we’re facing surgical procedures. Use them well. Ask them to hold your surgical team (and all the hospital staff you will encounter) in their thoughts and prayers for the day. Everybody wins with this. Your friends and loved ones feel useful and the hospital staff benefits from the positive energy surrounding them.

GRATITUDE AND LETTING GO. As I said earlier, the physical is the last aspect of our body to be affected. It makes sense then to do what we can at the emotional, mental and spiritual bodies before surgery. How does one do this? Well, it could look like this.

First of all, understand that the body as a whole has memory. In fact, just before we are born the body takes an inventory of itself, which it remembers, for life. From that point on, anything on the list is considered us. Anything else is considered foreign and the our immune system will do whatever it can to keep only what’s on the list. To cut into the body and try to remove a piece of that will move the body into resistance. Resistance slows things down. We can ease the resistance significantly by letting go before the first surgical incision is ever made.

The first step in letting go is gratitude. Whatever is being taken away – whether it’s a gall bladder or a tumor – has served in some way. This can be a bit tricky at first. A gall bladder might seem obvious. It releases bile, which helps digest fat in the body. Thank you gall bladder. But it’s important to challenge yourself to look a bit deeper. How has the malfunctioning gall bladder served you? Has it brought you some awareness of what you need in your life – or of what you do not need? Showing gratitude for a dysfunctional organ or for a tumor may seem to be a stretch, but as spiritual beings it’s important to open ourselves up to the lessons life brings to us – even the challenging ones. To show gratitude speaks directly to our spiritual selves, it addresses the spiritual body. To acknowledge the organ or the tumor acknowledges its service.

Know that whatever is going on in the body is a communication to us. The body is speaking when we have dis-ease and telling us that something is out of balance. If we listen well enough, we can receive the body’s message. It may be a message just for us, or as in the case of cancer from environmental toxins – it may be a message for the wider community that change is needed. And when the body feels heard, it can enter a new level of relaxation.

So we begin with gratitude (spiritual body) and through deep listening we gain some understanding of what our body is telling us (mental body). What remains is our own willingness to let go. We get to say goodbye and emotionally release the organ or tumor or whatever it is that needs to be removed. When I work with clients pre-surgery and help them go through this process, I can palpate specific differences in the physicality of their tissue. I can feel the results under my hands as they offer gratitude, accept any lessons or messages and say goodbye. The whole area softens and the body moves into an alpha state of relaxation. It has surrendered that which is to be removed.

How does this help with the surgery? Clients consistently tell me that their surgeons said the procedure was shorter than usual and went very well. A shorter surgery generally means a quicker recovery time.

WITNESSING THE SACRIFICE – Acknowledge that going through surgery requires a lot from you. You are putting your body and perhaps your life in the hands of someone else. They are taking something from you. This does not technically make it a sacrifice. It is not the act itself that makes a sacrifice; it is the witnessing of it that moves us toward sacredness. The destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else is a sacrifice. To sacrifice means to make sacred. To carry a sense of the sacred going into surgery changes the experience. It allows you to witness your own courage. It allows you to more fully claim what lies on the other side – that something else, which you are surrendering for. This witnessing of your sacrifice moves you beyond the surgery to its outcome – a healed and sacred you.

So before you go into surgery (1) send prayer/focused intention to your surgical team and visualize your desired outcome; (2) offer gratitude to whatever part of your body that will be removed, listen to its messages and release it; and finally (3) witness the sacrifice you are making by acknowledging it. These actions will prepare your emotional, mental and spiritual bodies for the surgery. They will affect the physical body by helping to put you into a deeper state of relaxation. They will allow the experience to be sacred. All this will encourage a shorter surgery and a quicker recovery.