See Yourself Well
Forty-five percent less blood loss during spinal surgery.1
Sounds good, right? How’d they do it? Some new intraoperative technique or device? Some promising pharmaceutical product that supports coagulation?
Nope.
These patients simply visualized less blood loss before surgery. That’s it.
I read this study during my medical training, and it has stuck with me. In fact, I credit it with an exercise I have engaged in my private practice ever since.
When I meet with patients, simultaneous to our dialogue and co-presence, I am deeply engaged in visualizing them well.
I see them in my mind’s eye and feel them in my heart as the well version of themselves - their energy, their appearance, voice, and the kind of wonder and awe that invariably accompanies awakening to robust and resilient health.
This practice of seeing someone at their best sounds hokey, but it is rooted in a kind of unconditional love. Because when you can see past the overt content of an interaction and connect to the vital essence of that person, you bypass all of the stories, the blocks, and the interference between them and their potential for transcendence. This is exactly how we define unconditional love, isn’t it? When we can feel a powerful connection despite what is being thrown out in front of us. Ps, this is a major parenting tip!
I do this for my patients, but we can do this for one another, and you can do this for yourself.
And it works.
I recently had the honor of appearing alongside some spiritual luminaries in the documentary film Heal. In this film, Gregg Braden talks about gratitude and the reason for its unique power as an emotional state. It’s so unique that, after decades of research, the Heartmath Institute has identified it as the only emotion that predictably evokes a state of coherence - the electrophysiologic frequency of the heart, brain, and lungs at which the body begins to regenerate and heal. Gregg talks about how gratitude is a means of experiencing thanks for what already has been received.
It is a way of saying - this exists already, make it manifest. It is different than asking for what you want. He describes the Native American experience of feeling as a means of praying for rain in this video:
Quantum biology is beginning to explain how and why this experiential envisioning has its impact. Morphic resonance, for example, is the “process whereby self-organising systems inherit a memory from previous similar systems”.2
Try it:
Meditate on wellness, on what it would feel like to be finally free and and ease in yourself, your mind, your heart.
What would your body look like? Your skin, your hair, your eyes, your muscle tone?
What would your mind say to you in this well state?
What would your heart feel - peace? Joy? Love?
Where is the energy most intense in your body when you are well? Is it rising up and out? Localized somewhere?
What does the energy around you feel like? Light? Safe? Clear?
Feel all of this, now. Feel it as though it has happened and you are already there in the experience of your wellness. Focus less on the outcomes (resolved symptoms, etc) and more on the feeling that those outcomes might afford.
In the end, it’s a feeling that we want, it’s not a set of conditions, so get straight to the core of your desires and live it into reality.
References:
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