Sooner or later, life presents us with a condition for which we need expert medical attention. A bone fracture, a bad tooth, cataracts, heart-valve challenges, and cancer diagnoses are examples of circumstances that call for a deepening relationship with the medical practitioners in our lives. Many of us attend pre-surgery appointments with apprehension and even dread. Happily, EFT can reduce our anxiety about medical procedures before we have them, and, with frequent, specific use, shorten our recovery time.
Hip surgeries, knee surgeries, vision challenges, and dental complications are, at least at this point in our collective evolution, an integral part of the aging process. We all know friends, often more than one, who have gone under the knife for cataract removal, new hips, new knees, and dental implants. We also recognize that some people bounce back from these surgeries more enlivened than they were before their medical experiences while others languish in the aftermath of pain and medical trauma.
EFT has been used successfully in pre- and post-surgical situations because through tapping people transform any resistant energies to supportive ones. Through the study of epigenetics, researchers are illustrating the role expectations play in our day to day quality if life. Simply put, epigenetics is the study of influences outside or above the health challenge we are experiencing; in epigenetics research, such factors as belief and expectation are taken into account when setting up lab experiments. Bruce Lipton, in the Biology of Belief, and Dawson Church, in The Genie in Your Genes, write eloquently about how our thoughts influence our experiences. Lipton also explains how the Human Genome Project helps us to understand the limited influence of genes on our physical health. Both researchers present evidence supporting Henry Ford’s “Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.”
Going into a surgery as a partner rather than a helpless, frightened victim can make a big difference in surgery experience and surgery recovery. For example, for a hip replacement, one might tap before hand, “My body cooperates fully with the surgeon’s intention to restore pain-free range of motion. All the time I am under anesthetic, everyone in the room serves the purpose of my healing and their professionalism, including me. All is well in surgery and any surprises are handled with expertise and love. My physical self benefits greatly from this procedure and my medical support staff are very pleased with their team efforts to improve my quality of life.”
Creating specific scripts to support a successful partnership between medical personal and client sets the intention to positively influence the outcome of the procedure. If you doubt your ability to influence events, I hope you will dust off your curiosity faculty and apply this same technique to far less serious matters that can sometimes leave you frazzled: making unexpected payments on time, solving a surprise transportation challenge, teaching a class, chairing a meeting, or having an important conversation with a reluctant family member or staff person. Set the intention that all go well, that is, that events support what is in the highest good of all parties, tap on your very specific script including your fears and your desired outcome, and then journal about what you noticed about the process. (Maintaining an EFT journal is a great way to reduce your skepticism regarding the tapping process because your descriptions will remind you of how things shifted when you tapped, thus providing the incentive for more tapping.)
By experiencing smaller successes with EFT, we soon come to understand how useful it is for the big events of life. Wherever we might be in our recovery process from a surgery – whether we are disappointed with the slowness of recovery or furious with the cost both in time and money, we can create a very specific script in which we set positive intentions that are in the highest interests of all people involved. Standing on the threshold of a meeting that others predict will be tense, or lying on a gurney waiting for the anesthetist, we can tap our way into positive expectations for ourselves and others. Easy commutes to work, speedy problem solving, and even amazingly short recovery times where our physical selves appear to be orchestrated by benign outside forces are evidence of the power of our beliefs and expectations.
In this world of conflict and constant pressure, it is very easy to slip into the habit of negative expectations. Daily tapping can lift us out of negativity and into the realms of the positive possible. It is very helpful to remember that if one person experiences an easy procedure and recovers quickly we all can. We simply have to set the intention to do so, remove all resistance to easy recovery with diligent attention to negative thought patterns and old beliefs that no longer serve us, and trust the process of enlivening ourselves and others with optimism and joy. It’s a tall order, but by tapping faithfully, creatively, and meticulously, its an order we can fill with great enthusiasm.
Until next week . . .
Jane