The Science of Hope is a framework for people navigating cancer. Drawing on psychoneuroimmunology, the study of how thoughts and emotions interact with the nervous and immune systems, it treats hope as a skill that can be learned and offers practical tools to calm the stress response alongside medical care.

The Research on Mind-Body Medicine for Cancer Recovery Finally Caught Up This Year.

Most of what happens in cancer treatment happens to us rather than through us. That, however, doesn't mean we’re helpless or without agency. It seems that the space around treatment – the hours between appointments and the weeks between scans – is not empty. And this year, research on what fills that space became considerably more interesting.

A client recently shared that while she sat in the waiting room, she noticed that everyone else had someone with them, someone who held their hand, while hers sat empty because she had no one to support her.

She wasn’t complaining. She simply stated, “I don’t have anyone who can support me in this way, and I know that support is important.” According to research, she’s right. Support is very important, and not all of us have it.

The silver lining of cancer, if it ever comes for you, will not be something you manufactured. It won't be the reason you got sick — it isn't. And it won't be a prize handed out for suffering correctly. It will simply be something you notice, one ordinary day when you weren't looking for it, about who you've become and what you now hold close.

And if it never comes? You have lost nothing. You are not behind. You are not doing this wrong.

A Tapping practice you can do with your own two hands to resolve the two feelings that tend to show up in treatment: Helplessness and Hopelessness. They rarely announce themselves. They arrive quietly, usually late at night, and they sound something like this:

Nothing I do makes any difference.

And nothing is going to get better.

If you have surgery scheduled, you are probably discovering something that rarely gets discussed at pre-op appointments: the waiting is its own ordeal. The procedure has a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, and a care team. The three weeks before it have only you, at 2 a.m., rehearsing everything that could go wrong.

We all know that it’s important to keep our stress levels in check, but often, with the pace of life, and certainly with the onset of an illness such as cancer, that is easier said than done. If you’ve tried different ways to maintain a healthy level of stress but nothing worked, here is what I teach every one of my clients.