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.

For over twenty-five years, I have worked with cancer patients in the Boston area using an advanced form of clinical hypnotherapy as the primary therapeutic tool in their recovery support. The results I have witnessed in that time are consistent with what the research has been showing for decades: that the mind is not a bystander in the healing process, and that addressing it directly, through clinical hypnotherapy, produces measurable, meaningful outcomes for people navigating cancer.