Creative Healing
By Scott Jeffrey
You’re stuck. Before you even finish your standard treatment regimen, your intuition tells you it’s not going to work with this particular patient’s situation. Pausing, you breathe deeply, clearing your mind.
Out of the silence, a new idea comes. It’s not necessarily a bolt of lightning or a flash of light, but somehow, you see it: An unconventional approach you just know will help your patient recover.
Clinicians, whose job is to alleviate suffering, have undoubtedly encountered complex situations unresponsive to the usual tools in their kit. So how does one tap into creative inspiration to heal?
The blocks to creative inspiration for the health practitioner are the same blocks that any creative professional faces: Oneself. Limiting beliefs, preconceived notions, judgments, positions, emotionalized opinions, and other little deceptions of the human mind get in our way. Our limiting beliefs, for example, often manifest as the inner critic taunting, I can’t help this person. No one can.
As it turns out, creative inspiration can’t be unleashed by virtue of the will because the source of the creative impulse is beyond our personal, limited minds. Although we can’t force creativity with a technique, we can set up the “inner conditions” that increase the chances for creativity to manifest.
Here are three things you can do to allow creative inspiration into your practice:
Welcome the Wanderer. Reflection need not be the exclusive enjoyment of poets and artists. Creative work for health practitioners requires an inner space for the mind to wander aimlessly. Occasional periods of reverie allow thoughts to incubate and form new connections, yet the value and significance of this reflective state is not sufficiently acknowledged in western culture—and definitely not in the medical field. Our fanatical focus on constant “busy-ness” stifles creativity, leaving the Wanderer no room to explore.
Stop and listen. Appreciate the innate beauty around you; feel grateful for your existence. Seek natural surroundings. Hear the chorus of rustling leaves, the cadence of people walking. Find your inner center. Allow your thoughts to sink into the mind’s ocean. Welcome the Wanderer and his creative renaissance back into your life.
Praise the Muse. Creative geniuses generally don’t take credit for their work; instead, they credit a “higher power” as the source of their inspiration. William Blake called it “Poetic Genius.” Puccini said his greatest opera, Madame Butterfly, was “dictated to me by God.” Both Brahms and Beethoven appealed directly to the “Creator Himself.” And, in recounting his experience with the creative process, Mozart said, “What has been thus produced I do not easily forget, and this is perhaps the best gift I have my Divine Maker to thank for.”
Health practitioners need not wrestle between the polarities of false modesty and overt narcissism. If your thoughts aren’t personal, can you take credit for them as “mine”? Humility is the trademark of creative genius—available to all, accepted by the treasured few. So praise the Muse. When a healing solution presents itself, instead of taking credit for it, simply be grateful for its arrival.
Elevate your Consciousness. Psychiatrist and consciousness researcher David R. Hawkins, author of the bestseller Power vs. Force: The Anatomy of Consciousness, reveals that creativity originates from higher consciousness. The works of creative geniuses tend to be aligned to powerful energy fields, the same fields associated with love, gratitude and devotion.
How do you elevate your consciousness to align to fields that induce high-powered creativity in your practice? Live by basic spiritual dictums: Be kind to everything and everyone, including yourself; revere all life; approach all of life with humility. Your intention as a healer affects your ability to facilitate healing—the higher the intention, the better the results. Devote your noble vocation to something greater than yourself—your patients, your family, a loved one, humanity, or divinity.
Consider these three simple yet powerful ways to align to higher levels of creativity. Since the source of creativity is consciousness itself, the creative impulse is available to all—poets, artists, scientists, teachers, philosophers and yes, health practitioners. Are you ready to tap deeply into this ever-present creative energy to help better serve and heal your patients?
