Journal of Sacred Work

Caregivers chronically underestimate their ability to be agents of healing as well as curing. – Erie Chapman

  One of our finest popular thinkers on healing is the physician and writer, Deepak Chopra. Dr. Chopra’s insights can help us understand how we, as caregivers, can engage the energy of love in healing. This does not mean that we become healers, but that we may become agents of healing.
   As Dr. Chopra has said, "What has surprised me most is that when given insight,
even a little bit of insight, patients find themselves empowered to do the
impossible."
   Caregivers that have learned the gift of presence can awaken healing in others. This is part of the gift of not Quantum self-healing, but a new phrase for something ancient: Quantum Caregiving. We have the ability to help redirect energy in others as well as in ourselves. The best caregivers engage in a lovely choreography with patients that converts what was once seemed ‘impossible’ into a healing reality…

   Quantum healing, according to Chopra, "involves healing one mode of consciousness, mind, to bring about
changes in another mode of consciousness, body."
   I have often used the famous example of Norman Cousins astonishing recovery from a "terminal" connective tissue disease as an illustration of our ability to self heal by redirecting our energy. Cousins directed his energy into humor. Somehow, this appeared to dissipate the toxicity of his illness and, against all of his doctor’s prognoses, Cousins recovered.
   Quantum Caregiving, different from quantum healing, involves directing our loving energy towards others and helping awaken in them their ability to heal. This does not automatically mean that disease goes away. Healing is about more than curing. Quantum Caregiving has to do with engaging and promoting the well being of the entire other, not just their diseased part.
   We all know people who have been cured but are not healed. In the same way, we know people with cancer who are healed, but not cured.
   Quantum Caregiving, among other things, seeks to approach, with respect, the toxic energy of certain attitudes in both ourselves and others. Stress is attitudinally based and can be healed. When Mr. Cousins started his pattern of daily "laugh therapy" we can assume that his stress level went down. Scientists now know that stress affects our T-cell count and our body’s ability to fight infection. This is an important thing for healing caregivers to know as they approach others – that there job is not only to fix what is broken but to help awaken in the other their ability to self heal.
   The core of Quantum Caregiving is the approach it takes toward the spirit. Curing aims at correcting physical illness. Caring address the spirit. Curing tends to approach the body as a machine. Quantum Caregiving appreciates the human body as a place touched by the divine spirit.
   It requires significant reflection, prayer and meditation to appreciate the potential in Quantum Caregiving. We all know about those who administer it – the well known, Jesus, St. Francis, Mother Theresa – and the lesser known like the nurse or social worker down the hallway who brings a healing spirit to caregiving and, almost miraculously, often gains healing results with patients.
   Quantum Cargiving can be costly to caregivers. Hearts that are open to God’s love may also feel some of the pain of the patient and family. Yet there are the deepest of rewards as well.   
   Some believe that Jesus’ ability to bring about physical healing may have distracted people from his primary goal: to heal souls, not bodies. The evidence for this is in his occasional requests that individuals he had healed not tell anyone of what he had done. Yet he also felt the need to demonstrate the power of God’s love in ways that were visible to doubting humans. 
   Modern American hospitals have become obsessed with patient satisfaction surveys. Did the patient seem to like how they were treated by staff? These surveys have their place. But of far deeper importance is not surface satisfaction but a deeper sense of being more healed by a sacred encounter with a caregiver. This is the power of Quantum Caregiving. It begins with a caregiver’s awareness that their specific presence, something that arises from their hearts, can have a great impact. A loving heart shows itself in everything from voice tone and body language to the deepest kind of listening and affirming presence.
   I have applied a strange sounding phrase, Quantum Caregiving, to something many people have been doing in their work for years. By using this phrase, I hope to make you even more aware of something you may sense about yourself. That you have your own God-given ability to be a channel of light and love to all those around you.