Takeaway
Full presence with patients allows us to more empathically interpret clinical data.
Creative arts in medicine | March 9, 2026 | 1 min read
By Emily Lafferman, MD, Prisma Health
Pre-clinic meditation
Enter each room as sacred ground.
Not hunting symptoms,
but listening for what moves quietly beneath them.
Urgency is left at the door.
Lowering questions like lanterns,
steady and near the earth,
so what has been exiled
may find its way forward.
Remembering:
a pulse is a history asking for breath.
A mind is weather, not war.
A body defends for a reason.
Science held firmly in one hand.
With the other, leaving space
for what cannot yet be measured.
Sitting long enough
for silence to soften.
For defenses to rest.
For truth to feel oxygen.
Caring not to conquer suffering.
Practicing to widen the circle around it
until it no longer stands alone.
And when we leave,
all that is not ours to carry will be released.
I wrote this meditation from a quiet ache I’ve felt in modern medicine. So much of our work has become algorithmic, reduced to templates and time stamps, as if healing were a checklist rather than a living exchange. I wrote this as a return. A return to presence before productivity. To listening before labeling. To remembering that beneath every diagnosis is a human nervous system seeking safety, meaning, and connection. It’s my small act of recalibration, a way of stepping back into the sacredness of care that’s too often forgotten in the healthcare system.