How To Mentally Prepare For Surgery | MedStar Health

How To Mentally Prepare For Surgery

Managing stress before and after surgery

Your physician and medical team would like you to be as comfortable as possible and feel confident about your upcoming surgery. Research has found that when people create a positive mindset about their surgery they get better faster and have fewer complications.

We are providing you with this self-hypnosis audio file to help you prepare for your surgery. In this mental exercise, you will learn to relax and concentrate on suggestions for healing and wellness. You may want to listen to this once a day until your procedure date, so as to really implant in your mind that everything will go well.

Know that you can relax with the knowledge that your physician and your well-trained medical team will provide you with expert care; and to help you relax we are providing you with this audio file to listen to, to mentally prepare for your procedure.

Please note:

For optimal performance, we recommend using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge when playing or downloading audio files. To download any file to your device, please click on the "three-dots"  icon on the right of the media player and then click on the top  icon.

All of these audio files can be downloaded to your smart-phone (in your music folder), a tablet, computer, or even burned to an audio CD to make it more accessible for you.

Preparing for surgery

Dr. Appel’s soothing voice will guide you towards relaxation, healing, and wellness as you mentally prepare for surgery.

Listen or Download


Note: For optimal performance, we recommend using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge when playing or downloading audio files. Once in the media player page, please click on the "three-dots" icon  on the right of the media player and then click on the top icon  to download the audio file.

Surgery recovery

Whether recovering in the hospital or at home, Dr. Appel’s guided relaxation exercises can help you stay comfortable and recover more quickly.

Recovering in the hospital

Listen or Download

Recovering at home

Listen or Download


Note: For optimal performance, we recommend using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge when playing or downloading audio files. Once in the media player page, please click on the "three-dots" icon  on the right of the media player and then click on the top icon  to download the audio file.