"Spreading Healing Light Worldwide" With Healing Touch
“Spreading Healing Light Worldwide” is Healing Touch International’s motto. As a Certified Healing Touch Practitioner, I am proud to be part of such a profound movement that seeks to impact all of the inhabitants of the earth, through creating energetic balance and integrating body, mind, and spirit into a vibrant whole.
Healing Touch is an energy-based therapeutic approach to healing which uses touch on or off the body to influence the energy system thus affecting physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. Its goal is to restore harmony and balance in a person’s energy system to assist with self healing. Hands serve as natural electrodes because they have hundreds of sweat glands that reduce skin impedance and increase energy conduction.
Healing Touch is based on the work of Dolores Kreiger, professor of nursing at New York University. Ms. Kreiger developed a contemporary interpretation of ancient healing practices called Therapeutic Touch in 1972, which is considered to be transcultural and transpersonal. She worked with Dora Kunz and by 1990 they had taught their method to 36,000 healthcare professionals. Janet Mentgen an RN, BSN in Denver, Colorado began using Therapeutic Touch in 1980 and then added many other modalities, creating a curriculum to teach the skills and techniques of Healing Touch. It was first offered as a pilot project at the University of Tennessee and in Gainesville, Florida in 1989. Certification of HT practitioners and instructors by the American Holistic Nurses Association began in 1993.
A Healing Touch practitioner acts as a human support system to help re-pattern an individual’s weakened and disrupted energy flow; the practitioner is in a conscious state, setting the intention for the client’s highest good. Its success is based on a practitioner’s ability to integrate the client’s energy system into a synchronistic flow, rather than the amount or intensity of energy produced by the healer.
Practitioners prepare themselves for a treatment by becoming fully present, clearing their minds, and asking for the highest good of the client. They are committed to practicing good self-care so that their own energy field is strong. This acts as protection so that practitioners don’t pick up a client’s symptoms. Many practitioners also use visualization. HT practitioners act as conduits of universal energy that passes through their bodies and hands into the client, and therefore they also benefit from giving treatments.
HT practitioners assess a client’s need through an interview, checking the flow of the chakras (spinning vortex’s of energy with the body), and using their hands to assess the energy field that surrounds the body. This practice allows them to discern blocks in the energy field, heat, cold, static, thickness, or lack of adequate or harmonious energy flow.
The healing is done through a centered heart, thus establishing a spiritual process of extending compassion to the client. Healing Touch does not recommend or require a specific religious orientation. The ability to be an agent of healing is inherent in anyone who desires to help another with a sincere intent to heal. The practitioner acknowledges oneself as a channel or open vessel through which healing energy is transmitted. Practitioners do not see themselves as holders or givers of healing power, but view Healing Touch as a sacred act.
From a spiritual perspective, the physical body is the container for a person’s life essence or soul and the purpose of one’s life is to expand this essence into fullness and to unite with all other life essences and ultimately with Divine Essence.
The practitioner is responsible for holding a reverence for and creating quality of life in the world. This process acknowledges the complexity, mystery, and sacredness of each person’s life journey and engages the individual in a process of healing.
Physical illness can be a means for uncovering a blockage in one’s thoughts or feelings that hinders the life essence, thus hindering physical health. It may also become an avenue for restoring balance. Clients who seek HT for physical problems, are generally recommended to have a treatment every 1 to 2 weeks, although all cases vary. When the energy field is holding with strength and balance, sessions begin to taper off with the goal that clients learn to keep their own energy system healthy through such things as meditation, yoga, or Tai Chi.
Healing Touch is now offered through a multi-level certification process through Healing Touch International or The Healing Touch Program, leaders in credentialing in the field of complementary and alternative therapies. It is used extensively in the nursing profession and is recognized as an intervention for the diagnosis of energy field disturbance. Many hospitals, long-term care facilities, integrative health centers, private practices and clinics, and hospices worldwide integrate the practice. Check out www.healingtouchinternational.org or www.healingtouchprogram.com for information about certification and research, or to find practitioners.
The benefits of Healing Touch as a complementary therapy are many, including:
- Acceleration of wound healing
- Relief of pain and increase relaxation
- Reduction of anxiety and stress
- Provides support during chemotherapy
- Strengthens the immune system
- Enhancement of spiritual development
- Aids in preparation and follow-up after medical treatments
- Palliative care – assisting with the dying process
- Assisting with personal growth issues
I became interested in Healing Touch fifteen years ago when a nurse friend attended a weekend training and shared her enthusiasm with me. It triggered an important childhood memory. When I was 9 years old, my adored older brother sustained a terrible leg injury and went through a traumatic surgery to save it. Someone had to massage his leg regularly to keep the circulation going and I relished the opportunity to help. I could feel my love for him coming through my hands energetically. As an adult, I knew I had to learn this practice.
My certification took three years to complete and it was worth every minute. The process takes time because in addition to attending the trainings, a year-long mentorship is required, along with documenting 100 hours of work and writing a detailed case study. During the ten years that I have been a certified practitioner, I have had the privilege to work in a direct and meaningful way to help my clients achieve many of the benefits listed here.
For more information about energy medicine and spiritual healing you may enjoy the following books:
Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis, by James L. Oschman. He is a cellular biologist from Case Western, Cambridge, and Northwestern who brings together evidence from a wide range of disciplines to explain energy exchange. Mr. Oschman says the essence that nourishes the cell matrix is missing when someone is injured or ill and that the pure form of this essence must come from another person through the fingertips.
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, by Daniel J. Benor, MD and holistic psychiatrist. It is a review of 179 scientific, randomized, double-blind, controlled studies on spiritual healing from all over the world.
Betsy Willey graduated from the University of Michigan and is a retired high school English and History teacher. She received a certificate in Spiritual Direction from the Dominican Center in Grand Rapids in 2000 and completed a two year program in Interfaith Spiritual Guidance in Ann Arbor in 2006. She is a Certified Healing Touch Practitioner, a retreat leader and author of Footprints of the Soul, A Creative Guide for Spiritual Journey Groups and Individuals. www.footprintsofthesoul.com
About The Book About The Author Table of Contents How to Order "Footprints of the Soul" Healing Touch Leader Workshops and Retreats
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