More Complementary & Integrative Healthcare Articles
Healing Touch
Healing touch is an integrative energy therapy that can be used in conjunction with traditional therapies to help in the healing process.
The goal is to restore harmony and balance in the human energy system by creating an optimal environment to enable the body’s innate tendency for healing to occur. Practitioners consciously use their hands in a heart-centered and intentional way to support and facilitate physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health and healing within the human energy system.
The human energy system consists of energy fields (also known as subtle bodies or aura), energy centers (chakras) and energy tracts (meridians). The energy system is well known in such fields as acupuncture, yoga and martial arts, and is the basis for integrative medicine used by many physicians, including Andrew Weil, MD, a world-renowned leader and pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, Christine Northrup, MD, a leading proponent of medicine and healing, internationally known for her empowering approach to women’s health and wellness, as well as many other physicians.
Effects of this gentle, meditative treatment may include reduction of pain, stress, anxiety, muscle tension, depression, and mania as well as partial to total reversals in acute and chronic conditions. Clients can experience an increased sense of wellbeing and spirituality
The foundation of the practice of healing touch is a heart-centered, caring relationship in which the practitioner and client come together energetically to improve the client’s health and healing.
This is based on the belief that human beings are fields of energy that are in constant interaction with others and the environment. The goal is to purposefully use the energetic interaction between the practitioner and the patient to restore harmony to the patient’s energy system.
Healing touch practitioners believe that this process balances and realigns energy flow that has been disrupted by stress, pain, or illness. The process may eliminate blockages in the energy field so that the patient is in an optimal state for healing to occur.
Healing touch is intended to complement other healing techniques a patient may already be using, including conventional medical practice in hospitals, clinics and in-home care, or other body-mind oriented therapies such as massage, guided imagery, music therapy, acupressure, biofeedback, and psychotherapy.
Healing touch classes are available locally, nationally and internationally and are credentialed by the American Nurses Credentialing Center and the National Center for Credentialing Associations.
