Touch is a vital part of life. The use of touch for healing has been recorded on the ancient Egyptian papyrus from 1552 BC. In orphanages, babies who are only touched on schedule fail to thrive and often die. Healing Touch practitioners have been doing techniques on these babies, and they are now developing normally and many of them have been adopted.
Failure to thrive can even happen in our own society. For example, this couple had an unwanted child, and the child never grew despite being given growth hormones. But when the child is taken out of that environment and placed in a loving environment, the child grows.
We do live in a touch-deprived society, and of course I am talking about appropriate touch. You just need to walk down the hallway of a nursing home where the clients are reaching out to touch you. French studies have found that students who have very affectionate parents are less aggressive and violent. So what do we do when we bang our funny bone or have stomach cramps? We usually hold the area and it feels better. Or when the young child comes crying because they have hurt themselves, well, we pat it or kiss it, and they go away happy.
Janet Mentgen, RN, the founder of Healing Touch, had a vision about having these simple techniques in every home, school and hospital. What a gift that would be to see young children in the playground doing Healing Touch on each other, rather than running to get some pill to cure the discomfort.
Healing Touch is an energy-based therapy that uses hands on or off the body to affect the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual systems, and thereby putting the client in the best possible space to do their healing. Healing Touch complements traditional health care, and research has shown that it can reduce pain and stress, be used in preparation for and follow-up of medical procedures, supports cancer treatment, assists the dying process and is useful for self care.
Using Healing Touch along with pain medicine seems to make the medicine last long, and often clients don't need as much medication to control the pain. It is useful in working on clients with migraine headaches as they often have a big pain ridge that the drugs don't seem to touch. I had to make a house call on a client who was in bed in the dark over her vomit basin. She said her pain level was 17, and we usually say that 10 is the worse pain. In less than half an hour, I got her pain down to a 4 and she was able to sit up and eat her crackers. Even a young three old was able to decrease her mother's migraine pain by moving her hands like she saw her grandma do.
Or what about trying to get a hyperactive child to settle for bed, by using some simple sweeping motions off the body, which can soon have the child off to dream land.
One can learn Healing Touch to support their own self care, to work on pets or plants and, of course, on your family.
Editor's Note: For information on how to contact HANS Professional Member, Betty Petersen, see the HANS Wellness Directory at
http://www.hans.org/directory