During your Comprehensive Wellness Visit, and likely during other appointments, you may receive a type of energy therapy called Healing Touch Therapy (HTT).
Depending upon the condition being treated, HTT may be hands-on or hands-off, or some of each. The practitioner may focus on your whole body, or one or more specific areas. It can be performed while you are sitting, standing, or lying down, with eyes open or closed. The practitioner is often able to perform this work while having a conversation with you, but there may be times when it will be important for the practitioner to place all planes of focus on the process.
Additionally, it may also be performed when you are not physically present.
The History of Healing Touch Therapy
Healing Touch Therapy is based on the knowledge that human beings have their own energy field that is in constant interaction with others and our environment. When this energy does not flow as nature intends it, the body, mind, and soul suffer, leading to dis-ease.
The HTT Practitioner uses gentle hand techniques (on or off the body,) with purposeful intention, designed to help restore this energy flow, thus optimizing healing, and guiding one’s own being to its natural state of balanced wellness.
HTT complements other energy therapies (Reiki, acupuncture, massage, hypnotherapy, guided imagery, meditation, and others), natural and homeopathic remedies, and traditional treatments (such as medications, injections, vaccines, counseling, physical therapy, and so on).
“Therapeutic Touch” was first developed in the early 1970s by Dolores Krieger, a professor at New York University School of Nursing and Dora Kunz, a natural healer. It involves direct hands-on therapy.
“Healing Touch” was developed in the 1980s by Janet Mentgen, a Colorado Registered Nurse who worked in emergency rooms and home healthcare. She realized the healing effects of touch did not have to involve direct contact with the patient’s body – it could be achieved from a distance.
Since then, HTT has been studied and shown to do the following:
Relieve pain, anxiety, and stress.
Improve sleep, mood, and emotional balance.
Reduce side effects from cancer, medical, and pharmaceutical treatments.
Improve certain chronic conditions.
Accelerate healing from physical injury, surgery, and medical procedures.
Increase the balance of body, mind, and soul.
HTT is now considered one of the leading energy treatments in the world, practiced in 32 countries. In the US there are hundreds of healthcare facilities and hospitals actively using HTT, including Dartmouth, Stanford, Mayo, Duke, Harvard, Yale, Kaiser Permanente, Johns Hopkins, and Maine’s own Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, where staff physicians provide energy healing, including HTT, as part of the treatment protocol for children with chronic disease.
