Frequently Asked Questions

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I apply a professional, clinical energy therapy sequence which has guided me for many years in client sessions. The comprehensive, holistic steps include my own inner spiritual and mental preparation, an intake or update interview with the client, an energetic assessment, the energy therapy treatment, a post treatment assessment,  evaluation based on both of our experiences, and discussion, including an empowering plan of care. Once we make contact, I will send you an Intake Interview form which you can review and think about, or fill out and send or bring with you. It is a comprehensive overview of your body-mind-spirit self assessment to help guide us in getting to know each other and to create a trusting relationship and safe space.

Based on your history, healing intentions, beliefs and preferences, my first priority is your feeling safe with me and open to the treatment. Once we have co-created a sacred space, after answering your questions and providing a clear explanation of the steps i plan to implement, I transition to the intervention portion of the session by lightly touching your head or shoulders. I will speak aloud an opening guided meditation and/or offer a prayer that is resonant with your beliefs (if you like) including our mutual intention for healing. This helps set the sacred space necessary to create a feeling of safety and trust in the process. I continue with one or more specific HT or intuitively guided methods that are appropriate for the condition and intention for healing. This portion of the session is typically done in silence (or with quiet music) to help facilitate the relaxation response and other possible healing responses. Sometimes clients prefer to process some of their thoughts or experiences during the treatment and this can also be very effective. With my background in psychotherapy and spiritual  work, I am comfortable with various responses that may emerge.

At the end of the session, we will discuss yours and my experiences if you like. We can discuss how the healing momentum can be integrated into your life and beliefs to support your growth and healing. We will also discuss a plan of care to maintain the momentum of healing that has occurred based on the increased flow of energy and renewed sense of balance and clearing which is typically experienced by the end of a session, or within a day or so afterward. The vast majority of recipients experience a relaxation response which supports healing at physical, emotional and mental levels of being.

I encourage clients receiving a series sessions to consider learning and applying some basic self care methods to the self as a step toward empowering oneself to learn how to facilitate enhanced self-healing. I can teach you how to do this and will provide references/sources to support this process.

Add an ansSome body-mind-spirit health issues or conditions often respond nicely after one session. If you feel the session was helpful and would like to try a set of sessions, we can commit to a series. Health issues could be  physical, emotional, mental or spiritual in nature.

As a team, you and I will re-evaluate the benefits after the sessions, and over time, and adjust as needed.

In some cases, I will recommend the support of one or more other health care practitioners (mainstream or holistic) who may offer a modality that could be of significant benefit, and which is out of my legal scope of practice.

I will ask a client to sign an Informed Consent form at the beginning of our work together to help create clarity about our roles and relationships and to empower us in our work together. Sometimes we just use a verbal informed consent. I see our client-practitioner relationship as a partnership in healing based on honesty, empowerment, responsibility, professionalism and compassion. Humor is often part of our work together!wer to this item.

As a natural complement to traditional western medical care, HT is practiced in a growing number of hospitals, rehabilitation and long term care centers, physical and occupational therapy centers, chemotherapy and radiation treatment centers, athletic clubs, massage and spa facilities, pediatric hospitals, hospices and schools. In addition, many individuals, parents and family members learn the basics of Healing Touch in introductory or Level 1 class to use in the home setting or on one’s own family, friends or neighbors with health conditions. Many spiritual centers and churches also are establishing HT clinics and services, with parish nurses trained in HT as an example.

Energy therapy will empower a recipient to reconnect with the the body’s natural tendency to be as healthy as possible. Within a few minutes of a session, the energy that flows for the client’s highest good facilitates the relaxation response (in the vast majority of recipients) as one of the main mechanisms to restore or jump start physical and/or mental healing. By inviting the body to deeply relax, pain, anxiety and tension decrease or become dissipated or eliminated, and the body is enabled to align with its natural self healing processes. Physiological changes indicative of healthy response are frequently noted in blood pressure, circulation, metabolism, digestion, respiration and immune functioning.

Typically clients experience various degrees of body-mind-spirit peace and relaxation which allows one to release the effects of stress, illness, injury and trauma. Some clients have primarily physical responses, such as relief of pain, increased range of motion, improved mobility and increased energy. Others may have a primary response in the realm of emotion and thought such as peace of mind, decreased anxiety, clarity in thinking, or increase in confidence or self esteem. Many recipients also describe a deepened or new sense of connectedness with the spiritual self or with the spiritual world.

There is growing evidence that Healing Touch has been effective in providing support for a variety of health conditions, and has been known to:

• Reduce or eliminate pain, both chronic and acute
• Decrease anxiety and tension
• Enhance recovery from surgery and reduce length of hospital stay
• Reduce effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy
• Strengthen the immune system
• Reduce or facilitate healing for the effects of trauma
• Provide comfort during the dying process
• Improved sleep
• Deepen spiritual connection

No, one does not need to believe in energy therapy for it to be effective. A healthy skeptical attitude about any health care remedies or modalities is a good thing, based on the vast availability of various forms of health care, some which are legitimate and others with unknown or questionable benefits. The client may include one or more specific intentions for healing, but any particular intentions are also released for the highest good, based on the belief that neither the practitioner nor client may really know what is best for a client at that time. By trusting in the practitioner and the energy transferred from Higher Source, the body’s natural wisdom can accept what is beneficial on an energetic level.

The following disclaimer I wrote for the HTP Course of Studies Curriculum also applies my practice:

    “The Healing Touch Program Curriculum and methods are based upon healing arts concepts and holistic nursing principles and theories, including acknowledgement of the spiritual dimension of human life. Practitioners and instructors of HT engage in a myriad of spiritual practices and come from backgrounds of all the major world religious streams and their various branches. The universal principles of HT, including the belief that conscious, international and compassionate touch can positively influence the health of another, is a belief shared by all who practice this healing art.”

The reader [of the HT curriculum] will note that spiritual principles are addressed in a generic way in order to hold universal appeal. No specific religious or spiritual belief is taught or promoted in the HT Program. Participants are invited to consider how her or his own individual or group beliefs can be translated or transferred from HTP curricular materials.

HT practitioners are free to incorporate their own spiritual beliefs and principles within their own practice to the extent that their clients feel free and empowered as a recipient of Healing Touch. For example, a practitioner and client sharing a specific religious orientation may choose to bring in concepts, beliefs or practices from their common faith which may beautifully enhance their healing work together.

Healing Touch is beneficial for people of all ages – from babies in utero to newborns and to those in all stages of the life cycle including the elderly and frail. Energy therapy administered near or at the time of death can be instrumental in facilitating a peaceful passage. It is utilized in many health care facilities for both chronic and acute conditions including first aid and comfort care.

Healing Touch is considered a biofield therapy according to the National Institutes of Health. Biofield therapies, of which HT is well known and respected, are within the health field called Energy Medicine, which in turn is considered a branch of holistic integrative medicine increasingly recognized in mainstream health care. Biofield therapies are divided into two branches, those which use instrumentation and those which use the human capacities of heart and consciousness to affect positive change in a person or animal.