What Is Healing Touch Therapy?

Healing touch (HT) is an energy therapy that uses light touch or close-to-the-body touch to support and facilitate physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

Life force energy is known as qi in Traditional Chinese Medicine and prana in ayurveda. For centuries, energy work has been practiced in Asian cultures to help people find harmony and healing. Influenced by these Eastern principles, registered nurse Janet Mentgen developed healing touch.

The goal of healing touch (HT) work is for providers to assist in treatment by correcting deficiencies in the energy field. Thus, trained practitioners restore balance and harmony of energies for a client’s optimum health.

Similar Types of Therapies

Therapeutic touch (TT) is a similar therapy that promotes balance and well-being and was developed by Dolores Krieger, PhD, RN. In TT, the practitioner’s hands usually don’t directly touch your body but hover over the body. In HT therapy practices, the same is true, but in some cases, practitioners may use direct touch.

Some Asian approaches similarly focus on energy and maintaining a body’s harmony and equilibrium. These other modalities include acupuncture, qigong, jin shin jyutsu, and reiki.

What to Expect From a Healing Touch Session

HT is a biofield (energy field) therapy that practitioners claim may promote calm and relaxation. Similar to the setting for a massage, it is commonly administered while the client lies on a massage table. In some locations, patients sit in a chair.

In all treatments, clients are fully clothed. Sometimes music is played. HT practitioners will always get your permission if they plan to use direct touch.

• First, during intake, you’ll be asked about symptoms and reasons for your visit.
• Second, the practitioner prepares by getting centered. The practitioner focuses on going inward and eliminating distractions. They enter what is much like a meditative state.
• Thirdly, the focus is on you. The HT practitioner assesses your energy field by scanning, or moving their hands over your body, and assessing your body's energy field. The practitioner may experience a variety of feelings to flag these imbalances in your body.
  

Techniques of Healing Touch Therapy

Once they've finished scanning, they will choose a technique that would most benefit you. Two techniques are used in HT, as outlined below.

The Chakras Technique

One technique involves your chakras, often called energy points in the body. The American Psychological Association dictionary defines chakra as “one of the seven energy centers in the body” in Eastern philosophy.

Using this technique, the practitioner places hands on your feet and moves up the body, focusing on perceived areas of stagnation or atypical energy.

The Magnetic Passes Technique

The Magnetic Passes technique offers another option. This technique involves the practitioner’s fingers combing or brushing over the patient’s energy field. Actual physical contact is not made.

• The practitioner can focus on a particular area of discomfort or survey the whole body. Again, the purported claim of this technique is to help clear blocks in the energy system.
• Next, they perform a scan to be assess any changes in the energy field.
• Finally, they perform a grounding. This purportedly helps the patient receiving treatment return to an alert state.

What Healing Touch Therapy Can Help With

More research is needed to support HT's claims of efficacy but there are some studies suggesting HT may have promising benefits.

May Relieve Pain

Pain management in newborns poses special challenges for healthcare teams that care for these infants. A University of Cincinnati team recently published a study exploring the impact of massage and HT on neonatal pain.

The study focused on 186 infants, and 62% of them received both massage and HT. Focusing on pre- and post-therapy reactions, they found significant improvements in these infants' heart rates. Researchers concluded that massage and HT could be useful therapies in improving comfort and reducing pain in neonates.

Recent research conducted on cancer pain relief also showed the value of HT. The study was conducted on 572 cancer patients' pain and concluded that HT provided immediate pain relief.

May Reduce Anxiety

In another small study from a nursing school in Chester, Pennsylvania, researchers investigated if an HT session could lower anxiety in junior nursing students. The results showed a statistically significant reduction in the anxiety scores of the nurses as a result of the effects of the HT session.

Things to Consider

As they study more about the mechanisms that make HT effective, patient reports tell of improved quality of life. So while there isn’t much empirical evidence available yet, recent scientific studies show promise.

As there is no downside to adding this complementary treatment, it may be a valued adjunct therapy, especially for patients who are grappling with chronic pain within long-term care facilities.

Nowadays, hospitals are incorporating HT into their programs to calm and relax patients before they go in for procedures. HT is also being used for patients with anxiety and sleep disturbances.

Summary

While research has proven that massage has healing benefits, non-contact therapies such as HT and TT are more controversial. In the medical field, these practices are considered a pseudoscience by many and scientists aren’t sure exactly if or how it works. Some believe positive results may be due to the placebo effect.