What Do We Bring to the Therapeutic Touch Treatment?
By Barbara Janelle M.A.
The Therapeutic Touch
treatment is a remarkable interaction between two people or in the case of
triad sessions, among three people. But the presence of two or three human beings
is not all that enters into the treatment. Each person brings qualities,
understandings and gifts to the session that lead to the possibility of a
profound interaction. In addition, the treatment is an interaction of other
intelligences and forms of existence with human intelligence and intention.
The Receiver
The receiver
brings the all important gift of openness to the Therapeutic Touch treatment: a
willingness to allow, indeed invite, another person into deeply personal and
sacred space. The receiver also entertains the possibility of change in
response to the treatment. Perhaps, the best way to describe this is that a
receiver, on some level, brings hope to the interaction. That hope may be for
healing, for rest and/or reduction in pain, for understanding, or perhaps for
the possibility of surrender.
On the mundane
level, the receiver sets aside time and provides, as best as possible, quiet
space for the session. Calls go to the answering machine, friends are asked to
come later, and television or radio is turned off. In hospital, the patient may
tell the nurse about the upcoming treatment and arrange for a quiet time. If
the person is under a doctor’s care, it would be appropriate to inform the
doctor of the TT treatments because these can have an effect on the person’s
need for analgesics and other medication.
If conscious, the
receiver agrees to assume some responsibility in the treatment:
-
to
move gently if the body has been in one position too long,
-
to
tell the practitioner (who will ask) if it is all right or not for feet, hands,
and perhaps shoulders and back to be touched during the treatment,
-
to
tell the practitioner if someplace becomes uncomfortable during the session,
-
to say
“enough” if the session goes on to long (although this would be unusual)
-
to
rest for 20 minutes or so after the treatment
The receiver
should be aware as the practitioner is that the Therapeutic Touch Treatment is
a partnership.
The Practitioner
The practitioner
brings many things to the Therapeutic Touch treatment: intention, training and
skill, deep centeredness, acceptance and recognition of the value of the
person, and a willingness to walk into a unique other world to engage in a
wondrous conversation in service to the recipient.
The conscious and
compassionate choice to serve another being is an expression of recognition, respect
and valuing of that person or animal (or even plant). These attributes connect
practitioner and recipient. Service to another is a conscious alignment with
and for that recipient’s well being.
To the Therapeutic
Touch treatment, the practitioner brings compassion, centeredness and trust in
a force of compassion and order that is inherent in the universe as it is in
the field of the recipient. The practitioner moves into a profound partnership
with the recipient’s field and with this universal force.
Compassion. Compassion warms the practitioner’s hands.
This active emotion of the heart initiates a greater energy flow in the
practitioner’s own field and can be felt as heat or energy radiating from the
hands. Compassion turns things on!
Centering. Centering and deepening center are the most
important and effective skills that we bring to the treatment. Indeed, Merlin
Homer, a member of the founding group of TTNO’s Teachers’ Cooperative, says we
can do Therapeutic Touch simply by centering. One of the most effective
teaching exercises is to have students enter a treatment and do some work, then
pause and deepen center, and return to the field, where they discover enormous
shifts toward better function have occurred. Centering shifts the recipient’s
field toward greater order.
Centering also increases
the practitioner’s intuitive insight, ability to receive information from the
field, focusing and visualizing abilities, and communication with the field.
Dolores Krieger says that unless we are centered, we are not doing TT.
Partnership with the Field. The understanding that the practitioner
works WITH the field is critical to the TT treatment. The TT treatment is based
on assessment and much of the work is in response to information the field
gives.
For a long time,
the belief has been that the practitioner modulates the energy delivered to the
field. A greater truth is that the field
modulates the energy that practitioner delivers to it.
If the
practitioner sends blue into the field, and the field needs yellow, it will
attempt to modify the colour/vibration to fit its needs. The practitioner may
think that energy is needed in a particular place in the field and attempt to
send it there. The field may need the energy elsewhere (we truly do not know
the working mechanisms of the energy field) and attempt to draw it there. If
the field is stressed by too much or too intense energy input, or by
inappropriate colour/vibration being sent to it by the practitioner, it may
start to block the treatment and the practitioner’s centering will weaken.
A treatment
approach that is growing in use is to offer energy to the field rather than
direct it into the field. More and more practitioners are also recognizing the
value of offering white or rainbow-coloured light to the field and suggesting
that the field take what it needs. And yet another approach is to remind the
field that its normal function is taking in energy from the universal field;
the energy input in the TT treatment does not have to come from/through the
practitioner.
Intention. This practitioner recognizes the wisdom of
the field and its inherent strength and ability to move toward wholeness; this
is a primary principle in the TT treatment. By focusing on this strength and
wholeness, rather than on a problem, the TT practitioner energizes and supports
the function of the field.
An idea from Dr.
Kam Yuen’s work (1) that fits well in the TT treatment is that by brightening
the central line in the body/field, the whole being in all its aspects –
spiritual, mental, emotional, psychological, psychic and spiritual is
strengthened. On the physical level, this core is the spinal cord and more
energy is made available to move by way of the nervous system. On the energetic
level, this brightening feeds the chakra system as well as the meridian system.
To see the
receiver as strong and to work with and support that strength can be a valuable
focus in the TT treatment.
Intention and Time/Space. The TT treatment is entering a world beyond
time and space as we know it. As my friend and Reiki Master Ann Thomas once
said to me, “This moment is the composite of all moments.” In the TT treatment
we have the possibility of touching all time/all space. We can extend the
treatment to the whole of the person’s life, to all family members, to all
patients in a hospital for the whole of that hospital’s existence, to oneself,
to a city, to healing the Earth, to bringing joy to the universe. There are no
limits and access is through intention.
Partnership with Nature. The TT practitioner can engage with a wide
range of intelligences to support the receiver. In grounding, I ask the
conscious, living Earth to hold the receiver. I often ask nearby plants or
trees to help draw off congested energy. Practitioners report how the
recipient’s dog will often sit at or on the feet to support grounding. I will
engage the intelligence of the mineral kingdom in the metal of chairs and bed
frames to conduct congested energy out of the field. I have found it very
useful to ask for the help of animal spirits in the TT treatment. (2)
In energizing
food, water, clothing, bedding, bandages we can engage the help of the
intelligence in these things to make our work even more effective. In
energizing food, I don’t just send energy into it, but I ask that the
intelligence in the nature kingdom help to shift the vibration of the food meet
my needs for health and strength. I work with the intelligence of the mineral
kingdom to energize food prepared in my microwave oven to support the health of
all who eat it.
Partnership with Beings of Light. When we come with compassion, we link with
the universe of compassion. Many TT practitioners and students have encountered
helpers, beings of light, in the TT treatment. The recipient who says, “I was
sure you were at my feet the whole time of the treatment; it certainly feels as
though someone was there!” Tall columns of bright golden light are sometimes
perceived by the practitioner in profound treatments. Barbara Ann Brennan (3)
among others describes working with these beings. Some practitioners use
Machaelle Small Wright’s MAP Team (4) approach for consciously connecting with
them.
Engaging with a Universal Force. Dora Kunz often led a meditation in which
she would ask us to recognize our connection with nature and that we live in a
Universe of compassion and order. In TT we can and do engage with this force of
compassion and order. We dream of wholeness and engage this force to make it
so. Ultimately what we do as TT practitioners is to bring Trust in forces of
compassion and order into the TT treatment
Conclusion. The receiver
brings hope and openness and the practitioner brings centeredness, intention
and trust to the Therapeutic Touch treatment. The Therapeutic Touch treatment
supports the wholeness of both and is a fine merging of these qualities of
heart and spirit. The TT treatment is a dream of wholeness by both receiver and
practitioner.
Notes
1. Kam Yuen, Yuen Energetics:
The Power of Instant Healing, Shaolin Press, 2001
2. Barbara Janelle, Our Healing Power, Barbara Janelle,
3. Barbara Ann, Brennan, Hands of light: A Guide to Healing Through
the Human Energy Field, Bantam,
4. Machaelle Small, Wright, MAP: The Co-Creative White Brotherhood Medical
Assistance Program, Perelandra
Ltd.,
bj/April 2004