The Therapeutic Touch Partnership

The Therapeutic Touch Partnership

By Barbara Janelle M.A.

Previously Unpublished

The Therapeutic Touch Treatment is a complex partnership involving the practitioner, the recipient, a force of order and compassion, and a range of other intelligences. For the practitioner, the Therapeutic Touch treatment is a conscious cooperative act.

A Universe Of Compassion And Order

In leading meditations, Dora Kunz frequently directed TT practitioners to recognise that we exist in a universe of compassion and order. In the Therapeutic Touch treatment, the practitioner consciously partners with this force through Centering and by feeling compassion for the recipient.

The act of Centering moves the fields of both practitioner and recipient to greater order. Seeing the recipient with respect and caring supports the functioning of the practitioner’s heart chakra and increases the flow of energy into the practitioner’s field and out through the hands to the recipient. The practioner becomes a conduit for this force of order and compassion to reach the recipient.

 

Recipient As Partner

The practitioner enters the TT treatment with the conscious recognition of partnering with the receiver and the receiver’s field. In agreeing to receive TT, the recipient opens to the possibility of change offered by the treatment. If this agreement and openness are not present, the treatment will be blocked: the field puts up a barricade.

The recipient’s field leads the treatment through information that it provides during the practitioner’s ongoing assessment. The field directs the practitioner on where to work, how to work and what to do next. Through the assessment, the field not only gives information on its character, but also gives an order to the work done. For example, it may take several treatments before a major problem site is revealed, as the field leads the practitioner by showing imbalances that first require attention.

By continually assessing during the treatment, the practitioner learns about the field’s response to the work, and the form of work changes to meet the field’s needs. For example, if the practitioner unruffles too slowly, energy may build up in the field; if unruffling is too fast, the field will not shift. The field responds to energy modulation using colour by accepting the colour, changing it to the needed vibration or blocking it if the practitioner insists on sending a particular colour or on directing it too strongly.

The field gives information about subsequent steps through its response to work. For example, a greater sense of uniformity in the field and a weakening level of centering in the practitioner usually precede the end of the treatment.

Earth as Partner

Therapeutic Touch supports the downward flow of energy through the field. Energy that comes in through the crown and other chakras moves down though the field and out of the root chakra and the feet. Grounding increases this flow and energises the field. Grounding also helps to integrate the field so that energy flow is more consistent through it. Grounding provides an avenue for energy from the Earth to enter the field (although we do not focus on this in TT). Most important of all, grounding invites the spirit to be fully present in the body.

Grounding may be done by either visualising roots growing from the field, feet or Root Chakra into the Earth, or much more powerfully by asking the conscious, living Earth to hold the recipient. When the latter approach is used, the Earth embraces the field and the TT treatment is greatly enhanced. (1)

Other Worlds

Recipients frequently report a sense of someone else being present in the treatment. “I was surprised when you touched my shoulders; I was certain you were holding my feet!” is a common statement.

Many years ago while treating a woman in hospital one evening, I could not reach the patient’s left foot to support grounding because of the location of furniture and my lack of time to move it. I wished there was someone there working to deepen the grounding, and then I saw tall yellow columns of light at the woman’s head and feet and found the grounding tremendously enhanced. Indeed the increased flow of energy through the field was so dramatic that it seemed to brighten the entire room!

When I walked out to my car in the parking lot and looked back at the hospital, the entire wall of the 12-story building dissolved, and in every room I saw Beings of Light. I understood they were waiting to help and could do so by going in on the beam of caring that one human holds for another.

Experienced practitioners often speak of loving presences in the treatment, supporting and directing through intuitive insights the practitioner’s work. (2) Some practitioners formally ask for assistance from these loving beings of light during the TT treatment.

Other Nations

Plants and Trees. I often use plants to ground congested energy and have frequently demonstrated a plant’s active participation in the treatment as shown by tiny movements that it makes. As an experiment, unruffle the shoulder area of a recipient and ask a nearby plant to catch and ground the congested energy. Watch what happens when the plant enters as partner in the treatment.

 

A Therapeutic Touch treatment is very special and powerful when done outdoors beneath a large tree. The tree significantly deepens the grounding and supports the flow of a great deal of energy though the field.

Animals. If present, animals will often play a role in the Therapeutic Touch treatment. Cats will get close to or “point” to problem sites. Dogs and sometimes cats will sit on the recipient’s feet supporting the grounding.

Animal Spirits. Native Americans recognise the intelligence and power of animal spirits. I frequently ask for an animal spirit to assist in a treatment. Some experiences of this are:

a) While treating a woman who had been in coma for three months, an eagle came and flew away with a grey caul that was overlying the patient’s head; she was out of coma the next day.

b) Animal spirits were involved in a series of treatments given to a young woman recovering from surgery with Crohn’s Disease. During the first treatment, a bevy of weasels cut tunnels through the very thick congestion over the abdomen and the next day the congestion was almost gone. In that day’s treatment, a sheep took up residence in her heart and on the third day, the sheep had become a lamb and was cavorting in the heart to the tune of “Mary had a little lamb!” The patient’s name was Mary and the lamb spoke of trust, a major attribute of a well-functioning heart chakra, and one that can be sadly lacking in Crohn’s patients.

c) Doves have flown drawing light through injury sites. Moles have worked to clear congestion in lower legs and feet, snakes have exited from the field drawing with them blocks in the field, and so on. In every case the animal spirit comes as a surprise not as a choice of the practitioner. Often an animal spirit brings humour and/or beauty to the treatment.

Partnership

In Therapeutic Touch, the practitioner brings centering, compassion and willingness to partner to the treatment. In entering the partnership we learn more about our human abilities and role in the universe.

Notes

1. Barbara Janelle, “Grounding in the Therapeutic Touch Treatment,” Embodiment of Spirit: Learning Through Therapeutic Touch, self-published: 2003

2. It is interesting to look at illustrations in Barbara Ann Brennan’s Hands of Light (Bantam Books, Toronto, New York: 1987) and see that Being of Light are included and acknowledged.