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Therapeutic touch in clinical psychology
Therapeutic touch in clinical psychology
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The Power of Healing
There is always the right way to do something, then of course, there the other way. According to Webster's Ninth New College Dictionary, to be unconventional means to be out of the ordinary, not lacking originality or individuality. Therapeutic touch is unconventional. It is a method of healing using energy.
Therapeutic Touch (TT) is the practice of facilitating healing using Universal healing energy. It has been shown to help the sick or hurt, calm the feared and comfort those who need comfort. Because of it's different approach to helping restore health rather than the "normal" taking a pill, TT has not been readily accepted by many medical doctors. In A Doctor's guide To Therapeutic Touch, author Susan wager, M.D. states that Therputic Touch is different then normal medical procedures. "In evaluating any form of healing, weather conventional medicine or unconventional therapies we make basic assumptions about the healing process"(24)
Therapeutic Touch is done by concentrating one's energy, and directing this focused energy through one's hands to a person or animal. Physical contact is not always necessary, but sometimes is appropriate.
My mother, Barbara Cull-Wilby, PhD., R.N., has studied practiced and lived TT since 1987. When I was five years old, my family and I Lived in Rochester, New York. I wasn't accident prone, but I wasn't without adventure. While playing with friends, outside one day, I decided to attempt a flying act off my picnic table. Not long after my miraculous take off my forehead found it's way to the table's sharp edge. This of course resulted in a big gouge in my forehead with quite a bit of blood. I ran screaming into the house to find my mother, who had an...
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...s TT could bring it from zero to hero in less than a week. The media could take this unconventional idea and turn it into a familiar household routine.
Therapeutic Touch is a good way to help others. It is different, but it does work. Trying new things never killed anybody. It is unfair for it to be labeled unconventional just because it expresses new and different ideas about healing. Next time you come across something that seems a little odd and might be a little silly, take a deep breath, close your eyes, feel the energy of everything around and inside you, and than decide weather or not it's worth your time. You never know it could save your life.
Work Cited
Cull-Wilby, Barbara, PhD, R.N. Therapeutic Touch pamphlet, Wholecare
Wager, Susan, M.D. A Doctor's guide to Therapeutic Touch,
New York, 1996
...uals, even if they don't agree with them. It really falls to nurses to address the situation properly, and effectively ensure that the cultural communication between the doctor and the patient does not break down. Nurses most of all have to communicate with patients in a healing way, even if they do not agree with mystical remedies because the nurse has to recognize that there is nonetheless a function that mystical ritual remedies do serve, even to western medicine: to comfort the patients and their families. Ancient rituals or customs, retained to some extent or respected by western caregivers, can serve to maintain a healing and positive attitude, and as a psycholgocial support which the nurse can provide through respect and symbolic use of non-western cultural myths as a psychological stimulant to assist the healing process and inspire the patient thereof.
though its massage may be uncomfortable it opens our eyes to social problems that we still can
Therapeutic touch was developed by Dolores Krieger and Dora Kunz in the 1970s as a non-invasive nursing intervention (Kelly et al. 2004). Jackson and Keegan (2009, p.614) defined therapeutic touch as “a specific technique of centring intention used while the practitioner moves the hands through a recipient’s energy field for the purpose of assessing and treating energy field imbalance.” The original theory of the technique proposed by nursing theorist Rogers (1970) is that individuals as a unified whole have their own permeable energy fields that extend from the skin surface and flow evenly when they are healthy. The energy field of the ill physical body is disrupted, misaligned, obstructed or “out of tune” (Huff et al. 2006). TT has the potential to re-pattern, reorganize and restore the individual’s imbalanced energy fields through the open system extending from the surface of the body interacting with the environment constantly (Krieger, 1979). The earliest studies of healing touch were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s: biochemist Bernard Grad (1965) collaborated with famous healer Oskar Estebany to demonstrate the significantly accelerated healing effects of therapeutic touch on wounded mice and damaged barley seeds. The central aim of healing therapies is to relax and calm patients in order to activate patients’ natural healing ability, and it does not include any religious activity (Lorenc et al. 2010).
Epiro, E. & Walsh, N., (1997). “Alternative Medicine–Part Two: Mind Body Medicine–Expanding Health Model”. Patient Care 15 Sept. 1997: 127-145. Retrieved: February 13, 2011, from:
The therapeutic aspect is focussed on the care received, and how it creates a positive outcome for the service user, this includes good communication, building strong relationships, person centred planning and the choices available to the person in receipt of care. (Miller, J, 2015) (Gibb and Miller, 2007)
Cherry, B., & Jacob, S. R. (2017). Complementary and alternative healing (C. Eliopoulos, Ed.). In Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends & management (7th ed., pp. 205-206). St Louis, MO: Elsevier, Inc.
Some clients who have experienced trauma are particularly sensitive to issues related to touch and loss of control. Healing Touch treatments can be done without physical contact and provides the client with a choice about when and how much touch is
With this in mind whatever method is chosen, modern medicine or alternative, spiritual healing is a crucial part of the whole process of healing.
Environmental barriers that prevent nurses from conducting touch identified could not only weaken the effectiveness of touch therapies, but also constitute various risks associated with nurses’ well-being. Lorenc et al.(2010) used a self-administrated questionnaire, surveying 67 healing provider’s opinions on supplying healing therapies on 38 conventional cancer centers across the UK. Feedback on barriers of this integrated service include: the little financial reimbursement for healer’s time, the lack of credibility of healers from patients, the insufficient regulatory framework within the conventional care setting and insufficient training and supervision for self-refereed healing provision. Green (2013) points out that the risk associated with this physically intimate nurse-patient interaction is much more than nurses have realized; aside from issues relating to nurses’ bedside commitments such as pay, hou...
Alternative medicines have constructed many theories to determine the impact of vitalism on the body. A few of the best-known theories are bioenergetic fields and the subsets of this category. This means that humans are surrounded by a field of energy, as proposed by Mesmer in his theories. These are called the human “aura” (Patterson,1998). Each organ in the body has an electromagnetic frequency, a factor used by alternative healers to direct their specific treatment modality. When illness occurs, it is because of a struggle between positive and negative electromagnetic waves inside the body (Stenger, 1999). Alternative practitioners claim “that they can affect cures for many ills by ‘manipulating’ this field, thereby bringing the body’s ‘live energies’ into balance” (Stenger, 1999).
On the topic of healing rituals, the Iroquois had an unconventional form of medicine. Though they were known to treat common sicknesses and injuries such as wounds and broken bones, they had an alternative method of treating more serious cases. This method involved ritual healers singing and beating of drums in order to cast away bad spirits. The Iroquois even had societies that were dedicated to treating a specific ailment through a specific ritual.
In the US., the therapeutic group seldom has approaches to correspond with individuals of societies so drastically unique in relation to standard American society; even a great interpreter will think that it troublesome deciphering ideas between the two separate societies' reality ideas. American specialists, not at all like Hmong shamans, regularly physically touch and cut into the collections of their patients and utilize an assortment of capable medications and meds.
Reflexology is the theory that the human body can be healed from disease or imbalance through pressure to specific points on the hands, feet, and ears (http://www.doubleclickd.com/reflexology.html). This alternative form of healing is doubted by many, although there are studies that support its theory.
Therapeutic touch was founded by Dolores Krieger RN and Dora Kunz (natural healer), it emerged in the early in the 1970s. Therapeutic touch is a contemporary interpretation of several ancient healing practices and its purpose is to facilitate healing and relieve the patient from any pain they are having. Therapeutic Touch also has a great influence in religious faith healing. This healing technique does not involve any type of contact and it is a widely used nursing practice also considered a nursing intervention. There are 100,000 people around the world are trained in therapeutic touch and that includes 40,000 health care professionals. Therapeutic touch is also taught in more than 100 colleges in seventy-five countries. When therapeutic touch was founded it was a contact technique which then evolved into a no contact technique. Its main objective is to balance out the human
I intend to help readers question their healing practices and the state of today’s formal medicine—to influence thought, education of the reality and exploration of the natural medicine realm.