What Are Energy-Balancing Therapies?
The three most prominent therapies using the hands to alter the body’s energy field
and impact the healing process are Therapeutic Touch (TT), Healing Touch (HT),
and Reiki. All three approaches could be simply defined as the use of the hands on
or near the body with the intention to help or to heal. Actually, the word touch is a
misnomer in Therapeutic and Healing Touch, because the practitioner doesn’t neces-
sarily touch the recipient to achieve the desired effects during a healing session.
Techniques are usually performed inches and sometimes feet from the recipient’s
body. These therapies are modern interpretations of several ancient healing prac-
tices, traditionally known as the “laying on of hands.” TT, HT, and Reiki, however,
must not be confused with faith healing, as the context in which they are practiced
is not religious but scientific.
The goals of these hand-mediated therapies are to accelerate the person’s own heal-
ing process and to facilitate healing at all levels of body, mind, emotions, and spirit.
All three are forms of treatment and are not designed to diagnose physical condi-
tions. Nor are they meant to replace conventional surgery, medicine, or drugs in
treating organic disease.
Therapeutic touch is practiced by an estimated 40,000–50,000 American nurses. The
brainchild of Dolores Krieger, R.N., Ph.D., of New York University, she launched the
TT movement in 1970 after studying with Dora Kunz, a past president of the
Theosophical Society of America and a natural healer. TT refers to the Krieger-Kunz
Method of Therapeutic Touch, and was originally developed as an energy field inter-
action between nurse and client. Dr. Krieger, along with Janet Quinn, R.N., Ph.D.,
from the University of Colorado School of Nursing, has devoted her career to the
research, study, and teaching of TT. TT has been taught in more than 80 universities
and colleges in the United States and in more than 70 other countries–primarily in
schools of nursing.
Healing touch refers to approaches taught in the American Holistic Nurses
Association’s (AHNA) Certificate Program in Healing Touch for Health Care
Professionals. Healing-touch therapy was developed by Janet Mentgen, R.N., B.S.N.,
a Colorado nurse who has been practicing energy-based care since 1980. When
Mentgen was introduced to TT, she added it to her extensive healing repertoire and
created the Healing Touch approach. In 1990, her five-course sequence in HT
became the first certified program offered by the AHNA.
Reiki is a Tibetan/Japanese technique for stress reduction, relaxation, and promotion
of healing. The word Reikiis made of two Japanese words: rei, which means “God’s
Wisdom or the Higher Power,” and ki, which is “life force energy.” Thus Reiki means
“spiritually guided life force energy.” Reiki is an ancient Buddhist practice rediscov-
ered by a Japanese physician, Dr. Usui, using ancient Tibetan texts. He first used168 ABSOLUTE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TOALTERNATIVE MEDICINE