Healing Hands

Alternative therapy targets ‘energy’ for relief

by Sasha Paulsen, Napa Valley Register Features Editor, March 13, 2000

Chlori Watson suffers from cancer of the spine, but once a week the patient at Hospice of Napa Valley waits for a treatment she likens to “standing on a hilltop and taking a deep breath.”

It’s the healing touch therapy provided by Mary Maddux, one of the team of health care providers at the hospice.

The treatment, Watson said, “just takes a great weight off me.”

Maddux doesn’t just treat the patients at hospice; when she has time, she give treatments to other staff members, who say the therapy provides a profound, almost mystifying relaxation.

The therapy consists of the lightest kind of touch — most often Maddux’s hands simply hover in the air above the patient. What she is doing, Maddux explained, is working with energy.

If this is hard to imagine, it’s equally hard for those receiving the treatment to describe its effects. “All I know is something is happening,” Watson said, “and it’s phenomenal.”

A former massage therapist, Watson said, “I know the benefits of touch; but this is more spiritual than anything.”

Healing touch, which developed from “therapeutic touch,” a technique used by many health care professionals, is based on the theory that a healer’s hands can re-direct the flow of a patient’s energy. And this, according to the theory, creates healing, using the term used in a broader sense to mean relief from pain, relaxation from stress or just an improved all-around sense of well-being.

“It’s a little unnerving,” said Mark Perkins, director of social services for the hospice, who tried a 10-minute session, and has now signed up for a level-one class to beginning learn the method himself. “I don’t know what she did, but it was almost a mind-altering experience.”

Maddux was a social worker at the hospice, when she was completing her training to become a certified healing touch therapist — a process that takes two to three years of study, plus a year of supervised mentorship.

Now, she said, she feels like she is “giving so much more” to the hospice patients and their families.

Maddux began providing healing touch treatments at the hospice last fall, part of a pilot program that includes other alternative therapies for patients, including art and music.

“I’m really interested in the idea of people as energy,” Perkins said. “There’s a vast potential there, and we’re just seeing a small part of it.

“I might have been skeptical,” he added, “but I knew Mary first as a marvelous social worker, who had done wonderful, grounded work with patients and families.”

And if the healing experience Maddux provides doesn’t lend itself easily to verbal descriptions, he said, “this can be a strength in a hospice. It’s another way of reaching patients.”

Maddux also treats patients at the Adult Day Health Center in Napa, and she sees private clients at the Sonoma Holistic Center.

They come to her for reasons that run the gamut from needing help for chronic pain and stress, recovering from accidents and dealing with emotional crises to seeking mental clarity or spiritual deepening.

“It’s based on the idea that we are all energetic beings,” Maddux said.

Healing, she said, starts with energy. “We (healers) deal with energy centers. We learn what they are associated with, how to balance them, to eliminate blocks, clear away the twigs and debris.”

“There’s definitely something going on,” said Celine Regalia, program director at the Adult Day Health program, who tried a treatment herself. “She hardly touches you, yet I felt like I’d had a full-body massage.”

The therapy “touches on the emotional, psychic, and spiritual,” Maddux said. “It’s all connected; everything is energy.”

But she agrees, it’s hard to describe what she does. “It’s partly intuitive,” she said. “I feel where there are blocks and try to open them up. We get information that doesn’t come through the five senses.

“But we always emphasize that all healing is self-healing,” she added. “A healer is only a facilitator. When a person comes to me, they’re already on the way.

“It’s an ability everyone has,” she added. “These are things we do naturally. If you bump your head, you put your hand on there. It’s instinctive, not just a gesture…There has always been a tradition of healing by laying-on of hands.”

Those who try it agree that part of the healing comes from the deep relaxation it induces. “Healing happens when you can just shut down and you’re able to go inward,” said Regalia.

While it may not change the circumstances of one’s life — whether it’s an emotional crisis or a terminal illness — it does induce a profound sense of peace that is in its own way, healing, said one of Maddux’s private patients, Beth Bywater.

Bywater, a registered nurse with a private holistic practice in Napa, has studied healing touch and therapeutic touch. She can do the treatment; nonetheless, she comes to Maddux for sessions when she can. “It’s incredibly relaxing,” Bywater said.

“Most people I see I see for a few times, and I try to teach them things they can use for self-care,” she said. They may come back for maintenance — like a tune-up.”

Maddux will be participating in a training session for those interested in learning more about healing touch therapy, April 14-16, at Adult Day Health of Napa, 3299 Claremont Way, Napa. The three-day session…is the first level training, which provides an introduction to healing touch, as well as techniques. It’s open to health care professionals as well as those interested in an “in-depth understanding of healing work that utilizes energy-based concepts.”

 

 

Comments

2 Responses to “Healing Hands”

  1. Helen Strahl RN CHTP on March 29th, 2009 3:25 pm

    Healing Touch was developed by Janet Mentgen not Therapeutic Touch

  2. Mary on March 29th, 2009 5:36 pm

    Correct, this news article was misleading in saying “Healing Touch was developed from Therapeutic Touch”. The article is about Healing Touch, however.

Share your ideas or ask questions!

(Your email will not be used by us or shared with a third party.)





Copyright © 1998-2008 Heart of Healing