Krieger, Dolores, Accepting Your Power to Heal: The Personal Practice of Therapeutic Touch, Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co. 1993. ISBN 1-879181-04-5 $10.95 paper
Dolores Krieger, PhD, RN, is professor of nursing at New York University. She developed the Therapeutic Touch (TT) method of healing along with Dora Kunz, a gifted healer. Krieger estimated in 1990 that she had taught some 36,000 professional people in the US and abroad to use TT and that Kunz had taught approximately an equal number. There are many others who have gone on to teach TT, particularly nurses, so one can say with fair assurance that TT is the most widely practised specific method of healing in the western world.
The American Holistic Nurses Association is enthusiastically involved with TT and there is a slow but growing interest in TT in the UK.
TT focuses on the biological energy fields around the body of the healee for diagnosis and treatment, the treatment consisting of '...sensitively modulating human energies'. (p. 11) Krieger feels that these are '...universal energies that are the backdrop to all living events and within which both healer and healee are figures sharing a unitary nature.' (p.45)
TT suggests that healing may be of benefit in ways not commonly employed in the UK:
1. TT is often taught to relatives of people with chronic diseases. This makes the healing more readily available as needed, provides a way whereby loved ones can be helped by family members, and brings about a greater closeness between family and friends.
2. TT is advocated for use in pregnancy, especially by the husband. This increases the family closeness at a time of stress, enhances parental bonding with the child, helps husbands to shift from their predominant preoccupation with work outside the home to personal contributions they can make within the home, and introduces awareness that '...we do not stop at our skins.' (p. 139) TT has been used by midwives, nurses, Lamaze instructors, in addition to the parents themselves, especially during the seventh to ninth months of gestation.
3. TT is useful for postnatal problems such as sore breasts and the healing of episiotomies.
Healers in the UK generally claim that there are no side effects from healing. Krieger notes that it is possible to 'overdose' with TT healing.
...it is possible for the healee to overdose on energy when Therapeutic Touch is overly prolonged and sufficient attention is not paid by the practitioner to the healee's sensitivity to the process. The signs of overdose to watch for in the healee bear repeating: increasing restlessness leading to heightened irritability, anxiety, hostility, or even pain if the intervention is heedlessly continued....A simple general rule to observe is the following: the sicker the healee, the gentler you should be in performing Therapeutic Touch and the shorter the period should be during which you intervene. This is particularly wise when working with little children, persons with brain injury, or healees about whom little is known.
...two persons doing Therapeutic Touch to the same healee must rhythmically mesh their efforts to rebalance the healee's energies. Otherwise, the healee may experience ill effects such as nausea, dizziness, or irritability...(Krieger 1993)
It would be of great interest to hear from healers whether they have noted such 'overdose' effects. The impression of the reviewer is that experienced healers develop an intuitive sense for when healings are complete, knowing thereby when to stop treatment, and that more experienced healers would be less likely to see such reactions.
This book is a goldmine of information on healing, an excellent update to Krieger's earlier book, The Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help or to Heal, New York/London: Prentice Hall 1979.
White, John (editor) Kundalini: Evolution and Enlightenment
New York: Paragon 1990; Anchor 1979. 482pp ISBN 1-5578-303-9 $12.95 paper
Kundalini is a term taken from Sanskrit, meaning heat or burning. In energy medicine it is an experience of powerful streams of subtle energies classically described as rising from the base of the spine, through the spinal column, and out through the crown of the head. Upon attaining the rising of kundalini, the adept often experiences a dramatic series of psychic and spiritual awakenings.
When in meditation you see visions divine and fall in a dreamy state of mind, have divine smells, see divine figures, feel divine tastes, hear divine sounds and experience divine touch and receive instructions from gods, then understand that the divine power of kundalini has come into action.
Swami Vishnu Tirtha
Signs of an awakening kundalini (p. 94-97)
Some eastern meditative practices are designed to facilitate the arousal of Kundalini energies. They strongly recommend extensive preparations in meditative focus and clearing of energy blocks in the body. Without such preparations, the process of the rising of kundalini energy may be physically extremely painful, emotionally severely disturbing and mentally disorienting.
Kundalini energies may rise spontaneously in people who have no knowledge of them or intent to achieve such experiences. They are reported in meditative and religious traditions of cultures other than those of the Orient.
...The Christian mystics, unaware of the Hindu term, described the same phenomenon, but named the animating, motivating spiritual force at work within them as the Holy Spirit. They were aware of Divine Love. They were of Divine Love. The kundalini experience is often accompanied by burning sensations in the body. The Christian experience is described as the 'baptism' of the Holy Spirit. In Matthew 3:11, John the Baptist says, "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance; but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire."...
Melinda J. McCleave
Christian mysticism and kundalini (p. 403-421)
Through a series of such quotes , Melinda McCleave shows that the rising of a burning energy is not infrequent in Christian religious experiences. The Church, however, has not focused upon these as practices to encourage amongst its members.
This is not surprising, because the experiences are disorienting and frightening. Particularly if a person panics, the experience may feel overwhelming. It is extremely helpful to a person experiencing the rising of kundalini to have support from knowledgeable persons who can explain and guide them through this.
This book is an excellent resource in several respects. It describes the broad range of subjective experiences with the rising of kundalini energies. This may occur sometimes in intermittent bursts rather than in a single great torrent of energy. Various physical, emotional and energy blocks which are localised in any part of the body may impede the flow of kundalini energy, which then may feel like it is burning its way through the blocks. Because such blocks may occur anywhere in the body, the symptoms associated with kundalini transformations are extremely diverse. There may also be different paths for the passage of the kundalini energy to pass through the body, as classical descriptions vary in important details.
People who have deliberately sought a kundalini experience and who have prepared diligently for it may still find themselves stressed to the limits of their endurance and beyond. People who did not understand they were undergoing a rising of the kundalini have sometimes been diagnosed as psychiatrically disturbed and have been hospitalised.
Conversely, psychotic people sometimes claim that they are in touch with divine spirit as a part of their delusional systems.
It is important that healers and carers working with energy medicine be aware of this phenomenon, as it may arise in the healer with the study or practice of healing, as well as in healees.
The range and depth of discussions in this book are outstanding. Its only major fault is the lack of an index.
Pam and Gordon Smith, Meditation: A Treasury of Technique
Saffron Walden, England: C. W. Daniel 1989 119pp ISBN 0 85207 2147 $13.95 Paper
Meditation can sometimes be a boring rut rather than an inspiration. This lovely book, illustrated lavishly with black and white photographs from nature, provides a wide range of meditative techniques which might give inspiration to beginners and advanced meditators alike. Explanations are followed by suggested practices.
Here is an excerpt titled Absolute Breath - Individuated Breath:
Every letter of our alphabet has form and structure and is a precipitate of the energy of life which brought it into being. Each consonant can be considered as spirit personalised, and the vowels as pure energy which give life to each word. When we make a vowel sound we do not make a closure with the lips, hence vowels represent free unformed energy.
The study of mantra is a lifetime's work, and we only make brief reference to the important symbols used here.
The letter 'H' is closely linked with the breath and represents spirit, it is also representative of a ladder which can have many rungs and represents the ability we have to establish a link between heaven and earth. The letter 'A' in all alphabets represents the beginning and is a symbol for the Absolute. The letter 'i' is a line pointing to a dot or a convergent point of spirit, and therefore represents individuation.
Keep the spirit of the mantra in mind when breathing 'AH' and 'IH' and feel yourself as part of life both Universal and finite.
...attune yourself to the whole Cosmic field of life. The first sound is AH which symbolises Absolute Spirit. It is barely whispered, and felt principally within the subtle body. To make the sound raise the arms out from the sides and upwards. Feel the sound to be an integral part of the breath as you inhale and expand your awareness out to the Cosmos and beyond.
The next sound is IH and symbolises individuated Consciousness. It is felt to be a part of the breath. As the arms return to the sides you return in feeling to the level of individuated Consciousness.
Repeat three times, finally stand in silence as the Microcosm within the Macrocosm.
British Medical Association, Complementary Medicine: New Approaches to Good Practice
Oxford University Press 1993, 7.95
The BMA Board of Science and Education surveyed professional organisations with a questionnaire, assessing structural organisation, methods and control of practice, training, qualifications and research. The focus was on homoeopathy, acupuncture, osteopathy, chiropractic and herbalism, which they consider to be 'discrete clinical disciplines'. They also discuss aromatherapy, massage and reflexology, which they find are being used increasingly by nurses. They conclude that it is impossible to devise a comprehensive model for regulation which would fit all of these practices. They recommend that each therapy should have a unified regulating body for registration and disciplining of practitioners, training, professional standards and research.
They acknowledge that increasing numbers of doctors are including such therapies in their personal practices. They recommend that there be more communication between complementary and conventional therapists and that there be collaborative research.
The General Medical Council requires that doctors be trained and qualified in techniques which they practise. The BMA report therefore advises that doctors should undertake 'recognised training' in any non-conventional techniques they wish to practise.
Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind
New York/London: Doubleday 1993 363pp ISBN 0-385-46870-9 $25 Cloth
Videotapes $29.95 each plus $3.50 shipping/$129.95 for the set plus $5.00 shipping
The book is based on an American TV series of five shows:
The Mystery of Chi, Mind Body Connection, Healing from Within, The Art of Healing, and
Wounded Healers
The book is a series of well edited dialogues between Bill Moyers and the various contributors. Lavish illustrations counterpoint the text. This is an excellent introduction to the mind-body interactions which can profoundly influence our states of health and disease. Leading clinicians and researchers present their experiences in helping people understand the roots of their illnesses and in sorting out how they may improve their bodies' abilities to deal with them.
The Art of Healing
Thomas Delbanco, M.D. - The healing roles of doctor and patient
Ron Anderson, M.D. - The healing environment
David Smith, M.D. - Healing and the community
Healing from Within
Karen Olness, M.D. - Self-regulation and the community
Dean Ornish, M.D. - Changing Life Habits
Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD - Meditation
John Zawacki, M.D. - Stress Reduction
David Spiegel, M.D. - Therapeutic support groups
The Mind/Body Connection
Candace Pert, PhD - The chemical communicators
Margaret Kemeny, PhD - Emotions and the immune system
David Felten, M.D., PhD - The brain and the immune system
Robert Ader, PhD - Conditioned responses
The Mystery of Chi
David Eisenberg, M.D. - Medicine in a mind/body culture
David Eisenberg, M.D. - Another way of seeing
Wounded healers
Michael Lerner, PhD - Healing
Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D - Wholeness
Of particular interest and importance are the highly effective treatment methods presented by Dean Ornish 'for reversal of serious heart disease using a combination of meditation, stress reduction exercises, group therapy, walking and a vegetarian diet.' While more conservative medical authorities hesitate to approve such approaches, claiming despite Ornish's positive research findings, that these are 'as yet unproved methods', insurance companies in the US are now willing to pay for such treatments.
Michael Lerner's contribution on healing describes a similar programme which encourages people with serious illnesses such as cancer to explore physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of their illness. He emphasises caring rather than curing.
The mind-body sections focusing on psychological/physical connections is excellent and highly recommended for an introduction to basic information on clinical methods and research findings.
The book falls short of anything serious in consideration of spiritual healing as the laying-on of hands or distant healing, other than to describe self-healing through Chinese chi gong exercises, to discuss some basic energy medicine aspects of acupuncture, and to mention that chi gong masters can use their own energies to heal others.
Highly recommended as an introduction to mind/emotions/body self healing.
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