Many people have asked, "How many healers are there in the USA?  The following is information that was gathered in early 2000.
As with other pages on this website, you are invited to update the available information.

 The numbers of healers practicing in the US is very difficult to assess. This very rough estimate is based on limited queries to teachers of healing who were readily available to me and who responded to one or two emails, letters, or phone inquiries. I did not have the time or resources to do more.

Definition of Healing

Practitioners who claim to be:

1. shifting biological energies manually (either between themselves and healees or within healees), and/or

2. influencing health through meditation/ intent/ prayer

(Prayer healers may claim to be doing something different from others in this category, but I do not know how this could be proved.)

Therapeutic Touch (Touch Healing and Near-the-Body Healing)

The Nurse Healer Practitioner Associates has approx. 900 practicing healer members.

They provide no estimate of the numbers of healees seen annually, noting that many practice in hospital settings where they see people of all ages and all problems.

There are many tens of thousands of people in the US trained in TT, with no national register of practitioners and no way to assess how many of these provide healing on a regular basis.

Christian Science (First Church of Christ, Scientist)

Over 1800 worldwide, seeing 2-40/day

Healing Touch (Touch Healing and Near-the-Body)

Certified HT Practitioners 1,345

170 Instructors

Averaging 200-300 certification applications each year)

LeShan Healing (Distant Healing)

At least 1200 trained healers, 550 on active registry

Trained over 40,000 health practitioners worldwide

Estimate 1,200 sessions annually. No estimate of numbers of US healers or numbers of people treated regularly.

Barbara Brennan (Touch Healing and Near-the-Body Healing)

803 practitioner graduates of 4-year program (plus currently enrolled 654 students)

Estimate 15-20 clients weekly in full time practice, 3-15 in part-time practice

Polarity Therapy Association (Touch Healing)

980 members, seeing 2-800 clients each annually

The Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) (Self-Healing Touch)

Meridian Based Psychotherapies (Clients tap on their own acupressure points. Therapist may do surrogate tapping, in which the therapist taps on his/her own body with the mental intent that the therapist should represent the client.)

Close to 200 members, most psychotherapists

Estimate 500 client hours annually, conservatively x 100 clinical members = 50,000 client hours annually to approximately 1,000 clients

Reiki (Touch, Near-the-Body, and Distant Healing)

International Center for Reiki Training: 18 licensed teacher/ healers, seeing 4 healees weekly = 200 annually

They teach an average of 15 Reiki classes annually.

They also teach weekend healing workshops, estimating they have trained 15,000 healers, of whom an estimated 5,000 have become teachers to others. They estimate their center has thus initiated about 100,000 healers directly and indirectly.

The RN Reiki Connection:

35 (30%) of the 120 members responded. Of those 35 members, 20 have an active healing practice. (The other 15 were attempting to begin a practice or use Reiki for family, friends, and patients in a clinical setting without charging for Reiki as a treatment. The range of clients seen per year was 10-400.

There are many more Reiki masters (thousands), many of these training others. No way to assess numbers of healers or numbers they treat.

Prayer Healing

Countless church prayer groups and individuals engage in prayer healing on a regular or as-needed basis. Some also have services in which the laying-on of hands is practiced.

No way to assess these numbers. This group constitutes a confounding variable in any study of healing.

While many of those engaged in prayer healing believe that this form of healing is distinct from other forms of healing, I see no way to establish that it is different from the other forms of contact or distant healing.

If we take the Gallup Poll survey of December, 1999, conducted by Irish Marketing Surveys in 60 countries, we find that 87% of the 50,000 respondents feel themselves to be part of a religion. 32% attend services at least once weekly, and health is at the top of the list of what matters most in life in 37 countries.

For information on prayer groups, an excellent resource is:
Randall-May, Cay, Pray Together Now: How to find or Form a Prayer Group, Boston, MA: Element 1999.

Summary

Taking the most conservative estimate of practicing healers in the US, allowing for 5,000 TT healers, 10,000 Reiki healers, 5,000 "others," we can certainly say there are 15,000 healers in the US outside of religious settings. If we allow for less conservative estimates, the numbers of TT, Reiki and other healers practicing in secular settings are very like to be in the range of 500,000 or more. If we include prayer healers, there are easily several million, and possibly many millions.