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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Cathy Landry became a certified Healing Touch practitioner because she believes in energy.

"I love energy," she said. "You're working with the body's energy on a physical, mental, spiritual and psychological level. You work with the energy in order to bring balance and harmony to the body."

Cathy Landry practises a healing touch technique on her daughter Suzanne, 16. Landry is the only certified Healing Touch practitioner in Yellowknife. - Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo

Landry is a registered nurse at Stanton hospital and has training in energy programs like reiki and therapy touch but recently became certified in Healing Touch, the first in Yellowknife.

"I love being a nurse but this made so much more sense to me to use in the healing field," she said. "It makes me feel like a complete nurse."

The Healing Touch program is an energy-based approach to therapy. It uses touch to influence the body and its energy system, specifically the energy field surrounding the body, helping control the energy flow to the physical body.

Studies have shown there are a variety of benefits from Healing Touch. Reduction in pain, anxiety and stress, providing support during chemotherapy and surgery and reduced effects from trauma and chronic pain are just some of the benefits of having Healing Touch therapy.

"It can be a hands on or hands off treatment with the intention of healing," Landry said. "Through universal energy with intention a patient or client will become very calm and peaceful. It can help with facilitating healing or even a quicker recovery. Sometimes it can help with decreasing pain. It definitely helps with anxiety."

Non-invasive techniques use the power of touch to clear, energize and balance the human environment affecting physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. One healing technique is called pain drain.

It moves energy out of the affected area, through touch, and is replaced with positive energy. Landry said it compliments the work she does as an operating room nurse.

"It does not replace, it compliments well and that's what is so great about it," she said. "What you have to keep in mind is that it's a complimentary therapy. When you're speaking about it, it's not that it's the only way, but maybe it can help."

Landry said it is important for people to maintain a balance and harmony within themselves. She said the techniques she developed during her training help her maintain a strong feeling of centre.

"They teach you a treatment you can do on a daily basis and it's kind of meditative," she said. "It's to keep your body in balance. I know the difference when I use it and don't use it. You can handle things on a daily basis very differently when you stay in balance.

"I'm a mom, a wife and a nurse. That's what a lot of people are these days and it's important you stay in tune with self."

Landry said the popularity of the Healing Touch program is growing across Canada. "It's getting quite common in southern Canada, especially in the hospitals. Some hospitals have signs that say if you would like your loved one to have a healing touch nurse to do some energy sessions with a patient they can have it," she said.

"It's in doing the work that people understand that there might be something to this."