Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 06/98) - Even though it's named therapeutic touch therapy, advocate Dianne Mercredi calls the treatment a "hands off" method of healing.

Unlike massage, therapeutic touch therapy involves projecting an aura on another person, Mercredi said.

"We are an energy field," she said. "We don't have one."

The practice works as a non-invasive, holistic approach to healing that stimulates the receiver's own powers to recuperate.

Healing power emanates from "chakras," or energy sources, in the palms as the hands move parallel to the body.

Many practitioners use the technique on family members or friends to relieve minor aches such as headaches.

To demonstrate the power, Mercredi asked people to hold hands several inches apart with palms facing, to better feel the connection of the chakra points.

Nurse Nancy Cymbalisty said she remembers a woman on a hospital bed who looked about to die. She was heavily sedated with morphine and both she and her family wanted her to have more to calm her nerves and cure her headache.

"I started the therapeutic touch and within minutes she was relaxed," Cymbalisty said.

"She called out for her husband and he came to talk to her to let her know that it was all right to go. Within minutes she was gone."

Cymbalisty said it was one of the most powerful experiences she has had with therapeutic touch.

Nurse Loretta Abernathy is another advocate of the therapy.

She said positive energy is likely at the root of treatment. If there is no positive energy, people could leave massage or therapeutic touch therapy treatments feeling worse than when they went in.

Dr. Delores Krieger developed the therapy as an extension of nursing care and then measured a marked rise in the blood's hemoglobin levels -- suggesting improved oxygen flow -- and lowered anxiety levels.

Therapeutic touch is used to relax the patient, to reduce pain, to accelerate healing and to alleviate psychosomatic symptoms.

"It can be used on people who are in emotional pain," Mercredi said.

"Pain resulting from issues of abuse and who don't like to be touched find this method to be very safe as it can be done with absolutely no touching."