Healing Touch
Throughout
history and across cultures, great healers and mystics have used touch as a
healing tool. We instinctively react to an injury by covering it with our
hand. If we have a toothache, we ease the pain by holding it. We know that
our own touch is soothing and helps relive pain. Mothers know that infants are
soothed by being stroked and held. Does it not, then, make sense, that touch is
a powerful force for soothing stress and comforting pain?
There are many
alternative disciplines which incorporate touch into their methodologies. Reiki,
reflexology, and massage therapy are three of the most common. Of the three,
massage therapy probably has the most respect amongst practitioners of
traditional medicine: it is recognized as being a powerful agent for
relieving stress, and stress relief is universally seen as beneficial in all
healing situations.
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This
site was prepared as a collaborative effort by Crystal Green, Tasha Smith,
Carole Petty, and Joan Keiffer.