Healing Touch:
A Powerful Energy Therapy

Healing Touch (HT) is a non-invasive form of energy therapy which complements medical treatments and supports self-care. It is based on the belief that a vital energy flows through and around the human body. The goal of this energy therapy is to balance and restore harmony and flow to the human energy field to support relaxation, reduce anxiety and stress, and help manage the side effects of treatment; for instance, chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. Maintaining this energy balance supports the body’s own innate healing capabilities.

Benefits to cancer patients, defined in peer-reviewed and published trials, also result from a heart-centered, compassionate relationship between the well-trained HT Provider and the HT Recipient. Today, HT has been widely accepted in all areas of nursing and family self-care.

Participants are fully clothed during their HT sessions which typically last 35-45 minutes. Techniques are effectively provided through light touch or with hands above the body. Healing Touch is risk-free, medication-free, and requires no special equipment. Participants can be lying down or sitting in a chair.

Healing Touch was first developed by Janet Mentgen, RN, BSN, who practiced energy-based care, developed the HT curriculum, and began training nurses in this energy modality in the early 1980s. In 1996, she created Healing Touch International (dba Healing Beyond Borders) as a nonprofit education, credentialing, and membership organization for HT Training and certification.

The American Holistic Nurses’ Association is currently an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Centers Commission on Accreditation #1415, and offers nurses 18 CNE contact hours for each level of training nurses complete.