From the June/July 1997 issue (Vol 6. No. 9) of the Cincinnati Skeptic, the newsletter of the Association for Rational Thought (ART). Bad Vibrations in the Energy Field? by Joe Gastright Last Spring, Dolores Krieger, one of the co-founders of the Therapeutic Touch movement appeared on a call-in show at one of our local university FM stations. The show specilizes in metaphysical, holistic and new age topics, and I routinely tune in to keep current with the latest trends. Therapeutic Touch is one of my favorite topics and I popped a cassette in the recorder to add Dr. Krieger's appearance to my library. The show turned out to be a pretty good summary of the version of Therapeutic Touch published in Dr. Krieger's three books on the subject. Then out of the blue one of the shows hosts asked about Healing Touch and how it differed, (see appended Transcript). Krieger made it very clear that "she did not have much regard for them", and that "they have nothing to do with me." Worse yet she stated that the Healing Touchers had gotten "a lot of people into trouble" and that "they are not competent to teach Therapeutic Touch." This didn't sound like a minor disagreement among colleagues, it sounded like the founder was excommunicating a wing of the movement and I decided to investigate what differences underlie the feud. I was particularly embarrassed because I bad been researching Therapeutic Touch for several years and had no idea there are two groups. I had collected the excellent work done by Bela Scheiber and the Rocky Mountain Skeptics. I had dozens of books on auras, Chakras, Theosophy, energy medicine, meridians and the other relatives and ancestors of Therapeutic Touch. Worse yet, I had spent a long weekend and several hundred dollars in being trained in level I of what I thought was Therapeutic Touch and I didn't even know that there were "anointed" touchers and heretics. You can imagine my astonislunent when I looked at my "Certificate of Attendance" and discovered that it was from the "Colorado Center for Healing Touch." I found myself among the outcast and rejected. You wM be interested to know that the nurses in my tr@ session received continuing education credit from the State of Ohio for their efforts. Early on there were two organizations involved. The Nurse Healers-Professional Association Inc.(NH-PA), described as a cooperative, which presents the Krieger/Kunz Therapeutic Touch methodology, and the American Holistic Nursing Association (AHNA) which since 1989 certified the Healing Touch methodology developed by Janet Mentgen, BS, RN. Mentgen had practiced "energy based alternative medicine" in Denver since 1985 after being introduced to Therapeutic Touch in a local workshop in 1980. Healing Touch was a certified training program of the AHNA from about 1989 to 1996 when for reasons unknown, they were decertified. At that point the Colorado Center for Healing Touch Inc., founded by Mentgen in 1993, incorporated Healing Touch International to serve as its certifying organization. Krieger claims to have personally trained over 40,000 healers since 1975 and Healing touch claims almost 31,000 workshop participants in the past 7 years. Last year alone Healing Touch offered 600 workshops in five countries with an attendance of over 9000. The membership lead is clearly with Therapeutic Touch but I get the @ession that the challenger is more active and intent on catching up. Both organizations are working on clearing up the confusion about names which caused my own identity crisis. The Healing Touch trainers were so positive in crediting the founders of Therapeutic Touch with pnortty that it wasn't clear that they were presenting only an "an introduction to the subject." as Dolores Krieger claimed. Healing Touch literature implies that leading lights of the Healing Touch movement such as Janet Quinn, acknowledged by both sides as their outstanding researcher, were at least initially supportive of Mentgen's efforts. Now both sides acknowledge that Therapeutic Touch is the specific process created by Dolores Krieger while Therapeutic Healing is an eclectic program created in 1990 which introduces not only Krieger's technique but also hand waving techniques created by Janet Mentgen and a half dozen other published healers. The Nurse Healers-Professional Association has a position paper (Feb., 1996) which is clearly not willing to deal with Healing Touch as a parallel or even useful process. "Certification in the Healing Touch Program should not be construed to mean that this qualifies one to be a Therapeutic Touch Practitioner or Teacher." Looking at my level one curriculum it is fair to say that only four or five hours were devoted specifically to techniques associated directly with Krieger/Kunz. Yet so much of the content, such as using dowsing rods to detect clogged Chakras, was common to both that a direct percentage would be difficult to establish. The NH-PA wants hospitals to recognize Therapeutic Touch only, and it requires Healing Touchers to retrain in Therapeutic Touch courses. The Healing Touch International has a number of certified Therapeutic Touchers in its membership and believes that its instruction in the area is all that is needed to be a Therapeutic Healer. The "additional healing" techniques added to the Healing Touch curricula are, with the exception of Janet Mentgen's "Magnetic Unruffling", "Chakra Spread", and "Ultrasound", the work of non-nurses. In fact, Brugh Joy, inventor of the "Chakra Comection" is a fallen away MD, and Rudy Noel, discoverer of "Mind Clearing", is a new age minister. The recommended literature in Healing Touch includes works by occultist Alice Bailey, Esoteric Healing; meteorologist Barbara Brennan, Hands of Light; engineer/minister Rosalyn L. Bruyere, Wheels of Light; Kirlian Aura researcher, Richard Gerber, Vibrational Medicine. Why is it do you suppose that these core texts of H@ Touch fail to mention the very subject? In fact the best selling texts in Alternative Medicine do not seem impressed with the efforts of the nurse based organizations. The same Energy Field/Chakra based ideas are, however, presented by better selling new age "healers". In addition to the group differences based on power, succession, and accepted techniques, other differences between the two groups may exist in the areas of scientific proof and certification. The Healing Touch camp appears to be more "practitioner" based and does not have the research interests of the more University based Krieger/Kunz school. It could be a function of Mentgen (BS) versus Krieger (Ph.D.). My instructor was clear that science doesn't accept the energy field, that Kirlian auras were suspect, and that it probably doesn't make a difference. In contrast Dr. Krieger believes that science will probably catch up with her in ten or 15 years. Locally three of the four hospitals with approved programs have chosen Healing Touch. Whether the practitioner bias exists among hospitals in other localities would be an interesting question. Finally the question of certification is not as interesting as it would be if the certificates were credentials or guaranteeing specific training. As it is, they represent only that the person went through the motions. It would appear that questions of malpractice or liability have kept both organizations from moving toward professional status. With hosp@ offering access to Touch in their "Wellness Centers" at $60.00 an hour and up, and with the therapists actively promoting the billing of their services to public and private health insurance, the question of credentials may become a bigger issue in the future. Whatever the real cause, or causes of the Touch conflict, it's clear that all is not well in the energy field. Copyright 1997, Association for Rational Thought ---------- Interview with Dr. Dolores Krieger on WVXU Interconnect (Spring, 1997), Cincinnati, Ohio Interviewer-. Dr. Krieger I have to ask this, here in Cincinnati there is a big movement of nurses doing work called healing touch, how is that different, and its quite a club. They don!t agree that anyone can do this, it's a club. Krieger. I am sad to say that I do not have very much regard for them. Its a hard thing to say on public radio, dear, but the reason I say that is because they have used the name therapeutic touch. We have had tremendous problems with them. They are not, they do not... At the most they teach an introduction to therapeutic touch but they are not competent to teach therapeutic touch. Moreover the reason I feel so strongly they have gotten a lot of people into trouble and we have gotten blamed because of the similarity in the names. They have nothing to do with the Nurse Healers Professional Association and they have nothing to do with me. Int. Is this a essentially a commercialization of something you've been doing? Kr. I think so but one of the things that I can say quite generally about therapeutic touch therapists at the least they will have a sliding scale to be commensurate with what people can afford in terms of their sessions. More often that we do work for nothing because the reason we got into this was out of compassion and out of wanting to be a part of the helping process.