The use of touch to alleviate pain and promote healing has been around as long
as history has been recorded. There is pictorial and written evidence of this
in many countries, such as India, China, Egypt, Rome, Norway and France. Native
American Indian and Aboriginal oral history includes the use of touch to help
those who are suffering.
Therapeutic Touch (TT) is a contemporary interpretation of several of these ancient healing practices.
TT has it's beginnings in the early 1960's when Dr. Dolores Krieger, Professor of Nursing at New York University, was invited by her friend Dora Kunz, the President of the Theosophical Society in the United States, to be part of a research programme that was being done on laying on of hands at McGill University in Toronto, Canada. Krieger learned to do laying on of hands and felt it might be useful for her nursing students. After practising what she had learned, researching it herself and teaching it to some of her masters degree students, Krieger felt what she was doing differed from laying on of hands as it was not performed in any religious context. She also felt that anyone could be taught this skill which she called Therapeutic Touch (TT). Krieger went on to teach it to other masters and doctor degree nursing students in a Frontiers in Nursing programme. These students have spread the teaching of it into Universities all over the U.S. To date it is the most widely researched of all complementary therapies practised by nurses. Exponents of TT have since placed it into a more Western theoretical framework of a nursing model, namely that of Dr Martha Rogers' Science of Unitary Human Beings (SUHB).
By 1996 nurses in more than 80 Universities in the US and 53 countries throughout the world were practising and teaching TT. TT was brought to Britain in 1989 by Jean Sayre-Adams, an American nurse who had been a student of Krieger. In 1995 a TT course was validated for nurses by the English National Board of Nursing and was being taught through the University of Manchester to British Nurses.
TT is now available to non nurses as well as nurses, and is currently taught in Manchester, Suffolk and the Midlands. In addition, if feasible, courses can be brought to you . Recently a course was taught in N Ireland.
The first part of each course can be taken as a stand alone for interest only. To qualify as a Practitioner the course involves written work such as Case Studies and additional class room time over a further two days.
For more information on the Foundation click on the link below.
Training continues
at the Sacred Space Foundation
Details of
training can also be obtained from:-
davidedgarlewis@btinternet.com or annie.hallett@hotmail.com
