What is Therapeutic Touch?
Therapeutic Touch (TT) is a contemporary healing practice in which a practitioner holds their hands a few inches from a person’s body, or lightly on it, with the intention of assessing and “balancing” what is described as a human energy field. Despite the name, it usually involves little or no physical contact. Practitioners say the method promotes relaxation and supports recovery. Proponents describe it as a secularized, nursing-based form of laying on of hands. This is the therapeutic touch meaning most often used in clinical and educational settings.
The practice rests on a premise that is not accepted by mainstream physics or biology: that people are surrounded by a subtle energy field that can be sensed and influenced by trained hands. No such field has been demonstrated by controlled measurement.
Origins & lineage
Therapeutic Touch was developed in the early 1970s by Dolores Krieger, a professor of nursing at New York University, and Dora Kunz, a Theosophist and self-described clairvoyant healer. Kunz later served as president of the Theosophical Society in America (1975–1987). Krieger had studied the work of the Hungarian healer Oskar Estebany, and she began teaching a graduate course at NYU around 1972. Kunz contributed the conceptual framework, drawing on Theosophical ideas about subtle bodies and vital energy, related to the Sanskrit idea of prana.
Krieger published early accounts in nursing journals in the mid-1970s and wrote The Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help or to Heal (1979). In 1977 the pair helped found the Nurse Healers–Professional Associates Cooperative, which later became Nurse Healers–Professional Associates International. The Therapeutic Touch International Association (TTIA) now carries on this work. TT spread through nursing schools and hospitals in North America and abroad. It drew theoretical support from Martha Rogers’s “Science of Unitary Human Beings,” a nursing theory that treats people as energy fields.
How it’s practiced
Practitioners describe a sequence of overlapping phases:
- Centering. The practitioner quiets the mind and sets an intention to help.
- Assessment. The hands move slowly a few inches above the body, sensing differences such as warmth, tingling, pressure, or “congestion.”
- Unruffling (clearing). Sweeping hand motions are intended to smooth areas perceived as disturbed.
- Balancing or treatment. The practitioner directs or “modulates” energy toward areas that seem depleted.
- Evaluation. The practitioner reassesses and ends the session.
A session usually lasts 15 to 30 minutes. The recipient may sit or lie down fully clothed. Many recipients report deep relaxation. Skeptics attribute this to quiet attention, expectation, and rest.
Therapeutic Touch today
TT is taught through workshops, continuing-education courses for nurses, and community classes, often under TTIA-affiliated instructors. Some hospitals and hospices have offered it as a complementary comfort measure, though its use has declined in some institutions since the late 1990s. It also appears in books, recorded guided practices, and introductory weekend programs. Seekers who ask “what is therapeutic touch” today often meet it alongside Reiki, qigong, and other energy-based practices.
Common misconceptions
- It is not massage. Contact is minimal or absent.
- It is not proven. In 1998 nine-year-old Emily Rosa, with her mother Linda Rosa and Larry Sarner, published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In it, 21 practitioners tried to detect which of the experimenter’s hands was near theirs without seeing it. They were right in 44% of 280 trials, no better than chance. Many scientists regard this as strong evidence against the claim that practitioners can perceive a human energy field.
- It is not a religious rite. Its founders described it in secular, clinical terms, though its roots lie partly in Theosophy. Proponents say it need not involve religious belief.
- It is not a substitute for medical care. Systematic reviews have found limited, low-quality evidence for effects on pain or anxiety, and effects are plausibly due to placebo and relaxation. Practitioners and critics both advise that it should accompany, not replace, conventional treatment.
- Not all nurses endorse it. Critics argue that teaching it in nursing programs conflicts with evidence-based practice. Defenders emphasize patient comfort and presence.
How to begin
For therapeutic touch for beginners, a sensible first step is Krieger’s The Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help or to Heal (1979), read alongside the 1998 JAMA study by Rosa and colleagues so both the practice and the critique are in view. Next, look for an introductory class listed by the Therapeutic Touch International Association, which offers courses for both clinicians and the general public. Ask any teacher about their training, what they claim the method can and cannot do, and whether they encourage medical care. Approach it as a contemplative, relaxation-oriented practice rather than a proven treatment.