From: amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.pagan,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: "Healing Hands" (was Re: Shielding)
Date: 15 Sep 1994 17:28:39 -0400

berens@argus.lpl.arizona.edu (Carol Shippey) writes:
> For me...I call it Energy. It is the "stuff" that gets transferred
> in a therapeutic touch session. (And yes, I believe there's "Stuff"
> being transferred. I've seen it WORK to many times to think any
> other way.)

What confuses me is that people are much more willing to posit some
"unknown energy" or "stuff," as you put it, than to posit that *touch
and attention themselves* could have a therapeutic effect.  Being
touched, especially by someone who is explicitly paying attention to
what they are doing, tends to make people feel better, especially if
they are tense or lonely (as people in hospitals, or even ones that
just aren't feeling well tend to be).

After all, I don't have to posit some mysterious energy to explain why
my cat purrs when I pet her, or why a friend sighs with pleasure when
I rub their back & shoulders...

> What's happening when a Circle of witches gets together and passes
> Energy around, concentrating it more and more and then putting it
> into the abdomen of a woman who's just had a hysterectomy ?

Well, for one, she knows that she has a group of people who are
thinking about her, want her to heal, and care about her.  This right
by itself is liable to have a large impact.

> What's going on when she goes to her doctor and he looks at her
> funny and says, "You're healing like a 13-year-old. You shouldn't be
> able to do this."

Presumably the same sort of thing that happens when cancer patients
visualize their white blood cells as being little tiny knights on
horses winning little battles, and proceed to go into remission.
Visualization is a very powerful technique; our experience is very
often conditioned by our expectations.

> She was mid-late 30's at the time, smoked, drank...but we loved her
> anyway.

And she knew it.  If she had felt she was on her own, the stress would
have quite understandably impaired her healing...

> What's happening when I apply the same techniques to myself as far
> as healing a toe and I have the toe-doctor say almost the exact same
> thing about how well I was healing ???

The same thing.  I do this myself.  I heal very quickly, without
infection, and have astonished doctors with both this and my high pain
tolerance.  It's nothing mysterious.  It's all a matter of attention.

> What's this GUNK I've pulled out of myself and others who've
> suffered emotional or physical abuse ? It's like tar...only more
> disgusting.

It's a conceptualization of an emotional process using a phsyical
model.  Very useful indeed.  However, you can't pave your driveway or
fertilize your petunias with emotional gunk :)...

> But even if it were just me...If the Goddess sat upon my shoulder as
> She has on occasions...I'd still do what I could to help and heal.

This is a good thing, and whatever strategies you use in the process
serve a wonderful purpose.  I just don't see any need to assume that
they involve new, unmeasurable forms of energy.  To me, at least, that
sort of explanation is actually a cop-out, since it reduces a whole
complex interplay of processes into something that can't be
investigated or explained.

Amanda Walker
-- 
"Condemnation is easier than investigation."	--Fr. Martin Bell