Chapter 1 Introduction There are moments powerfully laden with thought which compress time a hundredfold. Such compression can happen with a glimpse of a most inconsequential gesture, as it did to me one midsummer morning quite recently. The gesture caught my eye as I leaned against a tree while surveying seven former students, each of whom was teaching a small cluster of workshop participants how to do Therapeutic Touch, a method (derived from the laying-on of hands) of using the hands to direct human energies to help or heal someone who is ill. At that particular moment each of the teachers was using her hands in an attempt to translate to her group something of the interior experience one has when playing the role of healer. As I scanned the seven group teachers, these gestures froze in my mind as a progression of living statues, and for a moment I felt a sense of déjà vu. Each gesture was intimately known to me; each gesture called to mind an aspect of the working out from within of the highly personalized human interaction that is the healing act. By turning my head slightly, I could see Mary and her group sitting on a log pile at the campfire site in the maple grove where we all were. She was teaching them how to center, how to reach deeply within, become aware of the facets of one''s self, and then effortlessly bring those facets into alignment with each other.
Deeper within the woods, Eloise was also teaching her group to center. She was talking about the importance of knowing and recognizing one''s self in order to avoid the pitfall of mistaking all one''s own problems for those of the healee''s (patient''s), or vice versa. In a clearing in the grove, Nancy was discussing the need to learn to put self aside and to give priority to meeting the needs of the healee. On the other side of the campfire site, Marianne was demonstrating to her group how to assess a person''s field by becoming aware of energy differences without contacting the body with the hands. Sally was sitting against a tall silver maple tree; she was describing how she allows associative ideas to well up within her during the process of assessment. Farther in the woods, Janet was demonstrating Therapeutic Touch on a student who was sitting on a makeshift chair of logs. She was showing her group how to "unruffle" a person''s field, or the area just beyond his skin, and how to clear seeming areas of congestion in this field until one feels a movement or flow of energy. Anna Marie, sitting with her group on the forest floor, was teaching them how to build up a localized field between the hands and then use it to transfer energy to the healee.
It happened that all of the teachers that day were nurses; however, I thought of the many hundreds -- actually, almost four thousand at this writing -- of students I have taught at universities and professional organizations around the country during the last five years. Although the majority of them were nurses, since touch is intrinsic in almost all phases of nursing practice, well over a thousand of those I had taught came from other professions or were laymen. Over the years, I have realized that only about four-fifths of those I''ve taught have gone on to incorporate Therapeutic Touch into their health care practices and that the other one-fifth treat the information as an intellectual exercise. However, of the larger percentage, I''ve only known of four persons who, when properly taught, were unable to do Therapeutic Touch. It does indeed seem to be a natural potential that can be actualized under the appropriate circumstances; and so as I looked at the students in the groups below me listening intently to their teachers, I realized that, if they were willing to give themselves adequate opportunities for practice, they would have this unique method of man caring for man literally at their fingertips in a short while. Later on in the afternoon, my dog and I followed the headwaters of a nearby river to the cool shade of a gorge overhung with ancient hemlocks and large beech trees. As I recalled the morning''s events with the intention of picking up anything that might need elaboration in that evening''s workshop discussion, I thought again of the students and reminisced over the days of my own beginning knowledge about the therapeutic use of hands. My interest in the therapeutic use of hands came originally through research and, very importantly, from a lady, Dora Kunz, who has been a very significant person in my life.
Dora, as she is affectionately known, was born with a unique ability to perceive subtle energies around living beings. From the time she was a child, she studied the function and control of these energies under the tutelage of Charles W. Leadbeater, one of the great seers of the twentieth century. Through the years, she has studied these abilities in depth so that they have become like a fine instrument in her hands which she can turn on or off at will. During this time, she has worked closely with many medical doctors and scientists, sharing with them her special point of view. When I first met her, she was studying the processes involved in the healing act with several of them. They were studying many healers, among them Oskar Estebany, a world renowned healer. Oskar Estebany had been a Colonel in the Hungarian cavalry.
He loved horses; and one day, when his own horse became ill, he stayed all night in the stable with the horse. He knew the horse would be shot if it did not recover, and so he did everything he could think of to help the horse: He massaged it, he caressed it, he talked to it, he prayed over it. The last, in particular, he did not do lightly, for he was a man of deep religious beliefs. In the morning, to the surprise of all, including himself, Estebany found that the horse was well. After that incident, when other horses became ill, the cavalrymen would bring their horses to Estebany and he would help them as he could. In time, the children of the cavalrymen would bring their sick pets to Estebany to be healed, and he became very well known for this ability. Mr. Estebany thought he could heal only animals, he once told me, until one Sunday morning when a child in a neighbor''s house became very ill.
The family was unable to contact a doctor for some reason; and finally, in desparation, the father grabbed up the child and ran with him to Estebany''s house to ask him to do to his child what he was able to do to horses. At first, Estebany refused because he did not think his method of healing would work on humans; but the father persisted in his request, and finally Estebany treated the child. The child got better, and Estebany continued to work with people until he retired from the cavalry. Upon his retirement, he decided to offer his services for research purposes; and so, after a chain of events that saw him leave Hungary and take up residence in Canada, he joined the group with whom Dora was studying the process of the healing act. At the completion of that study, Dora, Estebany, and a medical doctor, Otelia Bengssten, M.D., decided to do a further study on a large sample of medically referred patients. Since I am a nurse, and since I had just received my Ph.
D. degree, I was asked to join them. The study took place in the foothills of the Berkshires where the facilities could handle not only all of us but also the patients in residence. My duties were actually peripheral to the study per se; and in retrospect, I realize that this was a good thing, for it gave me both an opportunity to observe Estebany close-up and the time in which to observe him. It is almost funny to recall that what I saw was not much of what I had anticipated -- incantations, the waving of arms, and a hypnotic glare in the eye of the healer was what my occasional readings had prepared me for. Instead, I found that Estebany was a well-built man with cheery blue eyes and a frequent smile. His healing ability carried with it a deep sense of commitment, and he did not spare himself in its practice: He frequently worked on the healees sixteen hours a day; more often than not he worked until Dora took away his patients and made him relax. Even then, he would take with him rolls of cotton batting to "magnetize" for the healees, and in the morning he would be up before sunrise, ready to start healing again.
He would distribute the magnetized cotton to the healees after having it near his person during the night; some of these patients have told me that, even after nearly a year, they could still feel an energy flow from the cotton. During the healing sessions, Estebany was very quiet; he would sit next to the healee and do exactly what he purported to do -- lay his hands on the patient. Although he made every effort to put the healee at ease, there was little conversation, for his command of the English language was limited, even though he spoke several other languages fluently. He would most frequently sit on a small stool either in front of or behind the healee and put his hands wherever he felt they were needed; occasionally Dora would suggest that he put his hands over a particular area that she could perceive in need of being energized. At times, he would make a little joke to put the healee at ease, but other than that he would remain with his hands on the healee, occasionally shifting position or placing his hands on another area, the entire treatment lasting for about twenty to twenty-five minutes. The healee would then leave the room, to come back the next day if his or her condition warranted it. Estebany''s actions seemed so simple that I began interactional sketches and behavioral profiles of both the healer and the healees, thinking that I would capture some of the subtleties I felt must be going on. As I ca.