Being open, grounded and centered in our true nature creates the possibility for healing ourselves at a deep personal level.
Mindfulness training and practice gives us the sense of being nourished by the divine within the sacred space of unlimited possibilities and Therapeutic Touch™, a heart-centered energy healing practice is guided by the principle of mindfulness in action. We send what we are!
The heart-centered mindfulness practices inherent in Therapeutic Touch help us harmonize the mind-body connection to experience inner peace and self-acceptance. From a space of alignment, our deepest personal resources emerge and a natural wisdom and compassion flow into our human lives and through us into the world.
As Dora Kunz, co-founder of Therapeutic Touch, said, When you center yourself in meditation, you are consciously experiencing wholeness, your individual unity with everything exists. When we are able to detach ourselves from personal interest, we can reach out to people in a much more enduring way.
To be able to sustain a harmonized mind-body connection, we must learn to manage stress. Gaining an understanding of stress as a process; signs and symptoms of stress, hot buttons and stressors that are particular to us and how we tend to react, can give us insight and the knowledge we need to develop effective response mechanisms and coping skills to enhance personal resilience.
Relaxation – Antidote to Stress
You can get stressed by a million different things; all of which act as your system’s information up-setters and distorters. Unmanaged stress can lead to disease or injury and affect the flow of energy, creating obstruction, depletion or disorder.
It is simply not possible to be both relaxed and tense at the same time. The idea of rebalancing the system after a stressful incident is based on an understanding that the system has a blueprint for optimum functioning and that when you deeply relax and centre yourself, you get out of our own way and let the body’s natural instinct for health and healing take over to re-establish balance and flow within its current capacity.
Cultivating the relaxation response as a conscious response to stressors and stressful situations is a Self-care practice.
As a self-care practice Therapeutic Touch empowers the individual to awaken to what deeply matters to them, manage stress, navigate challenging situations and take responsibility for lifestyle and behaviour choices, reclaiming trapped energy and restoring balance to improve their health, performance and satisfaction.
When you are healthy and relaxed, life energy flows freely and unobstructed, through you.
Mindfulness Practice and Therapeutic Touch
Mindfulness practices central to Therapeutic Touch include:
- sustained centering
- non-judgment
- non-attachment to outcomes
- compassionate intent to help or heal
- directing and modulating energies.
- Therapeutic Touch with its ability to elicit the relaxation response within 2 – 4 minutes is the perfect antidote to stress.
Therapeutic Touch facilitates the healing process by:
- Eliciting a relaxation response and reducing anxiety
- Changing the perception of pain
- Facilitating the body’s natural restorative process.
Mindfulness practice harmonizes head and heart enabling:
- Recognition of unconscious, automatic reactions – triggers and hot buttons
- Pre-empting habitual patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour
- Transcending contradictions and fears and integrate experiences
- Embracing complexity and making informed choices
- Taking empowered action.
- Mindfulness Practice Basics
Awareness of the Moment
Adopt an alert and dignified posture. Connect with your feet nicely relaxed and planted on the floor. Close your eyes if possible. Then ask: “What am I experiencing right now …in my body….in my thoughts … in my feelings? What sensations am I aware of?
Acknowledge and register what you are experiencing, without judgment.
Connecting to the Breath
Centre yourself and relax. Gently direct the full attention of your mind to your breath. Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, be attentive and follow the movement of the in- breath and out-breath and the rhythm of the breathing pattern. Your breath can serve as an anchor to help bring you into the present and help you tune into a state of awareness inner calm.
Expanding Awareness
Expand the field of your awareness starting by releasing any tension in your physical body, your posture, muscles face, hands etc. Allow your active awareness to be carried beyond the body by tuning into the rhythm of your breath.
This simple mindfulness practice helps you be present in the moment.
Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Thich Nhat Hanh
Learn Therapeutic Touch
Therapeutic Touch is a deceptively simple, effective and powerful life skill! Once you know it, you never leave home without it!
Anyone can learn Therapeutic Touch – It is an inherent latent ability in every person, in every culture. Under the right conditions, it can be developed….There’s something instinctive about the laying on of hands…We stub our toe, our hand goes there. We have a headache and touch our forehead.
Learn more about and register for our upcoming Therapeutic Touch Workshops.
References & Resources
Kabat-Zinn, J. Full Catastrophe Living, 1990, Wisdom Publications. Delta.
Kabat-Zinn, J. Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, 1994, Hyperion, New York, New York, 10011
Lama, The Dalai & Ekman, Paul PhD, Emotional Awareness, Overcoming the Obstacles of Psychological Balance and Compassion, 2008, Times Books
Nhat Hanh, T. (1999). The Miracle of Mindfulness. Beacon Press.
Thondup, Tulka, The Healing Power of Mind, Simple Meditation Exercises for Health, Well-Being, and Enlightenment, 1998, Shambhala Publications, Inc.
About Julia von Flotow
