Category: Healing Touch

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A Healing Shift

Cynthia Hutchinson

In the May Healing Touch Program Community Newsletter there is a brilliant letter by Cynthia Hutchison DNSc, RN, MSN, HTCP/I, that synchronistically describes my own recent insights. When I first read it I checked to make sure it had not been addressed directly to me. It’s another example of how my Healing Touch community supports my practice.

Cynthia Hutchison is the Program Director for the Healing Touch Program™ and has been studying holistic healing and energy therapies since the early 80’s. One of her many credentials includes a doctoral degree in nursing science. She has maintained a private Healing Touch practice for over 20 years and teaches all levels of the Healing Touch curriculum.

In her letter Cynthia describes how after 30 years of doing energy work she rarely feels kinesthetic sensations and gathers most of her session feedback through common sense, intuition and listening to her clients. Near the end of her letter she has a brilliant quote by Omraam MIkhael Aivanhov:

“…True initiates do not seek to develop mediumistic faculties. They work only to purify themselves, to grow in wisdom, love and self-mastery, so that they can project themselves as high as possible inwardly. Once they reach this peak, the substance of their being is so refined it is imbued with the very quintessence of the universal Soul. This quintessence, in which everything is recorded, enables them to see and feel whatever they wish to know. And so their work allows them to acquire not only power but clairvoyance as well.” – Omraam MIkhael Aivanhov

If I had read this quote a year ago, would I have comprehended the deep significance it has for me? Would Cynthia’s letter have had such a deep impact?

Last year I really thought that the more of my clients aura I could see the better healer I would be. About a month ago in a previous post I describe the realization that this was not true, that seeing auras was not the path to becoming a better healer. Then, before I went on vacation I realized that the one thing I had been basing the validity of my healing practice on – my own tangible common sense experience of doing a healing – was not as tangible and certainly not objective as I thought.

I often feel energy as heat when I give a healing. During a session I had my hands on a client’s knee and I became distinctly aware that I could not tell if my hands were hot or if his knee was just really cold. It was not so much the actual sensation that shocked me, but the distinct shift and instantaneous certainly in my awareness that there was no objective reality in my perception.

This was a huge and profound insight for me. It was also not pleasant. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me. It was so disorienting that I felt lost. Right after this realization I went to England for my Mother-in-law’s funeral and then took my vacation. I was out of my routine and distracted by the details of travel. I didn’t have to process the ramifications of this new awareness right away. Funny how things work out.

I understand now that my healing journey is not a process of becoming a better healer by developing extrasensory perception. Cynthia stated it so well in her letter. It’s about just being, about letting go and staying clear.

What does this mean?

I’m not really sure, but I have about five half-written posts that I am never going to publish because they are now irrelevant. So many questions feel answered. I have also felt a shift in my sessions. Healings feel even more effortless for me, and still very effective for my clients. There is an absence of striving. I also feel so relaxed. I mean a new kind of relaxed that I would describe as a deeper peace.

So I will just continue with my healing practice and stay open to what happens next. It all feels really, really good.

Jeri Lawson is a Healing Touch Practitioner and Clarity Breathworker in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.

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The Last Client Of The Day: A Healing Touch Session

From the Osho Zen Tarot

A new client came to me for a Healing Touch session with a physical issue to focus on. Before the session I set an intention to balance his energy so his body could heal itself, just like I always do.

With my hands I felt “tingly/static energy” all through his energy field and throughout most of the healing. It was not a soothing sensation, but not unpleasant, either. I noticed he did not relax until the second half of the session, and by the end of the healing he was in a very deep place.

After I was finished with the actual hands-on-healing, had checked his chakras and documented what I found, I sat beside the massage table and waited for him to return, wake up, or regain consciousness. I schedule my clients two hours apart, so there is always time for a gentle reentry after a healing. Sometimes, as in this session, this is when the most profound healing seems to take place.

As I sat beside him, I felt my heart open. The room felt so sacred. I felt so present, so joyful, so complete. I really felt like anything could be healed in this space, this vibration, this consciousness. There was nothing else to do, nothing else was needed. Just describing it makes me happy. I held this space for him, and myself, as long as I could. Luckily he was my last client of the day.

Afterwards he looked transformed and kept repeating how peaceful he felt, how he hasn’t relaxed that deeply in a long time and how grateful he was for the healing. His physical issue was an intermittent one, so at this time I don’t know if his physical condition was affected or not.

It was the perfect way to end a wonderful work day.

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A Workshop on the Bengston Energy Healing Method®

William Bengston and Margaret Nies
William Bengston and Margaret Nies

I attended William Bengston’s workshop in Louisville, Colorado last weekend. I came back home incredibly inspired and completely overwhelmed. It was fantastic.

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William Bengston has been curing aggressive cancer with hands-on-healing for over 30 years. He declared throughout the workshop he does not find the actual act of healing as enjoyable as being in the laboratory researching. He is always asking questions about the nature of healing and then creating and conducting the experiments that ultimately generate even more interesting questions. I found out about him and his research last October and he has already learned more about several of the hypothesis he had back then.

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A few of Bengston’s ideas conflict with my healing style. I, of course, at first found this stressful because I consider him a genius. Growth can be challenging.

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He thinks having a lively conversation with a client during the healing is a fine idea. I have spent years focusing on being present in my sessions which is really just about the opposite of Bengston’s approach. Bengston thinks it is necessary to distract the attention of the healer and the client in order to keep them from interfering in the events on the unconscious level, where he believes the real healing takes place.

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I’ll have to think about this. Is my focus on being present interfering with the healings?  Is my intense desire to create an effective healing for my clients actually inhibiting the session in some way? I have to admit I have had this question come up before and it’s time to look at it again.

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One of the many reasons I wanted to meet Bengston in person was to see what his energy was like. What kind of energy field would a man who can cure cancer have? I did get a sense of his energetic signature. I know this will be valuable later, but I’m not quite sure how.

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Bengston had all the workshop participants charge sterile rolled cotton to use for healing. I had read years ago that cotton, silk and water can be charged with energy and given clients for healing. While everyone was walking around the room charging the cotton I asked to feel his piece of cotton and he generously handed it to me. I may have held it for 45 seconds. Five minutes after I handed it back to him I realized the very significant headache that I had had all weekend from the Colorado altitude was now completely gone. That was really interesting. Really interesting.

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I don’t think I have been “healed” like that before. I didn’t notice the actual moment it happened, but just realized the absence of the pain.

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William Bengston has a lot of energy. The more he talked the more energized he seem to get and the coordinators, Sue Walker and Margaret Nies, had to really watch the clock or Bengston would have talked right through the breaks and probably through lunch too. On the breaks he was always enthusiastically answering questions.  I noticed him at almost every meal eating with someone from the workshop having an animated exchange. On Sunday morning I was lucky enough to have breakfast with him and with two other participants who were scientists. I wish I could have recorded the conversation. I did make notes on my iPhone that included a years worth of books and reading material.

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I now have quite a bit of work to do and ideas to process. I am practicing Bengston’s Image Cycling Technique, which I have already found greatly rewarding on a personal level. This is another perfect time in my healing practice in which I have to rethink everything from a new perspective. Ironically one of the things I really have to rethink is if I’m thinking too much. It’s important to me that I do not get too habitual or complacent in my healings.

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Besides having the most interesting data on healing available, Bengston is a passionate speaker, and very, very funny.  He doesn’t teach very often so I would HIGHLY recommend that you get to his next class in Chicago April 13-15th, if you are interested in hands-on-healing.

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Jeri Lawson is a Healing Touch Practitioner and Clarity Breathworker in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.

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Trusting the Energy: A Healing Touch Practitioner’s Journey

I’ve had amazing healing sessions from people right after they have taken their first Healing Touch class. As I have written before, I see people catching on to energy work much faster now.  Noticing this made me reflect on my personal healing journey and look at how my years of experience as a healer has influenced my practice.

For me, the most important thing I’ve acquired as a healer is complete trust of the energy. This trust is the greatest gift my healing practice has given me.

I can look back now and see three basic stages in my healing journey. Keep in mind that this reflection is specific to me, although I have heard other healers dealing with similar issues as they’ve become more experienced and adept as healing practitioners.

The first stage I vividly remember was the “Wow, this is incredible!” stage. This happened for me in my first Healing Touch Level One class, about the middle of the second day.  This was a fun stage.

Then after about 6 months of Healing Touch training and practice, I entered the “WOW, this stuff is really powerful. Could it be dangerous?” stage. This stage I would also call the “Oh, my God!” stage. This stage came for me right after a wonderful, yet dramatic session with a lot of muscle release for my client. Besides being a pivotal session for me, it was a life changing and very positive one for my client.

After experiencing this particularly powerful healing, I felt afraid instead of feeling more confident. I saw that Hands-on-Healing could be intense. This stage was not fun. Thankfully it did not last long.

The next stage I call it the “Trust the Energy Stage.” This is where I am now. The more I work with energy, the more I trust it.

This stage has never ended for me. It just gets deeper and more profound as I keep giving healings. I trust that whatever happens or does not happen in my sessions is what is supposed to happen or not happen. This is a huge deal. Really huge.

This trust includes the more subtle sessions to the more dramatic ones. This sounds easy and obvious, but when I am working with someone with physical pain that is an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, this certainty, this ability to trust the energy is invaluable and allows me to hold a higher frequency of healing for my client. Trusting the energy makes it possible to get my ego, and get myself out of the way of the healing.

Complete trust in the energy also gives me the grounding and balance to work with a client through an extended period of time, such as through ten chemotherapy sessions. Yes, I have to be grounded giving someone one healing, but holding a high energetic space for a client going through 5 weeks of radiation takes a whole other level of certainty and trust.

Learning to trust the energy was not just a shift in my healing practice, but a profound shift in my consciousness. This trust, this awareness of the energy never stops evolving and continues to deepen with each session.

Jeri Lawson is a Healing Touch Practitioner and Clarity Breathworker in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.

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Carol Kinney Shares About Healing Touch

Carol Kinney, RN, BSN, HNC, HTCP/I
Carol Kinney, RN, BSN, HNC, HTCP/I
Carol Kinney, RN, BSN, HNC, HTCP/I, gave a valuable one-day class last Saturday called “Benefitting Our Clients By Improving Our Skills.”
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It was actually an informal and very fun gathering in which Carol answered questions about Healing Touch and told her personal story about her journey as a healer. Carol Kinney started doing Healing Touch in the 1980’s and was instrumental in bringing it to the San Francisco Bay Area. She took all her classes with Janet Mentgen, the founder of Healing Touch.
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Attending the talk were practitioners at different levels of their healing journey. One inspired practitioner had just taken her first class two weeks prior. Several Certified Practitioners, myself included, have been working with clients for years. Everyone had interesting questions for Carol, and experiences to share about their own healing practices.
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One thing I again realized is how much faster the new students of Healing Touch are catching on to the work. When I assisted Carol’s level three class last year, I saw how easily the students mastered the advanced techniques and accessed the outer levels of the energy field that took me years to perceive.
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I believe that consciousness and energy is evolving as more people open up to it. What is possible energetically is expanding. I definitely feel like I have benefitted from the foundation that Carol and other Healing Touch Practitioners have created and I see the new practitioners are now starting off at a much higher energetic level than I did.
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Carol made the comment that even ten years ago she almost always had to explain what Healing Touch and energy work was before anyone would sign up for a class. I am sure I was one of those people. Now she finds people are ready to sign up before they even call her.
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The Internet and Healing Touch Program website has also contributed to this. More people find out about Healing Touch through friends, family and (hopefully) blogs like mine. Anybody who wants to learn about Healing Touch can go online and research almost everything about Healing Touch before deciding on taking a class or finding a practitioner in their area.
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The Healing Touch Community is a very supportive and exciting place to be. Having a teacher, mentor and healer like Carol available is an extraordinary gift.
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Jeri Lawson is a Healing Touch Practitioner and Clarity Breathworker in the
Temescal Area of Oakland, California.
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A Healer In The Real World

When I first started doing energetic healing work I was worried that if I was not in perfect emotional, physical and energetic balance then I would not be able to do healing work that would have a positive effect for my clients.

I also remember thinking that if I, as the healer, needed a healing then all the energy would go to me, not the client.

I have been doing energetic healing for over ten years, and it’s just impossible for me to wake up every morning in perfect balance. Even though I am very committed to being a healer and taking good care of myself, I have a life, relationship issues, sick pets, and cycles of intense personal growth like everyone else.

How do I know if I am grounded and balanced enough to do a healing?

This is how: I ask myself, “Am I open, or closed, to the energy?”

Bam. My body gives me instant feedback. Yes or no, open or closed, just like that.

The most important thing for me is to show up in my healing sessions for my clients with an open mind and heart. Even if I was up all night taking care of my sick cat, if my body says yes, then I am ready to do a healing. I gave some of the most amazing healings I can remember when my 17-year-old cat was in kitty hospice. Even though I was grieving her transition, I was open to the energy for my clients. Maybe even more so.

After every healing, I still always check in with myself to make sure I feel better after the healing than before the healing. And I also check in with the client to make sure they received what they came for.

The truth is, I get a healing from every session I give. I am in the energy and a part of it. I am so lucky to be doing this work. There is so much energy available every moment. I have found the universe is abundant and supportive beyond our wildest dreams. All we have to do is connect and be open to it.

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A New Level Of Energy

Black and White Flowers

I want to share an interesting healing session I recently had with one of my clients. I’m documenting my work as a healer so that I can help other people understand what happens in a healing session, whether you are a healer or are just curious about receiving a healing.

I gave a session a few weeks ago in which the healing energy was so intense my vision changed to the point where the room in which I was working appeared solarized to me. The dark areas appeared silvery light and the highlights looked dark and shiny.

I felt buoyant in my body, especially in my chest and arms. I felt mentally clear and deeply centered emotionally. I was joyful as my client and I went in and out of this vibrational state throughout the whole session.

For most of this session I did a Chakra Connection, a Healing Touch technique in which I start at the feet and work my way up the body. As I do that, I connect my client’s energy enters. During our session, the surface of my hands felt like they were cramping at every hand position. When the cramping sensation dissipated after a few minutes I knew it was time to move to the next hand position.

I have never experienced this kind of sensation in my hands while I was giving a healing before.

What is this solarized-vision-change about? What consciousness level did the healing go to for me and for my client? I have felt this level or vibration many times over the years, but never so consistently in one healing.  It’s like I’m a surfer in these kinds of healings, riding the energetic waves and holding space for what the client needs in the moment. I intuitively know for sure that this is what the client needed.  She also reported later that it was a very beneficial session.

I wonder if I could have held this solarized space a year ago for a whole session? This was an extremely high energetic state. I realized after this session that I had reached a new level in my healing work. I plan to learn more about it as I work with it in future sessions.

A Solarized Photograph
Solarized Flowers
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Reflections on Cell-Level Healing by Joyce Whiteley Hawkes, PhD

Cell-Level Healing
by Joyce Whiteley Hawkes, PhD

Next time you are browsing in a bookstore I recommend you take a few minutes and check out Cell-Level Healing by Joyce Whiteley Hawkes.

This nonfiction book is written from the unique perspective of a cell biologist who then became a healer. Biophysicist Joyce Whiteley Hawkes was also a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Health and a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In other works, she has been a very serious scientist. After getting struck on the head with a decorative leaded-glass window, Hawkes had what she realized later was a classic near-death experience.

An experience that opened her to a new level of healing consciousness.

Cell-Level Healing is about how she sees and perceives energy and how she heals from a cellular level. Hawkes sees biology as a way to understand how miraculous the body really is. The more we know about the cells of our body the more we will appreciate how precious all of life is.

She states,”Rather than struggle against the body and our sojourn here on earth, the body can be experience as a sacred temple of the spirit and an expression of consciousness. This knowledge is the first step toward a life of fullness and oneness of spirit and physical existence – a seamless connection from Soul to Cell.”

The most thought-provoking chapter to me at this moment in my healing practice is Chapter 4, Flow and Soul-Signatures.

Hawkes clearly and accurately describes two principles she has found in our human energy fields that I’ve been aware of and working with for years, yet never had the words for.

1. Each person embodies a distinctive variation on universal energy; a natural and unique pattern exists for each individual consciousness. I call this quality their Soul-Signature.

2.  In a healthy individual there is an abundant flow of energy through the body. In this regard I will use the word Flow to convey the quantitative aspects of speed and direction of the Soul-Signature.

Flow and Soul-Signature. I have written these two definitions into my personal dictionary of healing words. I feel like my whole brain has been feng shuied with this new perspective.

In my work as a healer, I feel with my hands my client’s Soul-Signature and Flow. What I feel gives me information about how much energy my client will be able to use in the session. Hawkes actually sees the colors or frequencies of the flow as a cylinder of light lying above the spine.

Since reading Hawkes’s book, I’ve been wondering how MY Soul-Signature is affecting my clients and asking myself these questions:

  • Do I as a healer, with my unique Soul-Signature, bring out certain frequencies and energies in my client’s Soul-Signature?
  • Why do some healers have better results with certain diseases than others?
  • Why can William Bengston heal fast growing cancers, but have zero effect on a wart?
  • Why do some people heal faster than other people?
  • Could the Soul-Signature be an important factor in how we think about healing?

I don’t have the answers, but I feel the questions are pointing me in an interesting direction.

This book has been quite inspiring to me. I recommend you check it out!

“Healing must touch the cells, because illness begins at the cellar level.”
— Cell-Level Healing by Joyce Whiteley Hawkes, PhD

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Self Care: Exercise and Rest

A Morning Walk Around Lake Merritt

Energy work is easier for me when my physical body is in balance: flexible, strong and energized. Exercise is a crucial factor in bringing my body to this balance, and key to my self care routine.

At this point in my life exercise is even more important to my wellness than meditation. There is a stereotype that healers don’t care about the physical world including their body, but that is not the case for me and many of my healer colleagues. Almost all my Clarity Breathwork and Healing Touch colleagues are very conscious of diet, exercise and taking care of themselves physically.

By writing about how important exercise is in my healing practice, I hope you might realize how beneficial exercise may be for you energetically, whether you have a healing practice or not.

Since half of my healing practice is massage I find my muscles feel better if I work out at least three times a week. My workout generally consists of at least 20 minutes of sweaty aerobics followed by stretching. I used to take yoga, but a morning class of downward dogs and arm balancing poses was just too much for my shoulders before a long day of massage. For a long time, Bikram yoga worked well for me because it worked up a good sweat, and there aren’t any arm balancing poses in the sequence.

I’m now in an early morning gym phase, where I can choose what exercise to do based on how my body feels that day. The Elliptical Fitness Cross-trainer is my current favorite. After 20 minutes my whole body feels warmed up and so much looser. Sometimes I swim with fins, using just my legs. I don’t need to work out my arms. I picked my current gym because of the excellent hot tub and sauna and I use both after every work out. I consider the hot tub and sauna an integral part of my exercise routine.

I have been doing essentially the same job for the last 15 years and periodically I just get restless and need a change of workout routine. So, I switch my workouts about every 6 months or so when my exercise feels dull. As I mentioned, I went through a Bikram Yoga period, changed my gym several times, walked around Lake Merritt for a few months, even bought a hula hoop.

Interestingly, I thought I would need less exercise when I started doing more healings and less massages in my practice, but I found the opposite is true. Exercise really clears my head, relaxes me and opens my chakras. I feel I need to exercise now more than ever. I realize now that the more healing work I do, the more I need the physical exercise.

In addition to exercise, getting a consistent amount of rest is really important to my wellness. I personally need to get at least 7 hours of sleep each night.

Janet Mentgen, the founder of Healing Touch, was a very busy and productive woman who taught Healing Touch all over the world. She found her physical body required 8 hours of horizontal rest on a daily basis. She did not have to be asleep during these 8 hours, but lying down, which included healing sessions since Healing Touch is frequently done on a massage table. She was very disciplined about getting her horizontal rest and if she missed a few hours one day she made them up the next.

To find out more about Janet Mentgen’s self care advice check out an excerpt from Janet’s keynote address given at the Australian Holistic Nursing Conference in 1995 Path of Healership: The Importance of Self Care for the Healer. Click here and look under “General” to download the pdf. In it you will find also find Janet Mentgen’s 7 Principles of Self Care for Healers.

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Janet’s quote below sums up the importance of self care for me:

“We cannot be a spark in someone else’s life if our spark has gone out”
Janet Mentgen RN, BSN, CHTP/I, HNC, Healing Touch Founder

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Healing Clinicians and Researchers

Healing
HEALING

In a previous post I wrote about William Bengston’s book The Energy Cure. This book and his 6-CD set Hands-On Healing: A Training Course in the Energy Cure has been the most inspiring material on healing I have come across in a long time.

Bengston writes, “…The world of energy healers is divided between the clinicians who treat on blind faith and are perpetually reinventing the wheel, and researchers isolated in their laboratories who blindly follow the data without regard to its application or the practical discoveries of the clinicians.”

Since I have a healing practice using Healing Touch and other healing modalities, I fall into the clinician category. Yet, I have always felt a researcher lurking inside, that intense desire to understand what is really “happening” in my sessions. I feel very strongly that I am only perceiving the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what is possible with subtle energy work. The more I understand healing, the more effective I can be as a healer.

Below are just a few of the many questions Bengston asks in The Energy Cure (pages 207 and 208) that I find extremely interesting.

“How many treatments are necessary to produce remission? Is it better to have many short treatments or a few longer ones?

How do different types of cancer respond to the same treatments?

Do multiple healers add to the positive effects of energy treatment?

Can energy be stored in some materials, then transferred to an organism? If so, what materials work best?

Do some materials block the healing effect?

Can hands-on healing before cancer occurs create immunity?

Can immunity be inherited? Can an organism that has been cured pass on resistance to the next and subsequent generations?

These are significant questions that need to be asked, systematically researched and funded. The Energy Cure has helped me understand how important it is to have more research done on hands-on healing.

I have found out that Bengston’s next workshop will be next March 2012 in Denver and is being offered through the Healing Touch Program. Click here to find out more about it and join me if you can!