A HEALING TOUCH

This is the light in which I see books like Quantum Touch, by Richard Gordon. The title uses the scientific word, Quantum, which refers to the smallest possible unit of electromagnetic energy. But there is not all that much science in Gordon's book. There is just enough to give respectability to the laying on of hands.

In folk medicine, there have always been people who possessed healing hands, which seem to say that some people have the ability to transfer more electromagnetic energy than others for any number of reasons. This is similar to saying that some people's hugs feel better than others.

Most of us know this. In fact most of us can remember people from our past, or in our present life, who really know how to hug. Quantum Touch tells us that we can all have the healing touch if we master a group of techniques that will heighten our awareness of our own healing energy, and enhance our ability to access and use it.

This is not much different than the things that my dad told me when I came home from college: "Toni, every cell in a living thing has a life force and this life force is in the form of energy. Now in the church we call it the Holy Ghost. The Chinese call it chi, the Indians call it prana, the Japanese call it reiki."

He so-o-o-o wanted me to love him as I once did when I was a child and he was the greatest force in my life. I so-o-o-o wanted to love him and so I had sent him home books by Wilhelm Reich that called the life force by one high-sounding word, by Anton Mesmer that called it another, and Henri Bergson that called it yet another.

All that time, my dad had been reading these books and not telling me. He was learning the terms that would have made him acceptable at my graduation, which he should have been anyway if I had not been so ill at heart. When we came together on the old ways being scientifically acceptable, we cried in each other's embrace. I guess you could say we gave each other healing hugs. It was so wonderful.

A Healing Hug is an organization, but the concept is not nearly as marketable as Quantum Touch, since QT promotes itself as a useful scientific technique for physicians, chiropractors, nurses, acupuncturists, reflexologists, Qigong practitioners, massage therapists of any sort, physical therapists kinesiologists, or anyone else who works in health care where the laying on of hands is part of a treatment. In fact hundreds of "heal yourself/heal others" QT Meetups take place all of America and in a few other countries.

The simple idea is that all healthy cells have energy that vibrates at a certain frequency. The energy of unhealthy cells vibrates at a lower frequency. When Quantum contact is made, that is contact on a deep cellular level healthy cells communicate electromagnetically with unhealthy ones and the innate healing ability of each cell does the rest.

Gordon's book claims that anyone can access what is called source energy and direct it towards the self, a person, animal, plant, food, water, etc., either through physical contact or at a distance.

The easy thing to believe is that Source energy can improve someone's health over time, but QT's claim is that miracles happen. Bones have spontaneously melted into their correct alignment with a light touch, liver cancer has gone immediately into remission, deformities from rheumatoid arthritis have suddenly been straightened, incapacitating migraine headaches immediately disappear, QT people say.

Now the thing that I think most about my dad is that he was a man born before his time, or I guess in a way the times finally caught up to him.