Magical Hands

Healing Hands:

For years, the back painBack Pain had been silently bleeding joy from your life, coloring every decision, every act, from putting in 12 hours at the computer to taking a fun ride on the Ferris wheel. You walked around fearful that your spine would snap if you so much as bent to pick up a dropped coin.

Surgery was out of the question, so you rubbed balms and swallowed painkillers daily, to stem the tide of pain. Now this was your last port of call: A faith healer who claims he can "cure" everything - from amenorrhea to arthritis — by the touch of his fingers! You're unbelieving but desperate so you put the fate of your taciturn back in his hands.

With New Age music playing in the background, the faith healer starts chanting mantras, calling on the spirits "to fill the dark, pain-filled corners in your body with healing light," and places his palm on your chakras (the various energy fields in your body). Unwillingly you are drawn under his spell. Amazingly, Back Painat the end of the half-hour session you emerge as if freed from a burden. You quit worrying about your back, and days later, you discover the pain has quit you!

A few years ago, every doctor worth his medical degree would have dismissed the thing as a load of crap, and accused the faith healer of pulling a fast one on the gullible masses. But today, certain sections of the medical community are agreeing that there may indeed be something to say in favor of the healing power of touch, as new evidence emerges from scientific studies. Mind you, they haven't gone so far as to advise people to turn to faith healing in lieu of medical treatment. Rather, that the believers use touch therapy in conjunction with modern remedies.

What’s going on?

There's power in touch, the most pervasive of the five senses. Human beings have known this fact instinctively since the beginning of time, and have exploited the knowledge in various ways. We know, for instance, that babies need touch to thrive; that a gentle touch soothes people of all ages. An ascetic holy man uses a simple embrace to endear her to skeptics and fans alike. For politicians and statesmen, touch is the trump card: A few minutes spent holding the hand of a flood-affected victim or bouncing a slum dweller's baby, they know, will draw more votes than an hour of yelling into the mike. Then there are faith healers, Reiki therapists and all manner of practitioners claiming to cure a multitude of human miseries with the power of touch. But as far as modern medicine is concerned, therapies that rely on touch have generally been under the radar for doctors.

The Power of Touch:

It was a simple experiment conducted by neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Virginia, on 16 couples, all rated as very happily married on a questionnaire asking about coping styles, intimacy and mutual interests.


Lying inside, an M.R.I, scanning machine and knowing that they would periodically receive a mild electric shock to an ankle, the women were noticeably apprehensive. Brain images showed peaks of activation in regions involved in anticipating pain, heightening physical arousal and regulating negative emotions.

Back PainBut when they felt their husbands' hands, each woman's brain activity level plunged in all the regions gearing up for the threat. A stranger's hand also provided some comfort, though less so. Those women in particularly close marriages were most deeply comforted by their husbands' hands, the study found.

"The effect of this simple gesture of social support is that the brain and body don't have to work as hard, they're less stressed in response to a threat," says Dr. James A. Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and the study's lead author.

Hospital Approaches

Such findings have been replicated in other studies as well, resulting in growing enthusiasm for touch therapies in the scientific community. Several medical centers in America have started pilot programs to study the potential benefits of touch therapies done just before an invasive heart test or surgery.

At George Washington University in Washington, D.C., individuals slated for cardiac catheterization were offered Reiki sessions before their procedures. Of the 428 people who were approached, 62% agreed to the treatment. In follow-up surveys, they said they felt more confident and "cared for" after the Reiki session than before it. The few cardiologists involved in the study who completed the surveys said that Reiki-treated patients were more relaxed and cooperative.

At St. Joseph's Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, healingBack Pain touch has been integrated into standard care for people undergoing open-heart surgery. About 90% of people choose to receive healing touch, which is done both before and after surgery. A preliminary study suggested that those who got healing touch had shorter hospital stays than those who didn't.

Try This at Home

You may not expect dramatic results, but there's little doubt that timely touch therapy could ease your anxiety or make you feel better if you're slated for major surgery. Consider for e.g. Those women who hug their partners more than once a day tends to have lower blood pressure than infrequent huggers, in a study reported in Biological Psychiatry. This may help explain why people who have emotional support from a spouse or a long-term partner tend to have a lower risk of dying from heart disease.

According to Reiki therapists, disease can cause blockages to the flow of energy, as can feelings of depression, anger, resentment, and bitterness. Hands-on healing, they say, helps dissolve these blockages, heal the schisms between mind, body and spirit, to create wholeness. Sometimes it may result in a cure, and sometimes it could simply result in the ability to see past the pain and agony of the instant and get on with your life.