Healing Touch: A Path to Transformation

• Author / Creator

  Wayne Richard Hughes

• Healing Touch: A Path to Transformation is a thesis that explores the transformative nature of Healing Touch, an energy based healing treatment used by the Healing Pathway, a program offered by Naramata Centre, a retreat and educational centre affiliated with the United Church of Canada. The thesis offers definitions for healing and transformation. It offers insights into energy work that is specific to the Healing Pathway but is applicable to other forms of energy work. The thesis outlines the history of the Healing Pathway including healing traditions from the Gospels and the early Church, the work of modern energy healers and organizations such as Agnes Sandford, Brugh Joy, Therapeutic Touch, and Healing Touch International. It briefly presents a scientific rationale for energy based healing including the connections of stress, hormones and the physical body that Gabor Mate outlines in his work. The thesis is a qualitative research project which uses a specific model of theological reflection developed by Robert Kinast with the acronym NAME, (Narration, Analysis, heart of the Matter and Enactment) to interview four co-researchers about their experiences with the Healing Pathway. This model encourages co-researchers to share their stories so the paper is also a form of narrative inquiry and because I use my experiences to validate the experiences of the co-researchers it is heuristic in nature as well. The thesis discovered that people are transformed in a myriad of ways. The Healing Pathway has a role to play in the modern church as it is what Sallie McFague refers to as an embodied way of knowing God.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Healing treatment
  • \"Healing Pathway\"
  • Transformation
  • Healing touch
  • United Church
  • Energy work
  • Stress

• Graduation date

  2010

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Theological Studies

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3T727W3G

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.