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Page 241
Further Dimensions of Therapeutic Touch
In 1984, Janet Quinn, a doctoral candidate in nursing at NYU, published landmark research in the field of ostensible energy healing. Her work was the first to show that physical contact was not necessary for the healing effects of TT to occur. More important, Quinn's research demonstrated the pivotal role of the healing intentions of the healer, using a modified version of Therapeutic Touch that did not involve physical contact with the patient. Quinn's study involved sixty cardiovascular patients hospitalized at St. Vincent's Medical Center in New York. Her randomly assigned control group received sham but realistic-looking noncontact treatments, and they had no change in their physiologic measures of anxiety. The group of patients receiving noncontact Therapeutic Touch from practitioners intending to heal in a mind-centered state had dramatic decreases in physiologic measures of anxiety following their treatments. 16 Quinn considers it possible, as we do, that through a shift in consciousness, Therapeutic Touch practitioners in some way facilitate a "repatterning of the recipient's energy field through a process of resonance, rather than an energy exchange or transfer."17
Quinn admitted to me (Jane) that she was highly skeptical of the whole process when she was a student in the first accredited TT class at UYU School of Nursing in 1975. Quinn's life at that time was inordinately stressful, since she was working full-time while being a graduate student. She said she had only signed up for the class in Therapeutic Touch because it looked like an easy elective. "But when Krieger did Therapeutic Touch on me, it blew me away!" Her full statement was:
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As Krieger began to do Therapeutic Touch on me, I could feel all the tension in my body being drawn to my center. Then I had intense chest pain. When Krieger did Therapeutic Touch over my chest, it was as if the pain was drawn out of me. My whole body relaxed. I felt grounded and centered. Even my mind became clear and focused. It blew me away! I stayed clear and relaxed and focused like that for more than a week.18
Quinn told me that her most profound experience with Therapeutic

 
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