June 11-17

This was a full week of comings and goings. As the days went by, fellowship staffers Jerry (Tuesday), Jennifer (Wednesday), Collin (Thursday), Bonnie and Craig (Saturday) all took their turn and departed.

On Friday, Leonie and I headed to Seattle just as Cordy Anderson and Julie Benkofsky-Webb, the coordinators for the Therapeutic Touch programs, were arriving. We were on our way to a busy Saturday in town, composed of an Indralaya Board meeting in the morning and a memorial gathering for Linda Jo Pym (see April 23-29) in the afternoon.

Leonie returned to camp on Saturday evening, just in time to do the orientation for the nearly 40 people who had arrived during the day for the Therapeutic Touch mentorship program. I stayed over until Sunday to visit with family and run some errands.

Dora Kunz

The last half of June at Indralaya has been devoted to the teaching and practice of Therapeutic Touch for nearly 40 years. Therapeutic Touch developed out of the shared work of Dora Kunz, Dolores Krieger and the experience of hundreds of interested students and practitioners, both here and at Pumpkin Hollow Farm in New York.

A key impetus for the development of this healing modality was Dora’s insight that the capacity for healing is a human quality that can be taught. In her book, The Personal Aura, Dora shared the following thoughts on healing:

Healing is the reestablishment of order within the body’s systems. I perceive its accomplishment as due to a universal energy which springs from the tendency towards order that is at the heart of all living processes... 

Healing involves forces and agencies which we do not fully understand, and certainly cannot command. Rather, we seek to be instruments of the power of healing which exists everywhere in nature. Even in the orthodox sense, medical procedures do not cure the patient; they merely remove the impediments to healing, which the body itself must accomplish...

Since the healing energy is a beneficent power available to all living beings, the ability to draw upon it does not depend upon religious belief. Every person who practices healing may conceptualize it differently. I personally feel that since this healing power or energy is available to everyone, it is essentially the same, no matter how it may be described.