“We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life." Carl Jung
 
Let me share some of my journey with you. I am a registered nurse with a background in acute care nursing including cardiac intensive care and both adult and adolescent psychiatry. I grew up in Seattle where I currently live. For eight years I lived in Lakewood, Colorado, home of what we came to know as the Colorado Center for Healing Touch. It didn’t exist then. I studied energetic healing with Janet Mentgen in the 1980’s and became an instructor of Healing Touch before it was called Healing Touch, and before there were Levels 2-6, much less certification. 

Back then I was working in adolescent psychiatry. One day I saw a flyer posted for a workshop on Love, Touch, and Healing in Sedona, Arizona. In Harry Potter terminology, my owl had arrived. It didn’t require a street full of flyers to get my attention. I wanted to go to Sedona and now I had a reason to justify the trip. The workshop was wonderful and scary at the same time. What I witnessed didn’t compute with any of my life experiences nor my five year University studies. It was outside the box, outside my comfort zone. 
 
The Universe wouldn’t let me ignore the Sedona experience. Driving home from work I would hear this voice over my right shoulder saying, “Therapeutic Touch, Therapeutic Touch.” It wasn’t until later that I learned to discriminate between spiritual voices and auditory hallucinations. I was aware that a nurse was teaching a class in Therapeutic Touch at Red Rocks Community College, not far from where I lived, as part of the Nursing Continuing Education program. Her name was Janet Mentgen. It took a year but the voices were persistent and persuasive. They called my name. 

I mostly stayed in the closet with this energy stuff but then came a situation that called me into service. To not have used what I knew would have been a “sin of omission” as Janet put it. My healing touch enabled a grossly psychotic fourteen year old to quiet and come out of his delirium. I was out-of-the-closet. This caused quite a stir in that psychoanalytic setting but the Occupational Therapist recognized that the energy work was producing a parasympathetic effect to counter the extreme sympathetic disorder and objections ceased. I cite this example to impress upon you the importance of languaging and the scientific connection. 

In 1988 we returned to Seattle where I established the first Center for Healing Touch in one of the country’s largest medical centers with a salary commensurate with the Director of Nursing. In fact, our Puget Sound 9th floor- view-offices adjoin. I have a staff of ten full-time CHTPs. Our work has been written up in the local newspapers on multiple occasions, appeared in Oprah’s magazine, JAMA, and I’m sure you all saw the TIME cover story
Well, the TRUTH is, that’s all FANTASY, of course . . . of MYTHICAL proportions! 

I did move back to Seattle in 1988 intending to be a clone of Janet. At the invitation of a Methodist minister I began teaching in his church what I had learned from Janet in her workshops. The next year the Healing Touch program was born and I became one of the first Instructors. I too taught HT at a Community College (like Janet) and went airborne to teach around the USA, Canada, and The Netherlands. Each year I taught more workshops, established a private practice, integrated energy work into my nursing care on an adult psychiatric unit, and waited for the world and our culture to embrace this gift of healing. Alas, evidently it was not Spirit’s will that I be on the cover of TIME magazine (yet) or share a joint office with the Director of Nursing with a view of Puget Sound but that doesn’t matter; it’s been a fantastic journey and I have dropped my attachment to form. I know now that it was the journey that mattered and the Healing Touch journey “changed my life.” 

Over the years many people have gone to the open microphone at HT gatherings and told their TIME cover stories. Others have shared their dreams with me. When their stories don’t make the cover of TIME, when the long term outcome fails to materialize and meet their expectations, when they run into the proverbial brick wall, they express surprise and confusion because they were sure it was their spiritual path. It’s so very important to understand that: 

It was their spiritual path.
It is their spiritual path.
It is our spiritual path.
And this spiritual path is the journey of the hero.
It is our Hero’s Journey.

Joseph Campbell said that, “The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive.” Wouldn’t you agree that you’re more alive as a result of HT? We’re more alive because we stepped out of our comfort zone. We go through a Hero’s Journey every time we make a choice that takes us outside our comfort zone instead of repeating old familiar patterns.

We pursue an outcome whether it achieves our designated goal or not, because it is the journey that really matters. Too often our goal is not big enough for Spirit and we find that we’re part of a much bigger picture. Did Janet plan on creating a worldwide organization when she taught her first class? Joseph Campbell defined the hero as “someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” Healing Touch and all it represents was and is bigger than oneself. Did I mention that it changed MY life? 
 
The Hero’s Journey forces you out of mass mind. It forces you out of the box. In Harry Potter terminology, it forces you of of Muggle Mind. Let’s define Muggles: they are people who live in ignorance of the spiritual dimensions of life; the magical dimension of life around them. The Muggle world is non-magical. The Muggle world often serves as our comfort zone; the known, the familiar. Muggles never leave their comfort zone. Their security is based on the status quo, they are quite defensive about maintaining their status quo, they have a desperate need to be right, to be in control, and they are suspicious and afraid of the invisible realm. 

Most of us become bored in our comfort zone at some time and we begin to feel a mysterious restlessness, dissatisfaction. The spiritual voices activate. The first owl arrives, OR if we ignore the message that will take us out of our comfort zone we might find a giant knocking on the door. So, the Hero’s Journey begins in the Muggle World, the Ordinary World. The Hero’s Journey is a point of reference; an understanding of a human life as a creative process of discovery and growth that never ends because the essence of a Hero’s Journey is that is always ends back where it began; where we hibernate spiritually and where it begins again. 
 
Each Hero’s Journey begins and ends in the same place. Every Harry Potter book begins where? At home with the Dursleys. And ends where? Returning to the Dursleys for the summer. The Dursleys are Muggles of the first order. But something is different. Harry Potter is different. He’s not the same eleven-year old that left for Hogwarts in book one. He is a different boy in each subsequent book. Each journey is different because each journey changes us. We are learning more as we go, learning what we don’t know, and most importantly we’re letting go of what we know; what doesn’t work for us anymore. We don’t fit in the same box anymore. 

What is the owl’s message? YOU are not a Muggle. YOU are a Wizard with powers you’ve never imagined. Campbell calls it, “The Force inside you.”  Our adventure begins with the owl’s message (the flyer on the unit) and ends with our coming back with a message (Hey everybody, I have just discovered this life-changing practice called Healing Touch). Ahhh, but what if the world doesn’t want to hear the message we bring back? Bill Moyers posed that question to Joseph Campbell: “That, of course, is a normal experience,” answered Campbell. “It isn’t always so much that the world doesn’t want the gift, but that it doesn’t know how to receive it and how to institutionalize it.”  

It’s time to INTRODUCE OUR HERO, HARRY POTTER 

Our hero, Harry Potter, is a ten-year old orphan when we first meet him in book one, The Sorcerer’s Stone. He is existing as an outcast in the Muggle home of his aunt and uncle, Vernon and Petunia Dursley and their son, Dudley. His room is a cupboard under the stairs; a constant reminder that he doesn’t belong, doesn’t fit in. Then, on his 11th birthday, an owl arrives with a message for Harry but Uncle Vernon refuses to allow Harry to read his mail. He is determined to keep Harry from the truth about himself. 
 
More owls arrive with more messages. Realizing that he’s losing the battle, Uncle Vernon moves the family away to a secret, isolated house in the middle of the English Channel. But, in the middle of the night a giant, Hagrid, knocks on the door. He will not be refused entry. The message is finally delivered. And the message is, "You are more than you thought you were, You are a wizard with magical powers. Your destiny is to awaken to these powers within. The time has come to master these innate talents, and the place to develop your skills is a place called Hogwarts."
 
Harry’s first big challenge in book one comes in just getting to Hogwarts. The train to Hogwarts leaves on Track Nine and Three-Quarters. All he finds between Tracks nine and ten is a brick wall. (Have any of you ever run into a brick wall?) How do you move through a brick wall? Mrs. Weasley informs him that, “All you have to do, dear, is walk straight at the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. It’s best to do it at a bit of a run if you’re nervous.” Taking Healing Touch into a psychoanalytic hospital back in 1987 was a bit like going through a brick wall. 

Joseph Campbell’s Criteria of the Mythical Hero is to: 

Subdue the seemingly impossible.
Become integrated as part of a group.
Realize his or her role in the society.
Acquire self-knowledge and mature during ordeals.

Harry represents the quest to know oneself and understand the forces of the world he lives in. Is that not our story; about our quest to know our Self and understand the forces of the world we live in? The Hero’s Journey is the adventure of being alive. The Hero’s Journey of the Healing Touch Practitioner is the adventure of being alive. Harry’s story is our story. Like Harry Potter you are more than you thought you were; you have magical powers, healing powers. It is your destiny to evolve those innate talents as your spiritual path. What matters is the Journey, not the form it elicits. You are part of a BIG PICTURE and your role is vital! 

We are in a Health Care Revolution: Existing bodies of knowledge are being/feeling threatened and careers of the proponents of change are being challenged. HEALTH CARE TODAY DEMANDS HEROES. The elixir, the wisdom that heroes bring back with them may be so powerful that it forces change not only in them but also in those around them. Part of our responsibility is to assist the Muggles of Health Care to institutionalize the healing Elixir of love and compassion. We need to remember that there are many Wizards masquerading as Medical Muggles simply because it isn’t safe in many places to acknowledge your Wizardry. 
 
Healing Touch and the Hero’s Journey will take you into the unknown and out of your comfort zone. Ordeals are a given in any Hero’s Journey; through them we acquire self-knowledge and mature spiritually. When we become energized with purpose and vision, our process can move along effortlessly and synchronistic ally, evidence that we’re ready. 
 
We must stay alert for the Boggarts, of course. The Boggarts were introduced in book three. They represent peoples’ worries; they take the shape of what we fear the most. What did Harry most fear? The Dementors, those entities that suck the very soul from a person. They feed upon the hope, happiness, and desire to survive. Boggarts can be deflected by the Patronus incantation, “Expecto Patronus!” The incantation “will only work if you are concentrating, with all your might, on a single, very happy memory.” And the incantation is always followed by saying, “Riddikulus!” and hearty laughter. Try it. Isn’t this basically the same idea of Heart Math’s “Freeze Frame” function to counter anxiety or other negative emotions? 

Joseph Campbell said that we need to create new myths for our times. Perhaps Healing Touch is creating a new myth for health care. Let me conclude with three quotes. 
 
"The universal human journey is one of becoming conscious of our power and how to use that power. Becoming conscious of the responsibility inherent in the power of choice represents the core of this journey."  ~ Carolyn Myss 

“It’s not your abilities, Harry; it’s the choices you make.” ~ Dumbledore 

“With great powers comes great responsibilities.”  ~ Spiderman 

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU.