Abstract

The intent of this existential-phenomenological research is to uncover the lived experience of receiving hands-on energy-healing and what this experience reveals about the nature of embodiment and the relationship with self and others. This study chronicles the researcher's participation in various hands-on-healing modalities, and then explores the presuppositions concerning the energy worldview in healing. First, energy is a metaphor for languaging that particular way of being-in-the-world in which a person experiences a sense of connectedness with self, world, and others, where the universe is one body. Second, hands-on energy-healing is a social construction of reality that utilizes the energy metaphor to display, create, and recreate the meaning of health and illness. Third, hands-on energy-healing is an intense form of healer-client interaction that creates co-presence, where both participants can feel "healing happening" . ;This dissertation uses P. Colaizzi's qualitative research method. Seven middle-class, middle-aged Caucasian women are interviewed to illuminate the experience of receiving hands-on energy-healing. Protocol analysis reveals that the experience occurs when the individual seeks a new sense of self and moves beyond the old self that is associated with emotions and physical pain due to illness and loss. ;The works of E. Gendlin and A. Mindell are discussed in relation to therapeutic, energetic healing. Gendlin posits that healing occurs when the client contacts his or her felt-sense---the preconceptual feeling or unformed bodily meaning at the edge of what can be said about ourselves, others, and the world. Mindell believes that healing happens when the client processes the dreambody signals. The dreaming body is the name for unusual experiences and altered states of consciousness that attempt to be made known through somatic symptoms, movement impulses, and synchronous messages from the world. ;This study proceeds to discuss the dynamics of energy healing in the context of ritual and symbolic healing. The process of symbolic healing involves an ontological shift for the client into a particular mythic world. Energy therapies can be thought of as approaches that heal through the use of language and ritual manipulating cultural symbols that transform the experience of health and illness. These life-affirming rituals and symbols create moments when one attains harmony with oneself and the world. ;This dissertation turns to the works of E. Husserl , M. Heidegger , M. Merleau-Ponty , D. Abram , and K. A'Llerio to explicate the life-world and its cultural layerings that provide the structure of reality which gives rise to the connectedness of person, world, and others. The implications for the human sciences and therapy are presented in addition to considerations for future research in the area of healing