HILTON nurse Genevieve Lyons uses “bio-field therapy” to help patients at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital relax and feel less stressed during their cancer treatment.
She practises Healing Touch, an energy-based modality that involves light touches to the body to support physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health.
The treatment aims to correct deficiencies in the body’s energy field and its origins can be traced back to traditional Chinese medicine, which balanced life force energy (qi).
• Genevieve Lyons (pink hooide) applies the ‘Healing Touch’, and (below) with members of Healing Touch WA, who help cancer patients at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital (bottom).
Healing Touch has been practised and taught in Perth since the early 1990s, but Lyons didn’t get involved until 2002, when she returned to Fremantle after working as a nurse/midwife in the Kimberley.
“I was looking to diversify my nursing career and study complimentary therapies,” Lyons says. “I met a nurse who told me about Healing Touch and explained it was an energy therapy created by a US nurse in the 1980s.
“Something inside me clicked and I knew this is what I was looking for. I enrolled into the Unit 1 class and the rest is history. I have been involved with this modality and this group of ladies ever since.”
Healing Touch practitioners operate mostly out of the Solaris Cancer Care Centre, a dedicated facility at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital that provides complimentary therapies for folk living with cancer and their carers.
“Our presence at this centre and at the hospital spans over two decades,” Lyons says.
“We offer Healing Touch to patients and their carers to alleviate some of the symptoms experienced due to whatever cancer treatment they may be undergoing.
“We’re also happy to treat patients on the ward or at the chemo lounge.”
Lyons says the gentle, energy-based therapy is used to treat a variety of conditions including headaches, migraines, stress, anxiety, general pain, flu, sinus, sleep problems, COVID recovery, depression, wound healing, grief and major life changes, palliative care and post surgery.
But what does Lyons say to those who think it’s pseudoscience and a lot of old codswallop?
“It’s an evidence based therapy that has been by practiced by nurses in the American hospital system for years,” she says.
Lyons cites US numerous research studies where the therapy has been successfully used to treat Vietnam vets with PTSD, chronic pain, immunity issues, and people suffering from anxiety and depression.
The not-for-profit Australian Foundation for Healing Touch was founded in 1997 and helps to train practitioners across the country.
Healing Touch WA has nursing and non-nursing members. If you are interested in joining or finding out more then email Lyons at contacthtwa@gmail.com.