VOLUNTEER

SPOTLIGHT

TTIA's Board is delighted to feature a regular column in our bi-weekly

E-news spotlighting volunteers. As you probably know TTIA functions because we have amazing and wonderful volunteers! We are grateful and we are in awe and are excited to share some of their stories.

Luisa Porrata MPH, RN, QTTT

--TT MEETeam Sharing

I contact my networking group once a quarter and they all seem to be doing well. Some of them keep in contact and some do not answer. In my contacts by email or phone I let them know some of what is going on in upcoming webinars and programs. I also follow-up on any questions regarding TTIA.

Back in 1980, I was talking to a Social Worker I knew about wanting to augment my nursing care. I told her that every night, as part of my prayers, I envisioned learning a healing technique from a petite, grey-haired woman. She paused, then smiled at me. “You know, she said, after a bit,” “I know of just the place you would love. It’s called Pumpkin Hollow Farm.”

I took my first TT Introduction workshop with Janet Macrae in 1980 at the New School in New York City. TT spoke to my desire to learn more about healing that was so much a part of my Puerto Rican culture. I attended a mentorship practice group with Mary Anne Hanley in NYC, and I met Dolores Krieger and Dora Kunz at Pumpkin Hollow Farm in 1980 and where I continued to learn and practice summer beginners, intermediate and advanced invitational workshops. I taught a beginner’s TT workshop at Pumpkin Hollow with Holly Major, Diane May and Deirdra Kearney.

My nursing career began in pediatric nursing and eventually I took care of the very first children diagnosed with AIDS. I worked in a research program with babies to preteens and realized how traumatizing their numerous blood tests were on each of their visits. At the time I introduced the parents and doctors to the Therapeutic Touch creation of relaxation in the very young patients in 2-4 minutes and pain reduction sessions.

In 1990, the year I was working in the HIV/AIDS Children, and Families Program, I arrived at Pumpkin Hollow physically and emotionally depleted. Dora told us we were not taking care of ourselves. I was then placed in Cathy Fanslow’s group where I had an “AHA” moment: I learned that in order to shield myself from the pain of caring for dying parents and children, that I had inadvertently closed off my heart. As Cathy did Hand to Heart, I could actually feel pink rose petals slowly opening my heart field and I then took my first real breath of healing relaxation and peace.

For my Therapeutic Touch work with the HIV/AIDS Program for Children and Families at the St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital Center in 1991, I was awarded that year’s Excellence in Professional Nursing Award.

In my career, I have offered Therapeutic Touch to children and their families, to seniors as a visiting nurse, taught introduction TT workshops as a Parish Nurse in the Wellness Center of The Riverside Church in New York City and also as part of pre-marital counseling, as an Interfaith Minister. I have also had the honor and pleasure of introducing Therapeutic Touch to Nursing Professors and Nursing students at the Metropolitan University of Puerto Rico.

In my last position before I retired, I worked as an Adjunct Professor of Nursing at Hostos Community College in the RN and LPN program, and I introduced Professors and students to Therapeutic Touch. I offered them TT sessions as needed.

I participated in the last two TT Dialogues in 2023 and 2024. We met monthly as a group to prepare for the Dialogue in May 2024, and as a result, I learned the true meaning of our TT family via our deep dive sharing.

I attend the monthly TT Practice Group with Sue Conlin as well as the Rhode Island TT Practice Group with Anthony Brogi.

I have been attending the webinars through the beginning of this year and truly enjoyed the TTEC Program on 5/11/24 Breathwork, Yoga, Meditation by Christina Lim. This program was sorely needed for both the entire TT community and for the care of our Hp communities.

Therapeutic Touch continues to be a remarkable adjunct to my quality of life. These days, I find tremendous satisfaction in both offering and receiving Therapeutic Touch via Zoom with colleagues and in providing similar assistance to clients, family and friends.

My Nursing career has afforded me such beautiful learning opportunities that would not have been so enriching and life changing had I not had the opportunity to have Therapeutic Touch as my companion throughout my career.

An Invitation to do TT

at NYU Langone Hospital

As we all know, Dee Kreiger taught the first Therapeutic Touch® courses at NYU in New York City. Recently Martha Fortune and Sue Ann Duncan taught Foundations of Therapeutic Touch at NYU Langone Hospital. Martha sends us the following request from the hospital:

"Here is an invitation to be a volunteer at NYU Langone Hospital to offer Therapeutic Touch to patients and/or staff in a variety of locations. I offered TT to the Integrative Heath team for about 5 years, and have recently offered TT to oncology outpatients while they received chemotherapy.

I currently offer TT on a pediatric floor where the patients have undergone procedures and will be discharged.

The staff come to see me one by one over their lunch break. In addition, I offer 2 individual half hour TT sessions every other week for a total of 3 hours every other week. The staff really appreciate it and I’m spreading the word about TT in a facility where most only know about Reiki. Come join me!"(click here for the link to the Langone Hospital invitation to energy medicine practitioners)

--Martha Fortune



Snow Geese

--by Mary Oliver

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!

What a task to ask

of anything, or anyone,

yet it is ours,

and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

One fall day I heard

above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was a flock of snow geese, winging it faster than the ones we usually see,

and, being the color of snow, catching the sun

so they were, in part at least, golden. 

I held my breath as we do

sometimes to stop time

when something wonderful

has touched us…

The geese flew on.

I have never seen them again.

Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.

Maybe I won’t.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters

is that, when I saw them,

I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

...I would say that compassion plays a number of roles during healing. It helps to bond and unify the healer and the healee. It also has a channeling role: the force of compassionate concern coming from the therapist's heart chakra draws directly from the universal healing field and targets the healee for the flow of healing energies. A very important part of that healing moment is the image that the healer holds of the healee as being whole and unharmed.

--Dora Kunz with Dolores Krieger, Ph.D, R.N., The Spiritual Dimension of Therapeutic Touch p 204

When the eyes and ears are open, even the leaves on the trees teach like pages from the Scriptures.

— Kabir quoted in Legacy of the Heart by Wayne Muller

Barbara Dossey, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN, HSGAHN

Internationally recognized as a pioneer in the holistic nursing and nurse coaching movements. She is a Florence Nightingale scholar, nurse theorist, and national and international speaker and teacher on Florence Nightingale’s legacy and the role of integrative nurse coaching in the emerging integrative health care paradigm. She is the International Co-Director and Board Member, Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH), Washington, DC, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Gatineau, Quebec. Together with her husband Larry Dossey MD she has won numerous awards including the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine Visionary Award 2016. She was Nurse Healer’s (TTIA’s Credentialing Arm) Healer of the Year in 1998. www.dosseydossey.com,

www.iNurseCoach.com, 

www.NIGHvision.net

Katherine Rosa, PhD, FNP-BC, QTTT



Co-Director of the Stress Management and Resiliency (SMART) Program, Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA; Instructor, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; and MGH Researcher, Nurse Scientist focused on Relationships as Healing Transformations. Previously she worked as a family nurse practitioner and taught nurse practitioners as Co-Director of the Family Nurse Practitioner Program at UMass Lowell. One of her areas of interest is in the neurobiology of compassion in compassion contemplatives and how it may influence healing. She will share some of the research on compassion and its relation to the practice of Therapeutic Touch. She has extensive experience teaching individuals and groups on meditation, resiliency strategies, and the practice of Therapeutic Touch.