August/September 2009: Healing Touch ... - Energy Magazine

Healing Touch Worldwide Conference 2009 Reflections
Out of Diversity We Gathered in Unity
by Linda L. Smith RN, MS, HN-BC, HTSM-CP/I, CCA
From our opening ritual to our closing, practitioners, friends and
instructors from three distinct Healing Touch programs came
to celebrate our oneness, as well as, to honor one another’s
diversity. For me, it was a grand coming home party where I
was welcomed for the gifts that we—our Healing Touch Spiritual
Ministry (HTSM) and aromatherapy practitioners—bring to enrich
the work of Healing Touch in the world. We are one family—
just different branches of the same tree.
We had wonderful keynote and breakout speakers who challenged
us to vision how we can be better practitioners in
service to the world. Even our vendors offered us
hope and self-care enrichment as they shared
their particular expertise with all of us. The postconferences
further enriched us by giving us
opportunities to go into depth on the subjects we
were most interested in pursuing.
It was a growth opportunity for all of us, a time to lay aside
differences and to embrace one another in true joy and acceptance.
I for one will carry the energy of this conference for the
next year in all the classes I teach. I will continue to encourage
as many of our students as possible to be at the 2010 joint
Healing Touch conference where we will bring the richness of
our diversity to bless the whole in unity.
below: (top) Carol Komitor (HTA), Linda Smith (ISHA), Cynthia Hutchison
and Lisa Gordon (HTP) at the opening cerimony. (bottom) Lisa
Gordon, holding Louis, Jean Watson, Dorothea Hover-Kramer and
Cynthia Hutchison.
One of the great benefits of attending a national
conference is the informal networking that takes
place in the corridors, over a glass of wine or
iced tea, during and in-between the sessions and
even in the bathrooms! I heard that one of our HTSM instructors
shared a hotel room with two Canadians who now want her
to come to Canada to teach. They connected not only about
the work they shared but on a spiritual level where they were
blessed by each other’s gifts. Other connections were made as
we shared with one another our gifts, talents and skills. This is
what a national conference is supposed to do—inspire each
other to be the best that we can be and to share the blessings of
the work with one another.
continued on page 10
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