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“That pain you had… For a mother to see a child with that kind of pain, is so terrible.”

 — My mom, Birthe Andersen

I have had juvenile arthritis since I was four years old, which means this condition and I recently celebrated (?) 50 years together. For most of that time, there were no treatments to control it. When I was a child, the primary “treatment” was aspirin. There was a lot of pain.

I don’t remember what it felt like – that’s one of the good qualities of pain, that it’s hard to remember. I do remember having to crawl around the house on all fours because my ankle wouldn’t support my weight. I remember sobbing because of the pain. I remember wearing splints and getting my joints drained of fluids through a needle without local anaesthetic, and I remember the abject loneliness.

I also remember my mother’s hand on one joint or another, pulling out the pain. Quite literally, helping me sleep, helping me walk, helping me function. I asked her to tell me more about that.

From one friend to another

My mother learned what was essentially a variation of the Healing Touch technique when she herself was in pain after her first back surgery. A friend came to visit in the hospital and “held onto my leg, because I couldn’t walk when she first arrived, it hurt so much.” Once my mother felt better, they went outside to sit in the sun. “And that’s how I found out that I could help you when the pain was there, I learned to pull it out of you,” she said. And of course, my mother, in the true tradition of all Andersen women, “improved on it a bit over time.”

She feels it still, this power to heal, especially in the centre of her right palm. If you hold your hand over that spot, you can feel the healing energy like a heat emanating out of her. “And with that heat, I could find the places where I should hold on, where it was really bad,” she told me and I remembered how for years, she helped me when nothing else worked.

In Danish, we called it “holde paa mig,“ which loosely translates to “holding on to me.” She’d place her hand on the joint that hurt, or sometimes in a different place. She placed it where her hand wanted to be and it was always right. Both of us would focus on opening up and helping the energy flow, sometimes doing it with closed eyes and silence, sometimes chatting a bit throughout. Mom would hold on to me 10, 20 minutes and during that time, I could feel the energy and the pain streaming from the hurting place to that area, leaving my body and going into her hand. She could feel it, too, the pain streaming from me into her, and both of us knew when it was done.

The power of helping

I asked mom what it meant to be able to do this. “Everything, Lene. Simply everything. That pain you had… For a mother to see a child with that kind of pain, is so terrible. And you will do everything to help. And when I then found out that I could, I have no words for how beautiful it was that I could take your pain from you. It was a very big thing.”

We teared up a bit at this moment in our conversation, both of us remembering how awful life can be when you have nothing that helps. I remember that feeling of helplessness, of being held prisoner by the pain, caught in a grip so tight I could barely breathe. And my mother remembers the helplessness of not being able to help someone you love.

It wasn’t just me she helped, though. Once, on one of my many trips to the rehab hospital, the girl in the bed next to me had so much pain in her ankle she couldn’t walk. My mom sat there, between two beds, holding onto both of us. When she had to go home again, we both walked her out.

It was not a cure, but it was help when there was none found elsewhere. “I couldn’t take it away forever. But I could take it away for so long that you could have a couple of good days, maybe,” mom said. When nothing takes the pain away, having a few days with less pain, enough that you can focus outward again, is a miracle.

The how of it

My mom is a firm believer that anyone can learn the healing touch and use it to help others, and even yourself. “I can help myself when my neuropathy is really bad,“ especially for her hands and the arthritis her shoulder, areas she can touch. (I should mention that a lot of people have a bit of distance between the hand and the area they are working on)

But this healing touch is not just about putting your hand on someone else. It involves opening yourself up completely, being vulnerable, asking for pain to come into your body. It requires a deep focus on wishing to help. Sometimes, if it’s difficult, leaning on another power may help as a conduit. For some that’s prayer or crystals, for my mom, it’s family.

When I lived at home, we had an intercom between my bedroom and my parents’. If I needed help, I’d buzz. When the pain was really bad, my mom would come down to hold on to me.

“There was one time when it was so bad that I couldn’t do it myself. It was one of the only times I have cried in my life, because I couldn’t help you. So I called my mother and she came with her two sisters,” she told me. You have to understand that these three women had died several years before, but we come from a long line of strong, slightly witchy women, who live to help others. And help, they did. “I said ‘mom, you have to help, I can’t do it myself,’” mom told me. “And then you fell asleep, your pain went away and they took it from me.”

But it’s about more than vulnerability and focus. You have to believe you can help, be absolutely convinced that you can do this. And it can take time to learn, but for some, it’s like clicking into who they’re meant to be. My mom is one of these — a natural healer. As we were talking, she told me “just sitting here talking about it, I’m buzzing,” her body and soul eager to help again.

That belief, the desire and need to help is where you start. Leave your sceptical brain out of it, and tune into your body, you heart, and your soul. I remember once asking an ex-boyfriend to put his hand on my aching shoulder. He did, but it lay there like a dead fish, doing nothing. On the other hand, I can do it myself, have a couple of friends who can, and The Boy is able to, as well.

Letting go again

There is one more important aspect to this healing and that’s to get rid of the energy that has travelled into you. My mother told me that once it enters your body, she is buzzing with it, a somewhat painful buzz that would keep her from sleeping. There are several ways you can get rid of this energy and how the energy leaves varies. For my mother, is through the tips of her fingers. For a friend of mine, it’s through his toes.

Holding onto a radiator can help, and so can shaking your hands vigourously. That never worked for mom, though, so she had to find other ways. Holding onto our dog worked, the energy travelling into him, but then he’d have had enough and leave in a bit of a huff. “Then I held them under running water and that took some of it, so I could sleep,” mom explained.

Some people probably shouldn’t do this. Mom has a lifelong heart condition that worsened in the 1990s. Doing energy work like holding on to me and others or reiki, in which she has a certificate, made her symptoms worse. She calls it “my heart is hopping.” It was one thing for her to buzz for a while, quite another to mess with her heart. So we stopped.

I think both of us miss it. Not just because of how it helps and what it means for both of us, but also because of the bonding that happens between two people involved in this intensely intimate energy exchange.

“It was so good that I could help you,” mom said. “I was so grateful.”

If you are interested in learning more about the Healing Touch, there are a variety of websites and articles available. The Healing Touch Program offers classes, and products that can help you learn. Note: this post is not sponsored.