Jourard Award Presentation

Healing Presence:

Experiencing the Medicine of the

Client-Clinician Relationship

Recipient of the Saybrook Graduate School

Dissertation with Distinction for 2003

My study explored clients' experiences of the subtle energy of healing presence, in order to expand clinical theory, primarily within the fields of humanistic and transpersonal psychology, and naturopathic medicine. Healing presence was initially identified as an affective quality with somatosensory components, felt by clients, which changes their state from suffering toward an expanded sense of well-being.

But, how could such a subjective experience be researched? How can a hypothesis be formulated when the topic of interest has unknown variables, or when its description relies on participants' awareness of their somatosensory experiencing for which there is no common language?

These were some of the challenges of my research. I was led to an emerging qualitative approach to human sciences research called Organic Inquiry that allowed a disciplined and in‑depth exploration of the experiencing of healing presence.

Organic inquiry—as a research approach that is grounded in humanistic sensibility, transpersonal psychology and feminist theory--- relies on the telling of healing stories, and obliges researchers to bring their authentic selves into the research process, to honor the wholism of their embodied experience, and their being, as relates to the investigation at hand.

My work provides a glimpse into how it is possible to engage in a study as if research is a sacred endeavor, and as if relationship is a spiritual practice. Choosing the Organic Inquiry methodology required an interweaving of six essential principles as the overarching framework for the project. These were the principles of the sacred, the personal, the relational, the chthonic, the numinous, and the transformative. These six principles, and the related evaluation criteria I developed, served to generate both idiographic and nomothetic knowledge.

Following the Organic Inquiry intent that research be a sacred endeavor, I performed procedures within an atmosphere of sacred space, and invited all participants to engage in the process in partnership with spirit. Specifically, what that means, is that I called on my spiritual guardians for guidance at the start of each day. Interviewees were invited to bring to the interview an item of spiritual significance, and before getting into questions, we co-created an altar.

These two procedures, unusual in research, accomplished another unique aspect of Organic Inquiry, that of making use of the liminal realm by shifting consciousness from the mundane to an expanded sense of rapport and alignment. Only one participant, the single male in the study, declined to bring an item for the altar, saying that he couldn't think of anything to bring.

Using a semi-structured guide, I interviewed eight clients who had experienced healing presence in connection with encounters with their naturopathic physicians, who were interested in exploring their experience, and who are self-reflective.

The formal research question was: In an environment where clients are seeking healing, how does having a somatosensory experience identified as healing presence, impact the experience of healing, what is changed in how clients view their world, and how might this, finally, impact healing?

In addition to in depth interviews, brief questionnaires were completed, and a creative arts activity was included to capture the extra-linear, meta-verbal meaningfulness of clients’ experiences, in painting, drawing, or clay sculpting. Interviewees reviewed vignettes drawn from their own verbatim transcripts, and identified key descriptors of their experiences at three points during the research.

I also used a resonance panel that consisted of three naturopathic physicians who read composite vignettes of clients’ stories, developed their own list of key descriptors based on the composites, and performed some data analysis procedures, thereby enriching the depth of the study. They each developed a single sentence synthesis statement of what they understood healing presence to be, from the perspective of the client stories they had read.

And then, using parts of all three individual sentences, and after much discussion to select precisely the right words, they wrote an elegantly simple group synthesis statement. Which was, healing presence is a palpable transformative experience of connection.

Chesler's Sequential Analysis was applied to all verbatim transcripts to discern key characteristics, and to generate a mini-theory. My research associate performed all data analysis procedures in parallel to my own, in order to provide a check on the development of meaningful generative knowledge.

Findings indicate that healing presence may be understood in part as a subtle energetic event experienced in the body, and perceived in the heart and mind. Healing presence may arise from some types of promoting and co-creative interactions, that convey special meaning for a clinician, or other catalyst, and an experient. That it may be linked with lasting or transformative change suggests that healing presence might be, at minimum, a type of psychospiritual event similar to what Native Americans call a medicine experience. And thus my subtitle Experiencing the Medicine.

The data also suggests at least six intertwining themes. And these are---

First: (1) The experience of healing presence is said to be difficult to articulate, and yet even in the variety of ways interviewees described their experience, there are striking commonalties.

Second, (2) Healing presence is a bodily felt experience---and this is the most striking of the commonalities. Everyone used physical metaphors like feeling their heart opening, or having a feeling of warmth that pulsed or radiated. Even interviewees who claimed not to have a deep level of somatic awareness described feeling something happening in some good and meaningful way in the body.

Third, (3) Healing presence is often experienced as a co-creation between client and clinician, in addition to being experienced as a way of being that some clinicians may exude. One interviewee said it was like her soul and her NDs soul came out dancing. Another said the client and clinician are magnetized to each other, causing an energy connection and flow.

Fourth, (4) More often than not, healing presence is experienced as having some kind of sacred or spiritual quality, such as, feeling like a soul force, or being in the presence of the sacred. And these are phrases that interviewees actually provided.

Fifth, (5) Being held or touched in some way---whether emotionally, physically, or energetically---contributes to the recognition of an experience of healing presence. Interviewees used phrases such as, hands holding all of me, or reached in and touched my soul. In some cases, the sense of being held or touched may last for hours or days beyond the clinical encounter.

And sixth, (6) Healing presence is recognized in part by a characteristic of effecting a change, expressed variously as some kind of realignment or reorganization, or some kind of shifting to center or letting go.

It is important to note that while participants in my study reported that their healing presence experience beneficially impacted the chief complaint for which they saw a naturopathic physician, that impact was not a miracle cure, but rather a catalyst. Healing presence should not be mistaken for faith healing, even though for some individuals it has the quality of a spiritual event.

Although further research is needed, perhaps it can be said that several things might be healed by an experience of healing presence. Among these, I hypothesize, are the person's:

(1) subjective experiencing of suffering;

(2) their depleted vital force, or condition of deficient, excessive, or stuck qi;

(3) their wounded self-esteem, self-confidence, or sense of personal safety;

(4) their expectations of abuse, abandonment, distrust, disrespect, and other pathologies of dysfunctional client-clinician relationships;

(5) their sense of existential separateness, or their lack of acceptance or belonging; and finally,

(6) their diminished sense of trust, love, compassion, spiritual connection, and wholeness.

In yet another unique aspect of the methodology, an Organic Inquiry invites eventual readers and listeners, to engage heart and spirit, as well as mind, as they interact with the grounding literature, the research procedures, and the stories of participants. Readers are encouraged to draw analogies to their own experience, and to actively enrich their knowingbeing by reflecting on how the stories presented may lead to similar, and divergent, interpretations when viewed through the lenses of their own lifeworld. In this way, the liberating, transformative aspect of an organic inquiry continues beyond the confines of a research project, as is intended by the methodology.

Source material for performing an Organic Inquiry, is limited to a chapter in Braud and Anderson's, Transpersonal Research Methods for the Human Sciences, and a self-published book by the founders of the methodology---Jennifer Clements, Dorothy Ettling, Diane Jenett and Lisa Shields, titled, Organic Inquiry: If Research Were Sacred, available only from Serpetina Press, Palo Alto. Several related, but, as yet, unpublished works by Jennifer Clements, may also be available from her.

I found none of these resources answered the more crucial questions I had, as I was designing and doing my project, so I have since written An Organic Inquiry Primer for the Novice Researcher: A Sacred Approach to Disciplined Knowing. It's available on Amazon for $17.95 plus shipping.