What Happens When Nurses Learn Energy Healing? A Look Inside ChristianaCare’s Program

What Happens When Nurses Learn Healing Touch Therapy?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:
You’re a nurse or caregiver. You give your all to others — your time, your energy, your heart. But there are days when you feel completely drained. Your patients are in pain, your shift never ends, and your own body is screaming for rest. You love what you do, but sometimes… it doesn’t feel like enough.

That’s exactly where Stacy Noel found herself. A seasoned nurse at ChristianaCare, she knew there had to be more — a way to support her patients beyond the standard protocols, and a way to replenish her own energy in the process. That’s when she discovered Healing Touch, a form of energy healing now being taught and practiced by nurses at one of the largest healthcare systems in Delaware.

This isn’t fringe wellness or guesswork. It’s a research-backed, hands-on practice being integrated into hospital care, and it’s changing the way nurses heal themselves and others.

In this article, you’ll get:

• A look inside ChristianaCare’s Healing Touch training and why nurses are signing up.
• A clear explanation of what Healing Touch Therapy actually is.
• Real examples of how it’s being used with patients and caregivers in hospital settings.
• A breakdown of what nurses learn in class and how it impacts their daily work.
• A simple grounding and intention-setting practice you can try right now.
• Honest answers to common concerns like, “Is this legit?” and “Can I really do this?”

How One Nurse Discovered the Power of Healing Touch Therapy

Stacy Noel didn’t set out to become an energy healer. Like most nurses, she entered the field with a heart for service and a belief in evidence-based care. But over time, something shifted. She saw patients who were still in pain after every available intervention. She watched colleagues burn out from the emotional weight of caregiving. And she felt it in herself — that quiet sense of depletion and the question no one could quite answer: Is there more we can do?

That question led her to explore energy healing — a path that ultimately brought her to Healing Touch, a structured form of energy healing created by a nurse and designed to integrate with conventional healthcare. Unlike some wellness trends that rely on intuition alone, Healing Touch is rooted in clear standards, a defined scope of practice, and a curriculum built to match the professional rigor nurses are used to.

Stacy became a certified practitioner and eventually a Healing Touch Certified Instructor. Now, she teaches fellow caregivers at ChristianaCare how to work with energy in a way that supports both their patients and their own well-being. Her story is proof that embracing holistic care doesn’t mean abandoning science, it means expanding what care can look like.

What Is Healing Touch, Really?

If you’ve heard of Reiki, you’re already in the ballpark. But Healing Touch takes things a step further — grounding energy healing in professional training, ethics, and clinical application.

At its core, Healing Touch is a heart-centered energy healing method. Practitioners use gentle, hand movements, either directly on or just above the body, with the intention to clear, balance, and restore harmony in the human energy system. That may sound abstract, but its impact is anything but.

So what does it actually do?

According to Stacy and a growing body of research, Healing Touch can help:

• Lower stress and anxiety.
• Reduce pain and nausea.
• Improve sleep and promote relaxation.
• Ease side effects from surgeries and cancer treatments.
• Support emotional and spiritual healing during difficult times.

This isn’t just anecdotal. Hospitals across the country, including Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and Nemours Children’s Hospital, have adopted Healing Touch as part of their integrative care programs. And at ChristianaCare, it’s used not only for patients, but for nurses and staff too.

Perhaps most importantly, Healing Touch doesn’t replace conventional medicine, it complements it. That’s why the National Institutes of Health classified this work as a complementary therapy - it’s not about choosing one over the other. It’s about adding tools to the toolbox.

What Nurses Learn in Healing Touch Training (and How It Works)

You might assume energy healing is all intuition and good vibes, but in Stacy’s class, it’s hands-on, structured, and surprisingly practical.

At ChristianaCare, Healing Touch training is offered to any caregiver — not just nurses. Physical therapists, respiratory therapists, occupational therapists, and nurse managers have all taken part. The Level 1 course spans two full days, broken up over separate weeks to accommodate work schedules. And yes, participants earn 16 continuing education contact hours, covering more than half of Delaware’s license renewal requirements for nurses.

But this isn’t just textbook learning. Stacy describes the course as highly experiential. That means:

• Students learn 12 specific Healing Touch techniques.
• They practice the techniques with each other in class, so they leave feeling confident, not confused.
• Everyone also receives Healing Touch during the training so they can feel its effects firsthand.

The result? Caregivers walk away with tools they can use immediately — on themselves, their families, their colleagues, and their patients.

And because Healing Touch is based on a defined scope of practice and taught by certified instructors, everyone learns the same core curriculum. It’s consistent, credible, and repeatable — not a “make it up as you go” approach.

In Stacy’s words, “Everybody loves coming to class.” It’s not just educational - it’s healing in and of itself.

How Healing Touch Therapy Is Helping Patients and Nurses in Hospitals

Healing Touch isn’t just a feel-good theory tucked away in a classroom. At ChristianaCare, it’s a daily practice — used in real time to help both patients and staff.

Stacy receives consults to provide Healing Touch to patients, often for issues like pain, anxiety, nausea, or stress. When she visits a patient, she explains the therapy clearly and without fluff: “Healing Touch is a form of energy therapy that helps promote relaxation.” That’s often enough to pique interest — because when you’re lying in a hospital bed feeling scared, sick, or overwhelmed, a moment of calm can be life-changing.

The results? Patients report feeling better physically, mentally, and emotionally. In some cases, it’s helped ease pain when medication has hit its limit. In others, it’s helped reduce anxiety and support healing after major surgeries like heart bypasses or knee replacement.

But patients aren’t the only ones benefiting.

Stacy also brings “Caring Cart Services” to hospital units, offering quick, three-minute Healing Touch sessions to caregivers right at the nurses' station or in their office. She tells the story of one emergency department nurse who sees her coming, sets everything down, and gets ready for her mini session. “It helps her reset. It relaxes her. It gives her something to look forward to in the middle of the chaos.”

For staff who’ve taken the Healing Touch class, they’re now using what they learned to:

• Help colleagues with headaches, stress, or fatigue.
• Support patients when meds alone aren’t cutting it.
• Care for themselves on tough days with calming self-treatment.

In a high-stress, high-stakes environment like a hospital, this is more than nice — it’s needed.

Try This Simple Healing Touch Grounding Technique at Home

You don’t need to be certified or in a hospital to experience what Healing Touch can offer. One of the simplest and most powerful practices Stacy teaches is called “centering and grounding.” It’s a technique anyone can do, anywhere, in just a few moments.

Here’s how to try it yourself:

1. Center using your breath

Take a slow, deep breath in, then exhale, and as you do, let go of anything that’s not serving you — stress, tension, or overthinking. Do this a few times. You don’t need to force anything. Just breathe and release.

2. Ground yourself

Imagine you’re a tree. Visualize roots growing from the bottoms of your feet, down into the earth. With each breath, picture energy rising up from the earth through those roots, anchoring you. Feel it in your legs, your spine, your chest. This is grounding — the feeling of being fully present and steady, connected to something deeper than the chaos around you.

3. Tune in

Now, check in with yourself. Ask: “What am I feeling right now? What do I need?” There’s no right answer. Just awareness.

4. Set an intention

Your thoughts are energy. Pick a simple, clear one — like:

“I move through today with calm and clarity.”
“I’m grounded and centered, no matter what comes my way.”

That’s it. This practice takes less than a minute. You can do it before seeing a patient, starting a meeting, or having a hard conversation. The more you use it, the more natural it becomes — and the more you’ll feel the shift.

Can I Learn Healing Touch If I’m Not a Nurse? (Yes, and Here’s Why)

If you’ve read this far, chances are something’s resonating — maybe a tug of curiosity, maybe a quiet “I need this.” But then the doubts creep in:

“Isn’t this too woo-woo?”
“I’m not a nurse — would I even fit in?”
“What if I don’t have a ‘gift’ for this?”
“Would my colleagues take me seriously?”

These are normal questions. In fact, they’re the same ones many of Stacy’s students had before walking into class.

Here’s the truth:

• Healing Touch is teachable. You don’t need to be psychic or intuitively gifted. It’s a skill — grounded in structure, taught step by step, and backed by research.
• You don’t have to be a nurse. While many students are in healthcare, others come from wellness, coaching, bodywork, or caregiving backgrounds. If you have the heart to help and the openness to learn, you belong.
• It’s evidence-informed, not fringe. Healing Touch is used in over 50 hospitals — including ChristianaCare, Mayo Clinic, and Cleveland Clinic. It complements medical care.
• Your beliefs matter — and they’re respected. Some students worry that energy healing might conflict with their religion or feel too “out there.” But at its core, Healing Touch is about compassion, intention, and human connection — not dogma.

What matters most isn’t having all the answers, it’s simply being open to the possibility that there’s more to healing than what you’ve been told.

Your Next Step Toward Learning Healing Touch Therapy

If you’ve ever felt like something was missing in how we care for ourselves and others, you’re not alone. And you’re not wrong.

Healing Touch isn’t about abandoning what you know. It’s about expanding it. It gives caregivers, nurses, and anyone called to help others a new way to support healing — one that’s grounded in compassion, backed by research, and deeply human.

You don’t need to have it all figured out, just a willingness to take the first step toward something that could change how you care, and how you feel.

Because when you learn how to work with energy, you don’t just offer healing — you embody it.

How to Start Your Journey with Healing Touch Therapy

Here are a few simple ways to take the next step:

• 🎧 Listen to the full interview with Stacy Noel on For the Love of Health Podcast 
• 📚 Learn more about Healing Touch Therapy and how it’s being used in hospitals across the U.S. 
• 🎓 Curious about learning Healing Touch? Explore our training program and see if it’s right for you