Its always fun when several interests converge in a single project. I enjoyed that experience writing an article for Energy magazine about Vitality Cincinnati, an innovative enterprise launched by a group of folks led by our friend Brian Shircliff. Vitality makes Healing Touch and yoga and other self-care approaches available to all at affordable prices. Avidly following their progress for several years, I wondered how or if I might ever get involved. Then last 
summer Brian and Vitality volunteers began offering Healing Touch at the food pantry where I help out as a shopper on Wednesdays, and I became more intrigued. In the fall, after much deliberation (Should I do this? Maybe I shouldn’t.) I took the first level Healing Touch training and immediately became converted to its amazing potential to promote relaxation and well-being. I eagerly responded to a suggestion that an article about Vitality be submitted to Energy Magazine, an online publication that explores this field of healing which works with the subtle energy fields of the body.
An excerpt appears below:
In a converted storefront on a main thoroughfare in Cincinnati, one-hour Healing Touch sessions are available by appointment several evenings a month at a nominal fee. A long rectangular-shaped open room with soft lighting and instrumental music playing contains four treatment tables arranged with pillows and blankets. Meditation cushions and yoga mats stacked along the edges of the room are evidence of other uses for this contemplative space, and hot tea is available at the kitchenette in the left rear corner. Clients are welcomed quietly in the entryway and then ushered to a table.
Just a few miles north, desks are moved aside in a second floor classroom of the parish center housed in a converted apartment building to create three Healing Touch stations. Each consists of two folding chairs facing each other. Despite the hustle and bustle of the Wednesday afternoon food pantry underway downstairs, serenity prevails. Clients are greeted with gentle warmth and quiet assurance that they will not lose their place in line as a result of diverting upstairs for 20-30 minutes of Healing Touch before shopping the pantry shelves. Foreheads nearly touch as the seated pairs confer. Soon the practitioners stand, set down the clipboard, and move their chairs out of the way to begin Healing Touch for the clients who remain seated.
Two contrasting settings in two distinct urban neighborhoods, but both are the work of Vitality Cincinnati, a small non-profit with a cosmic vision for “inviting transformation neighborhood by neighborhood, person to person, and breath by breath through gentle and accessible self-care: Healing Touch, meditation, journaling, yoga and Bones for Life.”
Living up to its name, Vitality is always growing! The article concludes by announcing a then-new program in Walnut Hills that just graduated its first group of interns. And I’m growing too, thanks to Vitality. This spring I joined Brian in offering Healing Touch at the pantry once or twice a month.
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