Janet Mentgen and the Healing Touch Story

Janet Mentgen

Janet Mentgen, RN, BSN was an ener­get­i­cally sen­si­tive nurse. Her drive was to deepen and expand the con­nec­tion between nurses and their patients. She saw the pos­i­tive effect of touch while using var­i­ous energy tech­niques and modal­i­ties. Janet began using her energy based heal­ing skills in 1980.

Janet was a prac­tic­ing nurse for 43 years. Her early work was with the U.S. Navy, then as emer­gency room nurse, and then home health care nurse. Her real love of patients and the nurse con­nec­tion began emerg­ing as she devel­oped her “heal­ing touch” meth­ods. She shared her meth­ods by teach­ing con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion classes for nurses at Red Rocks Community College in Lakewood, Colorado. Her research, with the appli­ca­tion within her pri­vate prac­tice, and her teach­ing of energy med­i­cine earned her the Holistic Nurse of the Year Award from the American Holistic Nurses Association in 1988.

In 1989, Janet for­mally cre­ated Healing Touch as an energy med­i­cine pro­gram. It began in 1990 as the Healing Touch cer­tifi­cate pro­gram spon­sored through the American Holistic Nurses Association (AHNA) coin­cided with the provider­ship of con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion for nurses by the Colorado Nurses Association. In 1993, Healing Touch was cer­ti­fied by AHNA. That same year, Janet formed The Colorado Center for Healing Touch ded­i­cated to bring­ing Healing Touch to mil­lions of peo­ple through­out the world.

In 1996, Healing Touch International, Inc., was founded by Janet as a non-profit edu­ca­tional and mem­ber­ship organization.

In 1997, the Healing Touch Worldwide Foundation, Inc., was founded by Janet as a non-profit char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion. Janet’s intent for Healing Touch Worldwide Foundation is to receive and dis­trib­ute funds to assist, encour­age and advance the phi­los­o­phy, objec­tives and tech­niques of Healing Touch ther­apy. This is pri­mar­ily accom­plished through fund­ing of grants for research and human­i­tar­ian projects around the world.

Within these few short years, Janet Mentgen rev­o­lu­tion­ized the med­ical model to include a clin­i­cal approach to energy based ther­apy. Her legacy lives on through the Certified Instructors and Certified Practitioners and thou­sands of stu­dents who are bring­ing a holis­tic approach to heal­ing. Healing Touch empha­sizes com­pas­sion­ate, heart-centered care in which the provider and client are equal part­ners in facil­i­tat­ing whole­ness. Healing Touch restores har­mony, energy and bal­ance within the human energy sys­tem and sup­ports the self-healing process of becom­ing whole in body, mind, emo­tion and spirit. Healing Touch com­ple­ments con­ven­tional health care and is used in col­lab­o­ra­tion with other approaches to health and healing.