Seeing with the Hands: How the Body Learns to See Beyond Sight
By Dr. Catherine W. Dunne | Holistic HealthCare Wexford & Aumvedas Academy
ABOUT CATHERINE: Dr Catherine W Dunne MSc. D., RGN, Reiki Master (RGMT), M.H.I.T: Master Acupressure, Practitioner of Reflexology, Aromatherapy, Deep Tissue/Myo-fascia Massages, Infrared Treatments, Vibrational Sound and Colour Therapist, Tissue Salt Advisor, Pendulum Healing Dowser, Chakra Practitioner , Tao Cosmic Healing Practitioner, Practitioner of Plant and Herb Medicine and Nurse.
The Seeing Hands: A Journey from Coma to Consciousness
Most people think a coma is like being asleep: dark, silent, empty and yet aware of your surrounding and what was going on around you. But for me, it was the complete opposite. It was the moment everything opened. Not my eyes, but my awareness. At just 7 years old, after a serious post-operative complication, I slipped into a coma that would reshape the rest of my life.
When I woke up, I was not the same little girl.
I had been “somewhere else” – a place without form, without walls, and yet full of presence. I remember it as a soft hum of connection. Of being held in something vaster than the body. And when I returned, it was like someone had turned on an extra sense. Except… it didn’t come through sight. It came through touch.
Please don’t misunderstand me, I never lost the sight in my eyes.
Learning to See – Without My Eyes
In the early days of recovery, something strange began happening. When I touched things or even hovered my hands over people – I felt information. Not just warmth or sensation, but layers. Emotions. Density. Flow. Blockages. Like rivers, jagged stones, or bright currents, moving beneath the skin.
My hands began to see.
Of course, try telling an adult that when you’re 7 and they’ll likely smile, pat your head, and offer you a biscuit.
By nine, I saw energy itself—colours spiralling through the body like living light, the true faces of the chakras (but I didn’t know then that they were called chakras).
We hear often how children and in rare cases some adults, see auras around people. Children believe everyone can, until told differently. I was no different.
But I knew this was real. And, as it turned out, so did someone else.
The Doctor Who Didn’t Laugh
My step-father was an Internist – a logical man, medically trained. But he was also a Reiki Master. Which meant he straddled two worlds: the clinical, and the subtle. When I was 15, his patients with back trouble started showing up at the house. He sent them in with a wink.
“Go on Cathy, take a look at them.”
I would hover my palms and know instantly where the problem was.
Not a guess. Not a hunch. A knowing.
He trusted it. And so did I.
That same year, he attuned me to Reiki Level 1. Not because I wanted to learn how to heal. But because he recognised that I already was a healer and just needed the keys to the temple I’d already been walking through in the dark.
Seeing Chakras… Differently
Here’s where it gets weird (or wonderful, depending on who’s reading).
At age 9, I began seeing (eyes & hands) chakras—and not the way they’re drawn in books. Not perfect spinning wheels with rainbow colours and petal counts. What I saw was alive. More like watery, pulsing orbs of frequency. Shape-shifting, responsive, and personal. They all have “funnels” adhered to them. The larger ones are to our back and front, one large one pointing towards our head and one towards our feet. In between, there are loads of smaller funnels and they have something, like “strings” connected to them. More about this later.
Some were dim, others bright. Some spun fast, some barely moved.
Later on, I’d find the books, the diagrams, the Sanskrit labels… but none of them matched what I had learned through my hands. The body does not lie. The energy system does not lie. And intuition does not wait for a textbook.
The Turning Point or The Path Wasn’t Learned — It Was Always There
That coma did not interrupt my life. It began it.
It taught me that consciousness isn’t confined to the brain. That healing isn’t only a profession; it’s a memory. I didn’t choose this path. It unfolded through me long before I understood it.
The coma also taught me that consciousness is not confined to eyes or words and that it moves through every cell.
Today, when I work as a medical intuitive, I still “see” with my hands. My hands became translators of that knowing. They felt, listened, and eventually saw. Healing ceased to be observation and became communication, a dialogue between the seen and unseen, between matter and memory.
I still trust the quiet information that rises through the palms. And I help others reconnect to their own layers of knowing too, because we all have it. We all are it.
Some of us just get thrown into the deep end a bit earlier.
If You’ve Ever Felt More Than You Could Explain… You’re Not Imagining It
Intuition doesn’t whisper in logic – it speaks in sensation. In resonance. In the things we feel before we understand.
The body is not just a vessel.
It’s a tuning fork.
And when we learn how to listen with more than our eyes — healing becomes not just possible, but inevitable.
The Science of Sensory Substitution
Modern neuroscience calls this neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to re-map itself.
- Fingertips contain more sensory neurons than any other part of the body.
- In those who lose sight, the visual cortex can awaken to touch and sound.
- Proprioception and vibration sensitivity sharpen with attention.
In essence, the hands truly can “see.” They translate texture, heat, and electromagnetic change into imagery the mind recognises.
The Subtle Layer — Energy Perception
Beyond the physical nerves lies another spectrum of perception. Every cell emits frequency; every emotion alters the field around it.
When awareness is trained, the hands register these resonances—the difference between calm and chaos, truth and distortion. What science measures as microcurrent, healers feel as life-force.
New Skills – Old Technique
In 2014 I was hospitalised for 3 days. Back in 2013/14 there had been much talk about the Third Eye … how you can switch it off and turn it back on, like a light switch.
I’m in hospital. The lady in the bed next to me, with curtains drawn around her, was pulling my energy. I was too weak to resist her. I then remembered “the flipping of the switch” and so I did.
A mistake I had to learn with to this day.
However, when a seeing person looses their eye-sight, they are taught to “see” and “read” with their hands.
I was discharged from hospital the day before Good Friday. By Easter Sunday I realised, I could not see a person’s chakras. What had happened? “The Light Switch”! Since then I am working on re-opening my Third Eye. But, and here’s the kicker:
I have, since aged 8 (taught to me by my Great-grandmother) always used my pendulum. My Trusted Friend (some people hear me make reference to my pendulum this way).
Translating Touch with the Pendulum
Intuition doesn’t whisper in logic, it speaks in sensation. In resonance. In the things we feel before we understand.
The body is not just a vessel.
It’s a tuning fork.
Over time I introduced a bridge: the pendulum.
Its swing turns micro-responses of muscle and energy into visible motion. The pendulum doesn’t decide; it amplifies—translating what the body already knows and allowing intuition and logic to converse in harmony.
And when we learn how to listen with more than our eyes — healing becomes not just possible, but inevitable.
Practice for Readers — Awaken the Hand-Senses
- Rub your palms together until warmth arises.
- Hold them a few centimeters apart; sense the subtle magnetism.
- Move them slowly toward a plant, crystal, or another person’s hand.
- Observe texture, density, warmth, or coolness.
- Journal each session for seven days. Note how your language of feeling evolves.
You are retraining the body’s oldest instrument: feeling as knowing.
Bridging Science and Spirit
Science explains the wiring; spirituality explains the meaning. Together they reveal a complete anatomy of awareness.
In holistic medicine, data and divinity are not rivals; they’re dialects of the same truth: the body is conscious, and consciousness is the physician within.
Closing Reflection
The body never loses its ability to see.
When one doorway closes, awareness finds another.
To feel is to witness creation in motion. One pulse, one breath, one infinite conversation through the hands of humankind.
I hope you feel inspired. Look after your body, and it will keep you healthy.
Catherine
CWD 01 November 2025/Ireland
Holistic Healthcare Wexford & Workshops 