Book excerpt: Part of the Medical Guides to Complementary and Alternative Medicine Series, this comprehensive resource offers brief, yet thorough coverage of alternative and complementary hands-on therapies, including Chiropractic, Healing Touch/Therapeutic Touch, Reiki, and massage. Focusing on manipulative techniques and their therapeutic applications to common and un-common disorders, it addresses both Eastern and Western approaches to the discipline. Ideal for comparing and contrasting the various forms of manual therapeutics, it describes the basic philosophy and theories of the different methods, as well as the techniques themselves. It also provides an overview of the principal manual therapies practiced worldwide, the theories and rationale behind them, and practice algorithms. - Provides comprehensive coverage of the full array of manual techniques, with applications to common & uncommon - disorders - Organized by therapy for easy access to information - Includes popular therapies such as Healing Touch/Therapeutic Touch, Reiki, and Massage - Coverage spans both Eastern and Western schools of thought - Contributors represent the highest levels of each discipline and are recognized experts in the field - Format is uniform for each chapter, which includes a history of the system, technique or method; basic principles and language; the specific techniques performed by practitioners; the educational background of practitioners; and applicable basic and clinical research - Appendix provides contacts, resources, and references for each therapeutic modality, allowing the reader to engage in further investigation - Serves as a vocabulary/lexicon of manual therapies.