LEWISTON – Holistic practitioner Anita DeVito is a firm believer in the healing power of touch.

Or not touching at all.

DeVito, whose practice originates in Scarborough, said treatment depends not on the ailment but rather a recipient’s readiness to believe in the body’s own healing power.

She was one of 15 vendors who set up shop at Wednesday’s holistic health fair, organized by four first-year occupational therapy students at Lewiston-Auburn College.

Toni Morton, Linda Merrill, Jennifer Chase and Sarah Cole developed the fair as a project for their leadership management class. The students wanted to show people what alternative medical services and products are available.

Fair participants hawked products from weight loss supplements to positive thinking programs.

At the core of holistic medicine is belief. Practitioners say once the mind is ready, there’s nothing the body can’t do.

“Physical therapists focus on fixing a particular injury or disability, like a broken arm, so that a patient can go back to doing something the same way he was doing it before the injury,” Morton said. “OTs help people find ways to do what they always have done, or have always wanted to do, even if the injury can’t be fixed.”

There are many types of holistic treatments, or “modalities.” All are defined as “energy healing” processes and none involve drugs or surgery. Among them are flower essences, metamorphic technique and reiki, the Japanese form of channeling one’s Chi, or life force, to achieve enlightenment and inner peace.

There also is dance.

When asked how dance could be a form of medicine, Anna Witholt-Abaldo, a meditative dance instructor from Camden, wondered how could it be anything but?

“We promote aliveness and awareness,” Witholt-Abaldo said.

Diane Williams, a dance instructor from Lewiston, agreed.

“It was very relaxing and very interesting,” she said. “Learning about new dance techniques is very important.”

Among the most commonly practiced modalities are cranio-sacral therapy and somato-emotional response. Each uses light physical touch to open passageways in the spinal and nervous systems to improve flow and remove “energy cysts,” which practitioners say result from physical and emotional trauma or injury.

“The opening process starts in the brain and works outward,” said DeVito, the Scarborough practitioner. “Connective tissue in the body holds tension, and CST is a great way to reduce that tension. The more ready people are to be treated, the better it will work for them.”

Kaitlyn McCormack, also a first-year OT student, agreed. She and other OT students volunteer at therapeutic riding facilities, where horses are used as instruments of healing. Some people ride the beasts and others may only help groom them, but all benefit from the interaction.

“It’s all interconnected,” McCormack said. “You can use almost anything if you believe in it.”

Lewiston-Auburn College has offered a four-year occupational therapy degree program since 1997. Yearly enrollment is limited to 25 students.