Reiki Gets Trashed Again!

There was an article today in MSNBC's Health/Alternative medicine entitled " Doctors eager to try ‘mystical mumbo jumbo’
Alternative remedies gain acceptance despite lack of evidence wherein Dr. Richard Dutton, chief of anesthesiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center, in Baltimore stated "Reiki therapy amounts to self-hypnosis". This could not be further from the truth.

Will someone please tell me when it was called "Open Season on Reiki" and it's practitioners? We seem to be getting pummeled in one form or the other all over the Internet. From the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops saying reiki "lacks scientific credibility" to Dr.Richard Dutton, chief of anesthesiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center, in Baltimore saying reiki is "mumbo jumbo". Is this plain, old fashioned fear speaking or is it possibly blind ignorance? Either way, the record on reiki needs to be set straight and I encourage my colleagues from all around the world to help inform the general public about what reiki truly is as well as what it is not. Too many people are mixing all kinds of things together and calling it energy work. Many are even using basic reiki lessons and calling it something different, yet energy work, thereby confusing the public even more.

As a Reiki Master/Teacher I am increasingly appalled and disheartened with amount of "trash talk" about Reiki. It seems that those who trash this beautiful Japanese healing technique for the improvement of both mind and body health do so without fully researching it or understanding. While some new age groups claim to be Reiki practitioners and mix and match all kinds of energy work together, please take the time to research what true Reiki is. Not all energy work is Reiki. Reik is not mumbo jumbo, mojo, whatchamacallit. It is a healing technique used to improve quality of life.

Please read below some facts about Reiki and conventional medicine working together:

The National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is the center in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that studies the safety and effectiveness of complementary and alternative therapies such as Reiki. Reiki has been use at NIH's Palliative Care Unit since 2000. See: http://nccam.nih.gov/...

Channel 5 - MYFOXNY.COM -- A hospital in New Jersey is using an unusual treatment to help fight pain. It doesn't involve painkiller medication or needles. Instead the Japanese technique involves using hands.

There is a Reiki program as well as other alternative medicine programs currently at Morristown Memorial Hospital.

The article ‘The first Reiki Practitioner in our O.R.' by Jeanette Sawyer in 1988 in the AORN Journal describes the steps that were taken to allow a Reiki practitioner into the theatre at the request of a patient during a laparoscopy. Also in 1988, patients were given the opportunity to experience a 15minute pre- and post- surgery Reiki treatment. More than 870 patients took part and as a result there was less use of pain medication, shorter stays in hospital and increased patient satisfaction. This was discussed in the article, ‘Using Reiki to Support Surgical patients' by Patricia and Kristin Aladydy in the Journal of Nursing Care Quality.

Heart surgeon, Dr Mehmet Oz, has worked with Julie Motz who used Reiki on his patients. These patients had received heart transplants and had experienced open-heart surgery. She treated 11 patients in total and none of them had the usual post-operative depression. The bypass patients had no post-operative pain or leg weakness and the transplant patients experienced no organ rejection. Julie Motz has written about this experience in her book, ‘Hands of Life'.

There are many aspects of Reiki that are being researched today. Some to see if Reiki speeds up healing, others to see if, how and whom it relaxes, to measure biomagnetic fields and to verify the concept of distant healing.

Here is a well-known trial completed using Reiki to examine its effect on human blood levels.

Human Hemoglobin Levels and Reiki
Reiki Healing: a Physiologic Perspective
Wetzel, Wendy (1989).
Published in Journal of Holistic Nursing 7(1), 47-54.

Reiki & St. Vincent's Comprehensive Cancer Center, NYC. At St. Vincent's Comprehensive Cancer Center, we believe that aligning your spiritual and emotional needs with your medical treatment can help improve your outcome and quality of life. The Complementary Therapies Program aims to provide a truly comprehensive approach by treating the whole person and not just the disease.Experienced professionals will help you access therapies such as yoga, massage, acupuncture, Reiki, therapeutic touch, Qi Gong and mind-body skills group. These are not alternative treatments to your medical care; rather, they are therapies used in combination with traditional treatments to provide you with a well-rounded approach.

The Reiki Clinic at the Tucson Medical Center in Arizona has a team of Reiki practitioners who give Reiki to patients in their rooms. The program first began in the Cancer Care Unit, but has since expanded to many other areas in the hospital. Conditions treated at the Reiki Clinic include cancer, pain, chronic conditions, postoperative surgery, and they also deal with childbirth. (Source: "Reiki In Hospitals" by William Lee Rand, Reiki Master, http://www.reiki.org/....

I sincerely hope this helps clear up any misinformation and misconceptions regarding the practice of Reiki.