REIKI 101 ™
Health Benefits and Cautions
Reiki is a peaceful, non-religious form of hands-on healing. It's greatest strength is as a stress management and personal growth tool. Currently, there is no valid scientific evidence that Reiki directly causes any type of physical healing, in spite of the many, sometimes astounding, physical health claims made by reputable Reiki practitioners around the world. It is important to remember that a lack of scientific evidence does not rule out the possibility that Reiki may be effective for physical health.
There is also a strong possibility that Reiki indirectly contributes to improved physical health. One of the indirect ways that Reiki may contribute to improving physical health is through its stress management properties. Stress has a well-documented role on our physical health, particulary on immune cell function. Reiki, when done by a practitioner who uses a peaceful intention, is an effective stress management tool for many people.
Reiki does have a well-established historical and clinical role in stress management, spiritual health, and as a preventive mental health and wellness tool. Reiki is a popular holistic health technique among people in addiction recovery (both alcoholics and drug addicts), people managing eating disorders, recovering from childhood sexual abuse, combating cancer, chronic pain patients and anyone whose illness is made worse by stress, such as diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, bipolar disorder, depression, infertility, and insomnia. It does not cure the underlying physical condition, but through a client's improved management of stress, prescription medications can sometimes be reduced or eliminated, and the patient can gain a greater sense of well-being. Reiki is also used to create a peaceful, quiet space for people preparing to leave this life, such as hospice clients. Johns Hopkins recently completed a study on energy medicine and children with autism, showing a quieting of behaviors and improved sleep. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is currently conducting at least four medical studies on Reiki, including treatment of prostate cancer, HIV/AIDS, fibromyalgia and cardiovascular disease (see links below).
Also, there is peer reviewed evidence from Stanford and Harvard medical research programs, that being part of a supportive group, processing painful emotions around an illness contribute to a higher quality of life, and may even increase survival time for people living with life-threatening illnesses such as AIDS and cancer. Reiki "share groups" can become this type of a supportive group for some people.
Another way that Reiki may contribute to the healing of physical illness is through the power of belief. There is a great deal of scientific evidence that our thoughts and beliefs directly affect and change our biochemistry and physiology. As a matter of fact, the link between one's belief in a treatment and it's ability to impact physical illness is so well-documented, that the FDA requires every new drug and device to prove it is more powerful than the power of belief (the placebo effect).
So, in addition to whatever yet unproven direct physical health benefits there may be for Reiki treatments, Reiki may contribute to physical healing through harnessing the placebo effect or "remembered wellness". Since the placebo effect is even stronger when both the practitioner and the patient believe in a treatment, it is not surprising that it is the practitioners who believe in Reiki's power to cure disease who are making testimonies to the physical healing properties of Reiki.
WORDS OF CAUTION
Unfortunately, most alternative medicine practitioners have been told by those who trained them, that Reiki has *magical powers* beyond intuitive knowledge or the power of belief. Also, many reiki practitioners personally follow alternative spiritual beliefs, and embrace other unproven approaches to health, and do not separate Reiki from those beliefs.
Until there is either scientific evidence documenting this intangible connection, or double-blind studies to document the theorized health effects of practices such as Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Polarity Therapy, etc., it is not ethical for a hands-on alternative medicine practitioner to claim that they have the power to heal you, or can help you facilitate your own healing using one of these tools. You should be especially cautious of practitioners who offer "testimonials" to you -- they are trying to make it sound as if there is some sort of proof that Reiki cures physical disease when no such proof yet exists.
This is especially true for people who hold some type of health care certification such as massage therapist, nurse, counselor, physical therapist, occupational therapist, physician, dentist, chiropractor, etc. Testimonies are not proof of anything, other than perhaps the power of belief (placebo), and if the acting agent is your belief, you should be told that, not tricked into thinking it is the practitioner's "product" working, just because they have training in other health fields.
It is important to remember that many hands-on intuitive practitioners use a wide variety of tools together with Reiki, Polarity, and Therapeutic Touch, commonly crystals and multi-level marketed external magnets. These have no valid scientific evidence to support they work any other way than the placebo effect, and are not part of conventional Reiki training or practice, and should not be represented as such.
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