Energy Healing Today

            Reiki Energy healing has gained tremendous credibility in the medical and holistic health worlds in the past 10 years. Healing with your hands and with your mind has created quite the buzz.

            Reiki energy healers are abundant worldwide. They were unknown 40 years ago in the United States and those who participated in this healing art in the 1980s were considered lawbreakers -- those who healed without a medical license -- and often jailed for using it.

            However, after years of research much of it provided by grants by the National Institute of Health and the United States Army, Reiki practitioners are now welcomed in hospitals and cancers centers across America and throughout the world.

            Even though Reiki has been given a Japanese name meaning "light energy," the healing art emanates from Tibet, India and the Himalayan region where its roots are traced back thousands of years. Reiki treatments can be given with hands-on treatments, above-the-body treatments, and through distance healing treatments using visualization and ancient symbols.

            Energy healing requires a specific band of frequency that is referred to as white light. This pure energy, which takes on characteristics of heat and vibration, accelerates the body's healing process. It's called Reiki across the globe but will soon take on the more generic term of energy healing. 

            This ancient art is now embraced by the Western medical world and is used in more than 150 hospitals in the U.S. This form of cell rejuvenation is dispensed in treatments by trained energy healers, who most often are trained in Reiki.

            Energy healing causes no harm. At the very least, it enables the body to relax. When we relax, the body heals. When we sleep, the body rejuvenates. Reiki pratitions dispensed energy waves of frequencies that range from 1 to 30 hz.

            Reiki workers are "attuned" to this energy when they are formally trained. This ancient healing art originated in Tibet and was introduced at a free clinic in Japan by Dr. Mikao Usui in the early 1900s. Although he was not a medical doctor, he trained medical doctors to use it before his death in the mid-1920s. Reiki began making its way west after World War II in Hawaii through Hawayo Takata, who was healed of cancer by Dr. Hijiro Hayashi in Japan in the late 1930s.

            The cost of classes then was far more than it is today. Prices for Reiki I, learning hands-on healing, range fro $70 to $150. Prices for Reiki II, distance healing and the use of visualization, are $150 to $250. Reiki Master classes start at $250.

            The use of Reiki is common among nurses, massage therapists, chiropractors and other holistic healers. Doctors have also seen the light and now embrace it. At Swedish-American Hospital in Rockford, Ill., all admitted patients are offered Reiki treatments for free. At cancer wellness centers, including Healing Pathways in Rockford and The Caring Place in Las Vegas, Nevada, also offer treatments for free. Insurance groups are now reimbursing some clients who are recommended treatments by doctors and psychiatrists.

            Even though the Midwest is one of the last regions that Reiki has become popular, it is available in numerous settings: college classrooms, health and wellness centers and through private instruction. Some of the more prestigious allopathic centers using Reiki include Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, the Baltimore Trauma Center,  Integrative Therapies Program for Children in New York, and many others.

            What can it help? There are six clinical trials under way that are funded by the U.S. government in the areas of stress, prostate cancer, fibromyalgia, AIDS and painful neuropathy (see www.clinicaltrials.gov and use "Reiki" as a keyword search). Reiki has had an effect on cancer and multiple sclerosis patients and is used as an integrative therapy to Eastern and Western modalities.

            As a proponent, advocate and a 27-year teacher, Reiki has been an integral part of my life. The results of its use have been what some consider miraculous. The key to learning this art is taking instruction from a longtime teacher who knows all the intricacies of its scientific roots as well as how it affects the body, mind and spirit.

            Where to find it? Reiki is offered in classes at wellness centers, community colleges in continuing education, massage centers and privately. There are also nonprofit groups that can recommend Reiki and that do research, including Reiki Energy International nonprofit group in Illinois and Equilibrium in Chicago.