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.