The Alternative Health Therapy

Reiki is an ancient miracle for modern times. The knowledge that an unseen energy flows through all living things and directly affects the quality of health has been a part of the wisdom of many cultures. Through experiments, medical doctors are considering the role it plays in the functioning of the immune system and in the healing process. Because of this, it is has become more widely accepted.  The system of Reiki is also being accepted into hospitals across the world.

Reiki and The Medical Community

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.

REIKI AND PUBLISHED MEDICAL RESEARCH:

According to the classification, designed by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at NIH, Reiki belongs to "Biofield Medicine, which involves systems that use subtle energy fields in and around the body for medical purposes".

Reiki therapy is safe and non-invasive. It is proving useful in hospices, nursing homes, emergency rooms, operating rooms, organ transplantation care units, pediatric, neonatal and OB/GYN units; facilitating relaxation and recovery and decreasing anxiety and pain; it can be a helpful addition to conventional therapy for HIV/AIDS and cancer patients [Miles: http://www.alternative-therapies.com/at/pdfarticles/0103reiki.pdf].

The medical research on Reiki is still preliminary. Medline search reveals several publications on Reiki in peer-reviewed journals. It was used as an adjuvant to opioid therapy in pain management, resulting in significant reduction of pain following the Reiki treatment [Olson]. Reiki was shown to be beneficial in supporting surgical patients [Alandyly, Sawyer].  When Reiki treatments were given to terminally ill cancer patients, some general trends included periods of stabilization in which there was time to enjoy the last days of one's life; a peaceful and calm passing if death was imminent; and relief from pain, anxiety, dyspnea and edema [Bullock]. Reiki has also been documented to benefit patients with multiple sclerosis, lupus, fibromyalgia and thyroid goiter [Hartwell]. Reiki treatments caused increase in hemoglobin values in patients with various diseases, such as pancreatitis, rheumatoid arthritis, congestive heart failure, emphysema and even in cancer patients, inspite of simultaneous treatment with bone-marrow suppressive agents [Rand: http://www.reiki.org/reikinews/reikin24.html]. Hemoglobin was found to increase among initiates after Reiki initiation [Wetzel]. Standardization procedures to conduct randomized placebo-controlled studies of Reiki are being developed [Mansour].

The nature of psychological effects arising during a Reiki session were studied, and anxiety was shown to reduce after treatments [Engebretson, Wardell]. Certain physiological changes were associated with receiving Reiki treatments, including decrease in systolic blood pressure, increase in salivary IgA levels and decrease in salivary cortisol after treatments, increase in skin temperature and decrease in electromyographic activity during treatments [Wardell].

Reiki is already used in several hospitals for cancer patients: Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (Lebanon, NH), Integrative Medicine Outpatient Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY), Intergative Therapies Program for Children with Cancer at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center (New York, NY), Metropolitan South Health Center (" Direccion de Servicios Metropolitano Sur", Santiago, Chile) [Miles: http://www.alternative-therapies.com/at/pdfarticles/0103reiki.pdf] Used in conjunction with conventional cancer treatments, Reiki is reported to ease the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation, improve immune function, ease anxiety and enhance positive emotional attitude, decrease pain and promote relaxation.

Reiki is also used in Mercy Hospital (Portland, ME), Willcox Memorial Hospital (Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii), Center for Integrative Medicine at George Washington University Hospital (Washington, D.C.), Samuels Center for Comprehensive Care at St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital Center  (New York, NY), Siloam (Philadelphia, PA), Tucson Medical Center (AZ), California Pacific Medical Center (CA), Portsmouth Regional Hospital (NH), Marin General Hospital (CA), University of Michigan Hospital (MI), Foote Hospital (MI), The Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital (NY) and others [ Miles: http://www.alternative-therapies.com/at/pdfarticles/0103reiki.pdf].

There are ongoing clinical trials of Reiki healing techniques for diabetic peripheral vascular disease and autonomic neuropathy, carried out at the Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research in CVD, Adult Cardiac Surgery/Thoracic Transplantation [The University of Michigan Taubman Health Care Center 2120, Box 0344, AnnArbor, MI 48109; Tel: (734)936-4984, Fax: (734)764-2255, http://www.med.umich.edu/camrc/research/reiki.html], and rehabilitation from stroke, spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury, carried out at the Center for Research in Complementary and Alternative Medicine for Stroke and Neurological Disorders at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation (West Orange, NJ) [1199 Pleasant Valley Way, West Orange, NJ 07052, Tel: (201)243-6972, Fax: (201)243-6984].