I recently noted that Ms. Miracle was pursuing other topics related to healing by intent. This is my offering to kick off at least one of the subjects.

Reiki - wiki definition.

Reiki (霊気?, /ˈreɪkiː/) is a spiritual practice[1] developed in 1922 by Japanese Buddhist Mikao Usui, which since has been adapted by various teachers of varying traditions. It uses a technique commonly called palm healing or hands on healing as a form of complementary therapy and is sometimes classified as oriental medicine by some professional medical bodies.[2] Through the use of this technique, practitioners believe that they are transferring universal energy (i.e., reiki) in the form of ki through the palms, which allows for self-healing and a state of equilibrium.[3]
There are two main branches of Reiki, commonly referred to as Traditional Japanese Reiki and Western Reiki. Though differences can be wide and varied between both branches and traditions, the primary difference is that Westernised forms use systematised hand-placements rather than relying on an intuitive sense of hand-positions (see below), which is commonly used by Japanese Reiki branches. Both branches commonly have a three-tiered hierarchy of degrees, usually referred to as the First, Second, and Master/Teacher level, all of which are associated with different skills and techniques.
The concept of ki underlying Reiki is speculative and there is no scientific evidence that it exists; a 2008 systematic review of randomised clinical trials concluded that "the evidence is insufficient to suggest that reiki is an effective treatment for any condition. Therefore the value of reiki remains unproven."[4] The American Cancer Society[5] and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine[6] have also found that there is no clinical or scientific evidence supporting claims that Reiki is effective in the treatment of any illness.
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From an earlier investigation I personally got the impression that Reiki was an energy focused healing process. From my readings it appeared to me that Reiki was used both locally and remotely to 'send' healing energies from the practitioner to the ill person or client.

Probably because this minor research was done more than a year ago, I don't really have current information to share. However, Reiki, is also a transferable skill. That is, you or anyone else can learn to utilized the healing process(s) inherent in the practice.

During my preliminary investigation, i was more or less turned off by the structure associated with the Reiki practitioners. The simple training would make you a practitioner, while with further training (read more investment) you could receive in depth training to allow you to become a "Master" and therefore able to teach the skill to others (for a fee of course).

So you can see my early impression was not all that positive. However, I have learned through study that Ms. Miracle rarely provides (can't think of any) misleading information on these public threads.
Therefore, I release this topic to the For Your Health board, so that there is a forum for discussion.

I have close friends who are trained practitioners though not publicly active that I will invite to participate in this discussion as well.

So fire away folks. Be Blessed!.

Hi Bill, well as you know, I'm a first Reiki. I have not followed it like maybe I should have, but like a lot of things when it comes to health....If you believe in anything with all the passion you can muster....well, I guess what I'm trying to say is, thoughts create. Even if there is nothing more than a person holding their hands over an area of soreness, if that person believes, and the person receiving believes, then more than likely healing will take place. My cousin is a Reiki master, and he worked on my skull fractures, and 20 seconds into the session, I was out for 5-6 hours and woke feeling great. When I was trained, a great many things made sense to me and I felt as if there was something to this, like for example when we stub a toe, and the first thing we do is grab that sore toe. Why in the world would you want to something like that? It's instinctual. This is just my 2 cents

Well, I had expected some updates from JudyH but nothing so far. Perhaps she was jesting about wanting another thread for more alternate healing modalities.

Thank you, Mr. B, for your contribution. Since this thread has been unreasonably inactive, I will post from URLs for folks who might be interested enough to check out some additional information about Reiki.

reikiharmonycenter.com/index_old.htm This is a site in my area that provides training in Reiki and has some additional information within their pages.

www.reiki.org/ a very comprehensive site with hundreds of pages of information. It is a non-profit organization as well.

www.reiki-for-holistic-health.com/ a general information page about Reiki with a fair number of links (URLs) at the bottom of the page.

Good luck with your personal researches and come back to let us know what you have learned and how it has been beneficial to your health and wellbeing!

Thanks, and Be Blessed!

Sorry, Bill...... have been tied up with a project and will be for a while longer.

I'm very glad to see your topic and have a few things I would love to contribute, but will have to put on hold temporarily. And, Mr. B..... LOVE your post......


MR.B wrote:
Hi Bill, well as you know, I'm a first Reiki. I have not followed it like maybe I should have, but like a lot of things when it comes to health....If you believe in anything with all the passion you can muster....well, I guess what I'm trying to say is, thoughts create. Even if there is nothing more than a person holding their hands over an area of soreness, if that person believes, and the person receiving believes, then more than likely healing will take place. My cousin is a Reiki master, and he worked on my skull fractures, and 20 seconds into the session, I was out for 5-6 hours and woke feeling great. When I was trained, a great many things made sense to me and I felt as if there was something to this, like for example when we stub a toe, and the first thing we do is grab that sore toe. Why in the world would you want to something like that? It's instinctual. This is just my 2 cents


...... I have recently been discussing the Placebo effect on another topic...and it ties in strongly to your statement regarding Belief. Placebo effect is not limited only to pills or medications...but also to other healing modalities....and not in ways most people would automatically assume. Read this article and you will see what I mean.


The Placebo Effect: The Triumph of Mind Over Body

by Peter Arguriou

www.scribd.com/doc/39802353/The-Placebo-...ph-Of-Mind-Over-Body

- excerpt -

" A growing body of research reveals not just psychological and perceptual components to
the placebo effect but also a biochemical substrate to the mechanism."

One of the most commonly used terms in medical language is the word placebo. The placebo effect
is used as a scale for evaluating the effectiveness of new drugs. But what exactly is the placebo effect and what are its consequences in the deterministic structure of Western medicine? The placebo effect has been frequently abused by health professionals to denote and stigmatise a fraud or fallacy. Alternative therapies have often been characterised as merely placebos. But the placebo effect is not a fraudulent, useless or malevolent phenomenon. It occurs independently of the intentions of charlatans or health professionals.
It is a spontaneous, authentic and very factual phenomenon that refers to well-observed but uninterpreted and contingent therapies or health improvements that occur in the absence of an active chemical/pharmacological substance.

Make-believe drugs—drugs that carry no active chemical substances—often act as the real drugs and provoke therapeutic effects when administered to patients. In many drug trials, the manufacturers of the drug sadly discover that their product is in no way superior to the effect of a placebo. But that does not mean that a placebo equates to a null response of the human organism. On the contrary, a placebo denotes non-chemical stimuli that strongly motivate the organism towards a therapeutic course. That is, the placebo effect is dependent not on the drug's effectiveness but solely on therapeutic intention and expectation.

The placebo effect has been often misunderstood as a solely psychological and highly subjective phenomenon. The patient, convinced of the therapy's effectiveness, ignores his symptoms or perceives them faintly without any substantial improvement of his health; that is, the patient feels better but is not healthier. But can the subjective psychological aspect of the placebo effect account for all of its therapeutic properties? The answer is definite: The placebo effect refers to an alternative curative mechanism that is inherent in the human entity, is motivated by therapeutic intention or belief in the therapeutic potential of a treatment, and implies biochemical responses and reactions to the stimulus of therapeutic intention or belief.

From numerous research findings, it is logical and rather safe to conclude that there is a biochemical substrate to the placebo effect. But what is more intriguing to it is its relation to perception. It would appear that perception and the codes and symbols that the animate computer, the brain, utilises in order to process internal and external information strongly determine the potency and form of placebo response. In a recent study, patients were purposely misinformed that they had been infected by hazardous bacilli and they subsequently underwent treatment. However, there were no bacilli and the treatment administered was a placebo. Guess what? Some of the study subjects developed infection-like conditions that were not treatable by the placebo medication. The mind interpreted the fictional bacilli as hazardous and instructed the body to respond to them as if they were real.

Despite the placebo's potency and its importance for a new perception of health where body and mind heavily interact, large numbers of scientists continue to regard the placebo as an insignificant systematic error, a troublesome nought. According to cancer researcher Gershom Zajicek: "There is nothing in the pharmacokinetic theory which accounts for the placebo effect. In order to keep the theory consistent, the placebo effect is regarded as random error or noise which can be ignored."

Five centuries ago, Swiss alchemist and physician Paracelsus(1493–1541) wrote:

"You must know that the will is a powerful adjuvant of medicine."

It seems that our scientific arrogance has blinded us to the teachings of the past.