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Re: Skeptical Eye, Health Supplement, October 11th
The article, Reiki doubts by Paul O'Donoghue from the Irish Skeptics Society, contained some information which was inaccurate.
Contrary to what Mr O'Donoghue wrote, reiki practitioners do not claim to detect energy imbalances.
The constitution of the Reiki Federation Ireland clearly states that reiki practitioners refrain from diagnosing or promising cures.
Reiki Federation Ireland is the organisation involved in regulating reiki training and practice in the Republic.
I am a nurse who has been involved with reiki for over a decade. In my experience of using reiki, I have never used "ritualistic waving of hands" as a means to rebalance energy as was stated in the article.
As outlined in the article, energy does have many forms - kinetic, atomic electromagnetic and so on. However, the science of quantum physics was not referred to in any detail. Quantum physics is the science that studies the world of subatomic particles.
It has been experiments like "the double slit experiment" that have shown us that subatomic particles, which are the constructs of the world around us, behave both as particles and as energy.
And that is not the end. Not only does matter behave in its elementary form both as mass and as electromagnetic wave energy, but it does so according to the scientist's observation. What was astounding was that the results of the experiments depended on the expectation of the one carrying them out.
Many questions arose from these findings. Do our thoughts affect the world around us? Is it possible to influence reality at its fundamental state just by changing the way we think? Is this confined to the scientists alone or to the bus driver and the waitress as well?
This new science is giving long-awaited answers to complementary therapies, such as reiki - therapies that to date relied only on experience and testimony for their validation.
Mr O'Donoghue's article failed to mention that studies have been carried out which recorded the effects and fluctuation in the electromagnetic field during healing sessions.
The Copper Wall Study in Topeka Kansas is worth noting.
In this study a researcher named Elmer Green has shown that experienced healers have abnormally high electric field patterns during healing sessions.
In his test, Green enclosed his participants in electrically isolated rooms made with walls constructed entirely of copper, which would block electricity from any other sources.
Although ordinary participants had expected electrical readings related to breathing or heartbeat, the healers were generating electrical surges higher than 60 volts during healing sessions, as measured by electrometers placed on the healers themselves and on all four walls.
Video recordings of the healers showed that these voltage surges had nothing to do with physical movement.
Over the past couple of decades a lot of research has been done around the power of intention, healing therapies and prayer.
In the US, a psychiatrist, Elizabeth Targ, and a psychologist, Fred Sicher, conducted randomised double blind studies on patients with advanced HIV and have proven these therapies have absolute merit to them.
Other studies done include one carried out at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Centre in New York.
They used reiki during open-heart surgeries with very encouraging results.
Understandably, some people remain sceptical about complementary therapies. Every one is entitled to their own opinion.
Reiki, along with other therapies such as acupuncture, are being practised in hospitals alongside conventional methods.
These therapies are set to flourish in a future where science is in hot pursuit of understanding the world of subatomic energy.
Angela Gorman Reiki teacher www.thehealingpages.com
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