What is your experience with Reiki health care?!

My experience with reiki health care over the years has been an amazing and very rewarding experience. I first started studying reiki ten years ago and I have been practicing it ever since on a regular basis. There is now more so than ever before, increasing scientific research that supports and validates the therapeutic benefits of reiki for depression, stress, anxiety and pain conditions (especially in cancer patients). This is called the 'touchstone process' and you can see the evidence for itself here:

http://www.centerforreikiresearch.org/

(You will need to open an account to view the report on the findings but it is worth it if you ask me.

Reiki is practiced all over the UK and the USA in many hospitals/hospices now and many mainstream medical doctors are incorporating it as an effective complementary treatment to conventional medical care for their patients as they can see the benefits that reiki has. It has nothing to with the placebo effect (contrary to what some people may think). Placebo effect at best, shows us that the body has the ability to heal itself if we believe that is the case. The mind is very powerful. If our intention is strong enough, we can in fact achieve what we need. Reiki is sent with intention also so you can see how reiki and placebo are in fact very similar to each other and why they are so often confused together. They key to understanding this is that we all have the inherent ability to heal outrselves and that is the essence of reiki - we can really see the powerful effects of it when we use it for our own personal and spiritual development.

*Autonomic nervous system changes during reiki treatment: a preliminary study
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15674…

*Using reiki to manage pain:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/97657…

*Using Reiki to decrease memory and behavior problems in mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17109…

*Long-term effects of energetic healing on symptoms of psychological depression and self-perceived stress.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15154…

If you have not already experienced reiki for yourself I would suggest you try it. It could be one of the best things you ever do. Find a professional reiki master/teacher who is registered and insured and make an appointment. Many teachers offer a free introductory reiki healing session which I would recommend you try out. I offer reiki to people in a local hospice in a voluntary basis and I also do some work in hospitals too. It is a very rewarding experience on a personal level. You could also look into Qi gong, falun gong and tai chi as well if you are interested. All work according to improving the flow of chi throughout the body for optimum health and wellbeing.

*Emission of extremely strong magnetic fields from the head and whole body during oriental breathing exercises:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/90511…

*Detection of extraordinary large bio-magnetic field strength from human hand during external Qi emission.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13536…

As you can see from the above studies, the evidence/information speaks for itself really.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

Best,
Sky x

Reiki is a form of ‘energy’ healing where the practitioner manipulates or channels the universe’s ‘life force energy’ in order to heal. Basically they wave their hands over you. Reiki is scientifically implausible and there is no empirical evidence that it works beyond placebo effect. There have been many studies and a 2008 systematic review of randomised clinical trials concluded that "..the evidence is insufficient to suggest that reiki is an effective treatment.." for the conditions studied (depression, pain and anxiety, and others): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11…

It’s my contention that the teaching of Reiki, including ‘attunements’ (where you gain the ability to manipulate the ‘energies’) is a hugely expensive scam and the 'Reiki Masters' know it.

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EDIT: @skybird.... sigh. Again you are misrepresenting science to push your brand of alt med placebo. You have posted preliminary or pilot studies only (abstracts, so no data) – and not surprisingly they are all of inadequate design quality to be presented as “scientific research that supports and validates the therapeutic benefits of reiki”. They are so bad that they would have been immediately rejected for inclusion in the 2008 systematic review of randomised clinical trials (see my link above).

To summarise and so you know not to put them forward again:

"Autonomic nervous system changes during Reiki treatment: a preliminary study": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15674…
This is a very small unblinded PILOT study in which even the authors state: “this was a pilot study with relatively few subjects and the changes were relatively small”. It does not scientifically validate Reiki treatment.

"Using Reiki to manage pain: a preliminary report": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/97657…
Another small, unblinded PILOT study of only 20 subjects which did NOT control for placebo. I don’t understand why you would even post it. It does not scientifically validate Reiki treatment.

"Using Reiki to decrease memory and behavior problems in mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17109…
This is yet another very small study that was not blinded or placebo controlled. You cannot not possibly put this forward as scientific validation of Reiki treatment.

"Long-term effects of energetic healing on symptoms of psychological depression and self-perceived stress": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15154…
Again very small, only single-blinded and reliant on self reporting. It does not scientifically validate Reiki treatment.

"Emission of extremely strong magnetic fields from the head and whole body during oriental breathing exercises": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/90511…
This is a ‘study’ on TWO individuals with NO controls. From this it concludes “ that traditional Oriental Qi Gong breathing appears to stimulate an unusually large biomagnetic field emission”. So what? Even if the result is true (doubtful), how is a magnetic field now ‘Reiki energy’, or ‘universal life force energy”? (a field is not energy btw) Sorry but it is not evidence for the existence of Reiki ‘energy’ or scientific validation of Reiki healing.

"Detection of extraordinary large bio-magnetic field strength from human hand during external Qi emission": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13536…
This is an appallingly poorly designed and biased ‘study’; from the result of ONE test on ONE subject they conclude that “bio-magnetic field strength can not derive from internal body current alone”, and so they "suppose" that the bio-magnetic field strength 'might‘ be originated from 'Qi' energy".

One must remember that the concept of ‘Qi Energy’ makes no sense in terms of physics. They are making an argument from ignorance. ‘We don’t know what happened, therefore we think it's Qi Energy’. This is pseudoscience at its worst and does NOT provide evidence for the existence of Reiki 'energy'. Neither does it explain how this is a ‘healing’ energy, nor how it is that special people can manipulate it to heal people.

Many alternative medicine proponents reject science based medicine, but happily cherry-pick anything ‘science-y’ they can find that they think supports their quackery. All this demonstrates is that they have either an embarrassingly poor understanding of science, or they are dishonest. Or maybe both. You have in no way provided anything here that disproves the null hypothesis (ie; Reiki is implausible and doesn’t work).

It's super effective.
If you enjoy waving your hands around and not getting better.

Reading about it's total lack of plausibility.