The Hands-On Healing Called Reiki Seems To Work But No One Knows Why

Knight-Ridder / Tribune News Service
Thrity Umrigar Knight Ridder Newspapers

June 19, 1999, AKRON, Ohio -- She could feel her baby move. Somehow, the treatments relaxed her enough that she was more aware of her pregnant body, could feel the changes happening inside her. She would feel the dual stresses of the pregnancy and her job float out of her in giant waves.

She would leave the sessions energized and calm. Karen Bailey of Kent, a self-described skeptic, did not really believe that Reiki would help her. But it did. Reiki is a 3,000-year-old Tibetan healing system. It was rediscovered in Japan in 1914 by Mikao Usui, a spiritual healer, who named it Reiki. Rei, in Japanese, denotes spiritual consciousness.

Ki means life force. To believers, Reiki works. They will tell you that the ancient system works because it moves and unblocks the body's energy fields to achieve healing. Illness, they say, is the blocking and depletion of body energy. The fact is, nobody really knows why Reiki works. But this much is known: From the Caribbean practice of laying-on-of-hands to the Japanese practice of jin shin, living beings seem to respond instinctively to the power of touch. Touch makes babies grow and cats purr and children calm down. Practitioners of these ancient healing arts claim that touch also makes people heal from illnesses and physical and psychic wounds. ''Reiki hastens the process of healing,'' says Edward Coyle, a Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Reiki therapist.

''It opens the mind and spirit to the cause of disease. ''The cause of so many illnesses is emotional. When clients receive Reiki, old things come to the surface to be released.'' That mind-body connection is what first attracted Kele Castillo, a licensed mental health counselor in Kent, to Reiki. She became a Reiki therapist because she was looking for alternative ways to help patients who were in chronic physical pain. Castillo says her clients often have a strong emotional reaction to the treatments because the practice helps them get in touch with long-buried emotions. The chief characteristic of Reiki is its gentleness.

Unlike, say, massage, which usually requires the client to undress and can often be vigorous, Reiki is very noninvasive. At times, practitioners lightly lay their hands on a client's body. Other times, they barely touch their fully dressed clients, placing their hands inches away from the person. Castillo's clients lie on a massage table in a low-lighted room. Soft music plays. A warm face mask covers the client's eyes.

At the start, Castillo ''scans'' the person for trouble spots by placing her hands at various places along the body. She says she can spot the hot spots by the way her hands tingle and feel different. She also encourages the client to tell her about past injuries and surgery. Then, she gets to work. ''I put my hands on certain positions,'' she says. ''It helps direct the energy in the right flow. It helps the person become balanced because all the organs are working together.'' Since she started practicing Reiki a year ago, Castillo has worked on people with arthritis, chronic back pain, cancer and tendonitis.

She has also worked on people grappling with a host of mental health issues, such as depression and bipolar disorder. Castillo says she has even worked on a patient who had a mastectomy and felt her nerve endings growing after Reiki treatments. Coyle makes similar claims. He has seen tumors recede and cancers go into remission after Reiki. ''We see the entire spectrum of humanity. Some come for a stiff neck or a sore back,'' Coyle says. ''But I've also worked on cancer patients and people who are seriously ill.''

There is no study that documents that Reiki makes cancers go into remission. Coyle adds that he is not suggesting that seriously ill clients abandon conventional treatment for Reiki. Coyle defines Reiki as a spiritual practice that is compatible with all religions. People who teach and practice Reiki are called masters. Reiki practitioners generally learn their craft from other masters.

''In Reiki, people talk of lineage -- who studied from whom,'' Coyle says. There are four levels of training. At each level, the Reiki master will give his student an ''attunement'' -- a special technique that Coyle says activates the student's ability to practice Reiki. Although energy healing work is ultimately an intuitive process, having an attunement gives the practitioner a powerful tool, Coyle says.

BECOMING MAINSTREAM

The medical establishment is beginning to eye Reiki as an effective, low-tech, low-cost way of promoting healing. Coyle is discussing the possibility of opening Reiki clinics with two major Cleveland hospitals. He declined to name the hospitals because he said the deal is pending.

He said he has also trained several area nurses in Reiki. Many hospitals nationally have Reiki centers or at least Reiki practitioners on their staff. Cancer patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York, including patients with bone marrow transplants, receive Reiki. At least six doctors and 25 nurses at Sloan Kettering have taken Reiki training. The Reiki Clinic at the Tucson Medical Center in Arizona has a team of Reiki practitioners who give Reiki to patients in their rooms. The Tucson program started in 1995 in the center's Cancer Care Unit, but has expanded to other areas in the hospital. Both Coyle and Castillo teach Reiki classes in addition to working with individual clients. The cost of an individual, one-hour session ranges from $45 to $50.

Insurance typically does not pay for the sessions. Most Reiki practitioners say that the wonderful thing about the technique is that it does not deplete their energy. In fact, they feel energized after each session. ''When I'm doing Reiki, it benefits me also,'' says Castillo. ''It gives me a sense of spiritual, emotional and physical well-being.'' The benefits obviously extend to the clients, also. Bailey says that Reiki works for her because she finds it difficult to use other relaxation techniques.

Although Bailey has not had a Reiki treatment since the birth of her son, Donny, on April 1, she says the benefit of her treatment is still with her. ''I feel like I can draw from the past and recreate relaxation on my own. I used to feel waves of tension floating out of me (during a treatment). It was very real. Remembering that is enough, so that it can help me at any time.''

 

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