Reiki in U.S. Medical Centers

Reiki is offered in prominent medical centers across the country, some of which include:

• Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital (N.Y.)
• Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (Boston, Mass.)
• Yale-New Haven Hospital (New Haven, Conn.)
• Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System (Baltimore, Md.)
• M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, Tex.)
• George Washington University Hospital (Washington, D.C.)
• California Pacific Medical Center (San Francisco, Calif.)

Reiki in an Acute Clinical Setting

The experience of a Reiki practitioner in an acute clinical setting.
http://www.reiki.net.au/Podcast/Claudia.mp3

Reading List: The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart

Why? Because of the following:

PREFACE

"This book represents a piece of unfinished business that began in 2001 when I published a book called The Field. In the course of trying to find a scientific explanation for homeopathy and spiritual healing, I had inadvertently uncovered the makings of a new science.

During my research, I stumbled across a band of frontier scientists who had spent many years reexamining quantum physics and its extraordinary implications. Some had resurrected certain equations regarded as superfluous in standard quantum physics. These equations, which stood for the Zero Point Field, concerned the extraordinary quantum field generated by the endless passing back and forth of energy between all subatomic particles. The existence of the Field implies that all matter in the universe is connected on the subatomic level through a constant dance of quantum energy exchange.

Other evidence demonstrated that, on the most basic level, each one of us is also a packet of pulsating energy constantly interacting with this vast energy sea.

But the most heretical evidence of all concerned the role of consciousness. The well-designed experiments conducted by these scientists suggested that consciousness is a substance outside the confines of our bodies -- a highly ordered energy with the capacity to change physical matter. Directing thoughts at a target seemed capable of altering machines, cells, and, indeed, entire multicelled organisms like human beings. This mind-over-matter power even seemed to traverse time and space.

In The Field I aimed to make sense of all the ideas resulting from these disparate experiments and to synthesize them into one generalized theory. The Field created a picture of an interconnected universe and a scientific explanation for many of the most profound human mysteries, from alternative medicine and spiritual healing to extrasensory perception and the collective unconscious.

The Field apparently hit a nerve. I received hundreds of letters from readers who told me that the book had changed their lives. A writer wanted to depict me as a character in her novel. Two composers wrote musical compositions inspired by it, one of which played on the international stage. I was featured in a movie, What the Bleep!? Down the Rabbit Hole, and on the What The Bleep Do We Know!? Calendar, released by the film's producers. Quotations from The Field became the centerpiece of a printed Christmas card.

However gratifying this reaction, I felt that my own journey of discovery had hardly left the station platform. The scientific evidence I had amassed for The Field suggested something extraordinary and even disturbing: directed thought had some sort of central participatory role in creating reality.

Targeting your thoughts -- or what scientists ponderously refer to as "intention" and "intentionality" -- appeared to produce an energy potent enough to change physical reality. A simple thought seemed to have the power to change our world.

After writing The Field, I puzzled over the extent of this power and the numerous questions it raised. How, for instance, could I translate what had been confirmed in the laboratory for use in the world that I lived in? Could I stand in the middle of a railroad and, Superman-style, stop the 9:45 Metroliner with my thoughts? Could I fly myself up to fix my roof with a bit of directed thought? Would it now be possible to cross doctors and healers off my list of essential contacts, seeing as I might now be able to think myself well? Could I help my children pass their math tests just by thinking about it? If linear time and three-dimensional space didn't really exist, could I go back and erase all those moments in my life that had left me with lasting regret? And could my one puny bit of mental input do anything to change the vast catalog of suffering on the planet?

The implications of this evidence were unsettling. Should we be minding every last thought at every moment? Was a pessimist's view of the world likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy? Were all those negative thoughts -- that ongoing inner dialogue of judgment and criticism -- having any effect outside our heads?

Were there conditions that improved your chances of having a better effect with your thoughts? Would a thought work any old time or would you, your intended target, and indeed the universe itself have to be in the mood? If everything is affecting everything else at every moment, doesn't that counteract and thereby nullify any real effect?

What happens when a number of people think the same thought at the same time? Would that have an even larger effect than thoughts generated singly? Was there a threshold size that a group of like-minded intenders had to reach in order to exert the most powerful effect? Was an intention "dose dependent" -- the larger the group, the larger the effect?

An enormous body of literature, starting with Think and Grow Rich,1 by Napoleon Hill, arguably the first self-actualization guru, has been generated about the power of thought. Intention has become the latest new age buzzword. Practitioners of alternative medicine speak of helping patients heal "with intention." Even Jane Fonda writes about raising children "with intention."2

What on Earth, I wondered, was meant by "intention"? And how exactly can one become an efficient "intender"? The bulk of the popular material had been written off the cuff -- a smattering of Eastern philosophy here, a soupçon of Dale Carnegie there -- with very little scientific evidence that it worked.

To find answers to all these questions, I turned, once again, to science, scouring the scientific literature for studies on distant healing or other forms of psychokinesis, or mind over matter. I sought out international scientists who experimented with how thoughts can affect matter. The science described in The Field had been carried out mainly in the 1970s; I examined more recent discoveries in quantum physics for further clues.

I also turned to those people who had managed to master intention and who could perform the extraordinary -- spiritual healers, Buddhist monks, Qigong masters, shamans -- to be able to understand the transformational processes they underwent to be able to use their thoughts to powerful effect. I uncovered myriad ways that intention is used in real life -- in sports, for instance, and during healing modalities such as biofeedback. I studied how native populations incorporated directed thought into their daily rituals.

I then began to dig up evidence that multiple minds trained on the same target magnified the effect produced by an individual. The evidence was tantalizing, mostly gathered by the Transcendental Meditation organization, suggesting that a group of like-minded thoughts created some sort of order in the otherwise random Zero Point Field.

At that point in my journey, I ran out of pavement. All that stretched before me, as far as I could tell, was uninhabited open terrain.

Then one evening, my husband, Bryan, a natural entrepreneur in most situations, put forward what seemed to be a preposterous suggestion: "Why don't you do some group experiments yourself?"

I am not a physicist. I am not any kind of scientist. The last experiment I had conducted had been in a tenth-grade science lab.

What I did have, though, was a resource available to few scientists: a potentially huge experimental body. Group intention experiments are extraordinarily difficult to perform in an ordinary laboratory. A researcher would need to recruit thousands of participants. How would he find them? Where would he put them? How would he get them all to think the same thing at the same time?

A book's readers offer an ideal self-selected group of like-minded souls who might be willing to participate in testing out an idea. Indeed, I already had my own large population of regular readers with whom I communicated through e-news and my other spin-off activities from The Field.

I first broached the idea of carrying out my own experiment with dean emeritus of the Princeton University School of Engineering Robert Jahn and his colleague, psychologist Brenda Dunne, who run the Princeton Engineering Anomalous Research (PEAR) laboratory, both of whom I had gotten to know through my research for The Field. Jahn and Dunne have spent some thirty years painstakingly amassing some of the most convincing evidence about the power of directed intention to affect machinery. They are absolute sticklers for scientific method, no-nonsense and to the point. Robert Jahn is one of the few people I have ever met who speak in perfect, complete sentences. Brenda Dunne is equally perfectionist about detail in both experiment and language. I would be assured of no sloppy protocol in my experiments if Jahn and Dunne agreed to be involved.

The two of them also have a vast array of scientists at their disposal. They head the International Consciousness Research Laboratory, many of whose members are among the most prestigious scientists performing consciousness research in the world. Dunne also runs PEARTree, a group of young scientists interested in consciousness research.

Jahn and Dunne immediately warmed to the idea. We met on numerous occasions and kicked around some possibilities. Eventually, they put forward Fritz-Albert Popp, assistant director of the International Institute of Biophysics (IIB) in Neuss, Germany, to conduct the first intention experiments. I knew Fritz Popp through my research for The Field. He was the first to discover that all living things emit a tiny current of light. As a noted German physicist recognized internationally for his discoveries, Popp would also be a stickler for strict scientific method.

Other scientists, such as psychologist Gary Schwartz of the Biofield Center at the University of Arizona, Marilyn Schlitz, vice president for research and education at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dean Radin, IONS' senior scientist, and psychologist Roger Nelson of the Global Consciousness Project, have also offered to participate.

I do not have any hidden sponsors of this project. "

CAM - Complementary and Alternative Medicine

CAM Use Among Children

The 2007 NHIS asked selected adult respondents about CAM use by children in their households. Overall, approximately 12 percent of children use some form of CAM. Use is greater among:

• Children whose parents used CAM (23.9%)
• Adolescents aged 12-17 (16.4%), compared to younger children
• White children (12.8%), compared to Hispanic children (7.9%) and black children (5.9%)
• Children whose parents had higher education levels (more than high school: 14.7%)
• Children with six or more health conditions (23.8%)
• Children whose families delayed conventional care because of cost (16.9%)

Figures 7–9 show survey findings on CAM use by children, including top therapies, natural products, and diseases/conditions.

Holistic nurses group responds to Catholic bishops: 'Denying Reiki is unethical'

Is it ethical to deny Reiki treatment? Or to prevent a nurse from administering Reiki?

The American Holistic Nurses Association says no, in a statement issued in response to last month's new guidelines from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops denouncing Reiki and calling it "inappropriate for Catholic institutions." Since then, Reiki programs at some Catholic health-care facilities have been discontinued.

The AHNA points out that "the practice of holistic nursing is not subject to regulation by religious organizations such as the Catholic Church.

"Further, it is important to understand that any person, organization, or institution denying a patient Reiki or prohibiting a nurse from administering Reiki violates the ethical principles of patient and nurse autonomy."

The AHNA statement quotes Midge Murphy, JD, PhD, a professional liability risk management consultant:

"One of the essential core principles of health care ethics is respect for patient autonomy. Autonomy refers to the patient's self-rule and the opportunity to make meaningful choices. . . Disrespecting autonomy means ignoring, insulting, or demeaning those choices by not honoring the decisions and preferences of the patient . . . The [Catholic bishops'] Guidelines in effect would violate the ethical principle of patient autonomy because the Guidelines would deny a patient in a Catholic hospital or health care facility the right to choose Reiki as part of the patient's treatment plan."

The statement goes on to point out that the bishops' guidelines also conflict with the AHNA's Standards and Scope of Practice. It also cites five studies "that support the efficacy of Reiki in reducing anxiety, reducing pain, facilitating wound healing, creating a sense of well being, increasing hemoglobin levels, and decreasing free radicals." The AHNA statement concedes that "studies involving Reiki are not conclusive and the exact mechanism in which Reiki healing occurs is unknown. . .

"Not all natural phenomena are understood by science -- new discoveries are first ridiculed, then argued against, then accepted as obvious," the statement concludes.

Many thanks to holistic nurse and Reiki Master Teacher Lilia V. Marquez for alerting us to this news.

"The Reiki Digest"

A Nurse's Account of Reiki in Her Workplace

A Healing Space for Reiki in a Hospital

By Janny E. Adkins, RN, BS, CHTP, HNC

I manage a holistic women’s center, St. Luke’s Women’s Care, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. St. Luke’s Hospital is a member of a large hospital system, Iowa Health System. We are considered rural and conservative. In l994 Women’s Care opened a new facility located in a medical office plaza connected to St. Luke’s Hospital. Women’s Care views women from a holistic perspective, honoring their needs from a physical, emotional, and spiritual perspective. Nurses on staff are holistic nurses, and they integrate this philogosphy with their traditional nursing care. Mammograms, and diagnostic interventions are offered as well as holistic nursing, imagery, and energetic balancing techniques which initially included Therapuetic touch, and Healing Touch. At that time, the Vice President of Nursing was very open to holistic interventions. I obtained her sanction to begin to offer these modalities, quietly, without advertising, and upon the request of clients.

At that time I knew nothing of Reiki. One of the nurses on staff at that time, Diane Cira,told me about a Reiki Class that she had taken from Laurelle Shanti Gaia. She returned from the class enthusiastic and excited about using Reiki with clients. Within a few months, I took a Reiki Class from Laurelle, and immediately experienced the gentle, but profound, healing power of Reiki, and immediately saw the advantage of incorporating Reiki into the clinical setting. The versatility of Reiki appealed to me, as it was simple in the clinical setting to call on the Reiki energy to be present. There was no necessity to make obvious hand movements. Reiki could also be sent from a distance without placing hands on a patient. All of this appealed to me, and I could see that adding Reiki would greatly enhance the energetic interventions that were already offered.

At the same time I began sponsoring Reiki Classes taught by Laurelle in the Women’s Center Educational Classroom. The classes were popular, as more and more people became excited about using and experiencing Reiki.

This is now three years later and we have individuals asking us if we offer Reiki. I find it interesting that the individuals ask specifically for Reiki. Patients have told us that they are using St. Luke’s Hospital because they can have energetic interventions, like Reiki, while they are hospitalized.

Individuals coming to St. Luke’s ask their physician to write an order for relaxation therapies. Hospital staff nurses call Women’s Care and one of the Women’s Care nurses provide the relaxation intervention at the bedside. Each individual is holistically evaluated by the nurse to determine the correct intervention; Reiki, Healing Touch, Therapeutic Touch, Music Therapy, or Imagery. The nurse charts on the patient’s computerized chart, noting consent for treatment, pre-treatment assessment, and response to treatment. There is currently no direct charge to the patient.

In Women’s Care, women may self refer. All visits are paid out-of-pocket. We especially encourage women to use Reiki pre and post surgery as a part of the pre-surgical consultations we offer to help women prepare for surgery. Use of Reiki is one of the modalities that we suggest.

Reiki has added a depth to our energetic interventions that cannot be described with words... Reiki was the missing piece.

An interesting caveat is that for several years, there was no formal written protocal regarding energetic interventions like Reiki. I considered the provision of energetic interventions part of our nursing care. However, last August, I asked Mona Sonkens, a Women’s Care staff nurse to write a department policy regarding Reiki. Mona had served on hospital policy and procedure committees for 14 years. Mona wrote the protocol, which I edited and reviewed and adopted as departmental policy.

Would I suggest that other hospitals do what we have done? I would ask how can one argue with the fact that we are offering Reiki.

Reiki has added a depth to our energetic interventions that cannot be described with words, only experienced by our clients. Reiki was the missing piece. It provided the spiritual component of healing that was not identified in the other modalities.

I believe Reiki has a place in hospitals if we are to make our hospitals authentic places of healing. Just as Reiki works with the healing of our patients and clients, I believe Reiki has created a healing space for itself within our hospital.

Janny Adkins is a Reiki Master and Karuna Reiki^® Master; Manager, Women’s Care, St. Luke’s Hospital Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Free Reiki Session for the "wee ones" Amongst Us

We've researched the beneficial effects of Reiki. I know I could have used it as a "wee one" and as an expression of my care for the "wee ones" amongst us I am offering an initial consultation and Reiki session for the kids. Contact me at findslt@healthyreikiliving.org to schedule a consultation time.