Reiki research and ancecdotal evidence
Today I was interviewed by a student of Anthropology at Sussex University about reiki and it’s effects. It was incredibly refreshing for us both to chat about reiki training, healing, yoga and Indian philosophy. We ran out of time but will catch up again later in the month. Last year another student used me as a case study for her dissertation. Any research on reiki is so important, as it’s highly improbable that any medical research facility (usually funded by big pharmaceutical companies) would welcome money spent on hands on healing. The tools used to measure the effects of any complementary therapy are so crude, for me it’s all about results and that does mean much of the evidence is anecdotal i.e from people’s personal experience of trying out the therapy.
I recently read Your Body’s Many Cries for Water by the brilliantly named: Dr Batmanghelidj. He claimed back in 1979 that we’re all walking around chronically dehydrated and that drinking at least 8 glasses of water every day, will not only prevent illness but could also cure ailments such as asthma, high blood pressure and back pain. His research was mainly from experimenting on his clients and their subsequent letters and accounts. Now of course much of his research is in the mainstream — we all know now that drinking water can get rid of headaches, hangovers, excess weight etc. It’s common sense and instinct really, and we don’t need millions of pounds of research to know it’s correct.
In Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Control Alcohol (not to be confused with Alan Carr) he explains our natural instinct to reject alcohol (as children) is correct. Pure alcohol is poison, and we train ourselves to drink it, using mixers at first and later acquiring a taste for it. Our body violently rejects excess alcohol from the system or makes us feel dehyrated and lethargic the morning after. So why do we put ourselves through it? It’s all conditioning and social pressure to conform. Smoking was common place in our society and then gradually it’s become more socially unacceptable. Regular reiki healing and learning reiki helps us let go of all addictions easily, sometimes without even realising it.
There has been some research done on healing by the Reiki Research Foundation and William Lee Rand has collated some findings on his Reiki.org website.
A highly regarded surgeon I met a few years ago said that he found there was more resistance from alternative therapists towards conventional medicine than the other way around — more GP’s and doctors within the private sector as well as the NHS are becoming more open to using reiki as a means of relaxation and for speeding up recovery. In his words: anything that helps the patient is fine by me.
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March 18, 2009 5:04 pm
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