Have you experienced the benefits of reiki?

Benefit? No. I spent an evening listening to a presentation and demonstration, and it was interesting. I could certainly feel the vibrations. But I had no reason to think there was likely to be any more benefit than, say, a turn in a spa, and probably less than a yoga session. I don’t believe there was anything to it beyond a certain transitory physical effect.

It’s nonsense.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/reiki/

I have experienced several reiki sessions during a period of great emotional pain. I think the biggest benefit I received was stress reduction and relaxation. I can see how it would compliment other treatments for physical ailments. I definitely will participate in more sessions.
My practitioner and i had never met, we did not talk prior to the session other than introductions. Shortly into my session while I was starting to relax, she started crying, and cried through the remainder of the session. She later told me she experienced the emotional pain that I was feeling and described some of it to me. I am a believer!

I use reiki.

I am working on emotional and physical well being.

At first I didn’t feel anything although it was relaxing. But because the lady was a volunteer I thought I’d give it a shot.

The lady started with one technique. I ended up feeling more relaxed I also felt some lightness and during the session barely but present some viberational energy. My muscles would twitch randomly.

When she switched, she was being taught a different form, but she had to go through training seminars and finish a course:

It was much more powerful the air seemed thicker. I could almost hear the vibration I felt. Sometimes it evoked powerful emotion. Not only from her but me. There was warmth and I also started meditating a bit at home. Again it started slow, yet it took less time to really reap benefits from it.

I recently started feeling iciness. Chilled very cold. She says we are now working on my etheral spirit. That it all occurs in layers.

I took great comfort in that University of Washington will have one offered to me when it comes time for my transplant and recuperation.

I have no proof that it works. I look at my life since before I started going. Sure it is not the only change. I am so much further more of a person. I am physically capable of so much more. It took work. But I have since read a couple of books and heard it described similar to this:

People spend their life trying to make the right choices. Take the right steps. Everything is within grasp. Yet somehow they keep slipping up, defeated by themselves. What they lack is energy. Or rather the positive energy to fuel them. Energy work fuels the soul and propels them forward.

Terrible paraphrase.. Yet essentially that is my thoughts.

My advice give it a shot if it works for you that is fantastic. If not its a story or an experience to add to your list.

LOL “energy healing”

Got some crystals to go around with it?

I have not but I have tried different things from time to time. Why not. You only live once. And even if it works through the placebo effect, it still works. If it doesn’t work you lose nothing. May feel a little foolish but who hasn’t gone on a bender and felt foolish the next day?

I haven’t tried it and I truthfully don’t actually know what it entails. I always thought it was some type of legitimate massage – some of the comments above suggest my thought was wrong.

The only thing I can think of is talking to a therapist/counsellor when my family (I explained some of the issues) were giving me a lot of stress and I needed to debrief with someone who would be open minded but not just take my side. Not sure if that’s even ‘alternative’!

I feel foolish when I hand my money over to scam artists.

@Rarebear All the reiki healers I know worked for free its a spiritual service. Ok I don’t know a lot of them. Personally two, there are teams of them at hospitals who also work on volunteer basis.

@Rarebear I was referred to one by a Doctor. In the UK Doctors are working very closely with energy healers now.

Q. How much does a treatment usually cost?

A. A Reiki treatment usually will cost between $25.00 and $100.00 depending on the area of the country. However, some practitioners offer treatments free of charge or for a donation.

http://www.reiki.org/faq/questions&answers.html

@LornaLove I hope there are still some doctors back in the UK who have not lowered themselves to practicing placebo medicine, and still believe in science.

@Rarebear Placebo medicine is science… And if you take a look at the efficacy of surgeries, the few that have been studied, such as disk fusion etc. Placebo plays an equal role. If you would like to take a look at conventional medicine many of the pills doctors perscribe have also been shown to have the placebo effect.

“placebo is nothing more than “a substance or procedure a patient accepts as medicine or therapy, but which has no specific therapeutic activity” or, as Wikipedia now defines it, “simulated or otherwise medically ineffectual treatment for a disease or other medical condition intended to deceive the recipient.” ”

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-rebranding-of-cam/

All therapies have their place. Even as a placebo, it can still benefit some people. I think that where you “place” healing will be where you get a desired effect. This can be influenced by the individual therapist being convincing and you being in a stressed/anxious state. When I had someone doing their treatment, I couldn’t get passed just the ability to focus your attention on parts of your body, as they walk around you. A spin off from progressive relaxation, hypnotherapy, self-hypnosis etc.

After rereading my response I realize it could be interpreted that I know nothing about the Placebo Effect. While there is still more to learn I am not quite as unaware as you think. There are several reputable and scientific sites that explain

A blog that seems to be reputable, the info I skinned seemed accurate. I will be checking this out at a later time. states

the placebo effect is undeniably a force in modern medicine. In fact, it heals more people across maladies than even the most powerful drug. For example:

Antidepressants worked just as well as placebos in almost all cases
Heart patients experienced almost a 40% reduction in mortality
Placebo surgeries worked almost as well as the real thing in a number of cases.
Check out 80 more studies in our 101 Amazing Placebo Facts

In 2005 UCLA broke the story:
UCLA the first to report that when treatment with placebo reduces symptoms, it also changes the function of the brain. We examined research subjects with major depression, some of whom respond favorably to placebo treatment as part of research studies. When the subjects improved during placebo treatment, their brain function changed; the changes seen during placebo treatment were different from those seen during medication treatment.

In 2012 Harvard has jumped on the bandwagon and said this: For a long time, the placebo effect was held in low regard. If people responded to a suspect treatment, we said it was “just the placebo effect.” The suggestion was that they had been fooled in some way, and their response was inauthentic.

But attitudes are shifting, even in conventional medical circles. Randomized trials, some of them led by researchers at the Harvard-wide Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter, have deepened the understanding of the placebo effect and its various components. Researchers have also used brain scans and other technologies to show that there may be a physiological explanation for the placebo effect in many cases. There is some danger that uncritical acceptance of the placebo effect could be used to justify useless treatments. But more important is the growing recognition that what we call the placebo effect may involve changes in brain chemistry — and that the placebo effect may be an integral part of good medical care and an ally that should be embraced by doctors and patients alike.

Jumping back in time the Gaurdian reports that people respond to the Placebo effect even knowing that it is a Placebo.

2013 A Harvard placebo neuroscientist reports on the Nocebo effect. Which is the negative aspect of the placebo effect…

All in all I have no idea whether or not reiki is purely placebo. It doesn’t matter. It helps me.

Actually there’s been much research concerning different types of energy healing. The experiments seemed to have generated some positive results. There are various links to click on concerning different experiments related to energy healing, and Dr. Dean Radin is a very respected name in science.

@Paradox25 I’m assuming that you did not actually read the experiments themselves, but just the blog post. If you did, there’s no way you would have posted that, as every single one of those showed no effect (except for the prayer over the petri dish, which made me giggle it was so silly)

Because I have some time and it amuses me, let’s look at the methodology of some of those studies you posted:

1) The first one is a systematic review. I don’t have the energy to pull through each one of those papers on Pubmed, but on quick scan of the paper I see the words “No treatment effect” repeated several times. In short, it doesn’t work

2) The second one, despite the fact it had HORRIBLE methodology (they picked patients by flipping a coin? Really? There was no treatment effect. Didn’t work

3) Chanting and healing over a petri dish? That’s just downright hilarious.

4) Study showed prayer didn’t work

5) Study showed that prayer didn’t work

6) Figure 1 clearly shows that it favors contol (i.e. it didn’t work)

7) Garbage data. Skin conductance? That doesn’t mean anything, clinically.

I thought I would post these links for more information.

Reiki used in UK Hospitals

British National Health System committed to other healing(cam)/

There is too much information information to post here. A lot say it does not have proven results. A lot of hospitals have enjoyed results. So I am unsure. I posted this as a question to ask ‘if’ it had worked for you.

I have been severely run down by antibiotics and so have started seeking alternative treatments. I could say it depends on placebo but really a lot of skeptics have benefited too, so that kind of distorts that theory.

My first session was quite astounding really as she did pick up on things like blocked energies that no one knows about (past experiences).

@LornaLove Very happy that you got some good results. I wish you the best in your quest for wellness.

@Rarebear I copied the wrong link on my notepad. Though it’s brief, the latter study on my following link doesn’t seem to line up with the placebo effect. This article shows the results from an experiment concerning people who were not aware of the actual reason for their participation in it. This page on the bottom gives different sources related to energy healing experiments along with their results. Unfortunately a good deal of information related to alternative therapies are confined to books.

This isn’t my greatest area of knowledge as I’m more into mediumship, near death experiences and telepathy but there seems to have been many experiments done pertaining to energy healing and especially touch therapy or healing. I’ll post more when I have time (which I’ve been short of lately).

@Paradox25 Neither of those links is to a good study. The only links to good studies you posted, in your prior post, showed no effect.

If you honestly believe in NDE, telepathy, and mediums, then there’s nothing I can do to help you.

@Rarebear Actually the more I dug around about the topic of energy healing it became apparent that there was quite a bit of research done about it. I was able to acquire several documented scientific experiments that seems to corroborate my own opinion that thought itself has immense power, and that much more than the Placebo Effect is occuring in these experiments.

This paper explains away several documented experiments by skeptical scientists who used touch therapy techniques on mice injected with cancerous cells. These different protocols used were for determining whether or not touch therapy was more effective than none in forcing the cancer into remission. Some of the experiments had another purpose as well, to determine whether belief or scepticism played a role in affecting the reliability of the touch therapy techniques used.

I’ve found positive results pertaining to human subjects concerning energy healing techniques, and I’ll post some of those if you want. I liked the page I provided above because it does three things: one is that the experimental protocols were taken part in by skeptics and produced repeatable and predictable results, secondly the experiments demonstrated that something objective was clearly happening to the mice concerning touch therapy regardless of belief, and thirdly the page provides charts and even pictures concerning the experiments.

@Rarebear If you honestly believe in NDE, telepathy, and mediums, then there’s nothing I can do to help you. Actually I’m a very sceptical person who doesn’t believe in anything, at least anymore than the most seasoned critical thinker would likely claim. Rather a better way to say it is that I accept that there is enough evidence to reasonably convince me that some paranormal phenomena is a real event. Personally I’m not a fan of terms such as paranormal, supernatural or transcendence because if a phenomena or entity exists then it would be a natural part of science and nature.

I found a wellness clinic that has natural healers this last week treating the patient holistically. I am looking forward to my appointment on Thursday.

The sad fact is, many do not realize how much is at stake should people become healthy and no longer require ‘Medical Doctors’ to manage their disease. Stock markets would crash, as trillions of dollars are pumped into the curative industry yearly.

Instead of looking for Doctors to cure the disease we have caused in our body, we should perhaps eat better and become aware of how WE are in fact responsible to ourselves.

How we can manage our own diseases, prevent genetically determined ones and manage current diseases. Perhaps one needs to stop looking for answers outside to sort out messes we can cause in our bodies and minds and take control of our lives. Just a thought.

@LornaLove Loved the answer! Been thinking that same thing one example..

I have been looking at low dose naltrexone and some alpha lipoid treatments… There is a specific that does these treatments though he has to order them from the Uk and at that the customs shut him down because he might be drug mule… he had to find a pharmacy to prescribe them. He has people coming from all over the world to be treated. But no hospital would consider taking trying different things they are taught to follow a procedure and never question it. No critical thinking or independent thinking allowed apparently.

Pharmaceuticals refuse to market or test the drug because there is no money in it.

Ridiculous and sad.