I have to say that I feel you treat reiki very unfairly. Reiki is not a placebo effect. Reiki helps to promote long-term health benefits and balance between the mind and body. Of course, if you have a kidney infection, go the doctor and get anti-biotics. Even I agree on that score! Faith healers who say ‘the problem is spiritual’ (and it really actually isn’t), risk causing their patient to discredit reiki. That is why reiki practitioner’s never diagnose.

Medical science and the reiki community need to work together. Reiki practitioners do not diagnose under any circumstances as an increase of tingling/burning etc. during a session with a client could mean many things and it would be extremely wrong to give a diagnosis of a medical condition even if we did have an intuitive ‘hunch’ about something. You just don’t do it and if you do, you could cause a great a deal of distress in a patient. That is not ethically responsible behaviour.

You should read Dr. Deepak Chopra’s Quantum Healing’. It explains the nature of energy from a scientific perspective in regards to the connection between the mind and body to heal itself. Deepak Chopra became very disillusioned with western medicine as the medical profession usually treats the symptoms and not the problem itself.

It is all about striking a rational balance in treatment between reiki and western medicine. In my opinion, reiki really helps individuals to bring their health into an emotional/physical state of balance so they can reduce the likelihood of not getting to the stage where they have to undergo treatment for cancer in hospital.

As a reiki practitioner, I certainly do not believe that I take the place of God to heal as you state at the end of your blog. We are all part of the whole. Each and everyone of us is part of this life force (which could be called many things - most obviously it is most commonly recognised as ‘God’. Everyone has the ability to ‘tune into’ this energy whether you believe it or not. It is a fact of life!

As for the spiritual/religious side of things, Jesus (who I see as a normal guy who just understood these aspects of life a bit better than most for his time) if he came back again and said he could heal people, ( in other words, he could do reiki lets face it), he would be laughed at. Not much has changed really! Do you see how life repeats itself?

Sending Reiki to someone is actually a form of concentrated prayer. If you believe in it and have faith that it will work, it will work. If Christians didn’t believe in God, would they have miracles, prayers answered etc? Probably not.

If reiki practitioners didn’t believe in reiki, it wouldn’t work either. It is all about the power of faith and the power of prayer and in any situation, (whether it is in a church or you are sending reiki to someone in a treatment room), you can achieve miracles if you believe enough!

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work: Placebo effect is powerful. But it is using the mind to heal, not divine power of any sort.

As for God, CS Lewis put it the best: Aslan is not a TAME lion. Manipulating God is a big no no in any religion, because it leads to egotism, not humility.

Isn’t that why India is exporting so many of its nuns to the West to provide cheap workers in Catholic schools, etc. ?

But as for those orders who have basically abandoned the Gospel of Jesus in favor of the Gospel of what’s-the-latest-craze, I wish they would just go away. Join the Moonies if they’re still around. Or become Bhuddists. But go away or move on into oblivion and allow the Church to heal from the many wounds they have inflicted on it.

Our parish had been blessed with very holy, habit wearing nuns who had respect for our Holy Father. They lived in a convent and prayed together at various times during the day. They taught in our elementary school. They were a shining example to all of us.

Unfortunately, they left to serve others when a mean pastor arrived and made their mission miserable.

The Times article said their numbers are down from 180,000 to 60,000. To be honest, with some of the things they’re now doing, I think the Church would be better off if their numbers went down to 0. Who needs them? We’re better off without them. They actually are ding more harm to the Church with the nonsense they say and do, confusing the average Catholic and leading the young astray.

And this Rieki therapy baloney needs to be exposed for what it is. It’s nothing more than voodoo witchcraft in disguise. I can’t believe people actually fall for it and pay good money for it. It reminds me of the Dr. Feelgood Medicine man selling his bottles of snake oil miracle elixir. I also think the civil authorities ought to do some investigating to prevent more people from being taken in by this obvious fraud.

I long for the days when nuns looked like nuns, spoke like nuns, prayed like nuns, had respect for the Church and the Pope and did actual religious work in schools, hospitals and orphanages. I also feel bad for the older nuns who have to sadly watch with shame the disgrace that the religious orders they once loved have turned into.

Moreover, there are several clinical studies with mice and one with bone marrow cells (PMID: 18370579)which showed significant results using Reiki (mice and bone marrow cells aren´t much affected by placebos ).

I do wish people would check their facts before publishing….

Oh, now I know why the vatican is so upset. “Channeling the divine” (however it is defined) is the priests’ job. Can’t have those annoying old nuns butting in on that!

Silly me.

Sounds like they are actually channeling Mary Baker Eddy….

Reiki is the channeling of Divine Love. If it needed faith to be successful, why do babies heal when they’re treated? How much faith do they have? Reiki has been scientifically proven to work. As a matter of fact faith based practices have been proven to work anyway.

What if someone doesn’t heal if they’re treated with Reiki? Doctors don’t heal everyone either, yet you didn’t discount them.
Even Jesus said, “your faith has made you whole.” Why is that a bad thing? Not that Reiki should be used instead of doctor’s, but at least let a client decide to use if if it’s their choice and if Jesus used it, why can’t nuns. This does not mean that only Christians should use Reiki, as I am sure that Jesus loves all people, no matter what religion. I only hope that we can be as open minded and open to the ability to send loving thoughts even if it’s something that we disagree with.

As far as it being New Age, what people call new age has generally been around for centuries.

I think that it’s wonderful that you are a doctor, but I’m sure you know, like Jesus knew,” I of myself can do nothing. The Father within me, he doth the works.” In other words, the Reiki Practitioner doesn’t heal anyone, doctors don’t heal anyone, scientist’s don’t, and Dr. Mom doesn’t. Only God does.