Dovetailing Reiki and Mainstream Health Giving

 

Alternative medicine is taking the world by storm… slowly. Yet it is encouraging for advocates and practitioners of alternative medicine to read articles in the Washington Post describing Reiki’s adoption into mainstream medicine. According to the Washington Post’s March 15^th, 2011 article,  “In recent years, many cancer centers have offered Reiki…“

Reiki has been reported to help cancer patients with anxiety, fatigue, pain, and other common ailments associated with chemotherapy treatment. Although, many doctors have expressed the need for more thorough and rigorous experiments to learn Reiki’s true effectiveness.

The article continues by stating, “A 2004 study of 1,290 cancer patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering found a light-touch massage, standard Swedish massage and foot massage all helped symptoms including pain, depression, anxiety, nausea, and fatigue; the study didn’t have a control group.” Clearly the medical industry’s call for more in-depth and reliable studies is well founded. A control group could be established in patients who refuse to accept Reiki treatment.

Experiments in enhanced hospital environments range from garden facing glass-sided rooms for cancer patients, the use of cannabinoids in medical marijuana, and the increasing rise of Reiki offerings in hospitals, and all point to the changing face of modern medicine.

 

 

 

With the advent of Complementary Alternative Medicine in mainstream American health giving, Reiki is enjoying a resurgence in its use and a new level of recognition. Other experiments with reiki have yielded good results. Dr. Gronowicz of the University of Connecticut Health Center found that cells in a test tube that received non-touch Reiki treatments from trained Reiki initiates grew better than those that did not receive the treatment.

 

Further studies on bone cancer patients showed that reiki didn’t influence the presence of bone cancer cells, but it did improved the growth of bone cells by a statistically significant margin. In addition, skin cells and tendon cells grew under the influence of reiki channeled energy.

Reiki’s positive effect on patients is getting more attention, but so is its effect on nurses and other trained specialists. 75% of nurses who practice reiki on patients reported feeling peaceful, calm, and relaxed after the performance. Another 38% said that Reiki left them feeling grounded and focused.

Quite a few nurses also said they received most, or all, of the benefits their patients were receiving. They were simultaneously giving and being given to. Some common claims by nurses were reduced stress levels, an increase in intuition and insight while performing their duties, and a greater threshold of resilience against burnout. As the ultimate outpatient scenario, Reiki can also be performed on oneself to cut pre-work stress and anxiety.

The Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Medicine offers Reiki treatments to its patients free of charge and states that patients often report reduced anxiety, released stress, an energizing of mind and body, along with a number of other benefits.

As time marches on, Reiki is coming under serious study during Humanities ongoing struggle with such devastating diseases as cancer. With more tightly regulated experiments, Reiki may find itself as commonly accepted as the household word Tylenol.