benefits of reiki and energy healing

Usui Mikao is known for making reiki accessible to a large audience over the past century (he learned the practice from a study of ancient Eastern texts and through his personal experience) and earned great respect in Japan following his use of reiki to treat large numbers of earthquake victims in 1923. He trained other reiki practitioners until his death in 1926.  The healing practice of reiki gained widespread recognition in countries outside Japan over the past several decades, and this expansion of familiarity with reiki was accompanied by divergent views on how it should be practised.

In its essence, reiki is a specific methodology for accessing subtle energy fields (often referred to as ‘the human biofield’ when addressing the dimension of response of human beings to a greater repository of energy (in turn, referred to as ‘the universal energy field’) that can facilitate healing). Fascinating research has been conducted to gain deeper insight into the nature of these subtle fields. Some of the research has been conducted by leading scientists in the physical sciences, who published their work related to subtle energy fields in parallel with their paradigm-friendly mainstream research.

Reiki/energy work is a fundamentally person-specific procedure. As for the healing modalities mentioned in other posts on this page, clinical studies have been steadily increasing in number and reiki is being adopted in ever-greater numbers of hospitals and orthodox medical practices as a complementary treatment that demonstrates meaningful and valuable results in the overall healing care of patients.

My personal experience over the past several years has formed (and continues to form) the way I treat my clients as a practitioner. Deep respect, thorough preparation, and proper consultation form the foundation of a meaningful treatment.  

benefits of reflexology

The form of reflexology that I practice (I was trained in the Eunice Ingham tradition) is common in the Western world, and is based on discoveries made by a physician, Dr William Fitzgerald, in his clinical practice in the early 20th century. There have been various attempts to assign mechanistic explanations of the healing effects of reflexology that fit into the paradigms of Western orthodox medical practice. These attempts are not convincing, and a settled understanding of ‘how reflexology works’ might need to wait for broader paradigms of thought to become widely accepted. As Dr Fitzgerald (and thousands of practitioners and their many clients over the past century) discovered, the treatment is very effective in many cases, and there is a general consistency in the mapping of organs and tissues in the body onto the feet.

Reflexology is a mode of healing that is based on empirical evidence and on millions of successful treatments. The lack of a mechanistic explanation at present does not detract in any way from its efficacy, in the same way that humankind’s lack of knowledge (until a hundred-and-fifty years ago) about electromagnetic waves as the basis for everything we see did not keep us from being moved and inpsired by the visual beauty of the stars at night or a garden of flowers in springtime.

Numerous clinical studies have been published that demonstrate the benefits of reflexology in specific clinical contexts. My own experience with many happy clients echoes the clinical evidence of the value and power of this healing method.   

The benefits of massage ...

The benefits of massage …..

Massage has been used to improve physical, emotional and mental health for thousands of years. Egyptian tombs suggest that massage therapy was used there more than 4000 years ago; evidence from China suggests a well-grounded practice of massage as far back as 5000 years ago. In Europe, Homer wrote about massage 3000 years ago, while in the Americas, there is evidence of the use of massage an unspecified time ago, by various Northern Native American tribes as well as by the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans of Central and South America. The people of the Polynesian islands developed a unique from of massage which has seen a revival (and an introduction to the rest of the world) since the 1970s, specifically in its Hawai’ian form, Lomi-lomi massage.

Therapeutic massage has been a universal human practice for millennia. It might be the oldest healing practice still in existence.

Quite recently, the quantifiable benefits of the therapies I use in my practice have gained recognition in Western orthodox medicine. The American National Institutes of Health (NIH) established a National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, which covers massage therapy, reflexology, and reiki in its ambit. Professional research studies have confirmed that these therapy techniques can promote physical and emotional health by substantially reducing a client's levels of clinical anxiety, stress, and depression, alongside the obvious relief of muscle tension and strain resulting from massage treatment. Clear evidence of massage therapy’s effectiveness in strengthening the human immune system has also emerged.

In summary: In my own practice, I have seen, time and time again, how chronic pain is alleviated following a massage treatment (in cases of substantial injury, several successive treatments over a period of a few weeks may be required to achieve full relief). I have also witnessed healing on the mental and emotional level following massage treatments. And, on other occasions, my clients have simply needed an opportunity to achieve deep relaxation, and have had that need met.