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remote reiki

I'm really tired right now, but I'll throw my 2 cents in.

I have chronic neuropathic pain in my abdomen and the right side of my ribcage, stemming from surgery I had a year and some months ago. At times it's excruciating. Mostly, though, it's pretty uncomfortable at best. Today's been a good day actually -- it just has a weird "electric-buzz" feeling but no real pain to speak of.

I use self-hypnosis/meditation exclusively for pain management. Since both OTC and Rx narcotic pain relievers do very little for neuropathic pain, I've devised a way to cope with the discomfort while still being able to run errands, go to classes, etc. Never have I tried reiki for this, or any other type of "energy healing." No need.

Ernon, I suspect you may be experiencing placebo or maybe the effect of self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis really doesn't require a whole helluva lot of concentration, so I think perhaps that's what you're really doing.

Like I said, that's just my 2 cents. Now, it's my bedtime. G'night! :cool:
 
To get back to the opening post of this thread. Library Lady shared that she has been wearing a cervical collar due to a neck injury. A library patron, seeing her plight, offered to send her some remote reiki.

Ernon, or anyone else, can you tell me precisely how remote reiki is prepared and sent? One website talked about sending different colored reiki balloons. How would reiki be put into the balloons and how would the recipient get it out, or would they just let the balloon stay close to them?

This is a serious question. Until I read this thread, I thought reiki was a form of Japanese massage, similar to Swedish massage, to ease the pain of sore muscles. Obviously, I was mistaken.

The idea of remote reiki sounds outlandish to me. I don't understand the concept of sending remote healing at all, unless it's along the same lines as intercessionary prayer or a literalization of sending someone good vibes.

After I have stated that it sounds outlandish to me, I will understand if there is a reluctance to answer my question. However, I would much prefer getting an answer to my questions from someone who is not trying to sell it or make a buck off it. So, I ask it here.

How is remote reiki prepared and sent? Anyone?


Gayle
 
The first image of Reiki I received was on TV: It was like theraputic touch, minus the actual touch. No massage involved, except to possibly your chakra, er, aura... whatever.
 
Gayle,

The word Reiki actually means 'universal life force energy'.

When you get to Reiki Level II you are given three symbols that can be used to enhance treatments, one of which is called the Distant Symbol. With the use of the distant symbol, it becomes possible to send Reiki to someone over a distance.
 
Gayle said:
How is remote reiki prepared and sent? Anyone?
Click to expand...
I thought it was kind of similar to prayer -- the "sender" just concentrates on the "receiver", supposedly sending a wave of healing-type energy to them.

I could be wrong though, but that was my impression. And reiki practitioners all do it differently, so I don't think my conception of it would apply to all the people who claim to use reiki at a distance.
 
Nex,

I have just explained the process to you.

Yes, the sender of Reiki does have to concentrate on the person that they are sending to, but they must also use the symbols given to them at level II to be able to do this.

At Reiki one, you are unable to send distant Reiki because you are not taught the symbols to be able to do this.

It is the symbols that create the link.

Other than this, then yes, I am sure there will be some differences in the way that others do this.
 
Physiotherapist said:
Nex,

I have just explained the process to you.

Yes, the sender of Reiki does have to concentrate on the person that they are sending to, but they must also use the symbols given to them at level II to be able to do this.

At Reiki one, you are unable to send distant Reiki because you are not taught the symbols to be able to do this.

It is the symbols that create the link.

Other than this, then yes, I am sure there will be some differences in the way that others do this.
Click to expand...


This is sounding more WOO all the time.

Sooo, lets try a blinded experiment. We can have a 'local reiki practitioner' stay in touch with a subject's aura for a couple hours, while a 'long distance practitioner' intermittantly 'sends energy'. The LRP should be able to 'sense' the fluctuations in the subject's aura. Begin and end the test with a phone link between practioners, to make sure they can't claim later that "the planets were not aligned" or some such excuse. Compare logs later.
 
casebro said:
This is sounding more WOO all the time.

Sooo, lets try a blinded experiment. We can have a 'local reiki practitioner' stay in touch with a subject's aura for a couple hours, while a 'long distance practitioner' intermittantly 'sends energy'. The LRP should be able to 'sense' the fluctuations in the subject's aura. Begin and end the test with a phone link between practioners, to make sure they can't claim later that "the planets were not aligned" or some such excuse. Compare logs later.
Click to expand...


Without taking any position on the wooness of Reiki, I am curious as to where we would get the notion that a purported transmitter 'must' be able to sense what someone or something else is supposedly receiving.

Is this a specific law of physics?
 
Physiotherapist said:
[...] It is the symbols that create the link. [...]
Click to expand...
How does an inanimate object or symbol create a link? And what kind of link is it? And how do you test to make sure the link is there and that it is patent?
 
The original premise was that doctor whatshisname received his symbols from his meditation on top of that mountain. I've seen these symbols and they are a mishmosh of existing chinese/japanese chars. Personally I don't believe remote reiki works at all and the whole reiki thing as it was originally introduced sounds like a scam to get money. Even as a practioner, to obtain each level requires that one pay a fee for the attunement.
 
BronzeDog said:
Your position on Reiki isn't relevant. You're still fallacious.
Click to expand...

It is relavant because I was talking about a personal experience. What does that have to do with the price of milk in china?

When you relate something that happened to you, does someone ask you to go take a test? Similarly, I related something that happened to me. Criticize all you want but it was a personal experience that led to a belief. You're perfectly welcome to disagree but don't start calling me names. Thats when I call you names back. Being fallacious is one thing but calling me stupid and ignorant? A stupid or ignorant person would be the one that assumes that given our infinite universe and probabilities, that something would NEVER occur.

Can you say "Skeptic" ?
 
MoonDragn said:
It is relavant because I was talking about a personal experience. What does that have to do with the price of milk in china?

When you relate something that happened to you, does someone ask you to go take a test? Similarly, I related something that happened to me. Criticize all you want but it was a personal experience that led to a belief. You're perfectly welcome to disagree but don't start calling me names. Thats when I call you names back. Being fallacious is one thing but calling me stupid and ignorant? A stupid or ignorant person would be the one that assumes that given our infinite universe and probabilities, that something would NEVER occur.

Can you say "Skeptic" ?
Click to expand...
Can you say "straw man?"
 
My you just sidestepped my question didn't you? Isn't it convient that everytime a question gets asked, a logic term from wikopedia gets quoted?
 
It's easier to link to the wikipedia entry on "Straw man" than to call you a bold-faced liar. I never called you stupid. I never called you ignorant. I never said Reiki was impossible. I'm willing to be convinced by double-blind control studies.
 
MoonDragn said:
Even as a practioner, to obtain each level requires that one pay a fee for the attunement.
Click to expand...

That would depend on your teacher. I have never paid a penny for any of my levels.

(editied to correct spelling)
 
Last edited:
casebro said:
This is sounding more WOO all the time.

Sooo, lets try a blinded experiment. We can have a 'local reiki practitioner' stay in touch with a subject's aura for a couple hours, while a 'long distance practitioner' intermittantly 'sends energy'. The LRP should be able to 'sense' the fluctuations in the subject's aura. Begin and end the test with a phone link between practioners, to make sure they can't claim later that "the planets were not aligned" or some such excuse. Compare logs later.
Click to expand...


I don't find the word 'aura' in any of my Reiki literature or references to the concept as you are using it. Planets also don't figure into it. The best thought picture I could come up with for what Remote Reiki is supposed to be is to compare it to an email. It is sent to you and you read it when you like. You can re-read it as often as you wish or not.

Maybe the problem with looking at Reiki from a rational point of view is because people have become WOO Weary. One could hardly blame anyone that did, especially when one hears the same meaningless buzz words used and misused over and over again by the believe anything crowd.

There is a lot of new age stuff being shoveled into Reiki by people who think adding a plethora of these buzzwords explains what is happening. They have no science background or they would know they are spouting garbage. Or more likely, they have something to sell to the New Agers and must insert the proper verbage to attract them. In my opinion they are all snake-oil salesmen.
 
Nex said:
I'm really tired right now, but I'll throw my 2 cents in.

I have chronic neuropathic pain in my abdomen and the right side of my ribcage, stemming from surgery I had a year and some months ago. At times it's excruciating. Mostly, though, it's pretty uncomfortable at best. Today's been a good day actually -- it just has a weird "electric-buzz" feeling but no real pain to speak of.

I use self-hypnosis/meditation exclusively for pain management. Since both OTC and Rx narcotic pain relievers do very little for neuropathic pain, I've devised a way to cope with the discomfort while still being able to run errands, go to classes, etc. Never have I tried reiki for this, or any other type of "energy healing." No need.

Ernon, I suspect you may be experiencing placebo or maybe the effect of self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis really doesn't require a whole helluva lot of concentration, so I think perhaps that's what you're really doing.

Like I said, that's just my 2 cents. Now, it's my bedtime. G'night! :cool:
Click to expand...

I'm sorry you also have chronic pain. I have had it for 23 years now. Early on I was taught the techniques of meditation/self-hypnosis and used them to good effect for many years. I have never heard of the placebo effect working on your condition or mine, so I doubt that is what is happening to me.

You may be right about the self-hypnosis and I have thought about that as a possible answer; since I have been doing it for so long it is very easy for me to 'drop' into a medatative state. However that would not explain why the Reiki effect is felt by others when I send it.

I have done a couple of my own non-scientific experiments. Like putting my hands on someone but not sending Reiki and asking them if they felt it or putting my hands on them and asking them to tell me when (if ever) they felt it start. In the first cases, they felt it when I sent it and didn't when I did not. In the second experiment they felt it the moment I started to send it and not before. In all cases I made sure to be standing or seated behind the person so they could not see me and pick up any visual clues as to what I was doing or not doing.

The other day a co-worker asked me to relieve a bad headache she had. After sending the Reiki, but before her headache went away she commented (unsolicited) to another co-worker "That is so weird the way you can feel the intense heat from his hands." The co-worker, replied "You should feel Xxxxx's heat!" (Xxxx is my teacher) About 3 minutes later, she noticed her head didn't hurt any more.

I'll be the first person to say that it is entirely probable that her thinking that I could heal her, was what actually healed her (placebo effect). But at the same time, I have had too many anecdotal experiences just like this and others even more compelling, to dismiss it offhand as nothing more than placebo or projected hypnosis. I'll say again, I don't know what is happening. I continue to experiment because it is interesting and because it manages my pain effectivly. I will add, however, that it has not yet "healed" me in that I still have pain, managed though it may be.
 
Ernon, how about starting a log of your Reiki "treatments"? You seem to be some skeptical, maybe you can learn your self something . Not to mention the placebo enhancement that your subjects will get when they see you write their names in a little book. Leave room next to their names for a feedback rating. 1-5? Placebo may help up to 60% in some studies, see how your skills compare. But try to be honest, write down every subject so you don't 'forget' your failures. And try not to pick and choose your subjects- you'l have to 'treat' broken bones, ulcers, cancer as well as tension headaches. Make notes in your log for conventional treatments too- you can't get full credit for a cure if the patient is taking medicine too. Best test would be a cancer patient that hasn't started chemo/radiation yet. And also don't take credit for the natural healing process- bones heal in a couple weeks, colds last seven days, headaches go away in a couple hours anyhow, cancer has spontaneous remissions too, you can't take credit for those either. Hmmmm...doesn't seem like I left you much to take credit for???
 
casebro said:
Ernon, how about starting a log of your Reiki "treatments"? You seem to be some skeptical, maybe you can learn your self something. <snip> Hmmmm...doesn't seem like I left you much to take credit for???
Click to expand...

LOL, I don't want credit. :)
I like the idea of a log book but if I did that, no one would see it for exactly reason you stated: seeing it would influence them and that would taint my experiments.

There are a couple of other problems with your proposition though. I would not in good conscious offer someone more hope than I know I could deliver. I can take minor pain away from myself, so if someone asks me to do that for them I would. However, Reiki has not cured me of anything, so I can not assume it would cure anyone else. To me there is a huge difference between pain relief and curing something. I would first need to see evidence of ‘miraculous cures’ on myself before I would hold it out as hope for another person. My oldest son broke a toe and I gave him a treatment. It didn’t heal overnight ;), or even particularly quickly, but he said the pain the first day was significantly less after the treatment and throughout the healing process.

My last surgery was to fuse a bone in my thumb to one in my wrist, very painful. Reiki has been helpful in pain control, but has not ‘cured’ me. I am not complaining, pain relief is wonderful as anyone with chronic pain knows, but permanently healing it would be the proof I would need. It has already been too long since the surgery (2 years) to claim any miraculous healing at this point even if it happened today. What I will claim and my Doctor will back up, is that I went through the stages of healing this type of ‘injury’ faster than he normally experiences with other patients, with an important caveat; most people who have this surgery are significantly older than I am by at least 20 years. My body would naturally heal faster than theirs. That was my third surgery (all unrelated) so I know about how fast I normally heal. It did appear that I healed faster with the last surgery (the only one I had the opportunity to try Reiki on), but that is of course a very subjective conclusion.

IF Reiki can be shown to be an effective pain control mechanism, that is good enough for it to have value in IMHO, it doesn’t need to cure. Unfortunately, what I see in Reiki is people thinking they can take a weekend course, learn the woo words, hang out a shingle making outrageous claims and start charging for ‘healing’; it is all so much disingenuous bullpucky, it angers me.

I have theories as to why I am having success where others are not, but it goes to the heart of their training (or lack thereof) and attitudes. In Reiki one really has to learn not to do anything, not to try to control or direct anything. It is much harder than it sounds. Years of meditation taught me how to clear my mind of distractions, so maybe I have a leg up on others. When the practitioners ego gets involved, Reiki doesn’t flow. I know this last paragraph sounds VERY Woo, but I can not find non-woo abused words to describe what I have experienced directly.

I am a level three Reiki Master, one who has been ‘attuned’ with the fourth symbol, the Master Symbol. I went the long route in my studies, not the weekend seminar crap. It took me two years to get here and I had a 30 year head start with semi-related earlier studies. Even so, I haven’t bought into all the things Reiki is supposed to be able do since I haven’t seen the claims demonstrated. That is not to say that I won’t, just that I haven’t to date. And I feel there are a lot of claims being made that have nothing to do with what Reiki could conceivably accomplish.

I don't believe in magic, so whatever is happening will have a scientific explaination be it an undiscovered ability of the mind or a strictly placebo effect.
 
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