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Using hands to heal Reiki, a form of energy therapy,is gaining acceptance at some local hospitals Tuesday, October 23, 2001 By Susan Scott Schmidt
Correction/Clarification: (Published Nov. 6, 2001) A story on Reiki energy therapy in Your Health Oct. 23 incorrectly stated that a government-funded Reiki study on stroke patients showed that the therapy helped reduce stroke disability in the first year.
The study's principal investigator Samuel Shiflett, who conducted the study at the Kessler Medical Rehabilitation Research & Education Corp. in West Orange, N.J., said last week the therapy did not help in stroke recovery. Elena Gillespie, a Reiki Master and University of Michigan Medical Center researcher who provided the reporter with information about the Kessler study, said in reading the study's results, she believed Reiki provided some help with pain management.
Nancy Murray worked in the intensive care unit at the former Montefiore University Hospital in 1997. As a physical therapist assistant, she watched patients struggle on respirators, machines that breathed for them.
At night, the Regent Square resident traveled to a local natural health center, where she practiced Reiki, a Japanese hands-on healing art.
Trained as a Reiki Master, Murray would lay her hands on ill people, channeling life energy into them in a one-hour treatment. She treated people with chronic fatigue syndrome, AIDS, cancer and those just feeling stress from a day's work. Murray led parallel lives in conventional and complementary medicine. The schism frustrated her.
Would the two professions ever intersect?
Today, 300 hospitals recognize Reiki, including at least two in the Pittsburgh area -- Somerset Hospital Center for Health and Allegheny General, which have incorporated the healing art into treatment.
The word Reiki, pronounced RAY KEY, comes from two Japanese glyphs -- Re (Spirit) and Ki (life energy). In this therapy, spiritual energy is channeled through the practitioners to heal the spirit, and the body is healed in turn, according to adherents.
"It's a self-empowerment technique," says Murray.
An estimated 60,000 Reiki Masters work in the United States today. Sven Hosford, publisher of Point of Light, a local New Age magazine, estimates that two or three dozen Reiki Masters teach in the region.
Reiki is performed by laying hands on fully clothed patients. The hands move up and down the body in 12 to 15 positions, holding each from three to five minutes. The positions correspond closely to the body's seven energy centers, which the Eastern tradition calls chakras.
"It's not massage, acupuncture nor acupressure." says Elena Gillespie, a Reiki Master and researcher at University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor. She received $100,000 from the National Institutes of Health National Center for Complementary Medicine to explore the effect of Reiki on diabetes neuropathy, a painful foot condition. The government also has funded a study on stroke patients at Kessler Institute of Neurological Studies in West Orange, N.J. Statistics showed that Reiki helped reduce stroke disability in the first year.
"The Alternative Advisor: The Complete Guide to Natural Therapies and Alternative Treatments" by Time-Life says Reiki has been used to treat arthritis, athletic injuries, chronic fatigue syndrome, indigestion, insomnia, chronic pain, stress and other conditions.
Evidence of Reiki's benefits is mainly anecdotal. The existence of energy fields "is not yet experimentally proven," according to the NIH complementary medicine center.
Reiki Masters believe otherwise. All people have healing power within them, they say. Training just flips the switch to "on," activating it.
"We don't connect Reiki to anything supernatural or religious," says Gillespie. "People get the concept intuitively. It's like explaining water to a fish. If you've ever hugged someone, it feels good. We're all informally doing energy therapy."
The history
Reiki was used 1,000 years ago in Japan. It was rediscovered by a Japanese Christian monk named Mikao Usui, who taught at a boys school in Kyoto.
In the early 1900s, he set out on a 14-year quest for enlightenment after a student challenged him to perform a miracle. Usui's quest took him to India and into Buddhist monasteries. After he meditated for 21 days atop a holy Japanese mountain known as Mount Kurama, a bright light with Reiki symbols encased in bubbles appeared before him.
Usui took Reiki to the slums of Kyoto and healed beggars.
More about Reiki
He passed his knowledge to Chujiro Hayashi, a retired naval officer, who founded a clinic in Tokyo and developed the standard hand positions and other procedures.
A Japanese-American woman, Hawayo Takata, brought Reiki to the United States in the late 1930's having claimed her tumors were healed during therapy at Hayashi's clinic.
At the 100-bed Somerset Hospital, staff train for free and are encouraged to use Reiki with patients. Dr. Mary Kashurba, a physiatrist who cares for stroke victims, amputees and people rehabilitating from accidents, is also a Reiki Master and does the teaching. (Physiatrics is a branch of medicine that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease with physical means rather than with drugs, such as by massage, infrared or ultraviolet light, electrotherapy, hydrotherapy, heat, or exercise.)
"We focus on stress reduction and relaxation." says Somerset administrator Cheryl Brill. "Health care can be cold and high tech. It's an opportunity to put the humanistic component back into the care we provide."
Kashurba's most enthusiastic Reiki fans are the nurses in the labor and delivery rooms. "They've found it to be helpful in keeping mothers calm and decreasing pain during labor, and they love to use it on newborns," Kashurba said. "If a newborn is in trouble, they've used it and watched the color come back into the baby's face."
Kathleen Krebs, a registered nurse who manages Allegheny General's Integrated Medicine Program, likes Reiki, too. Dr. Arvind Kulkarni, a board-certified oncologist and Reiki Master, headed that program until he recently returned to his native India.
One patient, a woman with lymphoma of the eye, asked for Reiki before her radiation. Krebs and Kulkarni went to the sub-basement of the hospital, among the cobalt machines used for chemotherapy, to work on her.
"It was a sacred moment," recalls Krebs. "There we were, in the clinic, with him doing Reiki and me doing therapeutic touch [another type of healing therapy] beside him, before she got on the radiation table."
Although some staff at UPMC Shadyside's Center for Complementary Medicine have trained independently in Reiki, the therapy is not practiced nor recognized by UPMC.
The center has concentrated on other therapies in its commitment to offer care that is safe and can be evaluated for their efficacy, says Patricia Bartone, the center's clinical director. It has not had a chance to fully investigate Reiki.
Reiki is relatively safe. Kashurba believes there are no real contraindictions to use. "What's unique about Reiki," she says "is that it is spiritually guided and the person can only take what they need to help."
Some say Reiki should not be used with electrical monitoring devices like EKG's because it interferes with the readings. Reiki Master Tom Beardshall of McMurray believes it should not be used with mentally ill people in crisis, as it can intensify their distress.
A small group
Murray, the physical therapy assistant, always hoped to bring science and Reiki together. In 1994, she helped form a group called Key Stone Reiki to teach and practice. The core of the group included ophthalmic technician Kathy Welsh, natural foods consultant CarEl Dolce and writer Anne Gaudio.
In 1997, Murray and her group tried to begin a study in the Montefiore intensive care unit to use Reiki to help wean patients from respirators. Patients don't accept the tubes easily, and physicians typically have to prescribe drugs to calm them. But the drugs make it hard to get off breathing machines. Murray thought Reiki could reduce the need for the drugs.
The group raised money to train 15 hospital staff. But the project floundered when Montefiore reorganized and staff were transferred to other units.
She still dreams of participating in a NIH-funded study.
Gillespie of Michigan thinks Murray may get her chance. "As the medical system resources get overtaxed, I think we'll need as many people as possible to help with energy therapies."
Susan Scott Schmidt is a free-lance writer who covers alternative health issues.
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