"I envision a health care environment in which healing is as valued as cure, and the care of the entire health care staff and patient’s family is as important as the care of the patient."

With this revolutionary intent, Pamela Miles is bringing Reiki into hospitals and other clinical settings in New York City.

She is not alone. In New England, volunteer Reiki clinics operate alongside community hospitals. Nurses and other medical staff in Washington and Oregon are Reiki-trained to provide better care for their patients and themselves. Reiki projects are springing up in Atlanta, Boston, Birmingham, Tucson and other communities around the United States. A growing handful of pioneer physicians incorporate Reiki into their medical practices.

How does the homely "folk art" of Reiki fit beside the high-tech machinery of contemporary American medicine? Very well, thank you. But patience and respect are advised when introducing "traditional" healing methods like Reiki into contemporary medical settings.

St. Luke’s Roosevelt HIV Center

The HIV Center at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in New York is one of the oldest and largest HIV care facilities in the US. Since 1996 the Center has offered a program of complementary therapies—shiatsu, hatha yoga, meditation, and Reiki—to help its clients manage their stress and develop healthy lifestyles to minimize hospitalization. In addition to treatments, the Center sponsors Pamela Miles to offer Reiki training four times a year. Medical students and residents from Beth Israel Medical Center observe these classes as a part of their training in integrative medicine.

How does it help?

"We see a lot of people with anxiety disorders," said HIV Center Program Director, Robert Schmehr. "It’s one reason why people use drugs. When they’re in treatment, getting clean and dealing with their HIV, their anxiety rises. They can’t ride subways, can’t go out in social situations. We teach them to use Reiki to deal with that anxiety, and it gives them a feeling of being empowered. It’s something they can do for themselves."

The HIV Center serves more than 2000 clients on an outpatient basis. Ninety-nine percent are on medical assistance. About 60% have a history of incarceration and nearly two-thirds have a record of intravenous drug use. Reiki training is funded by foundation grants, and between 40 and 60 patients take advantage of the offering each year.

Robert sees that Reiki makes life livable for this population. "Reiki can be a tangible part of their substance abuse recovery program," he explained. "It’s relapse prevention."

Reiki Master Pamela Miles oversees the volunteer treatment program, and teaches the classes. "What I see in addicts is a natural spirituality run amok—a desire to surrender without discernment as to what is worthy of surrender. In a Reiki class, students for the first time experience something within them that’s pure, that soothes them. I tell them, ‘Reiki is like mother’s milk. You’re nursing yourself with your hands.’ It connects them to their spirituality and helps them begin to break the bonds of their addiction and to heal themselves."

Robert estimates that 50% of the patients trained actually use their Reiki. Of that number, another half of them use it daily and incorporate it as a significant part of their healthcare, regulating stress and managing their pain. "Practicing Reiki helps them to make healthier lifestyle choices, too, including taking advantage of other kinds of health and emotional support. Immunologically, we can’t measure Reiki’s effect; there are just too many variables. But I can say without question that the clients who use Reiki live healthier lives."

A Professional Approach

Robert was instrumental in getting Reiki into the HIV Center. "I first experienced Reiki seven years ago," he recalled. "It became the core of my healing, both emotional and physical. I wanted to apply it here, but I couldn’t find the way to bring it into the professional medical environment. Until I met Pamela. She has the right personality, the right kind of professionalism that helped us bridge the gap."

Pamela’s "right kind of professionalism" has opened doors to medical centers throughout New York City. In addition to her work at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt, she has presented complementary therapies to medical staff and patients at Beth Israel Medical Center, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, Montefiore Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, and Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center, in the departments of family medicine and oncology, and to psychiatric, HIV, and post-treatment cancer programs. She also maintains a private Reiki practice.

What is her motivation for taking Reiki into hospitals?

"I perceive a need for healing and spirituality to be brought back into medicine," Pamela explained. "I come from a long line of nurses. I’m squeamish so I didn’t to practice medicine, but I share that desire to heal. And I had a lot of early exposure to the medical environment."

Pamela believes that the way to make healing available to the largest number of people is to go through the medical professions, and she has a genuine compassion for medical professionals. "I couldn’t tolerate witnessing the kind of suffering that doctors and nurses witness on a daily basis without being able to do something to relieve it. Reiki is a powerful support for their work, and the simplest support."

"By getting Reiki into hospitals," she added, "we can start healing our medicine."

Pamela was a professional healer for many years before she heard about Reiki. "I always helped other people, but my own immune system was compromised. I was sick in bed one or two days every month. I didn’t know how to bring this healing into service for my own body. Reiki changed that. Reiki gave me an incredible self help tool. It’s astounding how healthy I became." Empowering the patient—providing tools that help people help—is one of her great rewards as a Reiki Master.

Speaking the Language

Reiki Master Norma Jean Young relies on her nursing background when she teaches Reiki to medical professionals in holistic hospitals on the West Coast. "The hospitals I work with are willing to offer Reiki training for staff—even to pay for it—and to let staff use Reiki in their jobs. It’s been a long process. Now these hospitals are more approachable for developing in-hospital Reiki programs. We, as Reiki practitioners, need to be prepared to talk their language, and to understand and learn more from the medical perspective."

Pamela agrees. "The medical world is the doctor’s domain. We’re the interloper. We must communicate the practice in a clean and simple way, without a lot of dogma."

Pamela cautions that people who do healing work are often blind to their assumptions about healing, about the medical profession, and about Reiki. "There’s no place for fanaticism in the medical environment. No matter what we may feel about the superiority of Reiki, a hospital is a medical domain and Reiki will always be in a supporting position In that environment."

Pamela and Norma Jean both advocate Reiki research, but acknowledge the difficulty of applying Western scientific standards to study its effect. A simple place to begin would be to replicate studies done on the healing effects of prayer and Therapeutic Touch.

"You don’t have to have proof to speak the doctor’s language," Pamela asserted. "I tell them there’s no scientific proof for this, but there’s also no scientific proof against it. At the moment we don’t have the technology to dissect the subtle energy field of the body in the same way we can dissect a physical body. But science does acknowledge that energy field, and can measure that this field appears strongest at the hands and feet."

"I also remind them that healing and a form of medicine existed for thousands of years before science was created by the human mind," she continued. "Besides, doctors know that if you give 20 patients a "proven" medication, you’ll get many different responses to it. Addressing this is almost a relief to them. Most can relate to this framework for the practice of Reiki."

Healing The Healers

American healthcare has been under scrutiny for years. Consumers and providers feel the effects of what one doctor called "churn-them-out" medicine. News stories often report the negative impact of this profit-driven philosophy on the patient. Bringing Reiki into the medical setting could soothe the less publicized but equally real pain of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.

"We offer something they need for themselves and they know it," said Pamela. "They sorely feel the lack of healing in their world. We must carry that gift lightly and with a lot of compassion."

"One way I can help medical people is to help them realize Reiki is so flexible it can be invisible. Doctors can learn to treat themselves before they integrate Reiki into THE care OF their patients."

To Norma Jean, pain management is the area crying for Reiki application especially in cancer care. "Oncologists feel so bereft that they have only two courses of treatment – chemotherapy and surgery. It’s a place of great need, for the patient and the professional. If Reiki research and practice concentrated on breast cancer alone it would be incredible."

Professional Training

The discussion of using Reiki in hospitals brings up the issue of professionalism in Reiki training. Pamela stressed, "Reiki training is not professional training. Students will find a lot of crossover if they are already trained in a healing profession, but if people have no training for how to be in a clinical or therapeutic setting, they need to develop those skills. I tell them to start by treating themselves, then to slowly branch out to treating family and friends. From there, they can pursue other skills."

How would a Reiki student start a clinical program in his local hospital? Norma Jean has been working with some hospitals for ten years, slowly building the relationships necessary to found a successful program.

Pamela advised, "Ask a lot of questions before you start. Find out as much as you can about this population – physicians as well as patients. The more you know about their needs, the more you can address them directly. And you must communicate your genuine respect for their profession."

Clear communication about Reiki, and offering personnel an opportunity to experience a treatment are key. Most successful hospital programs also hinge on the advocacy of an "insider," someone like Robert Schmehr in a position to influence management decisions. It takes a lot of time and energy to initiate a project and to sustain it.

"I’m a practical realist," Norma Jean confessed. "I look for the opportunity, and I go where I’m invited. I see that grassroots efforts make big changes happen in the world.”

Can Reiki and other natural therapies be successfully integrated with medicine? Robert thinks it’s too early to say. "It depends on how well current integrative medicine programs can demonstrate their efficacy. We need to show that we’re really helping people, and to quantify our results so Western medicine can understand what we’re doing."

"We need to educate, to offer treatment to staff," he went on. "If possible, we need to offer training so staff can understand it better. The Reiki treatment should also be a part of the medical record. It helps the other care professionals see its effect."

"African traditional medicine believes there’s no healing without a change of consciousness," Pamela said. "Reiki effects that kind of change." With time and patience, Reiki may bring a change of consciousness about what constitutes healthcare in the United States and in the world, integrating the effectiveness of scientific method with the age old mystery of healing touch.

Reiki In Clinical Practice

*Jill Baron, MD, worked in a women’s health clinic on Long Island when she began to incorporate Reiki into her practice.

"I started to do Reiki on all my patients and they calmed down. The healing power of touch can’t be underestimated. That connection with life force connects you with the patient. I think Reiki can be a tremendous adjunct to medicine, but first we need education – for the physicians and the insurance companies.

*Dan Garfinkel, MD uses Reiki in his private practice near Washington, DC.

One of Dr. Garfinkel’s elderly patients came in with aching hands. He sat, holding her right hand in his two huge hands as they talked together. When she left she told him her hand felt better. She called him the next day to say that her hand still felt better, and that the other hand felt better, too!

"One barrier to using Reiki in a clinical setting is the emphasis on what’s covered by insurance companies. People find it difficult when it comes to healthcare to spend money on something that’s not covered. The same people will spend the same money on some fleeting pleasure. Reiki is a gift that will last your lifetime! But it’s difficult for people to understand."

*Larry Palevsky, MD, is former head of pediatric emergency at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York

Dr. Palevsky has used Reiki "hundreds of times" in the delivery room. He tells one story after another of babies who exhibit breathing problems shortly after birth. Instead of applying the usual interventions, Dr. Palevsky says, "I put one hand on the back of the head and one hand on the top and stand there and do Reiki. Ninety-nine out of one hundred times, I watch the babies come into themselves. Breathing normalizes, muscles relax. The little noises they make as a sign of distress resolve. All within ten to fifteen minutes."

"It’s very distressing that everyone feels they need to validate a practice with the use of Western standards, trying double-blind studies for something that’s been used for thousands of years. For the skeptics who need research, go ahead, but I think it’s redundant. We don’t need research to prove what’s already been proven."

by Barbara McDaniel

This story first appeared in Reiki Magazine International, February/March 2000, ©Barbara McDaniel 2000. This story may be printed and shared with others, but may not be reproduced in any magazine, newspaper, or web site without specific permission of the author. Contact Barbara at barbara@reikihealingarts.com. Contact Reiki Magazine at www.reikimagazine.com.

Karin Olson, a Registered Nurse and Ph.D., has coordinated two studies of Reiki’s effect on cancer pain. Results of the pilot study were published in Volume 1, Number 2 of the journal, Cancer Prevention and Control, in 1997. A manuscript outlining the findings of a Phase II trial has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. Both reports indicate that Reiki is effective in reducing pain.

Dr. Olson was employed at the Cross Cancer Research Center in Edmonton, Alberta when she met Lisa Fontanella and learned about Reiki. Her purpose in engaging in this research is stated in the pilot study report. “To date, most research on cancer pain has focused on the use of opioids,” the paper begins. “Since high doses of opioids frequently aggravate other common symptoms of cancer,” she and co-researcher John Hanson were interested in exploring therapies that “may allow control of cancer pain with lower doses of opioids.”

The research team first combed through extant research literature but found no study of this kind. They then designed a pilot study to see whether Reiki is beneficial in managing pain in general.

Preliminary Study

The pilot study recruited twenty volunteers who were experiencing pain at fifty-five sites for a variety of reasons, including cancer. Each volunteer received a full Reiki treatment of one and a quarter hours duration, administered by a second degree Reiki practitioner (Fontanella) in her office. The environmental factors were the same for each treatment. Two different scales were used to measure pain: a visual analogue scale (VAS) ranging from 0 to 10 and a Likert scale ranging from 0 to 5. Volunteers completed both scales immediately before and after the treatment. The results showed that eighty-five percent of the volunteers had less pain after the Reiki treatment, called a “significant reduction” in the paperπs summary.

The results of the pilot study were encouraging but not conclusive. Since there was no placebo control group in the trial, the researchers couldn’t rule out the possibility of a placebo effect. Secondly, the length of the pain-reducing benefit wasn’t measured, so the researchers had no way of knowing the long-term benefit of a treatment. The touch itself may also have been a contributing factor to the results, but they had enough information to design and carry out a second study.

Phase II

The Phase II Trial of Reiki for the Management of Pain in Cancer Patients compared pain, quality of life, and analgesic use in two groups of cancer patients. One group received standard opioid pain management plus rest; the other used standard opioid management plus Reiki.

The study followed twenty-four patients for seven days. The patients kept diaries that recorded their use of medication and other activities used to relieve pain. A Reiki group received a full treatment one hour after their first afternoon analgesic dose on day one and again on day four of the study period. The other group rested for one and a half hours after their first afternoon analgesic dose on days one and four. VAS pain ratings, blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration were taken before and after each treatment/rest period. Quality of life was assessed on the first and last days (day one and day seven) of the study period.

Complete findings of the Phase II trial can’t be released before publication of the report, but the results encourage further study, both in Reiki’s effect on pain and on quality of life. Dr. Olson, Lisa Fontanella, and the rest of the team plan to seek funding for the next trial in the near future.

(You’ll find an interview with Lisa Fontanella about the process of developing this Reiki research in Wonderful Reiki Stories, available by signing up for Reiki Healing Arts’ monthly eZine on any page of our website, www.reikihealingarts.com.)

This story first appeared in Reiki Magazine International, August/September 2003, ©Barbara McDaniel 2003. This story may be printed and shared with others, but may not be reproduced in any magazine, newspaper, or web site without specific permission of the author. Contact Barbara at barbara@reikihealingarts.com. Contact Reiki Magazine at www.reikimagazine.com.

 

Look for silent retreats on the Internet and you’ll find hundreds—Catholic, Vedanta, men’s, Lutheran, Buddhist, women’s, Quaker. It appears that every spiritual tradition encourages us to be still for a time, to quiet the endless chatter of the surface mind and listen with our whole bodies to . . . well, what we’re listening for depends on the tradition, but all promote a sense of focusing inward. In Reiki we are encouraged from first degree on to “listen to our hands,” listen to our hearts. And if you practice enough long enough, Reiki, it seems, will call you to silence. This call finally led me to explore meditation after many years of resistance. This call—coupled with a fascination for the idea of practicing in community in silence—led my Reiki students to ask me to offer a silent Reiki retreat.

"Silence," writes Joan Chittister in Illuminated Life, "is the lost art in a society made of noise.”

One part of silence is not talking, letting the mind settle into deeper places. Another part is listening. Chittister continues, “ . . . the real material of spiritual development is not in books. It is in the subject matter of the self . . . Silence is the cave through which the soul must travel, clearing out the dissonance of life as we go . . .”

Without the clamor, we can hear what’s going on inside.

Listening

From the beginning I enjoyed the silence of Reiki treatment. I had practiced for about ten years when I began to have opportunities to give many treatments—four or five a day, five or six days on end. Sitting for hours in the quiet of a Reiki session, I finally had to face the contents of my mind.

Silence supports the practice of Reiki. With hands and body we listen intently to the rhythm of the energetic flow. In silence we can watch our thoughts burble up as well, noticing how and why we worry or anger, feeling when kindness, gratitude, and honoring arise. When we listen in the silence of Reiki, we know ourselves better, and we know the person we’re treating.

Without words, we come closer to direct experience. For a practice like Reiki, where so much of what we feel, sense, know, and understand is impossible to describe, silence is a natural resting place.

Retreat

Through good friends and good fortune I met a meditation teacher, which eventually led to an opportunity of a lifetime—a three-month silent retreat. What I learned and how the retreat changed my life is a book-length story. Among the many things I walked away with is an abiding appreciation and hunger for silence.

I found that talking requires tremendous energy and that there is safety in silence. When we’re not talking, I’m not telling tales to impress you, not defending myself with words. I don’t have to be anybody. You don’t either. The deeper and longer the silence, the more inside myself I can go. The deeper the silence, the more I can relate to you without pretense or masks . . . and the more you can know about me. We know each other without words.

And isn’t that also the experience of Reiki? When you treat someone over time, don’t you know that person intimately . . . and in an almost impersonal way you can’t describe?

When I returned to my Reiki community after the three-month retreat, people noticed a difference. When I took every opportunity to do more retreat, people in the Reiki circle got curious: What is this silence thing about? My colleague, Paul Mitchell, had already offered a silent retreat for Reiki Masters. Why not try it?

I borrowed the framework from the Tibetan Buddhist retreats I had attended, but the practices were purely Reiki. I wanted participants to give and receive full treatments every day and to luxuriate in full self-treatments too. Most of all, I wanted the silence to help us focus our minds around the Reiki precepts. A daily, one-hour discussion on a specific precept both relieved the urge to speak and expanded our reflection.

Through silence and sharing together in community, our appreciation of Reiki grows. We’ll retreat together for a third time this fall.

Experiences of a Silent Reiki Retreat
Voices in the Silence
compiled and edited by Karen Spiel

The golds of the maple and alder trees glowed against the deep blue of the water. The whispers of leaves falling from the trees were among the loudest voices we heard all weekend, because this was a Silent Reiki Retreat.

Thirty spokes meet at the wheel’s axis;The center space makes the wheel useful.Form clay into a cup;The center space gives it purpose.Frame doors and windows for a house;The openings make the house useful.Therefore, purpose comes from what is thereBecause of what is not there. (Tao, 11)

There were eight of us, including our facilitator. Our setting was the Harmony Hill Retreat Center on Hood Canal in Washington State at the peak of autumn. We came from different places and with different purposes, but with one common goal: to explore Reiki within a landscape of silence, which we would create together. Our three days were carefully scheduled, starting with an early morning group self-treatment while contemplating one of the precepts, morning and afternoon Reiki treatments, one hour in the early evening for group discussion about a precept, and group self-treatment to close the day. We had ample time for walking in the woods or on the beach and gazing into the fire. Here are some of our individual experiences:

From Gretchen:

I arrived exhausted, relishing the idea of taking some time off just for myself. I was having a terrible time shaking off the effects of a cold virus and wondering if it was developing into pneumonia again. I really needed some rest after teaching elementary school children.

The effects of the continuous Reiki treatments were profound. I have been doing Reiki for so long, but I was still amazed at the way my body healed so quickly. By the second day, I could breathe deeply again. Later that afternoon, I began to feel like myself. Finally, as we gathered for breakfast on the last day, I realized my mind had a clarity that had been lacking from a month of suffering from two successive viruses.

There was another response within me. The quality of our relationships in silence was a unique experience of peaceful connection. The sense of harmony built among the group, expanding to a fullness of blessed community. It was a joyful experience that I have carried back to the children I teach.

From Tod:

Silence is a much different experience for me than just quiet. I am usually a “quiet” person. In the case of this weekend I experienced both aspects, quiet and silence. Quiet is relatively easy if and when I remember to keep my mouth shut. The social compulsion to greet someone is a hard habit to suppress. We were all laughing about it as we gathered. We all said, “Oh yes, I can do this. No problem.” Yet first thing on the first morning, there was the urge to speak.

Silence is another thing. Until I actually approach it in earnest, I don’t experience it that much except during times of meditation and sometimes during Reiki treatments. The rest of the time I have a relatively boisterous life. This is particularly true in the collective residence where I live. Silence becomes an inner experience that I can rely on for comfort amidst the activity around me. The renewal experience here at Harmony Hill reminds me of what is possible when I have silence well in mind.

The addition of almost constant Reiki helps the meaning and the practice go just that much deeper. My experience of Reiki, while in an environment of silence and quiet, becomes even more intense. I find that in silence, with intention, I allow the Reiki to become more effective.

From Casey:

For years I listened to stories from other circle members about their silent retreats. I don’t really meditate, but it sounded so heavenly! I asked our leader what she thought, and so the first retreat happened last year. I didn’t make it. This year though, I did, arriving with a full-fledged cold. Could it get worse? Sure it could—I threw my back out Friday before lunch. I saw stars. I was in silence, what was I to do? It was time to make friends with my afflictions: This cold is making me miserable. I can’t think, I can’t smell, I can’t taste. I am running like a faucet. I used that as a tool to help me work. It became a cleansing river, washing away whatever I could let go of. My back—what can I say? Anyone who has ever had a backache knows. It hurt to move. I was doubled over like I was ninety years old, every step sending pain from head to toe. I had no choice but to "be still and notice,” so I had stillness and listening. It was so powerful. I do not at all regret that I could not walk in that beautiful place. I have no doubt what happened was what was supposed to happen. There is something truly wonderful about silence by agreement. It allows you as much room as you could possibly need. Our leader told us silence was as much about listening. I listened a lot! Am I changed? Most definitely! As I write this, it’s about three or four weeks later and the peace and depth are still with me.

From Karen:

At first I had to quell little urges to talk, and it was pretty noisy inside my head, with lots of unspoken conversations. I was worried that I would forget and make some silly remark, shattering the silence. At the same time, the freedom to experience, ponder, and savor without the need to verbalize was deeply restful. When I stopped talking, not only did my noisy left brain get to rest, but I noticed more of the thoughts that came from my quieter, intuitive right brain.

As time went on, we all seemed to feel more and more comfortable with not talking and with the spare gracefulness of simple gestures for thank you, excuse me, and back-in-a-sec. The silence began to feel like something we were all creating, not a lack of words.

Beginning our morning with contemplation of a precept helped me weave this thinking into the day, and the quiet gave opportunity for insights to arise. Often for me these insights were visual, tactile, or visceral instead of my usual verbal. I had wondered what it would be like to break silence every day for our hour-long discussion of precepts. Our discussions were thought provoking, and after the hour, we renewed our commitment to silence, so there was a slow rhythm to the day, like breaking a fast. Over the weekend I began to realize that a theme for me to take away from this weekend was listening—without worry or impatience, to hear what people need so that I can act with more kindness, mindfulness, and gratitude.

From Arlene:

I went to the retreat to explore the qualities of silence. I learned more than I expected. There are many levels of silence. There is the comfortable silence of a couple married for many years that have already shared so many thoughts and often know what the other is thinking without saying anything. There is a silence where people come together for a silent retreat and have many thoughts and observations that they try to share through non-verbal means. And there is the silence where people come together prepared to let go of thoughts and ideas as unnecessary and drop into a deep introspective peace. So one silence is obviously quieter than others are, and there are things to be learned from each type. Each afternoon, after our second treatment, we came together to discuss the Reiki precepts. This was not a time to visit; it was a guided discussion on a specific quality of one or more of the precepts. Coming out of a treatment and silence seemed to intensify and focus our thoughts. Each person had some insightful ideas about the precepts and how they all interconnect with each other. It expanded my understanding and helped me to appreciate the depth of these simple phrases. I came home determined to be more diligent about making the precepts an integral part of every day.

As with the cup of the Tao, the purpose came from what was not there, and together we filled that empty cup with Reiki. Three days of moving toward wholeness as individuals and as a group—it was a rich, restorative, and unforgettable experience.