Here's what I would say about Reiki... It's new-age, it's wacky, it doesn't work. And a lot of silly, gullible people spend their hard earned dollars on it in vain.
That's a popular type of thinking about Reiki and alternative medicine in general. And it's pretty appealing to the logical, scientific brains of our time. Except for one dilemma...Reiki does work and millions of people could say from personal experience that this is true.
So then the question becomes- as we sit atop our high horse in this, the age of reason- how does Reiki work? Or more to the point, why does it work. By all accounts it shouldn't work. It doesn't use any drugs. You don't have to cut into anything or anyone. 'Normal' doctors don't use it. I can't see it with my eyes or hear it with my ears. So, sorry lady. I don't believe it. It just doesn't work.
Except that it does.
Let's look at Reiki a bit here to see if we can figure this out. In a Reiki session you lay your hands on someone and use your life energy to help someone else's life energy to flow. Now that's just downright crazy. Anyone would say it, right. Now Reiki originated in Japan a long time ago. This is all the more reason to be skeptical. I mean no-one knew anything about medicine back then. So how could there be any validity to this stuff at all?
Well it now appears that science itself is coming up with a good and scientific theory to answer the question 'How does Reiki work?' Because Reiki actually does work. And the explanation is coming from the new and pioneer field of high-energy physics. (Hmm. Physics, huh?) As these scientists talk about high-energy physics, they bandy about terms like 'subatomic matter', 'unpolarized' and 'vortex' theory. From all of this, one gets the strong impression that there is some kind of energy flowing- energy that is way too small for us to detect by our standard methods of measurement.
However, we can certainly feel this energy. And we feel it distinctly- such as the tingling, warm, pins-and-needles feeling that a Reiki practitioner has in the hands as he or she works on someone. We also feel it when we are practiced upon- like a sensation of warmth, or even cold, in an area of the body that is worked upon. (Hmph. You're not just pulling my leg are you?)
Now let's take a better look at who has been using this Reiki stuff. If we really put our minds to it, we may be surprised at what we find out. For instance, do you remember the old biblical 'laying on of hands?' I hate to say it, but that does sound an awful lot like Reiki. So maybe, when we look back to our past as a race, we can see that people in the days of old were not as dopey as we once thought. They had some kind of intrinsic knowledge, for instance, that if something works- don't question, don't ask why or how- just use it. I wonder sometimes if we can't use a slice of their common-sense, old fashioned though it is to the Age of Reason advocates.