Reiki benefits research

Reiki benefits research

1. Some Reiki research outcome in a nutshell
   Since late 90s a number of studies and trials have been completed about Reiki usefulness in improving quality of life for chronically or critically ill patients.
   Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine published in 1998 a research about “Effects of Reiki on pain and selected affective and personality variables of chronically ill patients”. At the end of the 10 biweekly Reiki sessions, there was recorded a significantly reduced pain, depression and anxiety. Moreover, the follow up at three moths demonstrated that Reiki treatments have a lasting effect6.
   One research done in 2003 into reducing cancer’s patients’ pain 3 concluded that there is evidence Reiki might improve quality of life and also improve pain management in people receiving chemo.
   Similarly, a pilot crossover trial of Reiki versus rest for treating cancer related fatigue was performed in 2007. The group of patients receiving Reiki was compared with the group who rest for one hour a day, the timeframe required to receive a full body Reiki treatment. The results of the trial showed significant change in all areas pre and post treatment in the Reiki group and no significant change in the resting group. The benefits of Reiki treatment where associated to anxiety, fatigue and pain and they appeared to last longer than 7 days after the last session was carried out.
   Also, a study on the “Effects of Reiki Therapy on Pain and Anxiety in Patients Attending a Day Oncology and Infusion Services Unit” 4 , was published in October 2011 in the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. It pointed once again to the relaxation effects of the Reiki sessions. The anxiety score decreased greatly after four sessions and general improvement in wellbeing, pain relief and sleep quality were the quoted by the participants receiving Reiki.
   Similarly, there is another study done on “Integrative Reiki for Cancer patients” appeared in Integrative Cancer Therapies in 2014 5 which concluded that Reiki treatment significantly reduced distress, anxiety, depression pain and fatigue in patients who received Reiki healing. A high percentage of participants liked the Reiki session and considered it helpful.
   Likewise, other research studies showed reduction in anxiety, pain and depression in people receiving Reiki treatment.
   In addition, research on Reiki treatments for patients with adrenal fatigue or burnout syndrome, confirmed reduction in patients’ sympathetic activity and increase in body temperature as well as a relaxation effect.
   A research study completed by Hartford Hospital in Connecticut US point to improved patients sleep, reduction in pain and nausea and massive reduction in anxiety during pregnancy 7.
   An Australian research from Solaris centre in Perth, reports on complementary therapies including Reiki. The report shows improvement in quality of life and symptom control for touch based complementary therapy on cancer patients8.
   In a nutshell, so far Reiki treatments emerge as favorable in:
   • Reduction of anxiety and depression induced by medical procedures in chronic conditions
   • Alleviate pain and inducing better pain relief together with the medical treatment
   • Reduction of stress by promoting relaxation
   • Blood pressure reduction
   • Reduction of fatigue in cancer patients
   • Overall wellbeing elevation in Reiki practitioners
   Although the research completed to date was conducted in small groups and shows some variability, there is promising indication that Reiki treatment is useful as a complementary therapy in chronic conditions. It can help lower the stress, promote relaxation and reduce pain in patients.
2. What’s next?
   USA today reported in a 2007 article that 15% of the US hospitals offer Reiki sessions as a regular part of their patient services 1. More and more prestigious hospitals in US and around the world started to recognize the value in adding complementary therapies to the medical protocol. Countries like US, Australia, Germany, and Switzerland introduced Reiki therapy in some of the hospitals. There is still a long way until the day you can be offered energy therapy in addition to the conventional treatment in just about every major hospital. However, more people than ever are looking into touch therapies as an adjuvant to conventional medication or surgery.
   According to some sources, a survey conducted in 2007 in US, indicated that in the year before more than 1 million adults and more than 150,000 children received energy healing like Reiki.2
   One interesting aspect to be noted in the research on Reiki, is that it shows very positive promise in enhancing wellbeing when self done. That means, anyone can learn Reiki 1, the beginner stage and benefit greatly from self treating every day.
   The studies had done up to now point to Reiki as a potentially excellent ally for chronic pain relief, management of stress, anxiety and depression reduction. There is indeed a need for larger studies but no one can count on them happening soon. Because Reiki energy cannot be encapsulated in a pill and patented to get millions of dollars profit. Thus, you are left with the choice: to give it a try and believe the small research trials done so far or to turn your head and walk away on your other choice path. Either way it will be your choice.

Embracing the “New Wave” of Earth Energy

As a Reiki trainer and healer I always wanted to support people on their life journey. With the acceleration of time and the era of fast technology we could feel overwhelmed at times. This article address the problem by giving a few suggestion about how to cope with “new wave” of less time more to do. So, sometime ago I wrote this which today you can read here:

Embracing the “New Wave” of Earth Energy.

Three exercises for Clearing Chakras

Three exercises for Clearing Chakras.

The Journey into juice fasting

Image courtesy of Apolonia at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

After studying nutrition for managing disease and reading heaps on books on various ancient healing methods I concluded that fasting seems to speed up the process. No matter if you are trying to cure cancer, diabetes, a chronic condition or just lose weight and get you health on the right track it seems that starting this process with a 3-7-10 days of fasting is a sure recipe to speed up recovery.
There are so many books and articles written on the topic of doing a juice fasting so I thought that is doable and relative easy to stick with it. After all it’s only a 7 days from your life when you are going to avoid eating your normal diet.

As easy as it seems on paper I hit a wall when tried it in the real world. It looks that the all around temptations combined with human primary sense of “instant pleasure” make a dynamic duo. Every single time when I tried it I couldn’t go over the first day. I must confess that I wasn’t trying to overcome major disease just wanted to lose a few extra kilos I shed over the years and to get my health on the best. It was more a preventative method to assure my children will have a mother to nourish them for many years. I am a strong believer in prevention rather than cure as I think the changes you need to make when you are already in the middle of an illness are too dramatic and carry a lot of stress.

After successfully failing many times I found myself in the position of “the seeker”, the “eternal starter” of a better health. After a lot of introspection and self judgmental talk I finally settled with acceptance. I accepted that it is not an easy task to put your health on track by doing a 7-10 days juice fast and I committed to trying various methods to overcome the mental obstacles in achieving my goal. Moreover, I committed to document my trial and error in the hope that other people might benefit from it and make a “turning point” for their health.

The first attempt was to try and focus on what I can have (fruit and vegetable juice, water, clear vegetable soups, fruit smoothies, salad smoothies) and ignore the rest. It worked well until I had to cook and prepare my family’s lunches. The smell of a casserole and the look of the cheese made me break my pact of having a fast. I thought: “tomorrow is another day” I’ll start then. But everyone knows how tomorrow never comes so I kept delaying and delaying.

The very green juices and smoothies I’ve created

The next trial was to have everything ready for delicious juices and start the day with 2 glasses of green juice and have another liter or so ready for when the hunger hits.
What I found very intriguing is not the hunger because the juice manages very well the feeling of hunger but the constant thoughts of solid food that haunt your mind. I started having like a million thoughts an hour about that cheese in the fridge or about the yummy rye rolls in the cupboard. So, what have I done? I stopped all again and reverted to a solid food diet.

The subsequent challenge was to drink first thing in the morning 1.5 liters pure water and then continue as much as I could with juices, many green juices and at some stage during the day having my normal solid food. This attempt was based on the believe that water flushes out toxins from the body and the green drinks provide enzymes, vitamins and protein to the body and hoping that I could stop at some stage eating any solid food for a few days. That seems to work pretty well at least in terms of getting a normal elimination but it still didn’t stop my constant thinking of solid food and eventually at some stage in the afternoon I had “something to eat”.
That particular attempt drove me to thinking that some serious internal introspection is needed. After “being” with myself combined with meditation I have realized that my chakras are quite out of balance. That is not of surprise considering all the environmental, social and media impact. All the negative energy levels surrounding us interfere with the sensible chakra balance.
So, I have started a program of chakra healing (I’m a Reiki healer myself) and attempted to do less which means I tried to do a one day a week juice fast for as long as I need it to feel comfortable with the longer detox.
It worked wonders as one day at a time seems to be more manageable and you still can get some benefit out of it. If no other benefit at least you get to practice your discipline.

Yummy Purple smoothie

After four weeks of full body Reiki and practicing the weekly fast I came across a hypnotherapy tape on overcoming addictions. In an instant I have realized that I am addicted to cooked food so I listened to the tape as well.
The result was I stayed on a 3 days liquid fast with no cravings. How I felt is another story. Because I used smoothies mostly made of fruits I had really bad detox reactions so I mainly managed to do the basic things around the house and to lie down in bed. I also had flu like symptoms which lasted for about 10 days.

The change after the fasting was big; I switched to a gluten free diet (suspecting gluten intolerance), quitted coffee, sugar and alcohol and I lost 5 kg. The kilograms came off in the following 3-4 weeks after the fasting and it was a real surprise as I couldn’t lose a gram no matter what diet or training program I followed.

The 7 days liquid detox is still waiting for me to start it but now, I am much more confident I will be able to do it.

How about you?

Copyright @ Elena Constantinescu 2013

Related articles

• Healing With a Juice Fast (healing.answers.com)
• Pressing the Reset Button: 3 Day Juice Fast (bellasfreestylekitchen.wordpress.com)
• Juice fasting takes time, patience and will power (myrtlebeachonline.com)
• Juice Fasting For Better Health (healing.answers.com)
• Detox With Comfort (joystreamhealth.wordpress.com)

Just for today …

Three exercises for Clearing Chakras

Three experiences for your soul

For all exercises: Sit or lay down comfortably. Take 3 deep, relaxing breaths realizing you inhale new fresh energy and exhale used and diseased energy.

1. Every morning for 3-5 minutes just sit down relaxed (maybe on the side of your bed) and close your eyes and imagine or visualize a white light coming from above and going into your Crown Chakra and also surrounding you as a halo. You need to know that this light is both healing and protecting and it will keep you protected for 24 hours.

2. Every night before going to bed take 5 minutes and do this exercise: imagine or visualize first your basic chakra as a red ball of energy, inside the ball there is a light source emanating light. Look around the ball and identify any dark or black spots allow the light to intensify until all the dark/black spots are cleared and the energy ball is shining nicely red. Do the same exercise for all the chakras. Their colors are: basic – red, sacral – orange, solar plexus- yellow, heart – green, throat – blue, third eye – indigo (dark blue/violet), Crown – purple.

3. Do this exercise 2 times this week, first time go backwards from the present moment and the second time go forwards from the farthest moment in your life which you can remember.

Go on a journey through your life moments remembering all the uncomfortable, sad, upsetting moments. You need to go also to any moment when you had an important argument with someone or when you got upset with someone (and you still are). Re-live the moment and release the person by forgiving the person and forgiving yourself (and all other people involved). As I understand that in your life might be moments extremely traumatic if you accept that moment as an experience and forgive people the people involved you then can move forward and live a better life.
What we don’t know is that any anger, resentment, upset, unforgiveness, etc eats up our life energy, our positive energy and ties us up to the person who did the harm to us in a very unhealthy way. If you have enough traumatic moments in your life and you don’t release them then your body can get so weak that the disease will appear.
You don’t have to agree to the harm other people did to you but you need to release them and yourself to live the life you can live.

I recommend doing it both backwards and then forward because is amazing how many new moments you can find when you go the other way around.

I wish you luck with your new discovered freedom.
If you have any questions or comments feel free to send them to me to my email address k_ioan@yahoo.com.

Copyright @ healthnutmum July 2013

The Challenge – Day 29

Going with the flow of life became an obsession for many people. But how do you get to actually translate that into practice? It came to my mind to ask one of my friends today as she seems to manage it all well as opposed to myself. Feeling rushed and always on the search for the next thing to do is just what drains me and makes me angry and inflexible whit everything and everyone around me.
To sum up my friend’s answer to the above questions is: “I focus on what’s important on my life at this time. Getting financially/materially ahead while you go backwards emotionally or mentally is not a good trade for me. For sure the time for other things will come in my life but it’s just not now”. Whoaaa, what a revelation! That is so much true! I spent my last years in trying to combine work and raising a young and challenging family to exhaustion. When I got to the point that every other day I was depressed I started to ask more questions to myself and others.
I must declare that I am a workaholic addict in recovery … it just came to me today that to be tense and angry that you aren’t a supermom and superwife and superwoman and superbusinesswoman at the same time is not a bad thing. I’ll keep you posted how my recovery goes.

I’m grateful for:

1. having so many distance healing clients (for Reiki)
2. having such a great teacher and friend in my Reiki teacher
3. taking the time to rise healthy, happy and confident children
4. having enough free time on my hands to do my so loved vegetable gardening
5. realizing that I have a passion for becoming a multimillionaire (to read “financially free unbounded to any restrictions to live a balanced spiritual life”)

The Challenge – Day 27

Having three children it comes at a price some times. It all ads up in cost and the time for you, is almost nonexistent. That would be the downside of the story but the upside of it is the endless joys that a life on a full house offers. For me, there are so many pluses in staying at home with children that my many years of study really don’t matter anymore. Sometimes I’m a bit scared that I might get too attached by the role of being a mum. There is a little scary thing at the back of my mind that I might hate just any job I’d try when the children are older. So, to stay sane and connected with the outside world I keep this blogging journal.

I feel grateful for:

1. Reiki symbols for which I am attuned
2. my children’s endless resource of creativity (even when they do naughty things)
3. the sense of peace I feel right now
4. this very moment
5. the green smoothies I have every day

The Challenge – Day 8

This picture depicts the seven major Chakras with descriptions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today I started consuming 200 gr of green leaves per day.

100 gr goes into smoothies and 100 gr goes into a salad.

The green smoothie of today contained 1 bag of baby spinach!! But luckily it tasted good.

Today I’ll post a new recipe so stay posted.

I love the Reiki principles:

Today, what I’m grateful for:

1. going soon to sleep …

2. having fruits and vegetables for the next 2 days

3. kids are eating lots of fruits and veggies

4. I started the Life Challenge program

5. the green smoothie of today that tasted really good.

Related articles

• green smoothie for today (healthnutmumblog.wordpress.com)
• still preparing for the best of health challenge (healthnutmumblog.wordpress.com)
• DrinkGreen’s “Drink a Green Smoothie a Day Challenge” for Beginners! Day 14! (drinkgreen4life.com)

Reiki healing and chakra clearing

Reiki healing and chakra clearing

Reiki is an ancient healing practice rediscovered by Mikao Usui, a Japanese teacher and healer. It has no religious belief system attached but it is still considered a spiritual practice.

I am a Reiki practitioner trained to Master Level in Healing and I am also trained as Reiki instructor.

I was so amazed by the power of this ancient healing technique that I’ve embraced it myself for the last 3 years.