May the Force Field Be with You

Reiki--a type of energy healing--is gaining ground in the mainstream medical community

by Sarah Mahoney

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When it comes to the mind-body-spirit connection, I'm open-minded to a fault. (I once spent a week in a yurt, juice-fasting and doing yoga with people who didn't believe in swatting mosquitoes, and loved it.) But the first time a coworker described Reiki to me, it was hard not to laugh out loud. I have my very own electrical force field, she explained. No, there's no scientific evidence that this biofield exists, but that's beside the point.

What's more, my force field was undoubtedly in trouble, not just because of my own stress, but also because of all the bad electronic energy coming at me from my computer, TV, and omnipresent cell phone. A skilled Reiki practitioner--spiritually guided--would set me straight in no time, my coworker said, simply by laying hands on my body. Once my energy was rebalanced, I'd not only feel calmer, but I'd also be healthier, because my immune system would function the way it was meant to.

Thanks, but no thanks, I said, once I finished snickering. I'll just spend my $90 on a good, old-fashioned back rub.

Soon after, my coworker had serious surgery, and she credited Reiki (pronounced "ray-kee," Japanese for universal life energy) with helping her bounce back fast. At that point, I stopped sneering: She looked great and was taking the stairs two at a time.

The mainstream medical community has stopped sneering, too: About 60 percent of the hospitals included in the U.S. News & World Report America's Best Hospitals list offer some kind of Reiki program, if only informally, reports the International Association of Reiki Professionals. Some studies have shown Reiki to effectively reduce anxiety and blood pressure in otherwise healthy people, and government-sponsored clinical trials are underway to gauge its impact on prostate cancer, fibromyalgia, diabetic neuropathy, and advanced AIDS. But what really got my attention was that so many of the Reiki masters I read about were also registered nurses--sensible women with superior skills, not flaky tarot card readers.

Off to See the Wizard So I packed my skepticism in the car and drove off to Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA, to meet with Karen Pischke, an RN and a Reiki master, for my first treatment. Pischke stumbled onto Reiki while trying to ease her chronic throat problems and was fascinated by how well--and how quickly--Reiki helped her.

"I said to myself, I can't tell what it is I am feeling, but I definitely feel something," she recalls, "and I felt profoundly better after one session." Not long after, she started studying Reiki to promote her own self-healing. Soon, Reiki had changed the way she saw her job.

"So many of us got into nursing for the hands-on aspect of caring for patients," she explains, "and that's missing in a lot of nursing settings. Reiki is a way to get back to that." Just how hands-on? Last year, Pischke administered Reiki for hours at a time to 12 surgical patients, treating them during prep, throughout surgery, and in post-op recovery. As a result, they reported feeling calmer, and they healed more quickly than expected.

In her office, I turn off my cell phone and tell her that the whole force field thing sounds fishy to me. We don't even know if biofields exist, I say. True, she replies. Then she points out as an example that only recently, the brain-measurement technology used in PET scans has demonstrated changes in brain function that come from hypnosis. Maybe, she says, current technology just isn't advanced enough to find the proof.

She has me hop up onto the table, fully clothed, and slides a bolster under my knees as I lie on my back. She asks me about my stress level. Typical working mom, I respond. Right now, concerns about five or six work projects orbit random worries about the kids. Did I remember to tell my ex what time to pick up my 12-year-old from her horseback-riding lesson? Will he remember that he needs to take our 11-year-old to the band concert? Little to-do lists clutter my head: We're out of ketchup. The big dog needs a Lyme vaccine; the little one stinks and needs a bath. I left a flat of flowers on the porch--would there be a frost tonight? That's my brain: noisy, but normal.

Pischke smiles. Next she explains--as all Reiki practitioners are trained to do before a session--precisely what she will do with her hands, starting at my head, working her way through my face, neck, shoulders, abdomen, hips, knees, and ankles. Pischke uses traditional Reiki, sometimes called Usui, after the Japanese man who invented it in the 19th century. Other methods exist, but all involve the practioner's ability, through Reiki, to divine a subject's troubled energy spots and rebalance them.

Are We There Yet?

I look at my watch as we begin, but almost as soon as Pischke lays her hands on my temples, I get so relaxed that I'm practically delirious. It's a drifting, lolling, delicious relaxation--like a Saturday morning before kids. But I am also very aware, and amazed at how hot her hands seem in some spots, how cool in others. I can feel the temperature not only when she touches me, but also when she keeps her hands hovering above me, which is the Reiki style. When she tells me we are done, I am astonished: An hour and 15 minutes has flown by.

Afterward, Pischke explains to me what she "found": Mostly, she says, the heat seems to be in my throat area--a part of the body associated with thyroid function as well as communication. For a writer, maybe that's not the best area to have clogged. And there was something weird about my left hip. (That would be the one that's been making odd clicking noises during yoga class.) She says this chakra--one of several whirling vortices of energy found all over the body--is connected to survival; I think about my boyfriend in Iraq.

The long drive home to Maine is uneventful, except that my cell phone won't turn on, even though I know it is fully charged. Unable to check in with the kids or my voice mail, my brain is so quiet that it feels like someone else's. Peacefully, I listen to the Red Sox lose as the miles roll by.

At home that night, I check my e-mail, but don't answer it. Instead, I play rummy with my daughter before bedtime. The next morning, my son challenges me to a game of Wiffle Ball before the bus comes. I start to work, but midmorning, I wander away from my computer. I notice that my cell phone has magically sprung back to life and that the flowers have survived. I spend 20 minutes planting my window boxes and sit out in the sun, admiring them.

I remember a little sign Pischke has propped up in her office, the spiritual precepts the inventor of Reiki wanted to pass on:

• Just for today
• Do not anger
• Do not worry
• Be filled with gratitude
• Devote yourself to your work
• Be kind to all people

At the moment, I'm still so relaxed that my brain is fresh out of to-do lists. For today, I decide, this one will do nicely.