Job Discussion Forums

[sushi]

Reiki is a form of healing (spiritual healing for lack of better words), and it's very popular amongst the new age groups. I have just learned that the guy was Japanese and that he developed the technique here in Japan. Anyone know anything about him.

[Nagoyaguy]

Not sure about the guy who invented it, but Reiki itself is utter nonsense.

It has yet to be proven scientifically. It has yet to show any demonstrable medical effect that cannot be explained by the placebo effect. It is yet another in a long line of woo woo New Age "therapies" that do little but relieve the stress on your wallet of all those bills in there

Anyone who can show any measurable effect of Reiki could be a millionaire overnight. There is a man called James Randi who has that much money (a million US dollars) waiting in escrow for anyone, anyone at all, who can show any paranormal or new age phenomenon to work.

Don't waste your time.

[Sherri]

His name is Mikao Usui. The reason that I know is that my aunt is into reiki and she asked me to visit his gravesite and take pictures for her reiki group in the US. He is buried at Saihoji Temple in Suginami-Ku, Tokyo (near Shin-Koenji station). There is a large gravestone and an explanation of his life and work written in Japanese.

Sherri

[Nagoyaguy]

[sushi]

What's "the placebo effect".

I had a friend who used to visit her Reiki master in Tokyo every so often, but it cost her a packet every time. Seems as though they are into past lives, and the fact that connections to-day are based on one's previous incarnations ( if that's the word to describe previous existences, albeit wether you are a male now and may have been a female in a previous life)

[PAULH]

[JimDunlop2]

We often use the word "ki" (or "chi" in Chinese) when we talk about martial arts. I've studied Win Chung Kung-Fu for about ten years, and the topic frequently comes up when I practice with my see-bok (older uncle).

Except we don't ever see it as a "mystical" or magical thing -- or even a spiritual thing for the large part, but rather as a way of simultaneously qualifying and quantifying the way we use the energy we possess in our bodies. Whether or not "ki" actually exists as a scientifically measurable phenomenon or not is irrelevant to our purpose -- we use it more as a descriptive aid to help us understand our movements, forces at work and how we interact with our opponents.

Don't know about reiki though.... Sounds quite spiritual to me -- and I don't think I believe in what it professes.

[Nagoyaguy]

Jim;

You may want to check out the website at

www.bullshido.net

for some interesting discussions of ki or chi or qi. They get quite animated at times!

How would YOU describe it, then, if it is not energy, or measurable, or spiritual? It sounds more like a sense of situational awareness, developed through training. Hardly what the reiki bozos are claiming.


Back to reiki, I read another interesting site about it. The site claimed that you actually have to believe in reiki, or it won't work for you! Imagine if that test was applied to other forms of medicine.

"Sir, you must BELIEVE in the power of the penicillin, or your infection will not be cured".

If you heard a doctor say anything like that, you'd run for the door.

As PaulH mentioned, the placebo effect is crucial to understanding any form of 'healing' like this. It is actually very powerful. Also, it underscores the importance of basing research on measurable results and outcomes, NOT on mere feelings. Perceptions and reality are often miles apart.

It is similar to the "Forer Effect", which is used by unscrupulous psychics, astrologers, mystics, and the like, to convince their victims that the psychic actually has valuable information. People tend to accept vague and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves without realizing that the same description could be applied to just about anyone.

[sushi]

Same could be said for astrology and maybe palmistry. The horoscopes have something we all want hear. Some one really must have done their reasearch for the horoscope thing, because they all have some thing relevant for everyone.

I was talking to a reporter for a smal town paper, and she told me that they used to get as many horoscopes as they could and justmix them all to-gether on the particular day, and pick them at random for the given astrological time periods, and post them.

Palmistry I don't know

[luckbox]

[Nagoyaguy]

I get your point. It isnt ethnocentric at all. I would say the same thing (utter nonsense) about any form of so called treatment that has no basis in reality or science.

TT (theraputic touch) is a similar therapy to reiki, and is likewise total crap.

Actually, I should correct myself. These forms of treatment CAN promote the mental health of the patient. However, they will not cure or assist in the curing of any physical problem. Basically, they make you feel good. A massage is a prime example. It feels nice, but it wont cure anything. It may be a temporary solution to tired or aching muscles, but that is all.

Herbal remedies have their basis in science. Certain plants contain chemicals that help the body. Nothing mystic about it.

Websites for other so-called alternative therapies make outrageous claims as to their effectiveness. Accupuncture is a prime example of this. It is based on the totally untrue belief that there are 14 meridians in the body that direct chi around. Neither the meridians nor the chi have ever been proven to exist, so the therapy itself is based on nothing but superstition. Same for homeopathic cures. No evidence, the basis of the whole system is wrong.

There is no such thing as a "western science" paradigm. Science is science. Serious researchers use the same methods, regardless of their nationality. Are you suggesting that double blind experiments are not used in Asia? Clinical testing is based on culture?

You have to look past the mumbo jumbo and get to the heart of what these therapies claim. Reflexology, for example, claims that there are zones that connect the foot to the rest of the body. Sorry, no chance. Does a foot massage feel good and relieve stress? Of course. Especially because, in your brain, the area of your brain that controls your feet and the area that controls your genitals are right next to each other.

As soon as these treatments start claiming that they can cure diseases, they cross the line. The problems come when people erroneously believe that alternative treatment can ever possibly take the place of real medical treatment. This is dangerous.

Sorry, I am unwilling to play the equivalency game about quack science. It is all a big mental exercise. Wrapping up non effective treatment in the guise of "eastern medicine" or "things we westerners dont understand" does nothing but distort reality.

[luckbox]

Your points are noted, but I think questions regarding alternative treatment are not easily reduced to simplistic conclusions such as "utter nonsense" or "total crap". Part of the problem has been Western ignorance of Eastern medicine - and so Western studies and serious, thorough research on the subject is a relatively new phenomenon. How do you measure, locate or find something like the "qi"? Just because Western methods can't easily do so doesn't necessarily mean thousands of years of Chinese medicine is therefore "utter nonsense" or "crap". Studies are ongoing and likely always will be ongoing. I'm just as sceptical of scientific dogma as I am metaphysical dogma, and the things that science has "proven" - only later to be unproven or misunderstood - it's a long list, as you know. I define science orderly thinking. The methodologies used to carry out science are something quite different.

Anyway, it's an interesting subject, but not one I claim to know much about, so I remain sceptical of both sides of the dogma coin: those who swear by it treatments like reiki, and those who call it unequivocal "utter nonsense".

[Nagoyaguy]

[luckbox]

[Nagoyaguy]