Reiki

[Fanatic]

Has anyone tried Reiki? Could you tell me a little bit about it?

I do think using the word healing is misleading. For the majority of people I think they associate it with something that doctors do. It has a very different connotation for me, it's more about healing past hurts, anger, how I feel about myself - healing emotional things. I think that is much the same for those who believe in woo, certainly the people within my circles.

To answer angel Can I prove that Reiki doesn't work? - yes it has already been proven by peer reviewed clinical trials. If you and I were of a mind to we could set up our own clinical trial and prove it to ourselves in person.

I have a problem with any belief system that has been disproved. eg. I do not have any respect whatsoever for the belief that the earth is flat. I don't need to be open minded, I don't need to take on board anyone's opinion. It has been proved that the Earth is not flat and what is more, I can prove it myself.

You don't get an opinion on maths. 2+2=4. you cannot say, well in my belief system 2+2=5 and you have to respect that different people have different opinions.

You don't get an opinion on physics. Electrons are allowed to have the same energy/frequency, this is a fact. You can not say oh but I just have a different opinion, so you have to respect that too.

And you don't get an opinion on clinical trials. The data are there and they are true. The only option you have is to collect more data and see if the consensus of the data changes. It appears there have been getting on for 100 trials on Reiki so your new data would have to be wildly different from anything previously collected to make an impact. Obviously getting a wildly different answer from everyone else is unlikely in the extreme. If you look at something like homeopathy there have been thousands of trials so the job of overturning the consensus is so enormous that it is reasonable to consider it impossible.

But go for it.

Design your own trial. You need to:

Get at least 100 people. Split them RANDOMLY (this is important) into two groups. You must NEVER let them know which group they are in (this is the most important thing of all). Subject one group to the very best Reiki you can. Send the other group to me and I will subject them to the very best Reiki that I can. We then compare some measure from satisfaction, to perceived energy levels to pain relief...whatever you wish to find out really.

It is very likely (given all the evidence already collected on this topic) that we will find no difference between the results of our two groups.

The question is, will you then accept that it doesn't work?

Because I will tell you something. If we find that there IS a big difference between the outcomes in the two groups AND everything about the trial has been done correctly then I WILL change my mind.

Because I am intelligent and I don't let my beliefs get in the way of what the evidence actually says.

Correlation =/= causation.

yet I see the anti-woo side being rude patronising and dismissive and the pro woo side shrugging and saying it works for me, on an emotional (ie non measurable level) horses for courses. Maybe being relaxed and mindful unclenches people and attunes them to other's emotional states? maybe I will conduct a randomised blind trial on rudeness levels and intellectual arrogance.

Everyone knows that lying down for an hour and switching off is beneficial. Rituals are helpful in achieving that switched off state. Some people get that through exercise/massage/crafts whatever.

Xenia you are great gas as usual with your 'idiotic housewives' riff. Any stats on that or is it just a personal belief of yours?

And by that you mean "It is rude and patronizing to say someone is completely wrong, even if theyare completely wrong", I suppose.

So is it intellectual arrogance to point out the fallacies in, for instance, FB's statements about quantum mechanics?

What are we supposed to do? Pretend that FB's opinions on the matter are of equal standing with the proofs produced by Einstein, Dirac and Heisenberg?

Is it intellectual arrogance to point out the fallacy present in angel's assertion that Reiki works because she knows it does?

What are we supposed to do? Pretend that angel's opinion on the matter is more important than the outcome of multiple controlled clinical trials?

It is not politeness to nod and smile when people assert the untrue to be true....it is lying!

It's very worrying that you don't know what rudeness is. And you don't seem to know that you are very rude and patronising indeed.

Reiki might help with self-awareness, perhaps?

I have hyper-sensitive hearing and know if there is a TV on standby anywhere in the house because the whine sets my teeth on edge. I can also hear those annoying plug in anti-ant things.

Anyway, I've had reiki, acupuncture and reflexology, despite the lack of science (desperate times, you try being 42 weeks pregnant and trying to avoid induction). None of it worked. It was relaxing though, and nice to have an hour sat down with someone paying attention to me!

There is definitely a scientific basis to placebo. And a psychological truth in that one feels better if one feels that one has been listened to. Anecdotally, I have experience that the way that one touches another person has a great effect (I worked with people with PMLD, often who had been institutionalised since birth. Can you imagine if the only human contact you ever had was functional? interacting in a more human way can achieve communication with people considered completely unable to do so.)

IMO, that is reiki tyoe stuff writ large. We are apes, we are evolved to have physical contact as part of our lives. Yet we live in a society with strict rules regarding who may touch whom and how. It seems logical that holistic therapies that involve close contact would have a profound effect.

If you think that's rude and patronising, you obviously haven't ever met anybody who's really trying!

Not just the unsocialized behaviour, comfort, but the repetitive, and fundamentally attention-seeking, nature of the posts is indicative of some pathology at play. I suspect they rail at quite a few bits of life, not just reiki. Still, that has added to the length, if not the quality, of comment.

hmmm so more personal abuse and the assertion that I am rude...but no actual response to the points I made...

how surprising....

Well I think it is rude to accuse people of being rude, simply because they know more than you and can prove it. Seems like an outbreak of insecurity with a large does of shoulder chip. Maybe get a homeopath to help you with that eh?

Yes, I have been trying to get to the bottom of the anger and bitterness. Every time a thread about complementary medicine is started - about cranial osteopathy, acupuncture, you name it - the same people come on and de-rail it by sneering. It's extraordinary. Apparently it's not OK with them to want to talk about complementary medicine. Why on earth not?

I suppose you could say "she doth protest too much".

people often mistake facts for judgement of some sort...but it is all in your head.

That you are provably wrong is not a judgement on you unless you make it one.

You could always look at the evidence and think "oh well I didn't know that before, I will assert my intellect and ability for rational thought and change my mind" end of story. No one needs to feel bad. My ideas and beliefs are changing all the time as the amount of data available increases, it's not a weakness, it's a strength.

It's quite extraordinary to claim that you know more than others on this thread, entropy. Extraordinary.

Maybe it's the reverence in which complementary medicine is held. I'm glad to see the term "complementary" rather than "alternative."

There is an almost religious zealotry when it comes to complementary medicine. If I were to say "I don't believe paracetamol can reduce a fever," I would be wrong, simple as that. I would not be offended at being told this, either, as the science bares it out.

If I were to say "I do not believe acupuncture can induce labour" I am more likely to be told that it was because I was sceptical, or because of a number of other myriad factors, rather than a failure in the actual hypothesis of energy lines and sharp things.

It is frustrating.

It's bad science.

I think the question is: should people be allowed to discuss complementary medicine on MN without their threads being de-railed?

Incidentally, I have also argued with medical doctors when I have disagreed with their findings. The best doctors are willing to look at the evidence and either explain their decisions or change them, based on science. Woo practitioners are not alone in clinging to outdated techniques or pet theories, real scientists do it too sometimes.

Oh you can talk about it all you like...and we will talk about it all we like too.

why do you have a problem with that?

Well, precisely, CrunchyFrog.

Sneering and rudeness de-rail a thread and constitute trolling in my book. The aim is to drive other posters off the thread.

And off MN come to that. Then we would have an orthodoxy.

Of course some scientists find it hard to let go of a cherished theory when the data disproves it. We are human too. The difference is we are trying to rise above the flaw in our nature and strive constantly to be objective where ever possible.

In contrast the complementary crowd are making no effort to rise above the flaw and are in fact embracing it, presumably because their livelihood depends on ignoring the evidence at all costs.

hmm so essentially you would like threads where only people willing to ignore the evidence are allowed to contribute?