Reiki

[Fanatic]

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

angel "I am a Reiki Master"....yup so am I.....in a way we all are....

cote in particular, I feel you may also be a Reiki Master....

My personal qualifications include having read the wikipedia page and determined that you don't need any skills as such to be a Master at something that doesn't work.
With a similar logic I am also a Master in Homeopathy and nutritional therapy. I should start my own business!

cockneydad - Nobody is going to argue against calming your mind or meditating. Just as nobody is going to argue against praying if that helps you.

What we are questioning here is the rubbish people actually believe, thinking it has some scientific basis, like channelling quantum energy with their hands etc.

I can't be a Reiki master, simply because I would never be able to pretend to channel the energy of the universe with a straight face

for Cote

"quantum physics says that we are all made mostly of energy, not matter,"

Nope it really really doesn't. relativity gives us a way to describe the amount of energy that matter could be converted to if annihilated. Quantum mechanics says that mass is one of many quantum numbers that describe the properties for fundamental particles like photons, protons etc.

" and that it is scientific law that all energy in the universe is connected to and communicates with all other energy in the universe."

Nope it really doesn't. Only things within our light cone have EVER at ANY POINT even known of each other's existence...communication travels at the speed of light. The unbelievably vast majority of the universe will not know you exist within your lifetime.

"If you change the frequency of the energy of one electron, then energy shifts all across the universe as no electron can vibrate at exactly the same frequency as any other."

Nope not at all true. All of the electrons around a specific atom must have a different combination of quantum numbers. But frequency/energy is only one of those numbers (other include things like spin, angular momentum etc.) So in fact within one atom many of the electrons may have the same value for energy/frequency. And of course another atom has it's own set of orbitals and the energies of those electrons can be the same as for the first lot.

"Read books like The Bond by Lynne McTaggart to find out the science behind how energy works."

Erm nope not in a million years....she has no training in science as it not qualified to say anything useful on the topic. Turns out that I am actually a Master of science and am qualified to talk on this subject.

"Energy healers (like Reiki, acupuncture) seem to have known this already for thousands of years, but didn't need to 'see' it to know it works - they had faith, and the proof of actual healing. "

nope they did not have proof of healing. If they did we would not be having this conversation. All of the reviews of evidence for Reiki indicated that it has never been demonstrated to work for any illness.

"Now science is beginning to catch up and prove a lot of what these ancient spiritual traditions have known to be true for aeons."

see above. Science cannot provide an explanation for why something works if it doesn't in fact work. There would be something quite wrong with a scientific method that was capable of proving how something that doesn't work, actually works

Oh an OP, I can tell you everything there is to know about it in one short sentence:

Reiki has never been demonstrated to work on any illness.

I'd just like to clarify that I'm not the one who said all that nonsense entropygirl just replied to

yes of course!....the debunk was for you not against you :)

Have just been reading about chakras...words fail me...

I mean what do you do when you lived thousands of years ago and had no hope of understanding the complexities of biology and the human brain?

You make shit up and hope for the best.....totally understandable.

What do you do when you have the whole of thousands of years of scientific advances at your fingertips?

Apparently you continue to put your faith in the made up shit instead.....seriously what is wrong with people?

"seriously what is wrong with people"

Intellectual laziness. Why read a book about the universe written by a scientist when you can read one written by a journalist with zero formal education in the subject?

fair point...

If thing B happens after thing A, then why go to the extra effort of considering that the two events may in fact be unrelated....

Shit - I just noticed where this thread is....how am I going to get any work done when I know there is a whole section of MN to be debunked?

Damn you cote!

Genuine question. I am currently undergoing councelling, which falls under the umbrella of CBT, but is a newer form called ACT. It's basis is mostly on mindfulness and meditation, it is certainly curing me of my illness.

Does this count as 'not real' as it is not quantifiable? It certainly doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me.

Or do you believe that the mentally ill should stick to medication and electric shock therapy?

gob

CBT has been tested in randomized controlled trials and found to be effective for a wide variety of illnesses (particularly anxiety based). Or in other words it has been proven to work. It doesn't have to work for everyone in order to 'work' in the same way that paracetamol doesn't work on me but does work on average.

So CBT has been shown to work.

Reiki has never been shown to work.

Do you see the difference?

I will repeat again that you do not need to be able to understand how something works in order to know that is does work. You simply test it to see if it does what it is supposed to.

We may not know that much about how CBT works (although to be honest I think that we actually do know a great deal about how CBT works) but we have clear evidence that it does indeed work. That is enough for main stream medicine to use a treatment (well plus also knowing any side effects).

There is a big misunderstanding from the 'alternative medicine' crowd that only treatments that are understood are supported. This is bollocks. There are lots of drugs out there for which the mechanism of action is hazy. All that is really required is that they do in fact do something.

It was a genuine question, I understand what you are saying.

Having suffered from mental illness from many years and been sujected to many different treatments, some things work, some things don't.

I would actually say CBT doesn't work for a lot of people but it is the NHS treatment of choice as it is good for ticking lots of boxes and looking like there is proof of it's effectiveness. The ACT that I am recieving (and I realize I am damn lucky to be getting it on the NHS) is a whole lot more woo and beardy wierdy, it even goes into auras but for me it works.

As I have said when I was at my very worst Reki worked for me, it really did.

Whilst I think there is a real danger in people turning to some therapies to cure physical illness, it is not the same for mental illness, if a person has depression that is relieved by something that the science cannot explain, does that make that persons experience invalid, should they be denied that therapy because there is no 'proof' of it's effectiveness?

I am totally happy to accept that people should not use a scientific (or any other) argument that they don't understand to back up their ideas about anything.

But isn't a relief of suffering in a person proof that it works for that person? So how can it be said that there is no 'proof' that it works?

gob

Okay to address your final point:

The problem with saying "It worked for me" is that you cannot prove it. My guess is that what happened was that you had the treatment and felt better afterwards.
This does not demonstrate that the treatment worked. (There are many other reasons that might have caused you to feel better at that point, that have nothing to do with the treatment.)

So in order to prove that a treatment worked you have to look at large numbers of people and see how many MORE of them got better after the real treatment than got better after a faked treatment or no treatment at all. When you test Reiki in this way you find that the number of people getting better after the fake treatment is the same as for the real treatment.

So no. The fact that someone feels better after they had Reiki does not constitute evidence that the Reiki was responsible for the improvement.

Now on an individual level the same can be said of CBT (however it is dressed up with auras etc). I have had CBT as well and it seems to me that it works too. But the same logic applies. I cannot know that it is CBT that is responsible for the improvements I feel.

However when lots of people receiving CBT are compared with lots of people receiving a fake treatment it is seen that MORE of the people receiving CBT improve than those getting the fake. So it is shown that CBT has a measurable effect.

To sum up. You cannot tell from personal experience which treatments work, because there are too many random factors and you may be improving for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with the treatment.

But you can tell by looking at lots of people in a controlled trial. These have been done for Reiki and it failed.

I suspect that reiki and other healing therapies don't rely on our opinions as to whether they work/fail. I could be wrong, perhaps we can make it work or fail by inspecting it or railing against it or talking it up?

I find it interesting to hear what people think of what they have tried. Less what they think of something they have not tried. Just hoping this has not put off anyone who has something to share about what they have actually done.

I have no interest in what people think of something they have tried or not tried. I have no interest in opinion at all.

Proof exists. Reiki has been demonstrated not to be effective for any illness it has been tried for. Why should anyone's opinions matter in the face of that?

Entropy you are now my favourite poster on mumsnet after your posts on this thread.

Joins the entropy girl fan club. Motto - "Correlation is not Causation"

I would like to add "quantum mechanic =/= magic" to our manifesto....it is deeply disturbing how often QM turns up in 'explanations' of how things (that have been shown not to work) are supposed to work.

We need a catchy name....

Well the agnostics amongst us can read publications without coming to mumsnet for referrals. What we come for is sharing experience. You have none. Others do. I hope those who do have experience will not be put off by your behaviour.

erm how exactly do you come to the conclusion that I have no experience?

well don't be shy, share!

It is usually best to come to conclusions based on evidence....but maybe that point has escaped you.

My sharing experience: I have tried Reiki. It tends to cost money and doesn't do any good. Also I was brought up seeing a homeopathic doctor. This was free (on the NHS) but also doesn't do any good.

HTH oh and here are your back.