Peace process

It took a leap of faith for John Orr to undergo his first Reiki treatment.

Orr is a local Realtor, a guy who copes daily with dollars, deals and demanding clients.

And Reiki is, to put it bluntly, a little out there.

Scientists don’t know how this gentle, laying-on-of-hands therapy works. Practitioners aren’t sure why it works. And Orr certainly has no idea.

“It’s all kind of a mystery to me,” says Orr, 62.

But he does know that twice-monthly Reiki treatments have helped clear his mind and ease his stress.

“It’s healing,” says Orr, who lives in Liberty Lake. “It’s emotional healing. It’s physical healing. It’s like an hour-and-a-half-long hug … It’s very relaxing. It’s very soothing. It’s kind of like having your mother pat you to sleep.”

Reiki (pronounced “ray-key’) means “universal life force.” The practice centers on the belief that unseen energy flows through all living things. Reiki practitioners say they can channel this energy to help people reduce stress, relieve pain and heal a variety of emotional, spiritual and physical ills.

About one percent of the population has tried Reiki, according to a recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Numerous studies are looking into Reiki’s effectiveness. But so far there’s been little scientific proof to back up the anecdotal claims.

In a recent report, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine calls Reiki “among the most controversial of (complementary and alternative medicine) practices because neither the external energy fields nor their therapeutic effects have been demonstrated convincingly by any biophysical means.”

But, as practitioners point out, Reiki can’t hurt, either.

“It doesn’t conflict with anything that happens medically. There are no contraindications,” says Barbara McDaniel of Reiki Healing Arts in Coeur d’Alene. “It’s extremely subtle in its application. It can go where Rolfing, where massage, where acupuncture can’t go. Reiki is a very light touch. It’s contact and it’s very soothing, but it doesn’t manipulate, it doesn’t penetrate.”

Clients undergo Reiki while fully clothed, lying face-forward on a massage table, covered with a light blanket. Some Reiki practitioners accept insurance, but most charge about what a massage therapist would, around $50 to $100 an hour in this area.

Practitioners generally begin at the head and work down the body, gently placing their hands on specific spots. Then the process is repeated on the back.

“People often go to sleep,” says McDaniel, a Reiki practitioner since 1984. “If they’re not fully asleep, they often feel like they’re in kind of a dreamy state.”

Post Falls resident Barbara Lee had her first experience with Reiki in 1993. She is now a practitioner and teacher.

“It virtually changed my whole life,” Lee says. “It’s energy. It’s light. It’s life force … When I lay my hands on someone they actually draw the amount of energy, the amount of Reiki, they need. I don’t get tired when I do Reiki; it’s not my energy.”

A doctor in the Tri-Cities sent Monica Phillipy to see a Reiki practitioner after the Spokane mom was struck by lightning last August while watching her son’s soccer game in Plantes Ferry Park.

The doctor reasoned that Reiki could help discharge some of the energy that had built up in Phillipy’s body from the strike.

Phillipy visited Lee just a few days after being struck.

“I’d never even heard of Reiki before,” says, Phillipy, a 44-year-old mother of eight.

The first treatment made her feel as if she was reliving the lightning strike, she says.

“I can feel this energy when she does Reiki actually releasing from certain areas or flowing out of me,” Phillipy says. “It’s almost like it stirs the whole thing up again. Once it calms down, then I feel a whole lot better.”

Phillipy says the Reiki sessions have helped control her stuttering, calmed her racing nerves, and even restored the pulse in her left leg — some of the many maladies she says were brought on by the lightning strike.

The study of Reiki is broken into three levels.

The first degree helps students learn the basic hand positions and how to channel their healing abilities, says Candess Campbell, a Spokane Reiki practitioner and teacher.

“We all have self-healing abilities,” Campbell says. “We all have the ability to heal others as well. This is like plugging a lamp into the outlet. It just turns that energy up.”

The second degree teaches students about the Reiki symbols.

“The symbols have an energy and a power about them similar to the cross,” Campbell says. “We respond at an energetic level to symbols in a powerful way.”

Practitioners envision these symbols while performing treatments.

In the final level, that of Reiki master, the teacher performs a ceremony around the student to create an energy pattern that allows the student to then teach others the Reiki practice.

Emily M. Carstens has been practicing Reiki informally on her friends and family since 1997. She opened her own full-time practice in Spokane about a year ago.

Since then, Carstens has worked on a variety of clients, including cancer patients and those with side effects from diabetes. Reiki can help ease side effects associated with chemotherapy, she says, as well as the numbness that results from diabetic neuropathy.

She hopes to use Reiki to help bridge the gap between traditional, Western therapies and complementary treatments.

“There are a lot of people in the mainstream world and mainstream medicine that look at alternative medicine and the practice of such as really flighty and flaky and really woo-woo,” Carstens says. “I’ve seen a different side of it.”