Every person should have access to Reiki as an additional support after accidents or with perilous surgery. As well as overwhelmed relatives or Reiki practitioners. This is the vision, which has meanwhile led to success stories which have made patients and physicians rejoice. And even the police.

“As long as the person wants it” should be the addition to the title “Reiki-Help is Everyone’s Due!” Even though Reiki itself can never harm, this addition reveals that for interpersonal arrangements, codes of conduct are important. One such rule aims at every person being allowed to determine themselves what they want and from whom they want it. In the topic of ethics one soon reaches the question of the exception. For example: is one allowed to give Reiki to an accident victim, who is in a coma, without their assent? Often one argues in favour of this with reference to the fact that Reiki can never do harm. This is too narrowly considered. For the point is that the person might not want it – quite apart from whether it does good or not. To override this, just like that, is highly questionable.

With the idea „Reiki for everyone“ – as noble as it might be – the reflective Reiki practitioner will soon stumble onto such ethical considerations. These in turn prompt all kinds of practical questions. To answer these without losing sight of the intended goal demands a high measure of professionalism.

Over the last five years RIO (Reiki International Organisation) has created two services in order for people to be able to help: the emergency chain and the stationary program. An example: a man has a stroke and is brought to the hospital as an emergency. His worried friend knows that the patient would like to be supported additionally with Reiki. He signs up the patient in need of help on RIO online. The ethical and practical conditions are examined and within 24 hours the case is unlocked to 30 voluntary helpers who offer around the clock Reiki support by employing the so called absentee treatment (Reiki 2). In emergencies, help is provided free of charge and as unbureaucratically as possible. The man in the example above is stabilised at the hospital and then released into a 5-week rehabilitation program. During this time he wishes to receive additional Reiki support and enters himself into the stationary program, in which he is supported by seven helpers who commit to treating him daily. This service is charged (amount volunteered), as the helpers are entitled to remuneration. You can read the feedback of patient E.S. here.

Doctors increasingly appreciate their patients receiving Reiki in addition to medicinal treatments in hospitals. In July I reported to that effect in a post with the title “Reiki in the Hospital”. Today I visited the patient mentioned in that report again in the hospital. Sadly, his foot had to be amputated for the most part. I treated him a few hours after the surgery this afternoon. After a while, he was visited by a female doctor, with whom he spoke very humorously. She laughed and said, with regards to my hands on the foot, that the product of “the good energies which enter down there comes out as mischief on the other end.” I personally think that the euphoria was rather induced by the medication ... but that is beside the point. The story illustrates once more the favourable willingness of the doctors to cooperate with Reiki practitioners.

Reiki practitioners often reach a point where they cannot go any further by themselves. Think of a single parent of multiple children, one of which is at the intensive care unit. Or of someone with a stressful job and a mother in need of care at home. These people literally have their hands full with Reiki self treatment; no space to treat those entrusted to them with Reiki. In such situation RIO help serves to relieve both parties, the practitioner as well as their charge.

And then there is also the policeman who jabbed his forefinger at my chest after a public talk. This was after I had described an emergency situation in which the accident victim was already being looked after perfectly, but the accident perpetrator was in a shock-like condition. The story had happened about half a year before the public talk. At the time, I had sat myself next to the driver onto a small wall at the side of the road and treated him. The message of this story during the public talk was that one can utilize Reiki at any time. The policeman with the forefinger had a different message. It transpired that he was the chief of operations of the municipal police of Lucerne at exactly that accident scene of which I had been talking. He gave me the assignment, almost the order, to tell Reiki practitioners to make themselves known to the chief of operations at the scene of an accident – provided they are willing to help. “What you did there did the driver a lot of good and we were able to question him calmly. Our problem is that we usually have enough personnel for the accident victim, but mostly lack support for the perpetrators, who feel great anguish and fear. We are glad for any help. Please tell that to your people.” Yes sir, was my only possible reply. It is hereby done.

Der Beitrag Reiki-Help is Everyone’s Due! erschien zuerst auf Reiki-International.

Mischa and I have been in hospitals time and again for many years in order to provide patients with Reiki. This is important work, not only for the person who has fallen ill but also in order to integrate Reiki increasingly into our health care system. We often experience that not the doctors need elucidation, but the patients do, i.e. the people outside of academic medicine with all its prejudices.

Yesterday in the cantonal hospital in Lucerne: the patient is being dialyzed since 10 years. He has a long history of suffering including a kidney transplant, gout, gastric operation. His arteries are so congested that the heart is being damaged. Surgery would be a great risk. One can say that he has been living on borrowed time for quite a while and has done so with astonishingly high quality of life. This is among others thanks to Reiki, to which he owes a lot, by his own admission, also in several emergency situations of life. He also suffers of insufficient perfusion which in turn strains especially the extremities. Thus three years ago half of one foot was amputated. He is back in the hospital since six weeks because the toes of the other foot have also been lost. This was not accomplished in one surgery, it was done in steps, as they tried to preserve as much as possible.

The history of suffering of this man is unbelievable. And how he deals with it is even more so. As previously mentioned he values Reiki very highly. And still he pulled his foot away as the nurse entered his hospital room and asked me to stop my Reiki treatment. The bandage was gone for the first time; the wound looked grisly to the medical layman. But of course it makes sense to treat it right then. Maybe he was ashamed. I do not know. In any case I barked at him quite forcefully: “Don’t be like that! You know exactly how much good this does you.” As well as: “We don’t need to hide from the doctors.” The latter I said loud enough for the nurse to hear.

He looked at the nurse sheepishly and told her, that I am doing Reiki. Very good, she said, and then to me: “Next time please turn on the light outside, then I would not have disturbed you. Please excuse me. I will come back later.” Quickly we entered into a conversation which was followed by the astounded patient.

“Are you a Reiki Therapist?” she asked me. “Yes. And I am a Reiki Teacher.”

“Fantastic,” she replied, “we had an internal advanced training and I have been practicing Reiki as well since then and whenever I can I practice it here in the hospital and mention it in my nursing report. It cannot be prorated but it’s the only way that the effect of Reiki is being documented. And if many enter it into their reports, it will become a matter of course.”

She wanted to know my name as well, because she is thinking about completing the third degree…

This story shows that the problem is not traditional medicine setting itself actively against Reiki. Neither do I believe in a conspiracy of a bad pharmaceutical industry opposing alternative or complementary therapies. Aside from the prejudice described above of many people toward conventional medicine the biggest challenge is called “money.” The system – and I do not mean the health care system but a superordinate social system of our coexistence – currently makes it difficult for us to bill Reiki treatments in hospitals.

Whether the solution is to integrate Reiki through regulations and standardizations into the system; so that for example health insurance companies pay for treatments, remains to be seen. Many efforts go in this direction. The scientific debate about Reiki can further this goal. Mischa and I are supporting such developments. But not only that. Parallel and complementary we are also of the opinion that more innovative avenues can be explored. in-besten-Händen.ch is exploring such possibilities. We recommend our readers to catch up on the homepage of that organization occasionally.

In conclusion we invite everyone who is active in a medical environment to do the same as the nurse in this story: mention Reiki as often as possible in reports. Even if it does not result in short term financial benefits… constant dripping wears the stone.

See also “Reiki Help is Everyone’s Due!”

Der Beitrag Reiki in Hospitals erschien zuerst auf Reiki-International.