My little mutt, Petunia, likes to curl up around my feet. About two months ago, she was sleeping like this when I noticed that her heartbeat wasn’t going in a predictable rhythm. There was a random spasm in the mix. I took her to the vet, a conventional dog doctor, and he confirmed that she does have a mild arrhythmia. I asked the dog doctor if it would be okay to make Petunia some hawthorn medicine and give it to her myself, and he said “Yes, dogs can take all those herbal medicines people can take.”

Hawthorn, Crataegus spp., is a traditional heart medicine for people. The spring twigs and autumn berries can be made into an alcohol or glycerin tincture that, if taken regularly over time, will strengthen the heart, steady the heartbeat and lower blood pressure.

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According to him, homeopathy offers a cure for almost all diseases but people don’t take interest in helping the sector prosper. He said that there were more than 140 homeopathic medical colleges in the country while there was not a single government-run one. The graduates have to train at clinics because there are no hospitals for them, said Shah.

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I had been planning on either discussing a study or analyzing another cancer cure testimonial, but things have been (mostly) too serious around the ol' blog the last few days. What with depressing posts about the return of whooping cough thanks to antivaccine idiocy, more evidence that Andrew Wakefield is a despicable human being, and evidence that there are equally despicable ideas prevalent in "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), I was starting to enter one of my periodic periods of depression brought on by contemplating the sheer scope of human gullibility and stupidity. I needed a break, or at least something that could turn my despair at human idiocy into laughter. Fortunately, ss I was rooting about for potential topics for tomorrow, what should I see in my e-mail in box but an e-mail from my good blog bud Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism Blog. The e-mail contained a link that made me laugh out loud when I read it because it is one of the best distillations of the utter ridiculousness of homeopathy that I've ever seen. True, it's not quite as ridiculous as the article I once found about homeopathic plutonium a couple of years ago or Aqua Nova (click on the link if you haven't figured out what it is already). When I read it, I decided instantly that, even though Mark had already blogged about it and even though it was a nearly four year old article about homeopathy, I had to pile on too, particularly after I saw that everyone's favorite homeopathic apologist, Dana Ullman, had graced the comments with his IQ-draining presence. After all, if I haven't seen it, it's new to me and possibly new to you too.

Maybe, if we're lucky enough, Dana'll show up over here too.
The article is over at Hpathy.com and entitled On The Treatment of Burns. Like Mark, I know a thing or two about burns. You can't get through a general surgery residency without learning to care for burns, and the residency program where I trained was home to the main burn unit in northeast Ohio. During my rotations there, I dealt with numerous burn patients, with burns large and small. Some patients had burns over greater than 75% of their bodies. Doing split-thickness skin grafts became marathon endurance sessions in the operating room, particularly the children, for whom we had to keep the temperature set very high, leaving the operating room team drenched in sweat by the end of the case. So, having some knowledge about how burns are treated, I wanted to see how homeopaths treat burns.

My regular readers should be very familiar now with at least one principle of homeopathy, namely that diluting a remedy makes it stronger. That particular principle of homeopathy usually brings the most ridicule, violating, as it does, several laws of physics and chemistry, as well as not making any sense from an intuitive, common-sense point of view either. The other principle of homeopathy, which we discuss less is the principle of "like cures like." In other words, to treat a symptom, homeopaths choose remedies that cause that very symptom in healthy individuals. As with the idea that dilution strengthens a remedy, it concerns homeopaths not in the least that there is no physiological or biological rationale to think that such a principle is true, much less generalizable to an entire system of medicine. With that background knowledge now, I bet you can see where this is going, and, predictably, it's straight off the deep end:

Surgeons and doctors out there can probably guess what this idiot did. Can you? Yes, my guess is that this homeopath, by holding the burnt area of his hand in the flame longer, converted a first degree burn to a third degree burn (full thickness) or a deep second degree (partial thickness) burn. And it's true: Full thickness and deep partial thickness burns don't blister. They don't hurt either, because the nerve endings have been seared away. The reason we put cold water on a burn is to stop the process of thermal injury; what this homeopath did was to accelerate it so that the burn went all the way through the skin. Now, in the case of a tiny burn, as from a candle, a person can get away with this. Basically, the full-thickness burn in the skin dries up and forms a scab under which new skin forms. However, doing this in the case of a larger full thickness burn would be disastrous, leading to more scarring, a longer healing time, and possibly even the need for a skin graft. As one of the commenters pointed out, it's not a good idea to convert a superficial burn to a deep one because they hurt less!

Only someone who has no knowledge of burn physiology would be able to propose such a treatment. What a lot of people don't know about burns is that it is the more superficial burns that can often be the most painful and nasty-looking, even though they are generally not as serious. For example, first degree burns are very superficial and will heal on their own. However, because they don't burn away nerve endings they are often very painful. They also look incredibly nasty when healing, because they will often blister up. However, underneath the blister, the underlying skin usually heals without incident. In fact, it's usually best not to break the blister, because it's an excellent biological dressing.

What happened here? It looks to me as though he probably only had his hand momentarily in the fryer. He pulled it out right away, not having left it in long enough to get more than a first degree burning (which no doubt hurt like hell) and the thin layer of hot oil, because it was thin, rapidly cooled once his hand was out of the fryer. The warm water soothed it and also further cooled it, even though it was warm water. In other words, he was very, very lucky. I highly doubt that the outcome would have been so good if his hand had stayed in the fryer a few seconds. If his hands were wet before he slipped, that might also have helped because the water on the skin would instantly vaporize upon coming in contact with the hot oil and temporarily form a thin later of gas around his hand, which could have helped insulate him from the extreme heat, at least over the span of a second. In any case, my guess is that he would have done the same or even better if he had used cool water.

The third anecdote involves the homeopath's daughter, who scalded her hand with "double boiled water" (whatever that is). Whether he meant water from a double boiler or water that had been boiled twice, I don't know, but in any event apparently her friend's dog had started humping her leg while she was pouring water into a cup. (Folks, you can't make stuff like this up.) She told her dad that she had tried the "hot water thing" but that it hadn't worked. Her dad, being the homeopath that he was, gave her Caust 200C, which is a 10400-fold dilution of whatever Caust is, a dilution that is many, many orders of magnitude greater than the estimated number of molecules in the known universe. To everyone's relief, it apparently made the daughter less hostile to the dog, but to no one's surprise it did absolutely nothing for the burn. In any case, he includes a photo of the rather impressive blister his daughter developed and described her course after that:

Ultimately the blister started leaking, and his daughter pulled the skin of the blister off, and--guess what?--the skin underneath had healed! Is this a surprise? Nope. Remember what I said about the blister being an excellent biological dressing? This is exactly what I meant. I've often said that homeopathic treatment resembles the correct treatment of a condition by coincidence only. This was nothing more than one such coincidence. Leaving the blister intact and letting the second degree burn heal on its own were exactly the right moves. Homeopathy had nothing to do with it, although I do like the little bit of detail about succussing (shaking) the homeopathic remedy exactly six times. Nothing like a little magic to make the woo go down. I say "magic" because homeopaths will oh so solemnly tell you that just diluting a remedy isn't enough. It has to be "potentized" by being succussed at each dilution step in order to imbue the potion with its magic powers. Actually, they don't put it that way, exactly. That's just my translation of homeopathic woo-speak.

At least now I know where the myth I sometimes hear that cold water is bad for a burn came from. It appears to have come from Samuel Hahnemann himself! It's right there in an excerpt from a treatise on burns written by Hahnemann in 1816. We skeptics often joke about how homeopathy is nothing more than water, and indeed it is. However, it's more than that in that it is an entire system of magical thinking applied to medicine. We often assume that homeopathy isn't dangerous because it's water, or that it's only dangerous when people use it to treat or prevent serious diseases instead of science-based medicine. However, the homeopathic treatment of burns is an example of homeopathy being dangerous on its own, particularly for those who are so deluded to heat a burn with a candle and convert a superficial or partial thickness burn into a deep or full thickness burn. It's also the ultimate example of treating the symptoms instead of the physiology in that the severity of injury is increased by turning a superficial or partial thickness burn into a deep or full thickness burn in order to decrease the amount of pain. In other words, if homeopathic principles are followed in burns, in order to decrease symptoms, you increase the severity of the injury.

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Sceptics and scientists alike say homeopathy is a placebo. However, scientists at IIT Powai have done some ground-breaking research, and plan to release a new study this March. The British Medical Association has passed some serious judgment on homeopathy, liking it to witchcraft and black magic, “all placebo and no science”.

The debate over homeopathy is not new. Some of the criticism is over the quality of compounds which are heavily diluted with water. The final solution often contains only a millionth of the original ingredient. Researchers in IIT Bombay have found that these white pills work on the principle of nanotechnology.
A team of experts at the institute prepared a highly diluted solution of pills and checked them under powerful electron microscopes and found that even after extreme dilutions, the final solution did retain the original compounds.

Jayesh R Bellare, Professor of Chemical Engineering at IIT-B, said, ”We have shown for the first time that there is a scientific basis to the material aspect of homeopathy. Now it is possible for others to take on this and show that there is or there is not, a medical action based on this. And if there is a medical action, whether the particles that were originally there, are still there in the final medicine and whether they play a role or not.”The medicinal potency of the drugs after dilution still needs to be studied, but the debate does not bother homeopaths.

One homeopath customer CNN-IBN spoke to, said, “These findings and debates are for scientists, not for common man. I have been using it for over 60 years and I trust it.”Noted filmmaker Sooraj Barjatya too seems to be a proud supporter of homeopathy. He said that while allopathy was all well and good, in the end, it turned human being into a vegetable. “You wake up in the morning, you are grog, you sleep at night, you are grog.. Is that well being? So that is where homeopathy comes in.”Finally, it may just remain a matter of trust, till the science catches up.

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Homeopathy is a 200-year-old approach to healing that utilizes products prepared in accordance with standards set forth in the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States (HPUS) and its current revision service (HPRS). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates these products as over-the-counter (OTC) drugs and requires that homeopathic producers be registered as pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Nutraceuticals are defined by the American Nutraceutical Association (ANA) as functional foods that have potentially disease-preventing and health-promoting properties: they are naturally-occurring dietary substances in pharmaceutical dosage forms.

Interestingly, by definition, these two types of products seem different but in actuality, they are quite the same. They both offer an alternative to conventional OTC drugs. They have similar pharmaceutical dosage forms and uses. Their sources are sometimes the same, specifically those of herbal or botanical origin. Often, one can find the same herbal component of a nutraceutical in a homeopathic form. The basic difference is in the method of production.

Products are labeled homeopathic only when all active ingredients are prepared according to the HPRS. When a formulation contains a homeopathically-prepared herbal as well as the same herbal in pure form, for example, the product is considered a nutraceutical rather than a homeopathic.

Homeopathy originated and has flourished in Europe for hundreds of years. Europe has been at the forefront of alternative and holistic medicine. A publication from the European American Coalition of Homeopathy (EACH) titled Homeotherapy states the following: For a legitimate classification of a pharmaceutical (or nutraceutical) as a ‘homeopathic medication,’ it is not the manner of use, but the solely the aspect of manufacture which is decisive. These medications are produced in accordance with pharmaceutical criteria, which are stipulated within the official homeopathic pharmacopeias and the valid, authorized guidelines of the European Union.”

This advanced European approach to homeopathy is becoming more popular in the United States. It recognizes that homepathically-produced substances can be used in acute situations, in chronic illness, for specific indications and for support of organs and systems as homeopathic nutraceuticals.

Cell salts and Bach flower remedies are some of the earliest homeopathics and can be considered nutraceuticals in their clinical uses. Their use is the common thread that weaves together homeopathics and nutraceuticals.

Many homeopathics products that one sees in health food stores contain well-recognized herbals which are also available as nutraceuticals. For example, a homeopathic formulation for stress may contain ginseng for its adaptogenic effect and gotu kola for its anti-stress effect, plus royal jelly, a natural source of vitamin B, pantothenic acid. Ginseng and gotu kola, besides being nutraceuticals, are also official homeopathic substances, while royal jelly is a popular nutraceutical. Thus by combining homeopathics with nutraceuticals, you get the best of both worlds.

Homeopathic nutraceuticals are a modern-day amalgamation of both homeopathy and nutrition. This is a contemporary concept whose time has come. Homeopathics and nutraceuticals are currently regulated by the FDA through both drug regulations and the DSHEA. These products provide a safe alternative to habit-forming conventional medicine.

Annamarie Pamphilis is a naturopath and director of the Health and Balance Institute located in Lakewood, Ohio at Holistic Lakewood, 15217 Madison Ave.

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Homeopathy is as scientific as is modern medicine. If a sensible doctor that knows both the systems well tries for a good combination many present day incurable diseases could be managed to the extent possible I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There is a raging controversy over homeopathy, especially in the west. One of the London newspapers has a weekly column by a young modern medical doctor writing to convince the readers that homeopathy is nothing but a fraud on the gullible public. I am sure that column is sponsored by some vested interests and the author might not have had long enough experience with modern medicine to get to know the frustrations of a conscientious practitioner about its failings. While the writer gets a full page every week, the poor chaps who have to rebut that get hardly any chance. One gets an impression from those writings that while modern medicine is perfect and is a panacea for all human ills, there is absolutely no need to look beyond its frontier and try to get succor from fraudsters in homeopathy!

Origins of homeopathy
Homeopathy, like modern medicine, started as an art based on some scientific principles in the eighteenth century by a modern medical doctor Samuel Hahnemann who was born in Meissen in Germany in the year 1755. Mr Hahnemann’s frustrations in modern medicine led him to look for help outside. While translating the materia medica of a Scottish doctor by name Cullen, Mr Hahnemann chanced upon the pharmacology of quinine. He took a very small dose of quinine which gave him almost identical symptoms of febrile illnesses. Thus was born the pharmacology of homeopathy. “Similia similibus curantur”, like cures the like, was the basic principle. Every homeopath should be a prover in the sense that s/he should try the medicine on oneself to see the symptoms in a healthy individual before using that drug for curative purposes.

Materia Medica of homeopathy
Mr Hahnemann was impressed by his studies of many other drugs like ipecac, opium, etc, and by 1810 he had collected so many similar drug reactions that the general law of homeopathy was laid by then in his book, The Organon or the art of healing. The symptom complexes that occur in healthy individuals are called “proving” or “pathogenesis.” Between the work of Mr Hahnemann and his followers hundreds of substances are added on to the homeopathic materia medica. This system claims that it is  “therapy for the whole man”; consequently, is better suited for a dynamic system like the human body where reductionism has no place. There is no quarrel with allopathy as this system tries to help the body use its immune guard against a disease while allopathy tries to hit the disease on its head to get rid of it. If judiciously used in combination, they might even complement each other.

Modern Science of homeopathy
Edward Calabrese, the then director of research at Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling’s department of chemistry at Berkeley, was the one that discovered a new phenomenon called “Hormesis.” Derived from the word hormo (encourage) the new phenomenon shows that any chemical molecule in its very small doses is always bio-positive while the same drug in its larger doses could be bio-negative. Mr Calabrese’s PhD student elegantly showed that a tomato a day, containing about 25 mg of vitamin C, is very strongly bio-positive while the same vitamin C in larger doses could be dangerously bio-negative in the long run! Similar was the experience of the father of America’s hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller, who described radiation hormesis while working in the Nevada Desert to explode bombs, showing that very minute doses of radiation, in fact, could improve human health significantly while larger doses do kill. These two people got into serious trouble with their establishments for showing the truth and suffered a lot. That is for another occasion. Hormesis shows that homeopathy has a better claim on human healing compared to allopathy.

Science of water structure
Professor Rustum Roy, an octogenarian, is the father of nano and material sciences at the Penn. State University. He is of Indian origin from Bengal. A brilliant man, professor Roy, with an enviable reputation in the comity of scientific nations, all of whom have honored him with their highest awards, has been at the forefront of research on the structure of water. However, the Swedish Academy failed to recognize him despite being nominated twenty one times for the Nobel since his first ground breaking paper on Sol-Gel technique to extract nano particles in 1954. His students did get the award though. One of the reasons is that he is a humane scientist who goes after the truth ruthlessly.

His original work on the structure of the water along with the work of Professor Martin Chaplin’s at South Bank University, London, has established beyond doubt that water has a very complicated structure. Any chemical put into water changes the structure for ever and further dilutions do not change the structure. This is the signature of the chemical in water. Chemical analysis by conventional methods does not show the presence of the original chemical but the water structure remains changed as per its signature. That is how the very dilute homeopathic solutions work.

Placebo effect
Lots of people have an idea that homeopathy is only a placebo and not effective otherwise. This is not true. That said, I must hasten to add that the so called placebo effect is now measureable scientifically. There are many studies of modern medical drugs, leading ones being the expensive anti-psychotic drugs that have been tested against placebo tablets in patients. Almost all of those drugs were less effective than the placebo in the management of depression, anxiety etc. Similar studies have been done against some pain-killers also. Curiously there were studies to find out the basis of the placebo effect in the human system. While a patient has faith in his/her doctor and takes a placebo, the forebrain produces very powerful chemicals that work on the hind brain and through that on the whole system. Studies have also tried to block the release of those powerful chemicals from the forebrain using the blocking drug Naloxone prior to the testing with placebo. Lo and behold, there was no placebo effect and there were no chemicals getting to the hind brain at all. In other words placebo effect is a reality and not pseudo-science!

Therefore, even if one were to think that homeopathy is only a placebo, it does not belittle its importance as most of our modern medical drugs are worse than placebos. The added advantage is that placebo does not have side effects as the good effects are happening through body’s own generation of healing chemicals from the forebrain. Oliver Wendell Holmes, a Harvard-trained doctor who became a poet and a writer for a living had this to say about the placebo effect of a humane doctor’s work. “The two most powerful drugs ever produced are the two kind words of a humane doctor,” he wrote and added that “if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the seas it would be that much better for mankind but that much worse for the fishes.” That statement has to be written in golden letters today what with Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) becoming the fourth leading cause of death in the United States of America.

Conclusions
Homeopathy is as scientific as is modern medicine. Neither of them is perfect, though. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages in equal measure. If a sensible doctor that knows both the systems well tries for a good combination many present day incurable diseases could be managed to the extent possible. Unfortunately, there has not been significant progress in the science of homeopathy for a long time. What research happens is only repetitive but not refutative to demolish the myths and take knowledge forwards. Science suffers from this malady for some time now. To understand nature (human system) good scientists must come together to understand one another.

Division of science (method to unravel nature’s secrets) into smaller compartments will only hinder growth and understanding, like the Law of Thermodynamics which says that anything that divides ultimately disappears. Even inside these divisions there are sub-specialties. They try to know more and more about less and less until they know more and more about nothing. What we need in every field for progress is not information and knowledge but wisdom. Hope homeopathy would progress to be a real good method of relieving human suffering, especially for the minor illness syndromes, which form the bulk of sick absenteeism on any given day! It could also be a boon to the poor who bear the brunt of most illnesses but can not hope to go for top heavy prohibitively expensive modern medical methods.

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Anal Fissure is a small tear in the lining of the anal canal. Common in infants ages 6 to 24 months, anal fissures are less likely to develop in older children. Adults may develop anal fissures as a result of passing hard or large stools during bowel movements. Anal fissures may cause pain and bleeding. More than 90 percent heal on their own, and one can use topical creams or suppositories to provide relief as they heal. Anal fissures that fail to heal may become chronic and cause considerable discomfort. If we develop an anal fissure that fails to heal, surgery may relieve the discomfort. The main signs and symptoms of an anal fissure include pain or burning during bowel movements that eases until the next bowel movement, bright red blood on the outside of the stool or on toilet paper or wipes after a bowel movement and itching or irritation around the anus.

The most common cause of anal fissures is large or hard stool passing through the anal canal during bowel movements. Other causes include constipation and straining during bowel movements, inflammation of the anorectal area, such as is caused by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and anal sex (rarely). We may be able to prevent an anal fissure by taking measures to prevent constipation. Eat high-fiber foods, drink fluids and exercise regularly to keep from having to strain during bowel movements. We may be able to prevent an anal fissure by taking measures to prevent constipation. Eat high-fiber foods, drink fluids and exercise regularly to keep from having to strain during bowel movements.

The following lifestyle changes may help relieve discomfort and promote healing of an anal fissure, as well as prevent recurrences:

Add fiber to the diet.
Drink adequate fluids.
Exercise regularly.
Take a sitz bath.
Avoid straining during bowel movements.

Homeopathy in Anal Fissures:
Homeopathy can help in healing of chronic fissures and control pain and bleeding. Homeopathy can prevent recurrent complains of anal fissures. Homeopathy can prevent the need for surgery by reliving complains of anal fissures effectively. The improvement in anal fissures is mainly brought by regularizing the bowel movements and improving the digestion. Constitutional homeopathic treatment helps in improving digestion and relives constipation. This helps directly in the improvement of recurrent anal fissures.

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In this article I would like to talk about the sort of things that students might feel – or not feel – when receiving attunements or empowerments, when working with energy and when treating or being treated, and the significance of these sensations. The article is particular addressed to people who have just taken a First Degree course or who are only just starting on their journey with Reiki, though it should be of interest to people at all Reiki levels.

Attunements or empowerments
(Please note that, to avoid unnecessary repetition, I am going to use the word ‘empowerment' to refer both to Reiju empowerments and Western-style Reiki attunements.)

When we arrive on a Reiki First Degree course, we probably have very little idea of what we might experience when going through an empowerment. If you read books about Reiki, everyone seems to be going through an exceptional, once-in-a-lifetime experience, but for most people it really isn't like that.

There is no way of predicting what an individual will experience when receiving an empowerment, whether in person or at a distance. You may have an amazing experience, or you may feel very little or nothing. It is not uncommon for people to see some colours or feel some heat or tingling or pulsing or pressure in various areas of their bodies. For some people an empowerment is a unique experience, profound, emotional, an experience that is almost unbelievable. For others very little happens.

Sometimes you might find that there will be four people, say, on a course. Three people are talking about the surprising, or interesting, or special experiences that they just had, and one poor soul is sitting there thinking to themselves "I knew this wouldn't work for me… I know Reiki is supposed to work for everyone, but it hasn't worked for me". We assume that if we notice a lot happening then the empowerment has ‘taken', that it has worked really well, and we assume that if we felt very little – or if we felt nothing – then the connection ritual has not worked, that we haven't been attuned, or we haven't been attuned properly.

But what a student experiences when they receive an empowerment is no guide as to the effectiveness of that empowerment. In fact what a student experiences really is irrelevant, because empowerments always work. Of course it is nice and reassuring to have the "bells and whistles and fireworks" – it helps you to believe that something definite has happened - but someone who has noticed all these things has not been more effectively empowered when compared with a student who felt very little or nothing.

Experiences are interesting, but not important. They don't mean anything in terms of whether, or how well, an empowerment has worked, because empowerments always work, no matter what the student feels or doesn't feel.

Experiencing energy
People are all different, and people differ in terms of how sensitive they are to the flow of energy in the early stages of their work with Reiki. Sometimes people arrive on a Reiki course massively sensitive to the energy, and perhaps better able to sense subtle differences than is their teacher, and that's nice for them, while other people may notice something very subtle, or perhaps nothing at all. Most people will feel something.

So when playing with energy, most people will feel something in between their hands when they try to make an energy ball. Most people will feel something when they try to feel someone else's energy field, or if they practise ‘scanning' (assuming that there is something there to detect – there won't always be). But not everyone will feel these things to begin with, and the people who do not feel anything should not be disheartened: because sensitivity to such things can develop with practice and repetition. Most people will find that, no matter how sensitive they find themselves when they first learn Reiki, when they start to work with the energy regularly – for example by carrying out Hatsurei ho every day, and by self-treating – their sensitivity to the energy will increase. But this is a work-in-progress and we may need to be patient. And we may find that our sensitivity to the energy never reaches our goal, or is never as great as other Reiki people that we come across. Maybe we are setting an unreasonable target for ourselves.

And we should remember that sensitivity to the flow of energy is not the be-all and end-all of Reiki. We can work on ourselves and derive the many benefits that come through Reiki, no matter what we feel or don't feel when we carry out hatsurei ho or self-treat. We can treat other people effectively no matter what we might feel or not feel in our hands. I have come across several successful and effective Reiki Master / Teachers who do not feel anything going on in their hands, and never have done. The reason why they continued their Reiki training, rather than giving up in the face of no physical sensations to encourage them, was because they practised on lots of people and they could see, by the positive responses they received from the recipients, that something was definitely going on, that they were doing good things, that Reiki was certainly doing something for the people they treated even though they couldn't feel the energy.

You may ask how you can treat someone when you can't feel anything, or if you can't scan very well at the moment. Well, most people in the world of Reiki are taught a standard set of hand positions to use when they treat, and these standard positions can be followed, giving general coverage over the body; the energy is drawn to areas of need, so that works perfectly well. Not everyone scans. Not everyone is taught how to scan. It isn't a vital step in a treatment, but it can be a useful one to perform if you can do it.

But if you can work intuitively then of course you can place your hands in the right places for each person you work on, and stay in each position for the most appropriate amount of time, not based on the sensations you are feeling in your hands but based on your intuitive impressions. Everyone can work intuitively with some practice, and you may well be taught how to carry out "Reiji ho" (a Japanese method for opening to your intuition during a treatment) on a Second Degree course. So an intuitive approach to treatments actually eliminates any advantage in being able to sense strongly in your hands.

Sensations experienced by people you treat
Now, you will not be surprised to know that the experiences of people being treated also varies a great deal. For some people, on some occasions, treatments are very strong. They might feel intense heat from the practitioner's hands, see coloured lights, drift in and out of consciousness. And on other occasions that same person might feel the treatment to be mild and gentle. The energy is drawn by the recipient in amounts that are appropriate for them on that occasion, so the perceived ‘strength' of any treatment is determined by the recipient's need. The practitioner is just a necessary bystander in the treatment process.

While some people seem to quite often notice a lot happening when they are treated, there are also people who feel very little or nothing when they receive a Reiki treatment, no matter who they receive the treatment from. If you have just started out on your Reiki journey and you just happen to treat one of these people, or a few of these people, as your first ‘clients' then you may end up disheartened, thinking that their lack of a strong sensation means that you are ineffective as a practitioner. We want the recipient to feel a lot because that reassures us that we are doing things ‘correctly', that we are effective as a channel for the energy. But things aren't always so simple: while quite often there may be general correlation between what the practitioner feels and what the recipient feels (a very hot area for the practitioner is felt as a very tingly area, say, for the recipient) this correlation will not always be there and, sometimes, you might find a practitioner feeling a raging furnace in their hands, amazed at the strength of what is going on, while the recipient did not notice anything at all, and perhaps didn't notice anything at all during the entire treatment!

Summary
So really this whole article boils down to one simple phrase: "just for today, do not worry". While it is perfectly natural to want to have some physical sensations to help us believe that we are really doing something when we use Reiki on ourselves and on other people, and while most people who learn Reiki will receive sufficient feedback to reassure them, this will not always happen. With practice and experience we start to let go of the need to be reassured by what we and others feel, and we come to realise that no matter what we feel or don't feel, Reiki is working for us. But it can be difficult to accept this in the early stages, particularly if we are a little sceptical.

If you aren't feeling too much at the moment my advice to you is to follow the instructions you were given: carry out your Hatsurei ho every day, self-treat regularly, and get your hands on as many people as you can. Do short blasts on someone's knee or shoulder, treat people in a straight-backed chair for 20-30 minutes, do full treatments; go with the time you have you have available. The important thing is to get the hands-on practice and you will find, if you treat a good cross-section of people, that you will receive from them the positive feedback that you need, and with sufficient practice you may find that you start to notice more with time.

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Acupuncture is commonly thought of as an alternative medical treatment. Though in the United States acupuncture is considered an alternative medicine, it is widely practiced throughout the rest of the world and is an extremely common practice in Chinese medicine.

It has been used in China’s medical system since the 1930s. Most people imagine acupuncture as being stuck with needles in certain key areas to alleviate pain or cure other ailments. It is true that acupuncture involves needles being strategically placed on a person’s body, but there are many varieties of acupuncture.  

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)
This type of acupuncture not only involves acupuncture with needles, but also the burning of Chinese medicinal herbs. TCM in considered to be a holistic approach to medicine since it treats the whole person; not only the body, but also the mind and the spirit.

It is based on the concept of Qi (or Chi), which is believed to be a force of energy within the body that keeps the functions of the body, including organs, working properly. The Qi travels along the body on pathways called “meridians” with each one representing a certain body system or organ function. It is along these pathways that the acupuncturist places the needles.

The herbs used along with the acupuncture treatment aid in strengthening the body. These herbs can be used to help stop bleeding, fight a cold, and aid in digestion, for just a few examples. Normally, the herbs are used in combinations of three or more and can be taken in pill form, burned and inhaled, or in tinctures placed on the body during treatment.

Classical Acupuncture
Classical Acupuncture is the most common thought of type according to westerners. It is also known as the five element acupuncture. This type uses needles alone. It is also referred to as Classical Five Element Acupuncture because it corresponds to the seasons according to the Chinese cycle. This cycle includes:
Summer; Harvest; Fall; Winter; Spring

Not only does Classical Acupuncture correspond to the seasons, but also to the five elements found in nature as they relate to a person’s body. These five elements are:
Fire; Earth; Metal; Water; Wood

Japanese Acupuncture
Japanese acupuncture is along the same lines as classical acupuncture, but this type uses smaller needles. It also focuses more on precision and efficient techniques that promote accomplishing bigger results using the smallest amount of stimulation possible.

Electro acupuncture
Like the name implies, electro acupuncture combines traditional acupuncture combined with a low electric current running through the needles and is becoming an ever-increasing popular form of acupuncture. Electro acupuncture uses the same meridians as classical acupuncture, but uses a small device that clips onto the needles. The device sends electric pulses that the acupuncturist can adjust depending on the intensity needed.

Unlike Japanese Acupuncture, electro acupuncture does not need to be so precise. The electric pulses stimulate a wider area making it easier to treat the area. Those who are squeamish about needles will prefer electro acupuncture because it can be done with electrodes instead of needles and attain the same results.

Medical Acupuncture
Medical acupuncture is very similar to classical acupuncture, but it is performed by a licensed medical doctor. It incorporates the medical science surrounding neuromuscular anatomy. Some also include historically Chinese acupuncture patterns; thereby, creating a hybrid of western and eastern medical knowledge.

Auricular Acupuncture
Auricular acupuncture is unique. This type treats the entire body, just like other types of acupuncture, but it does so through particular points located in the patient’s ears. The acupuncturist pinpoints certain nerves found in the ear that relate to other parts of the body to help heal or alleviate pain in that particular part.

Auricular acupuncturists have over 200 acupuncture points to know on the outer ear. This is also called the pinna, more commonly known as the cartilage. Western auricular acupuncturists utilize a tool called an electro acupunctoscope, which is an electric tool. This is along the same lines as the electro acupuncture methods. This method is known as Transcutaneous Electical Nerve Stimulation (TENS).

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Depending on whom you trained with, you may have been given quite a long list of 'situations where you should not use Reiki'. It seems that the only restriction that Mrs Takata taught was that you should not treat a broken bone with Reiki, but many other restrictions have been added in later on in Reiki's Western history. I thought I would spend a little time talking about these 'Reiki contraindications'.

Firstly, I would like to talk about the 'broken bone' restriction. This is made on the basis that Reiki accelerates the healing process, so you do not want Reiki to set the bone before it has been put back in the right position. Now while Reiki is an amazing energy, and has done some wonderful and breathtaking things, I think most people's experience is that Reiki gently supports the body's natural healing ability, and that while it may accelerate the healing process, the effects of Reiki generally build up cumulatively. I do not believe that Reiki will set someone's bone like fast-acting Polyfilla, so that they will have to have the bone re-broken and re-set when they get to Casualty a few hours later. Breaking a bone is a shocking and painful experience (I know this from first hand experience!) and Reiki could make a real difference to someone, so I would not hold back from giving it, and I would not hold back from treating the area where the bone is broken. Suggesting that you could Reiki someone, but keep well away from the broken bone, does not stop Reiki from rushing to where it is needed (the bone), and why would we imagine that what many people see as a spiritually-guided life-force energy would mess things up for a person. Reiki is supposed to be intelligent.

Another situation where some people are taught that you 'should not treat' is when a client has a pacemaker. This restriction is made on the basis that Reiki energy is electromagnetic in nature, and will interfere with the proper functioning of the device. Confusingly, some say that this restriction only applies to analogue pacemakers, not the newer digital ones. There seems to be no evidence whatsoever to indicate that Reiki would cause a problem in this area, and I have not heard on a single anecdote where a Reiki practitioner treated someone with a pacemaker and the treatment caused problems. I am also not aware of any evidence to show that Reiki is electromagnetic in nature, either. If it was, you could measure Reiki easily: move your hand over a wire and you would induce an electric current, which you could pick up with a voltmeter. Some have suggested that you can solve this 'problem' by keeping away from the heart area, but we all know that Reiki rushes from where we put it to where it is needed. I would have thought that a person with a pacemaker needed more Reiki in the heart area, not less, and if Reiki is drawn to the areas of need then it is going to go where it wants anyway. The only solution would be not to treat someone with a pacemaker, which I think is ridiculous. Some have suggested that you should not attune someone with a pacemaker, and again I do not think that this is sensible. I am not going to restrict my practice of Reiki on the basis of unfounded supposition.

With nearly all the restrictions that are put on Reiki, there seems to be no evidence to back up any of them. I am not talking about double blind clinical trials here, but even simple anecdotes where a practitioner has treated someone and found that there is a problem that can be reasonably attributed to the treatment that has been given. I have heard that you should not treat insulin-dependent Diabetics, or people taking steroids for adrenal insufficiency. Those restrictions have been made on the basis that if Reiki produces an instant cure then the patient's next dose of insulin, or steroids, will kill them. Again, while Reiki is a wonderful healing force, it is not my belief that Reiki is likely to cure diabetes, for example, at the click of a finger. Most people's experience is that the effects of Reiki build up cumulatively and that if a condition has taken a long time to develop, then it is not so likely to disappear straight away. Yes, a diabetic patient's blood glucose levels may vary after a Reiki treatment, but diabetics' blood sugar levels vary a great deal anyway. That is why they have to keep on sticking themselves with a pin to monitor their levels, and you could only attribute this variation to Reiki if it happened consistently after treatments and their blood sugar levels were stable the rest of the time.

Having said that, there does seem to be some anecdotal evidence that Reiki treatments can sometimes cause the client's blood sugar levels to alter after a treatment. This does not mean that you should not treat diabetics: it means that you need to keep this in mind and mention this possibility to the client, so that they can monitor their blood sugar levels accordingly.

I have heard that you should not send distant Reiki to someone who is driving a car, because they will fall asleep, and you should not send distant Reiki to someone who is under an anaesthetic, because it will make them wake up… well, which is it? This doesn't sound like an intelligent energy to me, and there seems to be a lot of fear, and a lack of trust in the energy, underlying all these restrictions. So where is the evidence that Reiki wakes people up during surgery? Where is even one anecdote where it was clear that Reiki, rather than any other cause, led to this happening? Look for the evidence, and you find that these scare stories have no foundation.

In fact, the restrictions do not stop there. There are many more taught in different lineages. For example, you should not treat people with cancer, you should not treat people who are pregnant, you should not treat people who are depressed or who have asthma, you should not treat people who are stressed, you should not treat young children, you should not treat animals, you should not treat people who are taking homoeopathic remedies, you should not treat people who are taking medicines, you should not treat people wearing green trousers (sorry, I made that one up!).

Let's just examine two of these. It is said by some teachers that you should not treat people who have cancer because Reiki will "feed the cancer"; there is a variation on this myth, actually, where people are taught that they should not use one of the Reiki symbols because it will "put energy into the cancer". Let's think rationally about this for just a second: we have cancer cells inside us all of the time and as you sit reading this, there are cancer cells in you. Your cells go haywire all the time and your immune system detects the errors and kills the cells. But if you adhere to this Reiki contraindication then you should not treat anyone at all because Reiki feeds cancer cells, and everyone has cancer cells in them, so we can't treat people, or animals, we can't treat ourselves, and being attuned would be a death sentence!

And if we can't treat pregnant women then we really need to refrain from treating any women of childbearing age because of course women can be in the early stages of pregnancy and not know about it, or be pregnant and not know about it. And then of course all women of childbearing age should refrain from self-treating, and should not go on Reiki courses.

People do not think things through

I believe that Reiki is a beautiful healing energy that supports the body's natural healing ability, and brings things into balance on all levels. It either has an innate intelligence, and knows where to go to an extent, or it is the body that is intelligent and draws the energy to where it is needed. In either case, Reiki is not going to mess up a person and leave them less well off than they were before they started, other than a temporary intensification of symptoms. Examples of these would be an emotional release or strong emotions felt for a few days after being treated, or joint pains getting worse during a treatment and then improving subsequently.

The last set of restrictions that I have heard about concern distant healing, where it is said in some quarters that you should not send Reiki to people who have not asked for or given their permission. Some people say that it is totally unethical to send distant Reiki to someone without obtaining their agreement and that it a gross intrusion. I do not agree with this, for a number of reasons:

1. Firstly, I see sending distant Reiki as rather like sending concentrated prayer. When you pray for someone you are asking for Divine intervention in another person's life, in whatever way is right for that person according to Divine will. You are asking for things to change for the better. When you send Reiki you are sending it with loving intent and for the person's highest good, so it is in line with that person's destiny or karma, and many people see Reiki energy as having Divine origins. You do not ring someone up to ask their permission to pray for them, so why should if be different with Reiki?

2. If someone were knocked over by a car a few yards away from you, would you really not send Reiki to them because you couldn't drag them into the seated position to sign a consent form? No. You would send Reiki to their highest good and let the energy do what is appropriate for them. You offer the energy: you do not force the recipient to receive it.

3. Reiki is a beautiful healing energy that brings things into balance on all levels and does not mess people up, leaving them worse off than they were to begin with. With distant healing your intent is that the energy works for the highest good of the recipient, so if it is not appropriate for that person to get the benefit of the energy then it simply will not work. You are not imposing your will and you are not imposing your preferred solution on the situation. You are simply sending love, offering the energy, making the energy available, not forcing it to be received.

For these reasons, I have no problem in sending Reiki to people who have not specifically requested it. I send the energy with the intention that it be received by the recipient at whatever time is appropriate for them. I do not see that there are any other restrictions that need to be applied to the energy, or the practice of Reiki. In the West we think too much, and come up with too many complications. Reiki is simple and does not need to be restricted. It knows what to do.

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