Reiki and Pain

Originally from Ontario Reiki Programme Centre

www.magma.ca/~peterz/index.htm – given to The Healing Pages by kind permission

Millions of Canadians suffer from chronic pain. According
to Chronic Pain Association of Canada,[i]
over 18% of Canadians (some 5,400,000 people) suffer from severe chronic pain.
Over 70% of cancer patients experience moderate to severe pain during their
illness. At any given moment, half of all Canadians will experience some kind
of pain. A majority of Canadians experience head pain at least monthly. This
article looks at the use of Reiki for the management of chronic pain.

The following figure[ii]
shows the intensity of various types of pain on the McGill pain scale (which
rates pain from 0-50 in increasing intensity).

How much pain can Reiki be used to help with? Jeri Mills,
M.D., used Reiki for over 10 years in her OB/GYN practice and has documented
her experiences in a book “Tapestry of Healing: Where Reiki and Medicine
Intertwine.”
[iii] She observes, “Most
women slept through the first half of labor, some slept through their entire
labor with only Reiki for pain control. “[iv]

Ann Berger, R.N., M.S.N., M.D., Medical oncologist specializing
in pain treatment, Chief of the Pain and Palliative Care Service at the National
Institute of Health in Washington, D.C has said: “We use probably 50-80
percent of nonpharmacologic methods in our NIH pain clinic, meaning non-medication.
The things we use include massage, relaxation, hypnosis, and Reiki therapy,
which is also very helpful in fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndromes.”

[v] There is anecdotal evidence that
Reiki has been successful in the treatment of the pain associated with RSD (“causalgia”)[vi],
the most intense pain mapped on this figure.

Reiki programmes exist at a number of other palliative care
centres and chronic pain including: New Hampshire’s
Center for Integrative Medicine, the
Pain Management Center at Elliot Hospital in NH,
Ottawa’s
Sandy Hill Community Health Centre (for treating the HIV/AIDS community),

Bruce House AIDS hospice, the
AIDS-Committee of Ottawa, The
Marvelle Koffler Breast Centre recovery centre for breast cancer patients
at Toronto’s Mt. Sinai hospital,
Portsmouth Regional Hospital’s Pain Management centre,
the women’s health centre at the University of Connecticut’s
Charlotte Johnson Hollelder Center, and the
Yale/New-Haven Hospital.

The results: one double-blind study[vii]
found that “Reiki is an effective modality for reducing pain, depression,
and anxiety”; Hartford hospital reports that Reiki provides significant
pain relief for surgery patients[viii];
Edmonton’s Cross Cancer Institute concluded that Reiki showed a highly
significant reduction in pain in a pain management study including cancer. In
a study of Reiki for treating HIV-related pain and anxiety[ix],
Pamela Miles found that newly trained Reiki practitioners perceived reductions
in pain and anxiety when they performed Reiki on themselves or classmates.

Reiki reduces pain, but it also works to improve some of
the correlated effects of chronic pain, the psychological impacts: anxiety and
depression. One group[x]
specifically found that “Reiki is an effective modality for reducing …depression,
and anxiety”; a recent review of Reiki practice in the US found that hospital
“…staff, patients, and program administrators report a number of
benefits including reduced anxiety and …decreased numbers of self-reported
common gerontological complaints such as anxiety, loneliness, insomnia, and
pain…”
[xi]

Summary

Reiki therapy is safe and non-invasive. It is being used
to facilitate relaxation and recovery, decrease anxiety and treat pain[xii]
in hospices, nursing homes, emergency rooms, operating rooms,
organ transplantation care units, pediatric, neonatal and OB/GYN units.
It can be a helpful addition to conventional therapy for HIV/AIDS and
cancer patients[xiii],

[xiv].
Reiki can be learned by both the person experiencing the pain and his
or her caregivers, and can improve the quality of life of many chronic pain
sufferers.

References

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