Healer or Fraudster?

I went to interview a Reiki 'master' today for an article I'm planning to write about the health and relaxation benefits of the treatment.

Elaine, an OAP who has been practising Reiki for 12 years, has a full list of clients and pupils and does an immense amount of charity work. She even teaches Reiki to people all over the world - she is going to Bosnia for the third time in January to spread the Reiki message.

However, I cannot help feeling dubious as I arrive in her cluttered, homely living room, stuffed with shelves of books and lacking in a TV. I settle myself on the sofa.

I spend almost an hour listening to her incredible stories of miraculous healing - and I mean that in the 'that's impossible' sense.

First, Elaine tells me about how she sent long distance healing to a woman in hospital with peritonitis whose organs had shut down. Three days later she was home and fully recovered - Elaine swears it was down to the Reiki "what else could it have been?" she says.

Another boy she gave long distance healing to had an 9lb cancerous tumor removed from his chest and after the operation needed no pain relief at all due to the Reiki. Elaine says : "he just knew it was the Reiki we were sending him that cured him."

Elaine has also healed a man who had a hip replacement and was able to walk again after 6 weeks instead of 3 months thanks to Reiki, and practices it on a 73 yr old man with prostate cancer who apparently cannot cope without it. The man is in agony and his wife drives him the hour long distance for the sessions each week.

Elaine tells me she also performs Reiki on a breast cancer patients chemotherapy before it is injected into her.

Now, I'm not a believer in things like this, in spiritual healing, ghosts, acupuncture or even God.

I have an aunt receiving chemotherapy and herceptin treatment for breast cancer at the moment, she is ill with side effects and is having daily immune boosting injections to keep her out of hospital over Christmas. She was told by another cancer patient that Reiki was useful in dealing with the symptoms.
When she told me this it made me angry to think that people are making money out of others desperation and hope in the face of serious illnesses.

Elaine herself claims to have been told that she needed a kidney transplant in 1976. She still has not had the operation and has taken herself off of all the medication thanks to Reiki.

I ask Elaine about the scientific criticisms of Reiki and suggest that any benefits are down to a placebo effect. "Does it matter?," she replies "I don't think it is a placebo effect anyway, but does it matter? if it works don't knock it"

Well actually, yes, it does matter. I voice my concerns to Elaine that people may turn to Reiki in favour of proper medical treatment, and isn't this dangerous?

"I have never told anyone to stop medical treatment," Elaine tells me.

Hmmm, I am even more dubious now and maybe Elaine can tell as she then offers me a trial. Curious, I agree and hoist myself up onto her healing couch. "Now, you may not feel anything, but it doesn't mean it hasn't worked," she tells me before we begin.

I lie there staring at her patterned ceiling for nearly an hour, listening to the soothing music she has put on and smelling the incense she has lit. I wait for something to happen.

My eyes go funny from staring at the ceiling for so long whilst she hovers her hands above my head. Half way through she moves to my feet and grabs hold of my ankles. I bite my tongue to stop myself from laughing.

She then stands up and frantically moves her hovering hands up and down in the air above where I'm lying, shaking what ever it is she imagines is on them, onto the floor. Then, dusting off her hands she tells me we are finished.

I don't quite know what to say. "I can see why people might use it as a relaxation technique" I tell her. Because actually it was quite relaxing lying down for a while and the couch was really comfy.

That's about the only way I'd recommend Reiki, as a relaxation technique. I certainly don't believe, despite Elaine's stories, that people can be miraculously healed of serious illnesses. I think it is immoral and dangerous to pedal these beliefs to seriously sick people looking for cures - and have them pay an arm and a leg to lie on a comfy couch for an hour.

But as Elaine says, 'maybe I just didn't feel it working', or perhaps you really need to believe it's working to fool your mind into believing you've been healed.