The Reiki Cafe 

In my journey to understand my friend's MS and how to effectively do Reiki for the condition, I've gotten a lot of interesting feedback from some Reiki Cafe members with various autoimmune disorders. It seems that Reiki is too strong when people have severe flare ups of the conditions, be it MS, Lupus, Fibromyalgia, and that these people accept Reiki energy easier when their are in a more manageable state. Wendy mentioned that distant Reiki is too strong, and it seems that people with these types of disorders fare very well doing self healings--is it because they can instinctively control the amount of energy they receive? What do you think?

I also found my friend's mother, who is diabetic with neuropathy and wounds that don't heal, was OK with Reiki when she was not terribly ill, but when she was hospitalized with a lung infection and leg infections, she became hypersensitive to the energy. The energy was so intense for her, as to make her feel drained and depleted.

I'm wondering if any of you have come across these types of things and if you could tell your stories and/or try to offer explanations. It seems that there is a pattern here.

Namaste,
Starlight

HI STARLIGHT,
rest, rest & yet more rest, is what is needed with the autoimmune dis-ease,( one has to learn to 'PACE' one's self as not to over do things & go into a roaring 'flare')even the weather can do this when the barometric pressure drops!....
when a lot of pain is present, that's the body's way of 'telling you what not to do'....the 'inner voice' if you like,...(which is never wrong!,) if one goes ahead & does Reiki (on such a person when in a lot of pain) in a way it's going against the body's 'true healing process' of 'REST, to heal the body', if Reiki helped a person with say fibromyalgia 'to' much, a lot of harm would be the out come, as that person would tear muscles, ligaments etc. from 'OVER DOING' exercise!!! this is so very hard to explain....I feel the golden rule with all these types of dis-eases is to LISTEN to your body..(very hard to do all the time)...
this goes for most illness that have an autoimmune problem....what happens when people like this cut themselves or get bad sores, the immune system turns on it's self!!!....the goodies start in healing these wounds & 'so' do the baddies!!! so nothing really gets done..lol,

they have at 'long last', found out that with autoimmune dis-eases there is lack of, 'for a better explanation', BRAIN SPARKS, that send out the wrong signals, we are lacking in some brain chemicals....when they find out which ones, we will be well again, (on medication with what's lacking).....

When my Husband tried to give me Reiki, not only did I feel more pain but, he felt quite ill & threw up!!...so we never tried it again..he tried sending it to me, only for me having severe sweats & more pain, so that was out...
where I can reach I do my own hands on while doing relaxation after lunch & again when I go to bed & fall asleep doing it!!!my hands will get very hot, & I have noticed that he tells me 'where' to move to next, plus it's a 'very short time' in each position,
I do not send it to myself as that seems to strong, (even with the #2 symbol..)
so it's a hard one,.... I have had success with balancing the hemispheres of the mind, hands on, or distant, for people that have these illnesses, it seems to help their depression,(that 'is all a part' of having pain 24/7)...
goodness I hope you can understand all this????
it gives you some Idea as to what you are up against in this field....
live, love, & be happy,..luv Wendy xxx

Autoimmune conditions result from an imbalance that is too yang, too fire-based. Although some deny it, reiki seems to be a yang sort of energy. So IMHO, sending lots of reiki into someone who's going through an autoimmune flare-up runs the risk of exacerbating the imbalance.

Re. treatment, sending yin energy (flows from the ground up, water-based, and relatively cooling) has alleviated the flare-ups. Especially if yin energy is moved into the recipient's bone marrow and the area around the heart and thymus gland. It's helped w/ conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and autoimmune hypothyroiditis.

Bruce

Uh, Wendy? Doesn't that contradict your earlier insistence that it's always okay to send reiki to someone, whether or not permission has been obtained?

Bruce

wamps said on

>HI STARLIGHT,
>rest, rest & yet more rest, is what is needed with the autoimmune dis-ease,( one has to learn to 'PACE' one's self as not to over do things & go into a roaring 'flare')even the weather can do this when the barometric pressure drops!....
> when a lot of pain is present, that's the body's way of 'telling you what not to do'....the 'inner voice' if you like,...(which is never wrong!,) if one goes ahead & does Reiki (on such a person when in a lot of pain) in a way it's going against the body's 'true healing process' of 'REST, to heal the body', if Reiki helped a person with say fibromyalgia 'to' much, a lot of harm would be the out come, as that person would tear muscles, ligaments etc. from 'OVER DOING' exercise!!! this is so very hard to explain....I feel the golden rule with all these types of dis-eases is to LISTEN to your body..(very hard to do all the time)...
>this goes for most illness that have an autoimmune problem....what happens when people like this cut themselves or get bad sores, the immune system turns on it's self!!!....the goodies start in healing these wounds & 'so' do the baddies!!! so nothing really gets done..lol,
>
>they have at 'long last', found out that with autoimmune dis-eases there is lack of, 'for a better explanation', BRAIN SPARKS, that send out the wrong signals, we are lacking in some brain chemicals....when they find out which ones, we will be well again, (on medication with what's lacking).....
>
>When my Husband tried to give me Reiki, not only did I feel more pain but, he felt quite ill & threw up!!...so we never tried it again..he tried sending it to me, only for me having severe sweats & more pain, so that was out...
>where I can reach I do my own hands on while doing relaxation after lunch & again when I go to bed & fall asleep doing it!!!my hands will get very hot, & I have noticed that he tells me 'where' to move to next, plus it's a 'very short time' in each position,
> I do not send it to myself as that seems to strong, (even with the #2 symbol..)
>so it's a hard one,.... I have had success with balancing the hemispheres of the mind, hands on, or distant, for people that have these illnesses, it seems to help their depression,(that 'is all a part' of having pain 24/7)...
>goodness I hope you can understand all this????
>it gives you some Idea as to what you are up against in this field....
>live, love, & be happy,..luv Wendy xxx

starlight,

/*\ Namaste :-}}

- auto-immune means that the body, in essence, attacks itself - the body somehow mis-interprets some activity and then sets in motion its defenses - which then cause problems because they are really not needed

- so, the one thing that it is felt we need not do is apply Reiki to the immune system - the idea being not to 'enhance a system that is acting out-of-turn

- my recommendation, if Reiki is to be used with MS (and other auto-immune cases) patients, is to use base of the skull and Tanden hand placements; individually and simultaneously.

Reiki All Around,

All Blessings,

Firekeeper

I don't have much to add, except to note that a client who had lupus never liked to have a treatment when she was flaring. She always waited until she felt like she was on an "upswing."

Have also seen this with people with fibromyalgia.
Feather

firstly Bruce,
the letter was 'intended for starlight',
2nd..I have know Idea what your on about????
if you are referring to my husband sending me Reiki, this was done to see the response 'of a person with an autoimmune disease', which I soon found out was a bad idea,....'SO I LEARN'T,.....& would never send Reiki to a person with these disorders!!!or do hands on....
don't you have anything better to offer the board but 'negativity'& nit picking?!!!!
Wendy xxx

hi starlight,
just remembered the chemical that we are lacking in our brain....a form of 'Dobemien'... don't expect that's any help, but it is to a lot of people with auto immune problems,...... at least they know they are not going mad!!, or imagining it all!! as many doctors have a problem with accepting these illness's..
luv to you, Wendy xxx

First of all, Wendy, if your message was intended only for starlight, why did you post it to the message board rather than PM to starlight? I thought your message was intended for a wider audience, given the post to the forum.

Asking you to clarify the fit between what you said before with what you said now is "negativity and nit picking?" Good grief.

I'm "on about" your having asserted earlier in the "permission" thread -- which you did rather adamantly, one might even say with "negativity" in your responses -- that it's always okay to send reiki regardless of whether the recipient's permission has been obtained. If you did that to someone who had an autoimmune disorder, the results could be the same as you experienced. You've recently said that doing distant reiki on yourself at such times is too much; there's no reason to think that someone else doing distant reiki on you at such times would have less severe effects.

In any event, it seems that your most recent message retracts at least part of your earlier position, as you now say that you've learned and you would never send to someone with such a condition. I'm truly, sincerely happy that you've learned. And thank you for clarifying that your thinking on the issue has changed.

Bruce

wamps said on

>firstly Bruce,
> the letter was 'intended for starlight',
>2nd..I have know Idea what your on about????
>if you are referring to my husband sending me Reiki, this was done to see the response 'of a person with an autoimmune disease', which I soon found out was a bad idea,....'SO I LEARN'T,.....& would never send Reiki to a person with these disorders!!!or do hands on....
>don't you have anything better to offer the board but 'negativity'& nit picking?!!!!
>Wendy xxx

hi Bruce,
I am NOT on trial here!!!!I do not have to perform to your standards, nor do I need YOUR advice(I never asked for.)on how to do, & send reiki (with or with out permission, is my business!!)
yes, I 'HAVE LEARNED' a lot, one cannot stay 'STATIC' with reiki,...this I found out at my own peril,through trial & error with myself....
yes, I agree it is 'an open forum' for all to read, sorry I said that...
but I don't expect to be pulled up on a POST that I sent such a long way back!,....I expect now 'that' this 'permission' thread will be 'copied & pasted' on here also???? good grief!!
Bruce, I ALWAYS find out about a friend, client's, 'HEALTH CONDITION' BEFORE I send reiki,....(before you say it!!!),...no I am not a doctor! but do know more than you on auto immune disorders.....
wendy

Okay, I'm out of this subthread after this.

wamps said on

>hi Bruce,
>I am NOT on trial here!!!!

Agreed.

I do not have to perform to your standards, nor do I need YOUR advice(I never asked for.)on how to do, & send reiki (with or with out permission, is my business!!)

Why do you still fly off the handle so
quickly and so far when someone
expresses an opinion contrary to yours?

>yes, I 'HAVE LEARNED' a lot, one cannot stay 'STATIC' with reiki,...this I found out at my own peril,through trial & error with myself....

One of the points of the contrasting
views on threads like the "permission" one
is that there can be vicarious learning,
from the experiences that others mentioned
on it. Just as we can learn from each
other's experiences as recounted on this
thread, well at least in the beginning.

>yes, I agree it is 'an open forum' for all to read, sorry I said that...

Thank you.

> but I don't expect to be pulled up on a POST that I sent such a long way back!

You get so upset when others don't
conform to your expectations!

no I am not a doctor! but do know more than you on auto immune disorders.....

Too bad your knowledge hasn't enabled
you to do much in the way of treating
them. You know, sometimes other people
do know some things that are useful, even
when they don't fit within what you've
experienced so far. So there's no need
to impugn the character of anyone who
offers an opinion that might disagree
with something you've said. It's not
a deadly attack, and you don't have to
react as if it were.

Take care.

Bruce

Otoharo!

Bruce, thanks.

finaltiy

Hi Bruce,

Not having any background on yin and yang energy and Chinese medicine, I went online to try to find out a little bit about it. I understand what you mean about the Reiki being fire, but what I gathered from having read several different sites is that problems in the body occur in areas where the energy is too yin, and that may eventually cause disease or infection, which will produce a yang energy.

As Reiki seeks to go to the root cause of an illness, wouldn't a yang energy be the most appropriate energy for an illness which originated as an overbalance of yin? I thought this made a lot of sense in explaining why Reiki causes pain in people sometimes. We are sending yang into an area with too much yang at present, having been caused intially by too much yin. Isn't it like our body's reaction to infection--raising our body temperature to create a fever? Our own body applies heat to heat.

Pardon me if I don't make any sense. I have very little knowledge of this and am trying to make some sense out of the little that I've read. Does any of what I just said sound right to you?

Blessings,
Starlight

starlight said on

>I understand what you mean about the Reiki being fire, but what I gathered from having read several different sites is that problems in the body occur in areas where the energy is too yin, and that may eventually cause disease or infection, which will produce a yang energy.

My reply is rather long, but anyway . . . .

Problems occur wherever yin and yang are out of balance. If there's an area that has too much yin energy (or there's a yang deficiency, which amounts to the same thing as too much yin) then there's a problem. Similarly, if there's too much yang energy (or there's a yin deficiency, which amounts to the same thing as too much yang) then again there's a problem. Balancing fire and water is a basis for some Daoist internal energy practices.

As Reiki seeks to go to the root cause of an illness, wouldn't a yang energy be the most appropriate energy for an illness which originated as an overbalance of yin? I thought this made a lot of sense in explaining why Reiki causes pain in people sometimes. We are sending yang into an area with too much yang at present, having been caused intially by too much yin. Isn't it like our body's reaction to infection--raising our body temperature to create a fever? Our own body applies heat to heat.

That looks like a homeopathic sort of balancing of energy, and it makes sense in some circumstances.

OTOH, when there's a problem caused by yin deficiency, then adding yin energy to balance out excessive yang makes sense. In autoimmune conditions, there's excessive heart "fire," which can be balanced out by kidney "water." Take a look at the "destructive" or "regulating" cycle of the five elements of TCM -- water douses fire. Sometime after I'd observed that autoimmune conditions can be alleviated by sending yin, "water"-based energy into the bone marrow, one of my taijiquan teachers explained such conditions as being caused by excessive heart fire drying out the bone marrow. (Would've been nice to have been told about that earlier, but still good to get confirmation from a TCM-based viewpoint.)

Here's an example. By phone I talked a friend (who has good energy ability) through balancing water and fire when she had an episode of autoimmune hypothyroiditis. (As she put it, her "immune system is eating [her] thyroid.") She called again the next day, saying her condition was much improved -- she felt she even could've gone in to work, though she stayed home that day as a precaution. The key there was that she was able to keep balancing fire and water for herself.

Yin/yang balancing can also be important within a single organ: I mentioned in another thread that hot flashes result from a kidney yin deficiency. Without enough yin to contain it, kidney yang then goes everywhere uncontrolled, resulting in the sensation of excessive heat. Using yin energy to bring the yang back into balance worked really well when I did that. (Someone on whom I once worked for a few minutes when she was having hot flashes told me -- when I started moving yin energy up to her head after sending it into her kidneys -- that it felt as if there were ice packs on her face; there were few and less severe recurrences for several months after that.)

In the Resources section, I'll post a link to an article that explains the function of kidney yin and kidney yang, by reference to the action of various hormones and the properties of various herbs.

I just re-read your initial message on this thread. As for neuropathy, when my father had it, sending yin energy into his hands alleviated some of it. Kidney energy supports the nervous system. (But his neuropathy was caused by chemotherapy rather than by his diabetes.)

But anyway, re. yin/yang balance, I advise trying it out yourself, rather than taking my word for it, or the article's author's word for it, or anyone else's word for it. ("Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it . . . or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings--that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide." - the Buddha)

When using yin energy, I visualize standing in water (a cold mountain stream if treating a condition of excess heat, or warm water on the beach if some other condition) and drawing it up through my body (especially bones) on inhalation, sending it out through my hands on exhalation. (Also, a mixture of yin and yang can be used; it doesn't have to be just one or just the other.)

I hope this message helps to explain what I meant earlier.

Bruce

Bruce,

Your explanation of the yin and yang energies and when to use them is fascinating. If I understand correctly, when I do traditional Reiki, it's yang energy. If I imagine drawing the energy up from a cold spring I can access earth based energy which is yin? or am I redirecting the Reiki energy to be cool? or is this accessing of yin energy part of a different energy system? Sorry, it's a bit confusing.

Is there some sort of online directory or manual of sorts which helps someone determine if a certain illness is yin or yang based? That would be an incredible tool.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

Starlight

Hi, Starlight,

starlight said on

If I understand correctly, when I do traditional Reiki, it's yang energy.

Yes.

If I imagine drawing the energy up from a cold spring I can access earth based energy which is yin?

Yes, that's right. Yin energy is associated w/ the earth, water, and the moon -- put 'em all together, and you have the tides -- and it's relatively cooling. Yang energy is associated w/ the sky, fire, and the sun, and it's warming.

or am I redirecting the Reiki energy to be cool?

No.

or is this accessing of yin energy part of a different energy system?

It's not reiki. It's taught in some qigong systems. Well, the idea of drawing energy up from the earth is widely taught. (The cold stream imagery was my improvisation, but I later learned that some schools teach imagery of bringing water up; go figure.)

>Is there some sort of online directory or manual of sorts which helps someone determine if a certain illness is yin or yang based? That would be an incredible tool.

Start w/ the link I posted in the Resources section, which includes mention of conditions associated w/ kidney yin deficiency and kidney yang deficiency. There's also stuff out there more generally re. yin/yang imbalance affecting the body's other energies, but I don't yet have a feel for how good those resources are. (Do a web search that includes the terms "yin deficiency" and "yang deficiency" in the same search.) If any TCM practitioners are reading this, perhaps they would be kind enough to respond.

Kidney energy seems especially crucial in TCM because the kidneys store the body's "original qi," which is the energy that the parents pass along to the fetus. (The theory is that the original qi is used up over the span of the person's lifetime; some practices are purported to help replenish original qi, although some practitioners deny that it's possible.)

Bruce