LTRP Note: Energy healing techniques such as Reiki are growing quickly in popularity, even in Christian circles. When you’ve got someone as popular as Dr. OZ telling millions to practice Reiki, you realize this is no small thing. It is important for Christians to know that these forms of “healing” are occult based and extremely spiritually dangerous.
by Ray Yungen
In the book, Forever Fit, Cher speaks of a friend of hers who is a metaphysical “healer”:
She heals with her hands and, boy, if she puts her hands on you, you know you’ve been touched. Even near your body you feel it. It’s simply unbelievable. But she is truly tuned in to some kind of higher power.1
Occultists believe that man has more than one body, that there are other invisible bodies superimposed on the physical body. They refer to one of these as the etheric body and believe there lies within it energy centers called chakras (pronounced shock-ras). The term chakra means whirling wheel in Sanskrit, the ancient Hindu language. They were seen by those with clairvoyant powers as spinning balls of psychic energy. It is taught that there are seven chakras, which start at the base of the spine and end at the crown chakra at the top of the head.
Each chakra is supposed to have a different function corresponding to certain levels of awareness. The chakras act as conduits or conductors for what is called kundalini or serpent energy. They say this force lies coiled but dormant at the base of the spine like a snake. When awakened during meditation, it is supposed to travel up the spine activating each chakra as it surges upward. When the kundalini force hits the crown chakra, the person experiences enlightenment or Self-realization. This mystical current results in the person knowing himself to be God. That is why kundalini is sometimes referred to as the divine energy. According to New Age proponents, all meditative methods involve energy and power, and the greater the power, the greater the experience.
Basically, what all energy healing entails is opening up the chakras through meditation or transferring the kundalini power from someone already attuned to it:
At the sixth chakra, a person opens to a higher level of intuition and inner guidance. At the seventh, the person feels a sense of merging with Spirit.2
I want people to know that energy healing is fundamentally supernatural in nature. It is not based on something physically tangible as massage or chiropractic. The chakras are not something you can open up surgically and look at like you can the physical organs like the heart or spleen.
The chakra system is the basis for virtually all energy-healing techniques. In energy-healing, the power is channeled into the patient, thus bringing about the desired wellness and wholeness of the person receiving it. Currently, there are a number of energy-healing systems. Although they have different names, the energy that they use is from the same source.
Woman receiving Reiki treatment
Reiki
One of the fastest growing New Age healing techniques being used today is Reiki, (pronounced ray-key), a Japanese word which translates universal life energy or God energy. It has also been referred to as the Radiance Technique. Reiki is an ancient Tibetan healing system which was rediscovered by a Japanese man in the 1880s and has only recently been brought to the West.
The technique consists of placing the hands on the recipient and then activating the energy to flow through the practitioner into the recipient. One practitioner describes the experience in the following way:
When doing it, I become a channel through which this force, this juice of the universe, comes pouring from my palms into the body of the person I am touching, sometimes lightly, almost imperceptibly, sometimes in famished sucking drafts. I get it even as I’m giving it. It surrounds the two of us, patient and practitioner.3
One obtains this power to perform Reiki by being attuned by a Reiki master. This is done in four sessions in which the master activates the chakras, creating an open channel for the energy. The attunement process is not made known for general information, but is held in secrecy for only those being initiated.
One of the main reasons Reiki has become so popular is its apparently pleasurable experience. Those who have experienced Reiki report feeling a powerful sense of warmth and security. One woman, now a Reiki master, remarked after her first encounter: “I don’t know what this is you’ve got but I just have to have it.”4 People don’t make such comments unless there is an appeal involved. A successful business woman gives Reiki the following praise:
Reiki should be available through every medical, chiropractic and mental health facility in this country. Your fees are a small price to pay for such impressive results. I don’t know how Reiki works, but it works; that’s all that counts in my book.5
New Age teaching is that once someone is attuned he or she can never lose the power; it is for life. Even distance is not a barrier for the Reiki energy, for the channeler may engage in something called absentee healing, in which the energy is sent over long distances, even thousands of miles.
One master relates:
Just by having the name or an object of the person or perhaps even a picture in your hand, you can send Reiki to them to wherever they are in the world.6
Over one million people are practicing Reiki in the United States alone today.7 In many cases, these are people who treat or work with others on a therapeutic basis, such as health professionals, body workers, chiropractors, and counselors. Despite its bizarre and unconventional nature, Reiki has struck a chord with an incredible number of average people. In Europe alone, the number of people accepting Reiki is very impressive. One Reiki master claims that in the thirteen years she lived in Europe she alone initiated 45,000 people into Reiki as channelers.8
What Reiki is really about is using this power to transform others into New Age consciousness. As one Reiki leader states:
[I]t also makes a level of spiritual transformation available to non-meditators, that is usually reserved for those with a meditative path.9
Statements like this reveal that Reiki is in line with all the other New Age transformation efforts. It changes the way people perceive reality. Most practitioners acknowledge the truth of this. A German Reiki channeler makes this comment:
It frequently happens that patients will come into contact with new ideas after a few Reiki treatments. Some will start doing yoga or autogenous training or start to meditate or practise [sic] some other kind of spiritual method. . . . Fundamental changes will set in and new things will start to develop. You will find it easier to cast off old, outlived structures and you will notice that you are being led and guided more and more.10
What concerns me is that Reiki apparently can be combined with regular massage techniques without the recipient even knowing it. A letter in the Reiki Journal reveals:
Reiki is a whole new experience when used in my massage therapy practice. Massage, I thought, would be an excellent tool to spread the radiance of this universal energy and a client would benefit and really not realize what a wonderful growth was happening in his or her being (emphasis mine).11
Of all the New Age practices and modalities, Reiki holds the title to being the most intriguing and perhaps eerie one. This is brought out in the following observations made by one of the leading Reiki masters in the country. He reveals:
When I looked psychically at the energy, I could often see it as thousands of small particles of light, like “corpuscles” filled with radiant Reiki energy flowing through me and out of my hands. It was as though these Reiki “corpuscles” of light had a purpose and intelligence.12
Since Reiki is not something taught intellectually even children can be brought into it. In one Reiki magazine, I found an ad that was offering a Children’s Reiki Handbook: A Guide to Energy Healing for Kids. The book is described as a “guide that provides kids with what they need to prepare for their first Reiki Attunement.”13
Therapeutic Touch
Therapeutic touch is another widespread healing technique. This method was developed and promoted by Dr. Delores Krieger, a professor of nursing at New York University.
While Reiki is obtained by being attuned by a master, therapeutic touch is acquired by standard metaphysical meditation commonly referred to as centering. Teachers of therapeutic touch readily acknowledge that “centering is probably the most important part of the entire process.”14 A practitioner relates that when she first encountered therapeutic touch in graduate nursing school, it was “the craziest, kookiest stuff I’d ever seen or heard.” This skepticism did not last. She explains:
I got through the semester, though, and in the process Dr. Krieger performed the procedure on me. It was then I knew something very real was going on, so I continued to learn about it, and practice it.15
Like the others, she attributes this power to “the individual Higher Self”16 and feels that this type of healing is not just for the body, but is also “very spiritual.”17
(Be sure and check out our booklet tract, The Truth About Energy Healing, which contains the content of this article.)
Notes:
1. Robert Hass and Cher, Forever Fit (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1991), p. 165.
2. Joy Gardner-Gordon, Pocket Guide to Chakras (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1998), p. 13.
3. “Healing Hands,” op. cit., p. 78.
4. Joyce Morris, “The Reiki Touch” (The Movement Newspaper, October 1985).
5. Barbara Ray, Ph.D., The Reiki Factor (Smithtown, NY: Exposition Press, 1983), p. 63.
6. “Vincent J. Barra Psychic Healer Transmits Reiki Energy” (Meditation Magazine, Summer 1991), p. 31.
7. William Lee Rand, “Keeping Reiki Free” (Reiki News Magazine, Spring 2005), p. 37
8. Mari Hall, “Reiki and the Adventure of My Life” (Reiki News Magazine, Summer 2006), p. 14.
9. Paula Horan, Empowerment Through Reiki (Wilmot, WI: Lotus Light Publications, 1990), p. 9.
10. Bodo J. Baginski and Shalila Sharamon, Reiki Universal Life Energy (Mendocino, CA: Life Rhythm, 1988), pp. 33, 49-50.
11. “Sharings” (The Reiki Journal, Vol. VI, No. 4, October/December 1986), p. 17.
12. William Lee Rand, “The Nature of Reiki Energy” (The Reiki News, Autumn 2000, p. 5.
13. The Reiki News, Spring 2006, p. 43.
14. D. Scott Rogo, “The Potentials of Therapeutic Touch,” Interview with Janet F. Quinn, Ph.D., R.N. (Science of Mind, May 1988), p. 14.
15. Ibid., p. 83.
16. Ibid., pp. 83-84.
17. Ibid., p. 87.
“Dr OZ endorses reiki on TV”
(from out side news source) – from February 2010
“Dr. Mehmet Oz, a renowned cardiovascular surgeon and host of the third (or possibly second) most popular syndicated television program in America, this week introduced millions of viewers to the natural healing practice of Reiki as part of a program on alternative and natural remedies. The Dr. Oz Show included not only a segment featuring a demonstration by Reiki author Pamela Miles, but an emphatic recommendation to “try Reiki” as the #1 “Oz’s Order” at the show’s conclusion.” Cick here to continue.
For our research on Reiki, click here.
