Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation, it also promotes healing. It is administered by “laying on hands” and is based on the idea that an unseen “life force energy” flows through us and is what causes us to be alive. If one’s “life force energy” is low, then we are more likely to get sick or feel stress, and if it is high, we are more capable of being happy and healthy.
Home Care Partners, a Washington-based nonprofit home care agency, believes that elderly patients who suffer from dementia will benefit from receiving reiki therapy. The federal administration on aging has agreed to support them with a $250,000 two-year grant to try it out.
Anger, agitation, fear and restlessness are common side effects of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Reiki can relieve stress, reduce anxiety and even help diminish pain in dementia patients, according to Home Care Partners’ education manager and trained reiki master, Marie Muller. “We hope that our clients with dementia who become agitated and stressed will find reiki calming,” says Muller. Anita Graham, a reiki master based near seattle, echos Muller’s sentiment. “I treated a frail 88-year-old with Parkinson’s-related dementia,” Graham recalls. “The staff at her facility reported that she wouldn’t speak, about 10 minutes into the treatment she said, ‘I’ve never had anything like this before.’ At the end of the treatment she related that she was going ‘home’. I felt moved by witnessing this woman’s expression of comfort and making sense out of her dying process.”
Although it has not been scientifically proven effective, the practice of reiki has been determined safe by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Home Care Partners has trained 36 aids who will be reporting observable changes in patients, and will also offer training to the family caregivers and workers at adult day programs next year. This article was taken from the November 2011 issue of Day Spa Magazine, page 90.
Reiki is great for anyone not just those who have dementia. If you have questions on Reiki or would let to schedule a session at our Rochester salon call (507) 285-1888 and make an appointment.
