Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

There is no objective evidence, nothing that I think would be convincing to you. There are plenty of experiences, which many skeptics dismiss as anecdoptal. I can say, here, take this psychedelic, but it would easily be explained as the effects of the psychedelic acting upon the brain. I can say, hey, meet this person, or try this technique ... but it wouldn't matter. Our civilization is simply just not ready for this stuff.

The thing is, there are a lot of phenomena that are difficult to show evidence, even in a laboratory setting. There was one parapsychology experiment that was interesting: a skeptic and a non-skeptic both collaborated and created an experimental protocol. They then watched each other conduct the experiment. The idea being that, each of them have a vested interest in proving or disproving the hypothesis.

Somehow, the skeptic had experimental results showing nothing beyond chance, and the non-skeptic had experimental results showing there is a statistical significance beyond random chance for the phenomena under study.

That can be taken as that, there were some bias that were missing. But what if, for example, it could be as simple as, neither experimenters were truly neutral, and it affected what happened?

Anyways, I'm in the point of my life that I simply don't care enough to try to convince people to believe in one way or another. That emotions behave more than "just" emotion is not something that is special or extraordinary for me. Sometimes, I encounter people for whom they start experiencing this. I help them when I do.

>> What if there are some things where scientific objectivity and scientific method breaks down, and is incapable of exploring?

> Then that's a thing you can demonstrate.

Then you are more clever than I am. I have no idea how to test some of this stuff, let alone do it with double-blind study.

It isn't as if science is incomprehensible to me. I understand and apply the scientific method, have run experiments. I also know its limits.

Part of it is that the most reliable instrument for this stuff is the consciousness itself. What is under observation changes when it is observed, and more troublesome (from the perspective of trying explore this scientifically), is that the observer is also changed by the observed.

Some of the phenomena won't happen if there is too much disbelief in it.

Do you have any ideas on how to experiment with stuff like this?

About the only time that gets interesting is when a life-long skeptic have some parts of their consciousness wake up, and now they are trying to figure out what is wrong with them. They were not looking for this stuff -- far from it. And here they are, finding themselves with these phenomena, inducing a lot of cognitive dissonance. When I have encountered someone like that, I point out resources for them to read. They are free to test and verify it for themselves. It works for them because they are capable of verifying it for themselves.

Everyone else have to start from scratch with things like meditation and yoga. And that is going to depend upon the teacher, quality of teaching, the transmission, and how you practice.

A good example is the standing meditation from Taoist traditions. One of the early stages of the phenomena are spontaneous movements in the bowels, or spontaneous movements of the limbs triggered from the early stages of movement of subtle energy. It tends to freak people out, because it is not something that is so easily attributable to internal experience.

The problem is that reliably being able to get to that point to experience for yourself requires dedicated training. A lot of groups might think 1 hr standing meditation is a kind of holy grail of practice ... but I know of one group that drops beginners into 6 hr sessions. It is a huge investment of time, for both student and teacher. Complicating that even further is that there is quite a bit of fraud and abuse aimed at conning people.

I am enjoying the comment section here just as much as the article. Not many here will pull more comments than points. I cant see the word "Reiki" without hearing "URAMESHI!"

To me, most new-age medicine is an exercise in low grade mental programming. By forming and guiding behavior under close supervision, positive reinforcement helps to remake harmful neural short-circuits. By giving your treatment a name, a method, and a history, you are creating a corrective program that is then delicately implanted in the patient, then activated in the physical sessions. If coercive brainwashing and mind-control is black magic, what these people and other similar healers do can best be called white magic. Braincleaning. In the article, they especially note that these treatments are effective on problems that cannot be fixed with surgery or medicine, thus are almost totally in the mind. There is such a thing as psychosomatic illness, and the nervous system doesnt end at the spinal cord. Your muscles have a simple, low-level form of memory in the patterns of nerves and motor neurons, and this extends throughout the body. Sometimes these systems get badly imbalanced, and the body's failsafe mechanisms, the sympathetic, parasympathetic, lymphatic and immune systems cannot correct it. Rolfing, chiropractice, and massage techniques act physically on this system to reset muscles and nerves, putting them back into line. By combining a physical regime with psychological correction, you can clear the nervous system of stubborn low-grade problems.

True, in a double-blind experimental setup, it may be difficult or impossible to reproduce the results. This is because the results hinge on a relationship between patient and practitioner, the experimental setup tends to nullify the methods that this relationship advances on. Its programming, brainwashing, but to benefit the person; not just turning them into a cultist.

You dream of Capitalism?

No, of course not. People who say "an economic system that serves human beings" never mean an economic system that actually serves human beings... except in the "To Serve Man" sense.

Can you tell us what training/experience was required to become a Reiki master? Is there some kind of exam?