The Medical Reiki Origin Story: My Perspective

Chapter 8: Additional Stories of Medical Reiki 199

Facing Radical Medical Events with Medical Reiki 199

A Story of Life, Death, and Medical Reiki 202

Medical Reiki Testimonials from Clients 209

Stories from Other Medical Reiki Practitioners 218

Conclusion 243

Epilogue by Mandy O’Hara, MD, MPH 247 Bibliography 259 Recommended Resources 267

Exercises

Chapter 1 Meeting a Spirit Helper to Assist You in Healing 31 Working with Your Spirit Helper 36 Healing Affirmation 38

Chapter 2 Practice of Self-Discovery 84 Healing Affirmation 85

Chapter 3 The Energy of Loving Light Meditation 117 Affirmation Using The Five Principles of Reiki 120

Chapter 4 “I am in the Universe and the Universe is in Me”

Meditation 132 Healing Affirmation 134

Chapter 5 Meditation to Tap into Positivity and

Open Yourself to Healing 156 Affirmation for Yourself and Your

Health Care Providers 158

Chapter 6 Concise Mindfulness Meditation 175 Healing Affirmation for Doctors 177

Chapter 7 Meditation to Connect with Your Healing Ancestors 195 Affirmation of Divinity 197 Practitioner’s Proclamation Affirmation 197

Chapter 8 Meditation to Receive a Blessing from Mikao Usui 239 Healing Affirmation 242

Forms

Chapter 5: Forms for Patients Seeking a Certified Medical Reiki Master Form 1: Patient Request Without a Known CMRM 148 Form 2: Patient Request With a Known CMRM 149 Form 3: Confirming Your CMRM’s Credentials with Your Physician 152

Chapter 6: Forms for Physicians and Surgeons Form 4: Physician or Surgeon Request to

Check CMRM Credentials 167 Form 5: Physician or Surgeon Request for CMRM 175

Acknowledgments

So many people have contributed to this book—RKMRI Medical Reiki Masters Kristin DeGroat, Marleen Duffy, Carolyn Nicholson Fowler, and Michelle Robin provided me with Reiki sessions; Lydia Lyte, Lille O’Brien, Thayer Burch, and Lisa Vento Abbatiello lent me their constant spiritual support; my intrepid therapist Bernice Belth listened to my soul’s journey as it wound its way through powerful feelings that transformed themselves into rivers of words. And I can never thank Chris Mitchell enough for bringing me tea, serving me meals, and rescuing me when he felt I needed a reprieve from the sentences and paragraphs continuously dancing in my head.

I thank Kathie Lipinski, Registered Nurse and Reiki Master Teacher, for explaining to me how important Reiki is for doctors, nurses, and all other health care professionals when she said, “By caring for themselves with Reiki, all those who work in health care can remember why they went into medicine in the first place and extend heart-centered caring to their patients.”

My gratitude goes to author and friend Andrea Bartz, who kindly looked with fresh eyes at my proposal which brought me to my superstar agent, Steve Harris. Steve is a treasure who is always behind me one thousand percent!

And my heart overflows with gratitude to my brilliant editor, Angela Wix, who like a fearless surgeon has cut and stitched together the most important elements of this book so it can live a robust life, full of health, telling the story of Medical Reiki’s benefits for not just doctors’ patients, but for doctors themselves. Kudos to my production editor Rhiannon Nelson for her focused attention on every detail before this book went to print, and my undying gratitude goes to

Llewellyn Publishing for all the care everyone has put into moving this project forward!

Most of all, I thank Dr. Sheldon Marc Feldman, the master surgeon and incredible physician who has humbled me with his continuous belief in my work. This book would not exist without his willingness to embrace a brighter way forward for patients through the addition of what, after all our years of working together, has come to be known as Medical Reiki.

With palms pressed together at my heart, I bow in deep gratitude to all the Beings of Light, both seen and unseen, who have given me this opportunity to share my words that are intended to bring blessings to those in need.

Foreword

By Sheldon Marc Feldman, MD, FACS

In the 1970s when I was a medical student and surgical resident, I was being groomed to become a heart surgeon. It was extraordinary to literally hold someone’s heart in your hands and to fix it so that the patient would continue to live. My mentor was Dr. Frank Spencer, chairman of surgery at NYU and a pioneer in new heart surgery techniques. He was charismatic, powerful, and a master surgeon and communicator with his patients and families. Most of the surgical trainees wanted to follow in his footsteps. It was a field that was rapidly progressing and that was where I was headed in my career. Then in 1977 when I was a third-year resident, my older sister, Fern, was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. That diagnosis threw everything up in the air for me in terms of my career path, and for my family. Fern had three little children and she tragically died two years later, which changed my path.

During Fern’s illness I was very involved in her care and I experienced much of her treatment plan from her side, rather than from the medical side. I was amazed that she had a higher quality of life than was expected for quite a long time by adding as many

non-traditional therapies as she could possibly find to her medical treatments. On the medical side, although I made sure she saw the right people and had the right care, I witnessed a lot of things that were not very good. There was a lack of humanity and compassion I saw in those providing her treatments. And there was also a lot of negativity and scars that were created, not with surgery, but with words and with the lack of a healing approach by her medical team. Those negative experiences affected our parents so deeply that they carried the scars forward with them all the way until they died in their nineties. For me, it was very, very powerful to just begin to understand how important it was to have compassion and kindness, and how much those simple things could help day in and day out, especially when coming from people in white coats who have all this authority—it was huge for me to be able to understand that.

In the wake of our loss, my family opened the Fern Feldman Anolick Center for Breast Health, and I became a breast cancer surgeon. I was determined to bring better care to my patients than what I had seen my sister Fern receive from her medical team.

In my practice as a doctor, I have devoted myself to advances in breast cancer treatment and surgical techniques, without ever forgetting what my sister taught me about the importance of a patient’s quality of life. As a result, I was influenced to invite alternative healers to work with me in my quest to help my patients accept the allopathic medical treatments that could save their lives. A patient of mine asked me if Reiki master Raven Keyes could attend her breast cancer surgery to help her get through the procedure. I knew Raven had provided Reiki to a patient during open-heart surgery with another surgeon and I wanted to see how

her presence in my operating room would affect my breast cancer patient. The results were so powerful I decided to invite Raven to continue working with my patients, and we have now worked together for many years. She is extraordinary and the energy medicine of Reiki has been very helpful to my patients. I find it very, very powerful when Raven assists them in coming to grips psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually with the loss of their breast(s), chemotherapy, and radiation treatments. Raven’s help is invaluable in preparing a patient for their journey; she creates a safe place to cry, to express how they are really feeling, and I find it is a really big deal for my patients to have someone present in the operating room who is loving and who cares deeply for them. Raven’s presence in the O.R. elevates the whole experience for the entire surgical team. In what can often be a busy and structured reality in which we all have our very intense and specific jobs to do, Raven reminds us why we are really there—first and foremost as healers.

All my training has stressed that scientific proof is fundamental to demonstrate the efficacy of all modalities; however, through my experiences with my sister Fern, in life, and with my patients, I can now fully accept that there are fundamental truths that cannot be validated scientifically. This is a major philosophical shift, which may or may not allow health care professionals to fully embrace their full potential as healers. If we have to prove everything that we do, it’s going to prevent us from doing some things that can be very beneficial for our patients.

Integrative oncology is about treating patients in non-traditional approaches to support them with things like massage, dietary techniques, acupuncture, and energy therapies. There are many people

in the United States who have been diagnosed with breast cancer— more than 12 million—and a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that four out of ten adults had used Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM) therapies along with allopathic care.1 The reasons patients choose CAM therapies are to prevent side effects from conventional therapy, to improve the benefit of traditional therapies, to fulfill needs that are not met by conventional therapies, and to promote overall wellness.

At this moment in time, Reiki needs more evidence-based data in order to be added to the treatments recommended by the Society for Integrative Oncology, and for Reiki to be paid for by medical insurance. Because of what I myself have witnessed in my patients I would like to see Reiki readily available as part of mainstream medicine for more patients to benefit. Toward that goal, I am planning a randomized prospective to evaluate the efficacy of using Reiki in combination with conventional medicine. The future lies before us, and we hope to create a better way forward for patients by completing this necessary research. The study is being evaluated by our institutional review board (IRB) and will begin in the near future, while Raven is teaching the protocol she developed for bringing Reiki into medicine to Reiki masters from across the world. Together we look forward with hope and envision a day when this energy medicine becomes part of standard care, and Medical Reiki Masters are welcomed into operating rooms and other medical venues in service to doctors’ patients across the globe.

1. Patricia M. Barnes, Barbara Bloom, “Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Among Adults and Children,” National Health Statistics Reports,

Published December 10, 2008, https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/5266.