The Client’s Perspective

Sheldon M. Feldman, MD, FACS Chief, Division of Breast Surgery & Breast Surgical Oncology Director, Breast Cancer Services Professor, Department of Surgery

Montefiore Medical Center The University Hospital for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care Past President: The American Society of Breast Surgeons

Introduction

My name is Raven Keyes and I practice the healing art of Usui Reiki in modern medicine. Reiki is a Japanese word describing the energy underlying all of life and Usui is the name of the man who discovered it. Reiki instantly floods the practitioner with its grace before speeding into the client through the practitioner’s hands, flowing to wherever it is needed. As it moves through the body of the recipient, it can also release negative emotions and trauma, as I witnessed time after time in my volunteer Reiki work for eight and a half months after 9/11. For those of us who practice Reiki, we describe it as universal life force energy; in the medical world it is often referred to as energy medicine.

Although Reiki is not a religion or based on any dogma, the power it describes can be called by many names, all of which apply, and none of which has the right to claim it. Reiki belongs to everyone and is in everything, whether a human being wishes to think of it as God, Great Spirit, All That Is, Universe, Source, or in any other way that works for the individual. It is often referred to as spiritual energy medicine, because it connects us to something vast,