Express your gratitude in our annual Thanksgiving issue

It's blessing-counting season once again: here in the United States, we'll soon be celebrating our gratitude with the annual Thanksgiving feast. And here at The Reiki Digest, we'll be celebrating as well, with our annual Thanksgiving issue. We invite all our readers to join in the festivities by writing to tell us what you're grateful for this year. To get an idea of what we're talking about, check out last year's Thanksgiving issue.

Email your messages of Thanksgiving to editor @ thereikidigest.com by November 24, 2009.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts with our global Reiki community!

Celeb-Reiki cyclist recovering from crash injuries

Olympic cycling medalist Hayden Roulston of New Zealand, the world's best-known Reiki-practicing athlete, is taking it easy for a few weeks as he recovers from injuries he received in a freak crash during his home race, the Tour of Southland, earlier this month. Roulston wasn't even on his bike at the time -- he and another rider were off their bikes talking to race officials after a crash involving dozens of riders when another cyclist rode into them. Roulston suffered injuries to both knees and a dislocated shoulder. We trust that Reiki is part of his healing process, just as it was a few years ago when he came back from a life-threatening heart ailment to resume his cycling career. Since then he's gone on to win Silver and Bronze medals in the Beijing Olympics and ride with distinction in his first Tour de France. He was going for his fourth consecutive win in the Tour of Southland at the time of the accident. Get well soon, Hayden!

Music we love to practice Reiki by: Anugama

Anugama has been a musician since the age of eight, but it was during a stint working in a Hamburg, Germany, music store that he became fascinated with the exotic instruments from faraway lands on sale in the shop. From there, he traveled extensively to the places those instruments came from. During five years in Asia, he underwent a spiritual transformation and has since focused on healing music. Click on the button to listen and find out more.

All purchases you make via the links in The Reiki Digest help keep this a free publication. Thanks to iTunes, and to our readers, for your support.

Thanks for your patience

We're dealing with some behind-the-scenes technical difficulties here, so look for the next edition of The Reiki Digest on Tuesday. Apologies for the delay in publishing and in responding to your emails. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Rest in peace

Reiki Master Teacher Janet Ellen Neigh, 68, Silver Spring, Maryland, October 18, 2009.

Reiki Master James B. Nelson, 63, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, October 20, 2009.

Reiki Master Nancy Adam Sampson, 78, Quechee, Vermont, October 28, 2009.

Reiki Master Donna Sue Weaver Perry, 81, Yuma, Arizona, November 4, 2009.

Click here to see all obituaries published in The Reiki Digest since 2006.

Please stand by...

This week's edition of The Reiki Digest will be published on Monday.

The weekly waka

It's raining acorns;
most of the leaves have fallen
- indian summer
memories of the season past
linger in the morning sun

(By Beth Lowell)

(Waka wanted: If you'd like to contribute a waka to our regular series, check out these guidelines, write your waka, and email it to editor @ thereikidigest.com.)

This week's specials

Many thanks to our advertisers for their support of The Reiki Digest. Please support them (and us) by checking out this week's special offers:

Carnival of Healing #214: Victory through surrender

Welcome to Carnival of Healing #214! And welcome, carnival-goers, to The Reiki Digest!

Last week's Carnival was hosted by Astrid Lee at Therapeutic Reiki, and next week the show moves on down the road to Rose de Dan's Wild Reiki and Shamanic Healing Blog. Wow! That's three Reiki sites in a row. And of course, Carnival organizer Phylameana lila Desy, About.com's Guide to Holistic Healing, is also (among other things) a Reiki practitioner. Just in case any carnival visitors are unfamiliar with the natural healing practice of Reiki, click here to find out more from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

You can become even more familiar with Reiki by subscribing to The Reiki Digest email edition (it's free). And if you're already a Reiki practitioner and you'd like to freshen up your knowledge of the subject, you might be interested in our Reiki Update Training course. And we invite you to stand up and be counted in our Global Reiki Census, and add your events to our Reiki Events Calendar. Those are just a few of the ways we've been serving the world Reiki community since 2006.

And for those who may be unfamiliar with the Carnival of Healing, a brief explanation: the Carnival is a weekly round-up of personal blog posts on the topics of holistic health, wellness, spirituality, and self empowerment that travels through cyberspace, setting up its virtual tents at a different site each week.

The great football coach Vince Lombardi often said that "Winning isn't everything: it's the only thing." Coach Lombardi may have won many games, awards, and even the distinction of having a New Jersey Turnpike rest area named after him, but he did not contribute to this week's carnival. Just as well, since our theme this week is the power of winning through surrender.

So if you're hoping to be immortalized on a plaque alongside a highway somewhere, go ahead and keep pushing for victory at all costs. If you're looking for a different kind of win, however, keep reading.

At Life Optimizer, Donald Latumahina kicks us off with The Importance of Giving Up. And Carole Gold at Gold Post-it scores a field gold (sorry, couldn't resist that one) with The Law of Surrender: Giving Up That Which You Desire. At Grace in Gravity, Gina Loree' Marks discusses a different kind of giving up -- letting go -- in Brace Yourselves, a post about how and where we hold onto tension in our bodies.

Health Blogger found victory in defeat in his first attempt to run a marathon. And at Healthcare Hacks, Amy B. Scher never gave up in her fight to overcome paralysis from Lyme Disease -- though sometimes circumstances required her to give in -- and now she's Running Toward Forgiveness.

At X-Ray Tech Schools, Carolyn Friedman urges us to let go of 10 Common Myths About Bipolar Disorder, and at Glowing Face Man, Sam Alexander tells us that letting go of negative thinking has an abundance of positive benefits.

Kaushik Chokshi at beyond karma has something in common with Coach Lombardi: approaching life as a game. But in Kaushik's case, it's not about winning or losing: it's all about playing.

This week's Carnival also includes a couple of great Reiki-related posts: Rose de Dan tells us how she happily gave up the chance to respond in kind to an unexpected outburst in Building Bridges with Animal Reiki. And Sherri Lane gives up her own resistance to sharing her healing gifts in Seeing Miracles Every Day: Following the Healing Light.

All in all, a winning combination! We hope you enjoy this special edition, and we'll be back next week with all our regular Reiki Digest features, including the Celeb-Reiki Report, the Reiki Roundup, and a Reiki sports update.

Stay tuned for the Carnival of Healing

Watch this space! Carnival of Healing #214 will be published here in a few hours, and this week's email edition will follow soon after. Stay tuned!

Listen free to Celeb-Reiki Lisa Williams on Hay House Radio

This week's Celeb-Reiki is Lisa Williams, both a Reiki master and a medium, best known for her Lifetime TV shows Life Among the Dead and Voices from the Other Side. She now has a new show at Hay House Radio, and it's free to listen (Click on the image above to find out more).

Please note: Reiki and mediumship are two distinct and different practices. Not all Reiki practitioners are mediums, and vice versa. Ms. Williams combines the two practices in her own unique way.

Music we love to practice Reiki by: Jia Peng-Fang

This week's featured artist is erhu player Jia Peng-Fang. The erhu, or Chinese two-string violin, dates back more than a thousand years, although it didn't become a solo instrument until the 20th century. If you travel the New York City subway system, you may frequently hear the erhu being played by buskers in between trains. The plaintive yet hopeful sound of the erhu can work well for a client with a lot of sadness to be released, so keep the tissues handy and leave a little extra time at the end of the session in case your client wants to talk.

Click on the button to listen for free, and remember that every purchase you make at iTunes via our links helps support The Reiki Digest. Thanks, iTunes!

The weekly waka

the leaves are turning
to gold, or to flame, or dust
each of them perfect
have compassion for yourself
have compassion for others

(By Beth Lowell)

(Waka wanted: If you'd like to contribute a waka to our regular series, check out these guidelines, write your waka, and email it to editor @ thereikidigest.com.)

This week's specials

Please welcome our newest advertiser, Value Health Card, providing 10% to 60% discounts on dental, vision, pharmacy, chiropractic and other health benefits in the USA. Card members have immediate access to some of the largest provider networks in the nation including Aetna Dental Access®, United Chiropractic, Coast to Coast Vision, and SunRx, and there are no health restrictions due to any pre-existing conditions. So far, Reiki isn't included -- but stay tuned for further developments. Click below to find out more.



Other specials this week include:

A musical Reiki session

Editor's note: Some readers have had trouble listening to the audio. If you're one of them, click here to download the recording to your computer.

Featured Practitioner: Cymber Lily Conn

Hakalau, Hawaii

Reiki practitioner and harpist Cymber Lily Conn

By Janet Dagley Dagley

Editor

I received a delightful and unexpected healing gift the other day: a distance Reiki session in the form of a musical recording from our first-ever Featured Practitioner: Cymber Lily Conn of the big island of Hawaii. Cymber was a student in our first Reiki Update Training class, and one of the first to pass the final exam. While she was waiting for her test results, Cymber decided to do a little extra credit project for the teacher. Cymber not only practices Reiki, she's also a harpist, and she combines both to offer Reiki to clients via her music. For clients in her local area, she offers live Reiki healing harp sessions. Those who aren't nearby can get live sessions via phone or Skype, or even recorded sessions. Since I'm not in Hawaii (alas!), Cymber did a Reiki harp healing session for me, converted the recording to handy mp3 form, and emailed it to me.

I've been able to listen to it again and again over the past week or so, and now I'd like to share it with you as well. Just click on the pink button on the mp3 player below -- but to get the most from the experience, you might want to prepare by setting up a comfortable place to sit or lie down while you listen.

Cymber explains that she began the session by focusing herself as usual for a distance Reiki session, and then:

"I allowed the Reiki to begin to flow through my hands, as though I were in a regular session with a client on a table. I then brought Janet to mind, and began to get a sense of how her energy was moving and how she was feeling. It's important to remember that someone in a different time zone (there are five hours between Janet and me) is in a different part of their day, and their energy will be different from mine.

Then I begin playing the harp. Reiki vibrates like musical notes only much higher, and is infused into the music.

In most musical sessions, I begin with a grounding improvisation. However, Janet was already quite grounded, so this was not needed. Her musical Reiki session starts with music to help balance energy and prepare to release blockages. The second section creates a safe place to look a little deeper at the shadow side, the rich, dark, loamy place we don't like to look. Reiki energy will help release stuck places in the shadow. The third section brings you into a cheerier mood, and returns to a brighter place than the one you left.

Once I had finished the recording (using GarageBand), then I tidied up the usual little noises at the beginning and end of the recording, turned it into an mp3, and emailed it to Janet. She can listen to the recording as often as she needs. And when the recording is no longer useful, she can request a new recording that better matches her energy-balancing needs at the time."

Thanks so much, Cymber! I've never been able to share a Reiki session I received with anyone else before, or relive it the way I can when listening to this recording. And thanks for becoming our first Featured Practitioner.

About Reiki Digest Featured Practitioners: From time to time we'll be introducing you to selected Reiki practitioners from around the world who have demonstrated their knowledge and skill by passing the Reiki Update Certification Exam -- practitioners we feel confident in recommending to clients and students. Click here for more information about Reiki Update Certification.

'Strong evidence' Reiki & other biofield therapies help reduce pain

Encouraging breaking news from the scientific community: A review of 66 clinical studies by researchers at UCLA found "strong evidence" that Reiki and other biofield therapies help reduce pain, according to an article published last week in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

The review found "moderate evidence" of the effectiveness of biofield therapies in decreasing negative behavior in dementia patients as well as decreasing anxiety for hospitalized patients, and "equivocal evidence" that biofield therapies can help with fatigue and quality of life for cancer patients and decreased anxiety for cardivascular patients.

The authors, researchers Shamini Jain and Paul J. Mills of the University of California at Los Angeles, say there is a need for further high-quality studies.

The studies reviewed were of average quality by scientific standards, the researchers wrote in the article, titled "Biofield Therapies: Helpful or Full of Hype? A Best Evidence Synthesis."

"In order to better inform patients of the potential benefits or non-benefits of these biofield-based interventions, clinicians and scientists within behavioral medicine should familiarize themselves with current theory, practice and research of such techniques," they concluded.

Insurance coverage for Reiki, other complementary therapies could lower costs

Health insurance plans don't usually cover Reiki treatments -- not even plans that offer coverage for other complementary therapies such as acupuncture. But one company in Wisconsin has been including coverage for Reiki, massage, craniosacral therapy, naturopathy and acupuncture as part of its standard plan for the past four years, and a company spokesperson says the policy may actually be saving money.

The Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin pays up to $375 per member per year for complementary therapies, and currently has 45 practitioners working in four different clinics. The services were added at the suggestion of a local doctor who had herself benefited from alternative treatments for fibromyalgia.

While most insurance companies consider complementary and alternative therapies to be unaffordable luxuries, GHC's marketing manager says officials believe the policy will reduce the amount it spends on prescription drugs. The numbers aren't in on that yet, but meanwhile, GHC made the top 10 health plans in U.S. News & World Report's annual survey of consumer satisfaction and success in preventing and treating illness.

Update training now available for all levels

The next round of Reiki Update Training begins on Tuesday, November 3, but if you're not registered yet, don't worry: we've revised our training so that you can study at your convenience, so you can start anytime. We've also added a separate update class for Level 1 practitioners -- that will begin December 8. Click here for more information on why you should update your training, and how to sign up.

Happy holiday!

Whether you're celebrating this day as Halloween, Samhain, or in some other way, we hope you enjoy the festivities! We're taking the rest of the day off, so look for this week's edition of The Reiki Digest here and in your inbox by Monday.

The Celeb-Reiki Report

It may seem silly to even suggest that the tabloid gossips have stepped over the line in their dogged pursuit of certain celebrities. Of course they do -- that's their job. But we can't help thinking that those who are criticizing this week's Celeb-Reiki, Jennifer Aniston for spending money on the care of her ailing dog Norman. Far beyond Hollywood, from Ireland to India to China, in Polish, Spanish, Japanese and German -- just to mention a few of the reports we've seen -- tongues are wagging about the $250 the actress reportedly spends each week on Reiki, massage, and acupuncture for 14-year-old Norman. Hey -- he's 112 in dog years, he's ailing, she loves him and can easily afford the treatments. So what's the big deal?

Calendar glitch

We have a slight glitch with our Reiki Events Calendar -- all the times are supposed to be local, but for some reason the only time zone it recognizes is Greenwich Mean Time. So if it appears that an event is scheduled for 2 a.m. or some other odd hour, please read the listings more closely to find the correct local time. We hope to have the problem solved soon. Meanwhile, please include the event time near the beginning of your listings.

To become eligible to list your Reiki circles, clinics, classes, and other events, send an email to editor @ thereikidigest.com with your name, address, telephone number, and email address for our files. You can choose the contact information that goes into your listings.

Submissions wanted for the Carnival of Healing

Time to fire up the old calliope once more and spin some cyber cotton candy: Next Saturday the Carnival of Healing will pitch its virtual tents once again here at The Reiki Digest, and that means we're inviting our readers to join the fun by submitting a post from your web site or blog to the Carnival.

The Carnival of Healing is a weekly round-up of blogs across the Internet featuring information about healing, self empowerment, and spirituality, coordinated by Phylameana lila Desy, About.com's guide to Holistic Healing. It travels constantly through cyberspace, landing at a different blog each week.

Click here to submit a post.

Participating in the Carnival is a great way to draw new readers to your web site, make yourself more visible online, and find other natural healing practitioners you might never have encountered otherwise.

To get a better idea of what the Carnival is all about, check out this week's special Halloween edition at Therapeutic Reiki.