The Reiki Digest for August 16, 2006: Tuning in to Reiki on TV

This week's edition of The Reiki Digest is upside down. Usually, our Celeb-Reiki feature is at the end of the digest, but today it's at the beginning. What's more, this week's Reiki celebrity isn't exactly a celebrity -- yet. In a few hours, however, this non-famous person will be much better known, because he'll have been on television for an hour this evening.

So congratulations, Tom Collett of Denville, New Jersey, USA. You're our star Celeb-Reiki!

This week's other Celeb-Reikis are a little better known already: the first is documentarian Morgan Spurlock. He became famous, and suffered ill health, with his movie "Super Size Me," in which he ate only McDonalds food for a month. Spurlock has since recovered and gone on to his latest venture, this time on television. His reality series "30 Days," now in its second season on the FX Network, features real people who spend 30 days doing something they wouldn't ordinarily do. Brand new celebrity Tom Collett is the star of tonight's episode of "30 Days," titled "New Age." During his 30 days, Collett, described as "skeptical 37-year-old New Jersey salesman," tries out numerous so-called "New Age" methods under the guidance of this week's other Celeb-Reiki, life coach Barbara Biziou.

"New Age" premieres tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern, but if you're reading this sometime after that, don't worry: the show will be rerun several times between Aug. 17 and Aug. 21, at least.

Reiki is just one of the stress-reduction methods Collett and his wife, Misti, tried during the taping of "30 Days." And even though the cameras stopped rolling some time ago, they told reporters that they're still doing Reiki, unlike some of the other things they tried.

The Colletts were discovered by Spurlock's team one day as they were eating lunch right here in Hoboken, New Jersey (home of The Reiki Digest). The producers took note of the former college football player enjoying chicken wings and beer and decided he was just right for the part.

In addition to Reiki, Collett's "New Age" experiences for the program included yoga, acupuncture, a spring-equinox ritual, a tribal-dancing class, and a Tantric-intimacy workshop, according to the episode's blurb at TVguide.com. Does he or doesn't he walk on a bed of hot coals as a finale? Even if you don't get to see it, we''ll let you know in next week's edition of The Reiki Digest.

While we're on the subject of television, this week search engine Google redesigned its main page to include a link for video. It's turned out to be very popular, so we decided to search for Reiki videos. The results were a bit disappointing: fairly good technical quality, but with wildly different interpretations of what Reiki is and how it is practiced. Then again, you have to take all Internet searches with a large grain of salt. And as a whole, they're a fairly accurate representation of the diversity of 21st Century Reiki practices. We did like this one, however: it's a Reiki screensaver.

Yahoo!'s search engine also offers a video search, so we searched for Reiki videos there as well. The biggest difference seemed to be that Yahoo!'s results were more international and in more languages.

Both those links to videos will give you fresh search results, so what you find there may be different from what we found today. In any case, take a look and tell us what you think by adding a comment to this post (if you're reading this on our web site) or by email to editor@thereikidigest.com (if you're a subscriber.)

From video we move to audio for this week's podcast of The Reiki Show from the International House of Reiki in Australia. California Reiki practitioner Kathleen Prasad, whose specialty is Reiki for animals. Prasad is the co-author of the book Animal Reiki. As usual, it's a fascinating program, and you may get a tear in your eye, especially when you hear Prasad talking about her work with seeing-eye dogs and in animal shelters.

And if you look at the latest newsletter from The Reiki Show hosts Bronwen and Frans Stiene, you'll find, among many other items, the good news that they have at least 15 more episodes already taped.

Speaking of celebrities, from a press release headlined "Celebrity Nude Resort Opens in Palm Springs," we learn that clothing-optional Reiki is now available, among other natural healing modalities au naturel, at a spa called Sea Mountain in the California desert. No word on which, if any, celebrities would be giving or receiving the Reiki or other treatments.

And on that note, we'll sign off by once again encouraging readers to make this more than a one-way communication by adding your comments.