The Reiki Digest for April 4, 2007: Following Usui's footsteps up Mt. Kurama

Our intrepid Special Correspondent Michelle Shinagawa has made it to the birthplace of Reiki on her visit to Japan. We know that because she posted these words on her blog last Thursday:

I am at Mt. Kurama right now.

She hasn't posted anything since then, but it seems unlikely she changed her itinerary and decided to stay 21 days there, as Reiki founder Mikao Usui did. The most likely scenario is that she's continuing her travels but still having Internet access difficulties. We will let you know as soon as she posts again. Michelle, if you're reading this, we hope you're enjoying the journey and we'll look forward to more dispatches when you can send them, even if we have to wait until the trip is over to read about it.

Meanwhile, I'm holding down the home front, and not doing much more than that, thanks to a visit from an incurable but thankfully temporary affliction: the common cold. Yes, Reiki can help with the symptoms, but tissues, hot tea, and cough drops come in handy, too: the illness is affecting the whole person, so I'm treating the whole person. If this were a typical mainstream media article about alternative medicine, the kind that turn up at least once a week in some newspaper or magazine somewhere, at this point the reporter might interview a medical doctor who warns, "Reiki can be dangerous, because if you rely solely on Reiki to treat your common cold, it could turn into pneumonia and that could be life-threatening." It's a false argument: Reiki practitioners don't insist on using Reiki at the exclusion of other treatments: not for cancer, not for the common cold.

Fortunately, germs can't travel across cyberspace (even though computer viruses do), so please disregard the sneezing and sniffling on my part as we travel together on this week's Reiki Roundup.

Reiki on the ranch: In an article headlined "Cancer: Treating the Whole Patient," the Tucson (Arizona) Citizen takes us to a former dude ranch, now a cancer support center, where Reiki is among the therapies offered. Yeee-ha! Chant 'em, cowboy!

In Wilmington, Delaware, the News-Journal takes us to the Christiana Care Center for Integrative Health, where Reiki is among the offerings in an East-plus-West approach to healing.

Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, Vermont, also offers a holistic program for women with breast cancer. The program is free, thanks to a grant from the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

And in Milton, Pennsylvania, the Standard-Journal introduces a Reiki Master who led a workshop in labyrinth walking at a recent cancer conference.

In Sebastapol, California, we find a Reiki practitioner who set out to follow her late teacher's funeral instructions and ended up with a new career in a new field: death midwifery.

This week's Celeb-Reiki is Bollywood moviemaker Aparna Sen, who found the lead actress for her next film, The Japanese Wife, when she went to Japan for Reiki.

With your kind indulgence, dear readers, I'll keep this edition short but sweet and get back to blowing my nose. If you're so inclined, please send some Reiki my way.