Reiki for veterans

Reiki made the popular blog Daily Kos last Saturday in a post about its use with traumatized war veterans, and that is a very, very big deal: Daily Kos has more than 900,000 visitors daily and is consistently one of the top ten blogs in all cyberspace, according to traffic.

Daily Kos contributor Ilona, who has her own blog about combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder, linked to several recent news items on the topic in a post headlined, "Reiki for Veterans? Military and VA Testing, Already Using Ancient Touch Therapy." Regular readers will notice one error right in the headline: the system of Reiki dates back only to 1922, which isn't exactly "ancient." The article includes some other common errors, referring to founder Mikao Usui as a doctor (he wasn't), and a YouTube video that is basically an ad for a "Grand Master" in India, which also includes some common errors. Many practitioners learned those myths from their teachers, who learned them from their teachers. Those small points aside, the article does capture the essence of Reiki fairly well, and it includes links to quite a few scientific articles and other resources on the subject.

Reiki "seems to be bubbling up to the mainstream surface more and more these days," Ilona wrote. "That the military and VA are incorporating it, is another positive sign that mountains can be moved even in mammoth bureaucracies -- as long as you believe it can be so (and add a little action into the mix to help it along)."

From Daily Kos, the story of using complementary and alternative healing for combat veterans spread to the Hartford Courant, and from there to Stars and Stripes, a daily newspaper for the U.S. military. Who knows where it will spread from there?

We hope the article will help make Reiki and other holistic therapies available to more people, both military and civilian, who have been traumatized by war.

Ilona's Daily Kos post on Reiki is quite extensive, with 59 comments appended so far. To give you a chance to read it, we're keeping this Digest post short and sweet. May Reiki continue "bubbling up to the mainstream surface."