2008: The year in Reiki

Welcome to this year's final edition of The Reiki Digest. We won't be publishing on December 25 or January 1, so our next edition will be January 8, 2009. Instead, we'll be asking our readers to post their New Year's resolutions on our web site during our hiatus.

(Our other Reiki enterprise, The Reiki Dojo in New York City, will be open on Mondays only for the next two weeks. Our regular weekly meetings will be held as usual on Dec. 22 and 29.)

This week, we're wrapping up 2008 with a look back. 

As 2008 began, we had hundreds of readers in 80 countries, and our goal was to reach at least 100 nations by year's end. We're happy to report that we now have more than 1,500 readers in 142 countries, and we thank each and every one of you for the attention you've given us this year. We hope this review will be especially helpful to those who just joined us recently, but it's good for all of us to pause and reflect now and then.

In January, we reported that a new national healthcare council was being set up in the United Kingdom for the voluntary regulation of complementary therapies. That organization, the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, was established in April and had one meeting in July. Practitioners can begin registering sometime in January 2009, according to the organization's web site. The group's board of directors is already in place, and the majority of them seem to have a background in conventional medicine.

In February, Reiki made the pages of Natural Health magazine and Massage Therapy Journal. And one of The Reiki Digest's most popular articles got translated into Spanish by a Reiki master in Barcelona. 

In March, Reiki made headlines in Wired magazine with an article about therapies for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, and Sully the Shetland Sheepdog became our first four-legged Celeb-Reiki.

In April, we celebrated cherry blossom season and introduced a regular feature, the Weekly Waka. What's a waka? It's not only a form of poetry, but it's one of the major genres of Japanese literature. Mikao Usui, the founder of Reiki, recommended using waka as part of the hatsurei-ho meditation. They are also used at the meetings of the Japanese Reiki association (Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai) and at The Reiki Dojo as well.

In May, Reiki practitioner and mountain climber Santiago Quintero reached the summit of the world's fifth-highest mountain, Makalu, on the Tibet/Nepal border, even though he had lost most of his toes on a 2002 climb in South America. Also in May, I had the privilege of completing my third Reiki Master program, this time in Komyo Reiki with the founder of that lineage, Hyakuten Inamoto.

In June, The Reiki Digest celebrated its second anniversary, and we had a lively discussion on Reiki, the precepts, and the Law of Attraction that went on for most of that month.

In July, we had our first article on animal Reiki, and we found a wonderful video about the use of Reiki in medicine in the United Kingdom. And war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic, a real medical doctor, was found disguised as, among other things, a Reiki practitioner.

In August, Reiki practitioner Hayden Roulston of New Zealand completed his comeback from a life-threatening heart condition to win Silver and Bronze cycling medals in the Beijing Olympics.

In September, Reiki made The Washington Post, Australian cyclist and Reiki practitioner Lindy Hou won Silver and Bronze medals in the Beijing Paralympics, and the world economy began its dramatic decline. 

In October, we published our first special issue on Animal Reiki, and our reader community talked a lot about the issue of getting permission from Reiki recipients. And a prominent web site published one lineage's version of the Reiki symbols.

In November, we launched our new advice column, we expressed our gratitude, and wondered if President-elect Obama might have a Reiki connection.

And in December, we found a new full-time home for The Reiki Dojo in New York and sponsored our first special event there: a talk with author Pamela Miles on her work with Reiki in Medicine.

And of course, throughout the year, we welcomed guest writers with great articles about their own experiences with Reiki, something we hope to do even more of in 2009.

We have lots of other plans for the New Year, too, and we look forward to learning about yours.

Happy Holidays, and we'll see you in January!