Astrology

I agree about hospitals not seeing the patient as a person. When going into hospital always take a framed photo of yourself looking remarkably smart accompanied by your grandchildren. The excuse for the Photo is the grandchildren but it does mean that the staff see you at your best.

As far as I can see, Reiki is largely gentle touch with music and a calm atmosphere - likely to make the patient feel better and more relaxed, which will help the body's own abilities to cope with the problem. The voice of this demonstrator is quite hynotic, too It is not anything magical.

Chimps do something similar with grooming one another's fur. It improves the mood of the recipient and strengthens the social bonds (and puts the groomer into the good books of the one being groomed. In the Zoo here there is a sweet new baby chimp, the only one in the troupe. All the other females want to hold him but his mother is not letting go of him, so they try to curry favour by grooming her. There is always someone assiduously combing her fur with their fingers and it is getting quite thin. It doesn't work, but she revels in the attention.)

Never used music or talked much when doing Reiki Elegran prefer silence unless the 'patient' feeds back how they are feeling. I never touch the person either but prefer to put my hands a couple of inches away from the area being treated. People tell me they feel heat from my hands.

I don't know how it works or why it works. I used to be a real sceptic. The practioners I know, would never claim it cured diseases. What they do claim is it can ease pain and that appears to be the case. Likewise they would never suggest using Reiki instead on visiting a GP.

I have heard of some who make exaggerated claims, or claim they can heal over distances. I can't go along with those. All I would say is that, like some of the posters above have testified, it can ease pain. How it does that I have no idea, but anything that helps relax or ease pain, with no side effects can only be a welcome addition as a complementary therapy.

Hunt - That is an inspired idea about taking in a photo of oneself. I'm going to find one, frame it and put it in my "in case I have to go into hospital bag."

GillT57 My middle son who has Fibromyalgea and is in the Bi Polar spectrum sees a Homeopath on a regular basis. He gains a lot of support and comfort simply being able to talk through his emotional and physical problems. He has been prescribed remedies which he takes regularly.

I am a Reiki healer but not practicing as such. Even when I was a very small child I thought I could heal people and animals. . I always respond to illness by sending out healing it's a natural sort of sending out of healing thoughts.

When my eldest son was diagnosed with cancer I had healing from Christian healers, he was on a prayer list and I lit a lot of candles in the church. Well, his latest blood tests have come back as cancer free. My realist side puts it down to the operation and the chemo but my spiritual side is busily working alongside all the excellent medical treatment.

My grandmother in Ireland was the local midwife (unqualified) and all the women wanted her at their deliveries. She had warm hands and this is a sign that healing is being given

My Reiki practioner never touches my body , never plays music, never claims she can heal me , I do not imagine the heat I feel from her hands, I know I benefit from Reiki. My GP is also a homeopathy practioner as is the vet who treats my dogs . I doubt my dogs are aware of the placebo affect , neither were my children when babies

Just lying quietly and focussing inward would help as well. And they would feel the close body heat even without touch - our cave-dwelling ancestors probably all snuggled up together and felt all the better for it.

I do hate it, though, when practitioners of one of these supportive complementary therapies claim to cure all kinds of impossible things better than conventional medecine, and even accuse doctors of wanting to keep people ill for profit. If it keeps people away from some good treatment which has been shown to go straight to the problem and fix it, then it is failing the patient.

Astrology is another thing entirely - a system of personality definition and the prediction of major life events based on the positions of wandering stars thousands of years in the past. It is not even the right positions for the dates allocated to them - it has been shown that the accepted Zodiac is way out of sync.

The stars do effect our lives in one way - the atoms and molecules which form our bodies came from the food we eat and that our parents ate before we were born. Before they were in our food, they were in the soil, the rocks, the water, the air. All these things were made in the beginning out of the elements from the stars, planets and asteroids that had formed out of the dust of the big bang, and were travelling about the universe and crashing together.

They do not effect our choice of career or life partner, or the disasters and triumphs that happen to us (and to everyone else, indiscriminately)

Nor do they effect the diagnosis and treatment of our illnesses.

I have used reiki a few times - a friend offered it for free to help my depression. I am a real sceptic but took comfort from a peaceful hour, a sympathetic ear and the joy of a freely given kindly gift.

I never offer it Mishap - the person has to ask. That's not a hard and fast rule but how I prefer to operate. I takes too much out of me, even though that it is not supposed to drain the giver.

That sounds like a good friend Mishap

My husband had had lots of complementary medicine since he fell off a ladder in 1996. He did reiki himself, and had chiropractic, reflexology, acupuncture, homeopathy, etc. They all worked at the time he needed them.
When he was dying of cancer, we had a charity come to our house

www.lifespanteam.org.uk/home/

They were sent by MacMillan. He had his best sleep for ages after he had had reflexology.
Some people will never be persuaded that these therapies work, but I do not care. The rest of us know that they do, and that's all that matters.

Anyone around Durham, Crook Hall will be open on 14th March, with proceeds going to Lifespan.

We still seem to want to believe in magic don't we. Alternative therapies may seem to work at times when symptoms are alleviated - but of course people only cite the occasions when the use of them coincides with an improvement. Not all the occasions when they don't make a blind bit of difference. The placebo effect is very variable and unpredictable and only works on symptoms. It does not cure diseases. Ever.
I am very unhappy that taxpayers money is still being wasted on homeopathic hospitals - but of course Prince Charles is lobbying away in the background. The green party apparently think alternatives are a good idea and should be supported by taxpayer.
If people want to waste their money on homeopathy then I suppose it can relieve the pressure on GPs dealing with minor, self-limiting illnesses. But the down side is that there is a lot of fraud in the industry - at worst, people flogging fake cancer cures.
Complementary therapies such as massage are nice to have, may make patients feel a bit better and some hospitals fund them from charitable donations etc.

I wouldn't write off homeopathic treatments but, as someone else said, I prefer the term "complementary" since I see them as perhaps useful in some circumstances or as an addition to "conventional" medicine.

However, I have a degree of scepticism about over-reliance on both homeopathic and conventional drugs. I think many people are encouraged to be too passive in dealing with various health problems. I saw it with my Dad. He would have a whole line of different tablets to take each morning for all sorts of ailments, including depression, and I feel he was not encouraged to look at ways in which he could assist towards his own health and happiness - e.g. by watching his diet more carefully, keeping more active, etc.

Also, I believe I'm right in saying that research has shown that the "placebo effect" can be demonstrated in those that take conventional, as well as homeopathic, drugs.

I think treatments like Reiki, reflexology, head massage, do work for some people, perhaps partly because they induce a state of deep relaxation. Also the people who are attracted to doing these therapies usually have a genuine commitment to relieving suffering and a great belief that their treatments will be of benefit - a belief that may well be communicated to the client. I think any treatments (including "talking therapies") that focus intensively and compassionately on a person in distress can bring relief.

I have found that some people who practice Reiki do so for no payment or for voluntary contributions because their prime motivation is to help people.

Having said all that, I do think there are many charlatans around who promote all sorts of unproven treatments solely for the purpose of making money.

Conventional treatments have to at least have some scientific validation and unless homeopathic treatments can also be validated in the same way, I don't think they should be available under the NHS.

You are correct Eloethan when you say that some (in fact many) who practice Reiki do so for no payment.

Yes quite Eloethan the words "evidence based" should be used when deciding whether NHS funds should be spent on them.
Of course conventional drugs can have a placebo effect Eloethan but remember only on symptoms like nausea or pain. Never any suggestion that the effect is anything other than palliative. Homeopathic "remedies" are just sugar pills. It was proved by mathematics about a century ago that there is unlikely to be a single molecule of the original herb or mineral in a dose. An enthusiast then came up with the bright suggestion that water has a "memory" of molecules that have passed nearby. Complete balderdash. If this is the case then then sea water will have a memory of every substance that has ever been in a river (cow poo, contraceptive hormones, heavy metals etc etc etc) - so why not just take a sip of that and it will cure all ills?

Reflexology is a nonsense too - it's very nice to have one's feet mashed and manipulated, but the central idea that each part of the foot corresponds to a part of the body and is capable of indicating illness at that part, as well as being a means of treating the illness, is baloney... Other similar ideas are found in iridology, reading the iris of the eye and there is also a version treating the outer ear as a sort of homunculus and relating it to the rest if the body's parts. All tosh...

Really, feetle?
Reflexology cured my sciatica.
It also helped my husband to sleep when he was dying of cancer. In fact once he slept for so long that he slept through the hospice carers changing his pads and giving him a wash so he could go to sleep!
Of course, I do not care if you believe me or not, but your dismissal is quite hurtful.

Yes, scepticism is fine, but blatant scoffing is just rude.

How did reflexology affect your sciatica? Someone looked at your foot, and translated that into a diagnosis, manipulated the foot and effected a cure? How would that have worked? And I have had both sciatica and the experience of reflexology - I know, and sympathise with, your discomfort. But massaging your foot won't reduce inflamation in the sciatic nerve, will it?

I was totally sceptical about Reiki but it stopped my longstanding tinnitus for about an hour, for the first time in 35 years the ringing sounds ceased. Yes, they came back but I intend to start having it regularly. I was amazed...and converted !

I do not know, I do not care as long as it worked. It wasn't someone I expected to do reflexology, either. He was a sports physio for a professional team. He also used homeopathy on the team members.
He knew what worked as he had suffered from sciatica himself.

I even told the therapist that I didn't believe in it (I won a treatment), and honestly thought I was wasting both our times

There is a fundamental difference between relief and cure. All sorts of homeopathic remedies and hands-on or hands nearly-on treatments can make sufferers feel better if they believe in them, but they won't actually make them better.