I came across this remarkable chapter entitled “Reiki in Companion Animals “. As it comes from the Department of Clinical Studies and the Department of Veterinary Pathology, Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, PMAS Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the paper ought to be taken seriously, I thought. It seems that I was mistaken!
Here is the unaltered abstract:
The word “Reiki” is derived from two Japanese words “Rei” and “kei” meaning spiritually guided life energy. Reiki helps an individual to feel from disease, grow emotionally, spiritually and mentally. In case of animal, Reiki helps to build trust between pets and owner, promotes healing decrease psychological issues and keep an animal healthy. The major energies Reiki attunement include earth energy, heavenly energy and heart energy. Furthermore, the three degrees of chakra i.e., the heart chakra, the throat chakra and third eye chakra, allow an individual to love unconditionally, open path to consciousness and build trust, respectively. Some practitioner in Reiki train for years to understand the energy and how to navigate delicate and subtle energy which shifts within themselves and their participants, where instead of realigning your bones and muscles tension. The process of Reiki is something anyone can learn and something you can learn fairly swiftly, especially for animals. Reiki allows us to perform at a level where our positive energy flows freely. Reiki should not be an alternative to veterinarian medical care, but seen instead as an aid in the diagnosis to recovery.
Are you as baffled as I am? Here are some of my most immediate questions:
What is “Reiki attunement”?
What is “earth energy”?
What is “heavenly energy”?
What is “heart energy”?.
What is “the heart chakra”?
What is “the throat chakra”?
What is “the third eye chakra”?
What is an “open path to consciousness”?
What is “a level where our positive energy flows freely”?
None of these terms or concepts are defined. Why not? The answer is that they are not definable; they are mystical notions without meaning aimed at a gullible public (a polite way of avoiding the word bullshit).
Needless to say that the rest of the chapter is packed with some of the worst proctophasia and pseudo-science I have ever come across. The fact is that Reiki is nonsense, and nonsense should not be used to treat either humans or animals. If you are not convinced, please explain to me what this sentence tries to tell us: “Some practitioner in Reiki train for years to understand the energy and how to navigate delicate and subtle energy which shifts within themselves and their participants, where instead of realigning your bones and muscles tension.”
QED!
31 Responses to Reiki in Companion Animals?
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Can’t answer all those questions here. Suggest you take.a course or two before passing judgement. It would introduce a discipline that seems alien to you, surprisingly!
Most people know what chakras are and what energy is even if they don’t work with them. Pity western medicine doesn’t because it would explain a lot of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). In fact one wonders how doctors can practice at all without this understanding. It works on a completely different level, in fact powering the physical body and if defective can result in disease. Happily can often be corrected without need for pharmaceuticals which is all doctors really have to work with.
As for saying these terms are not definable because they are mystical notions and therefore nonsense is simply not scientific or logical. Not like you Edzy,
They just aren’t defined there because there is no need for that population of readers. Would you define lungs if writing about breathing?
Would it be possible to have the link to the whole article please?
In the first sentence of the article on which we are commenting, the phrase “this remarkable chapter” appears in a different colour to indicate that it is the anchor text[1] (aka link label; link text) — the visible, clickable/tapable HTML hyperlink to the document:
https://uniquescientificpublishers.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/non-conventional-therapies/190-198.pdf
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_text
You wrote: “Can’t answer all those questions here.”
In fact, you didn’t answer any of them. Instead, you wrote this abject bullshit: “Most people know what chakras are and what energy is even if they don’t work with them.”
You scoffed: “As for saying these terms are not definable because they are mystical notions and therefore nonsense is simply not scientific or logical.”
If that is true then you can define the terms succinctly, scientifically, and logically.
I look forward to your definitions.
See my comment regarding The misunderstood limits of folk science: an illusion of explanatory depth by Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil:
https://edzardernst.com/2019/02/heal-the-documentary-nonsense-and-cruelty-on-health-and-disease/#comment-154361
A lot to unpick, but a couple of comments.
“Take some courses “, in what? Unicorn husbandry? Margaret, you are the one claiming a variety of things, the burden of proof lies with you, to demonstrate the truth of your claims. Perhaps you might benefit from a course in critical thinking which may help you make a more cogent argument?
“It works on a whole different level” please provide proof “it works”, and demonstrate what this “extra level” is and how it can be tested. Just repeating a claim is not proof.
“Would you define lungs….” Lungs exist, there is no proof of the existence of some of the things claimed.
It might help your argument if you could actually try to define even a couple of the more exotic claims, to help everyone understand. To not address any seems a little like avoiding the issue and doesn’t help your argument.
You ask for a link to the article. If you take the time to read the post carefully you will see it is there and always has been, unlike unicorns, or “heart energy”etc.
@Margaret Lamont
Chakras don’t exist, and neither does this special ‘energy'(*). These things only exist in the imagination of some people.
Anyone who claims to be able to feel and/or manipulate any special ‘energy’ fails miserably in tests that even a child can (and did(**)) come up with. This means that reiki is a scam, and that reiki ‘masters’ and practitioners are charlatans. The only thing that these people can successfully manipulate is the wallets of their gullible customers.
Your ignorance about real medicine is quite telling. Real doctors do much more than just prescribe pills – they are the true holistic therapists, looking at all aspects of their patients in order to find out what is wrong with them, and many of those things they look at have to do with lifestyle and habits, work, relationships and other things that may affect health and well-being. And many of their treatments don’t involve pills, but e.g. physiotherapy or other non-pharmaceutical interventions.
But to remain in style: all those reiki practitioners have to work with is a bit of nonsensical hand-waving in a relaxing atmosphere. Which at best produces a short-lived placebo effect.
*: Energy (the real type) is simply the capability to perform work, and its effects are not limited to living things.
**: OK, that was about therapeutic touch – but it makes the same claims about this imaginary ‘energy’ as reiki.
If only ‘real Drs’ were true holistic therapists.
We wouldnt then have any CAM would we?
@JK
Of course we would have SCAM. Because there will always be people who want to pretend to be doctors and ‘heal’ people, but do not want to spend 15,000 hours of hard work on getting a decent medical education.
So they choose one of the many types of fake medicine such as reiki, homeopathy or bioresonance, and simply start charging people for ‘treatments’ without any proper education. After all, over 80% of medical complaints resolve naturally, so they can boast an 80% success rate without knowing what they are doing at all. The best that can be said about these charlatans is that many of them are not just fooling their customers, but themselves too.
@Richard Rasker
Dick said;
“After all, over 80% of medical complaints resolve naturally, so they can boast an 80% success rate without knowing what they are doing at all.”
Then wouldn’t that same perspective apply to MD’s also ?
@RG
Yes and no.
Yes, of course most of the complaints that a regular family doctor sees also resolve naturally.
No, as real doctors know what they’re doing. They won’t claim success when they know that a patient got better on their own, and they do know serious conditions when they see them.
Quite contrary to SCAMmers, whose diagnostic skills are best described as ‘absent’, and whose treatments are basically useless – if only because chosen on the basis of erroneous diagnoses.
No one is forced to pay for the CAM treatments you list.
I am not sure if abuse against CAM and CAMees helps your cause.
@JK If the treatments don’t work then people are being deceived at best, lied to at worst and defrauded. The effects of SCAM can also include not taking treatments known to work. In some cases leading to preventable deaths.
Being forced is not the pertinent issue. Your implication is that if they wish to do it, that’s fine. That is not ethical if the treatments are worthless, as is the case for Reiki, apart from the short term placebo effects, and people are being lied to that they are efficacious.
Your comment doesn’t address any of the issues raised, provide any evidence any of it is real, or of any value to anyone, other than the person being paid to perform the SCAM. It’s a plea to be left alone and not criticised. There’s a logical fallacy for that.
@JK
You consistently fail to appreciate the fact that SCAMmers sell services that do not deliver what is promised, i.e. effective healthcare.
Their diagnostic skills are abysmal at best, and completely absent in many cases, and any treatments based on those diagnoses are of course also completely useless.
Suppose you take your car to a garage because its fuel consumption has noticeably increased. The mechanic charges you $100 for just waving his hands around the engine compartment for half an hour, suggesting that you “try and see if things are better now”, claiming that his intervention “usually works”, or even that it is “scientifically proven”. At no point did the mechanic even try to locate and address the real problem, e.g. a leaking fuel line. Because this mechanic has not been properly trained, and doesn’t actually know how cars work, and what may cause certain problems.
I don’t know what you would call this, but I call it fraud. And a dangerous fraud at that, because the problem can easily get much, much worse.
Likewise, SCAMmers are committing fraud if they treat people with e.g. homeopathy or reiki and ask money for those treatments, saying that it “often works”.
@Richard Rasker
You are just as full of BS as ever
“as real doctors know what they’re doing. They won’t claim success when they know that a patient got better on their own”
That is the biggest crock I’ve ever heard. I never had a MD tell me one time I got better on my own and didn’t need to pay the visit.
I suggest that Richard Rasker reports these alleged scandalous activities to UK trading standards.
When they ignore him he should try again and again. Try the MHRA. Try a fraud and harm routine with the police.
Richard won’t get anywhere of course. Practising CAM is not fraud according to all UK authority. People like Richard who make allegations that cannot be proved get ignored. However, at least he can express his extream opinion. However, it is good that he can vent on this blog and get some responses.
@JK
Oh, I did, albeit not in the UK – 8 years ago I filed complaints against 10 Dutch homeopaths who not only told insecure parents that childhood vaccines could be very harmful (‘we know that vaccines can cause brain damage’ – which is of course a lie), but also sold their useless sugar crumbs as a ‘safe and trustworthy alternative’ to be used in lieu of vaccination.
I had the pleasure to meet one of those dumb quacks (the chairman of the Dutch Homeopathic Association) before the committee, and to my somewhat guilty pleasure, the man was absolutely livid. In all his stupid arrogance, he held a 40-minute diatribe how his ‘noble healing art’ was ‘scientifically proven’ (it most definitely is not), and ‘how dare I, a non-homeopath, criticise what he was doing’ etcetera etcetera. I was glad that there were two seats between us – not only because he was stammering and spluttering his way through his monologue from sheer rage and I didn’t bring an umbrella, but also because it was clear that he could barely restrain himself from physically lashing out at me.
The committee, however, was not impressed, and the verdict was that those homeopaths should indeed stop selling their fake vaccines, and also stop claiming that vaccines are harmful.
It should be, but alas, authorities don’t always do the most rational things.
What allegations do I make that can’t be proved? For most types of SCAM, there is no scientifically valid evidence that it has any effect beyond placebo. Yet SCAMmers claim that they CAN effectively diagnose and treat people, which means that they are liars. And because they charge people money for their fake healthcare treatments, they are frauds as well. The fact that authorities in many countries ignore the scientific evidence and instead fall for the nonsense that SCAMmers claim, only tells us that those authorities are human and make mistakes, not that SCAM is proven effective.
The crucial difference between car maintenance and treatment of disease being that cars don’t get better of their own accord, so the Voltairean* approach doesn’t work with them. This is why there are no Alternative Car Mechanics.
*Amusing the car while nature takes its course.
@Mojo
In a way they can, or at least appear to do so. Like medical complaints, technical problems can be intermittent, or they can have a non-technical cause – maybe the increased fuel consumption was the result of a more wasteful driving style, or because the owner used the AC a lot more because of an exceptional heat wave. Or maybe that annoying scratchy, squeaky noise was actually a mouse. Or wires can short out only occasionally when rubbing against each other due to vibration – problems like this can take a LOT of time to trace, and seemingly even ‘fix themselves’. Been there, done that.
Well, in a way, there are. And there are of course LOTS of quite incompetent mechs out there who are almost one-on-one comparable with alternative medical practitioners.
You make allegations of fraud and harm Richard that you cannot support with evidence.
You claim that ‘authorities in many countries ignore the scientific evidence and instead fall for the nonsense that SCAMmers claim.’ Why would authorities do this if there is evidence of fraud and harm? Only a conspiracy theorist would make such a claim implying that authorities are somehow making mistakes and ignoring all of this fraud and harm.
By all means Richard please get taken in by any conspiracy that you get sucked into. However, I would like to remind you that they did land on the moon, the earth isnt flat and i wouldnt be too concerned about any vaccines you have had.
@JK
You tell me. Authorities also allow other, extremely harmful things such as the sale of tobacco – which, admittedly, does vastly more harm than any type of SCAM. I guess it’s about money and about business lobby. And yes, there is also quite a bit of lobby for SCAM.
What conspiracy? I simply see that there are thousands of people who are selling ‘healthcare’ that doesn’t do anything and may even be harmful. Almost all real doctors and scientists agree with me – or rather, it’s the other way round: I agree with them when they show us (via research) that SCAM does not actually help people get better.
RR, you still do not understand that “Real doctors”, like Prof. Ernst have “Doctorates”, e.g. PhD’s. Health care providers e.g. Medical practitioners, dentists, vets, chiropractors and soon Physical Therapists use the title “doctor” as a courtesy not a right. Physical Therapists with a “Doctor of Physical Therapy” will be coming to the United Kingdom and expected to be addressed as “Doctor”. How will you cope with this? If you were to have a really good look at the science behind physiotherapy, you would find that it is nothing more than “Hands on Homeopathy”.
Physiotherapy is nothing more than "Hands on Homeopathy", which this anonymous chiropractor has been claiming since 2016:
https://edzardernst.com/2016/04/chiropractic-megalomania/#comment-76198
https://edzardernst.com/2017/02/opioid-over-use-chiropractic-megalomania-and-six-probing-questions/#comment-86145
https://edzardernst.com/2017/07/chiropractors-are-bullshit-a-rebuttal-of-a-rebuttal/#comment-93075
https://edzardernst.com/2017/08/is-chiropractic-subluxation-a-notion-of-the-past-sadly-not/#comment-97637
https://edzardernst.com/2017/12/is-it-time-for-chiropractors-and-osteopaths-to-look-for-other-jobs/#comment-97351
https://edzardernst.com/2018/01/chiropractic-is-not-the-best-treatment-for-back-pain/#comment-98055
https://edzardernst.com/2019/12/suffering-from-persistent-low-back-pain-forget-about-chiropractic-or-other-scams/#comment-118881
“There is no need for the emperor’s clothes to be described because they can be seen by the right people.”
And yes, when writing a chapter on the lungs, and treatments for diseases of the lungs, it would be necessary to describe the physiology of the lungs, and how the diseases and treatment affected it.
Submitted a long answer but not here so has either been binned or perhaps because I didn’t tick the box! Would appreciate a copy sending back if not too late. Many thanks
Am from india and this is being practicied by some fools here in india. It’s a bullshit baby powder. Ha ha ha
Richard do you have a medical training background? Or anything else? Would be good to know to judge usefulness of your answers
He has disclosed his background several times previously
The usefulness or veracity of an answer is not necessarily dependant on specifically medical knowledge. In this case many of the claims (which you still haven’t provided definitions or evidence for) are more physics related, e.g. claiming specific types of “energy” and the ability to manipulate it by hand waving.
I remind you – you are making claims, the onus is on you to provided evidence to support the many extreme claims put forward that do not have support from known science, be it Medicine, Biology, Chemistry or Physics.
I am afraid many of the regulars here will be familiar with the approach you take i.e. to not engage in an honest debate about the facts and evidence, but repeat unsubstantiated beliefs, conspiracy theories, and often use ad hominem attacks. Please don’t take that approach. Rather, present your evidence that led you to these beliefs.
It doesn’t take a medical training to understand that reiki is mystical nonsense: basic science will do.
Reiki is another one of the SCAMs which would require the re-writing of much physics, biology, anatomy, physiology and chemistry for it to work: that way would lie several Nobel prizes and a lifetime of text book writing contracts. Odd how no-one has done that yet…
@Margaret Lamont
Just to make clear why I think that I know what I’m talking about:
I am an electronics engineer specialized in biomedical applications. I know a fair deal about the interaction between electricity / electromagnetism and living organisms, complete with associated physics and chemistry. I know what kinds of energy are involved in living things (mostly chemical and electrical), what they do, and how they work. In all my 40+ years of experience in the field I have never even once encountered anything like the ‘energy’ (or ‘resonance’ or ‘frequencies’) that many SCAM practitioners claim to work with.
And when a claimed phenomenon can’t be detected or measured in any objective way, the only valid scientific approach is to assume that it does not exist. Also see Occam’s Razor.
Now of course I know that reiki and TCM practitioners etc. admit that their special ‘energy’ indeed can’t be detected by normal scientific means, and that one must first learn to detect and manipulate it. And yes, I am quite sure that these people really believe that they can feel it. But in reality, what they have trained themselves to do is not so much to ‘attune’ themselves to any real energy, but simply to evoke tactile sensations in their own brain when they go into ‘reiki mode’. Or in rather less respectful words: they have learned how to fool themselves (and their customers, for that matter).
How do I know that this interpretation is correct? Simple: there has never been a practitioner of ‘energy medicine’ who could reliably sense this ‘energy’ in a blind test, even though they vehemently claimed to be able to beforehand. Then of course there’s the Rubber Hand illusion, where it only takes a few minutes to fool a test subject’s brain into believing that a fake hand is their real hand – demonstrating that it is in fact very easy to manipulate the brain into sensing non-existing tactile sensations.
Another reason why it is quite clear that reiki etc. is just a placebo treatment is that its effects are largely identical to the effects of other SCAM treatments that are known to be placebo treatments, such as homeopathy and acupuncture.
None of those treatments can consistently produce objectively observable, repeatable clinical effects in any properly set-up experiment.
You are absolutely right. That will happen. It will completely change everything,
In response to Richard
Rasker
Your definition of doctors is lovely and would that it was that way. But that is what is imagination! It used to be more like that but has sadly lost its way now. Have you been to a doctor recently? And how do you expect all that in 8 minute appointment, if you can get one? Have some experience being under GP, consultant and specialist team for last two years.
Also referred to physio for arthritic knees and sacroiliac which is frankly pretty pathetic compared to what is available, even for example on YouTube. They could help so much more by referring to many of the alternative techniques that you blindly call SCAM.
@Margaret Lamont
Not recently, and I don’t think that but personal anecdotes are important or representative anyway – but since you ask for it: when I suffered from bouts of rather bad lower back pain, the doctor at the time a) checked if there wasn’t anything serious going on, or if there were clear causes for my problems (heavy work), and when that wasn’t the case b) prescribed ‘pain-guided activity’.
Which means to go about business as usual, but just taking it easy. No extended periods of resting (which I tended to do until then), and no painkillers unless the pain really messed up my sleep at night. It appeared to work: new episodes of back pain only lasted 4-5 days instead of two or three weeks. And by paying more attention to proper techniques for loading my back and lifting etc. I managed to reduce recurrence to maybe once every few years. I also tried things like physiotherapy and massage, but apart from feeling nice and relaxed those things didn’t bring any significant extra relief.
The scientific literature begs to differ. Many alternative treatments and techniques claim to be effective, but when properly researched, none of them are – beyond placebo, of course. There’s always placebo.