PAMIR KICIMAN
OASIS REIKI INSTITUTE
REIKI MASTER & FOUNDER

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INSPIRATION

We feature quotes from Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), the founder of Aikido which he called the Art of Peace. He was probably the world's greatest martial artist, but also a deeply spiritual and metaphysical man, both very wise and loving.

When you bow deeply to the universe, it bows back; when you call out the name of God, it echoes inside you.

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DISTANT HEALING FAQs

This is based on the work of Elizabeth Targ, MD, a pioneer in the research of distant healing and a gifted healer equally at home in the worlds of science and spirituality.

NOTE on Reiki Distant Healing: This also follows a compassionate model. One of the key advantages of Reiki is that it is spiritual energy, which is not only healing, but is available in a concentration, vibration and purity far exceeding a practitioner's own abilities.

What is distant healing?

Distant healing encompasses a broad range of healing practices, many of which are based in ancient spiritual traditions. Virtually all major religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, endorse and encourage the use of distant healing among their adherents.

Two of the most common distant healing practices are offering prayers for those who are ill and using forms of meditation where the practitioner holds a compassionate intention to relieve the suffering of another. Some practices focus on curing a very specific disease state while others emphasize creating a compassionate environment that can have a healing effect. Virtually all distant healing practices are concerned with alleviating the suffering and increasing the well being of others.

How does distant healing work?

Different approaches to distant healing are rooted in very different worldviews and cosmologies and consequently there are numerous perspectives on how distant healing works. Common to virtually all perspectives is the belief that a person's focused intention can have a nonlocal effect, that is, the healing intention of one person can have a positive effect on another who is at a distance.

Specific explanations of how the healing effect occurs are based largely on the worldview of the healer. Some healers hold worldviews where God can intervene in a powerful way to alter physical reality, in which case it is God's action that brings about healing. Other healers hold worldviews where all reality is understood as being intimately interconnected and where mind and consciousness can have nonlocal effects. For these healers, it is the power of mind or consciousness itself that brings about a healing effect through the nonlocal transfer of either energy or information.

What kind of conditions can be treated by distant healing?

Depending on their orientation, distant healers answer this question in different ways:

• Most distant healers come from a spiritual rather than a medical perspective and often don't use medical terminology to describe a particular condition or disease state. Consequently, they often do not claim to heal specific medical conditions, simply because that's not the model they operate within.
• Distant healers who focus primarily on creating a compassionate environment that facilitates a person's overall healing process would describe their approach as being beneficial in assisting in the healing of a particular disease state, but their focus is not to "treat" a specific condition but to rebalance the overall system so healing can occur - often in collaboration with other therapies.
• Distant healers who focus on healing or curing specific disease states do not generally single out particular types of conditions as being more responsive to distant healing treatment.

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THE WELLNESS CORNER--Tips to improve quality of life

The Wellness Corner will be a regular feature of our Newsletter, where we will dedicate it to a certain subject for one or more issues. All subjects will be common elements of everyday living and deal with how to improve the quality of our lives.

Since meditation is a core practice of Reiki and one that creates many benefits for body, mind and spirit, even when practiced in secular fashion, we will feature it for a while.

New York Daily News
MIND OVER DISEASE
By Lisa Liddane

In the middle of the night, Dale Lecht-man wakes up, all kinds of thoughts crowding sleep out of her mind. But Lechtman has an effective weapon to fight her insomnia: meditation.

Lying in bed, she focuses on breathing. She breathes in deeply. Then she exhales through her nose and mouth slowly, as if she were trying to make a feather float on her breath.

In time, the intrusive thoughts are no match for Lechtman's skills. They disappear into the darkness, and finally the 62-year-old nurse is relaxed enough to resume sleeping.

Lechtman has found that secular meditation - the deliberate quieting and focusing of the mind and body - can be beneficial to her health.

Indeed, as patients and doctors seek alternatives to medication to treat illnesses, some are discovering that meditation can be strong medicine.

According to Dr. Roger Walsh, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine, more doctors have opened their minds to the idea of meditation as complementary therapy. Walsh has published research on meditation and teaches the practice as an elective to medical students.

Among the latest findings:

# A pilot study led by Walsh suggested that meditation is useful in understanding the effects of anti-depressants and might be useful as maintenance therapy for depression.

Researchers found that meditation, like anti-depressants, fostered a state of equanimity - the ability to tolerate and not be disturbed by potentially provocative or stimulating thoughts, events, encounters or experiences. The study appeared recently in the Journal of Mental and Nervous Disorders.

# A study presented at a recent American Heart Association meeting found that transcendental meditation, or TM, reduced the severity of risk factors in metabolic syndrome.

This syndrome is a collection of conditions, such as high blood pressure and increased blood-sugar levels, that lead to heart disease.

People who practiced TM significantly decreased their levels of blood pressure, blood sugar and insulin, said Dr. Noel Bairey Merz, study author and medical director of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Merz continues to study the effect of meditation on heart disease.

# Preliminary results of a study on meditation and binge-eating disorder showed that meditation can help people "reconnect" with their minds and bodies to understand when to eat and when to stop.

Practical applications

Mindfulness meditation can help those with the disorder gain control over their eating habits, said Jean Kristeller, professor of psychology and director of the Center for the Study of Health, Religion and Spirituality at Indiana State University in Terra Haute, Ind.

Some meditators in hospital settings say the turning point for meditation in medical practice came after 1975, when Harvard University researcher Dr. Herbert Benson first wrote about the value of meditation in treating illnesses in the book "The Relaxation Response." Meditation already is an essential part of the Dr. Dean Ornish program for reversing heart disease, which impressed Lechtman and her husband, Max.

This year, the Lechtmans took weekly beginner meditation classes taught by Martha Jensen at UCI Medical Center in Orange. In these classes, Jensen teaches a range of meditation techniques in sets of four weekly sessions.

"Everything we learn in meditation we can use in everyday life," Merz said. "As we strengthen our concentration, we become less reactive to what's happening to everything outside of ourselves."

It's important for beginners to be exposed to different types of meditation to find one that's right for them, Jensen said.

One person may find walking meditation effective, while another may prefer to use a mandala, a symbol upon which one concentrates. Some choose to chant a mantra or repeat a prayer or word, such as peace or calm.

A common mistake some novices make is to try a type of meditation and not like it, then give up without experimenting with other ways.

Not surprisingly, time - not motivation - is the biggest obstacle to maintaining the practice of meditation, said Dr. Wadie Najm, associate professor of family medicine at UCI. Longtime practitioners recommend meditating twice a day for 20 minutes each time. "It's not as quick as taking medication," said Najm, who has recommended meditation to some patients. It requires a time commitment, much as exercise does.

Rhymes with medication

Sometimes, meditation helps the body and mind so much that patients can reduce their dosage of medications, such as drugs to reduce blood pressure or stress and anxiety, Najm said. In a few cases, meditation has proved so effective that it picks up where medication leaves off.

To maintain the state of equanimity that sometimes results from meditation, meditators have to continue practicing throughout life. Even longtime meditators are never completely rid of intrusive thoughts and distractions, but with practice, are better able to deal with them, Walsh said.

"The biggest myth is that if one learns to meditate, one will never feel upset," Najm said. "We learn to develop a more accepting outlook, with less resistance to life."