Reiki Energy Medicine
Bringing Healing Touch into Home, Hospital, and Hospice
"A significant contribution to the growing number of books that illustrate how complementary approaches to health and healing can be integrated with conventional medical treatment."
~Massage Magazine
Over twenty-five years ago I had the opportunity to illustrate and collaborate in writing a book on the ancient practice of Reiki. At that time Reiki was largely unknown in the US. Reiki Energy Medicine, Bringing Healing Touch into Home, Hospital and Hospice, published by Inner Traditions, Bear & Co., Healing Arts Press, was written to be a bridge between medical staff and the healing practice of Reiki. I helped take this practice into some of the most prestigious allopathic medical institutions in New England, including Brown University School of Medicine, Yale School of Nursing and New York Foundling Hospital.
It was a challenge to write about such a unique and powerful practice, rooted in Eastern cultures, for western readers not familiar with quantum physics. But I have always been fascinated with what lies under the surface. While the practice of Reiki is more widely recognized today, there is still a great deal of misinformation in books and on the internet, so it was a pleasure to provide clear and accessible information on what Reiki is and how it works. This book has stood the test of time and is now in its 17th printing, translated into seven languages with over 70,000 copies sold. Today Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Englewood Hospital, and New York-Presbyterian still have Reiki practitioners making a measurable difference for both their staff and their patients.
In 1999, the PBS series, Body and Soul with Gail Harris aired a segment filming a Reiki Clinic and interviewing Maggie (then Maggie Chambers) for Reiki, The Ancient Art of Touch Healing.
Reiki is an ancient, hands-on healing art with origins in the Tibetan sutras.
It has been used primarily by individuals in a daily practice that helps recharge, realign, and rebalance energy in the body. Today Reiki is joining other complementary therapies in the conventional settings of hospitals, hospices, counseling centers, emergency rooms, intensive care units. Nurses, physical therapists, surgeons, midwives, and anesthetists report that Reiki can help manage pain and promote healing. Counselors and caregivers treating those with terminal illness find that Reiki gives patients an increased physical, emotional, and psychological ability to cope. Reiki Energy Medicine explains the body's energy system, and describes how Reiki can be used in a variety of settings to balance energy and create the conditions needed for healing.
Reiki Energy Medicine is the first book to show how this ancient art of touch therapy can work within our mainstream health care system.
As our health-care system challenges institutions to offer high-quality but cost-effective service, Reiki can be an important tool that can help maximize patient care and minimize recovery time.
Reiki does not require complicated techniques or extensive training: practitioners of many disciplines are able to easily incorporate it into their specialties.
Reviews
JOAN BORYSENKO, PH.D., AUTHOR OF MINDING THE BODY, MENDING THE MIND
“This powerful book is a splendid contribution to the emerging field of complementary medicine. Reiki Energy Medicine presents a simple, effective, and ancient method through which the natural healing potential of the body can be stimulated, enhancing the efficacy of conventional treatment. Barnett and Babb elegantly describe the medicine of the future.”
AGNES LATTIMER, M.D., MEDICAL DIRECTOR EMERITUS, COOK COUNTY HOSPITAL
“With a clarity and conviction born of experience, Barnett and Babb show us that there is an energy and intelligence behind our natural impulse to heal, and Reiki gives us access to that energy.”
BETTINA PEYTON, M.D.
“Reiki Energy Medicine provides a form with which to reintegrate healing touch into our vast array of therapeutic techniques. Reiki’s utter simplicity, coupled with its potentially powerful effect, compels us to acknowledge the concept of a universal healing energy. Indeed, this energy may be what empowers all of our therapeutic interventions, whether they involve a scalpel, a pill, or a compassionate touch.”
GEORGE REMISOVSKY, M.D., OB/GYN
“Reiki Energy Medicine is a fine introduction to a technique that can truly enhance our capacity to make our patients well. I wholeheartedly recommend it.”
S.V. SWAMY, BOOKPLEASURES.COM, OCT 2005
"I recommend this book to all those who are interested in the use of Reiki in the health field."
From the Back Cover
The human body, more than just a collection of functioning parts, is a flowing energy field, continually reorganizing and restructuring itself. All conditions of physical disease are rooted in this energy system. Reiki, an ancient art of touch therapy with origins in the Tibetan sutras, provides a means to recharge, realign, and rebalance our energy field to create the conditions needed for an integrated functioning of the body’s healing systems. Reiki Energy Medicine is the first book to show how Reiki is being brought into mainstream health care.
As our health care system challenges institutions to offer high-quality but cost-effective service, Reiki is being recognized as an important tool to maximize patient care and minimize recovery time. Unlike other complementary healing methods, Reiki does not require complicated techniques or extensive training; practitioners of many disciplines can easily incorporate it into their specialties. Physicians, nurses, rehabilitation therapists, surgeons, midwives, and anesthetists report that Reiki can help manage pain and promote healing. Counselors and caregivers find that Reiki gives patients with terminal illnesses an increased physical and emotional ability to cope. Their stories make it clear that Reiki is one of medicine’s brightest hopes for a more compassionate future of healing and comfort.
Reiki Master LIBBY BARNETT, M.S.W., integrates her healing skills with past experience as a medical social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is the director of the Reiki Healing Connection in Wilton, NH. MAGGIE BABB, Reiki Master, artist, and mother of four, has worked with physically handicapped and emotionally disturbed children at The Coastal Center in South Carolina. She is the director of Being Reiki in Lineboro, Maryland. Libby Barnett and Maggie Babb conduct classes at hospices, medical centers, and medical schools throughout the United States.