“Some people’s opinions of Reiki are often anchored in ignorance and suspicion rather than pure scientific fact,”
Science. Cool.
Reiki was popularized by Mikao Usui (1865-1926). After fasting and meditating for several weeks, he began hallucinating and hearing voices giving him "the keys to healing."
I guess science looks a little different in the New Age.
I was in a Christian prayer group with a Reiki practitioner. She described her private prayers as self-guided imagery - imagining a walk through a garden in detail and then encountering a person who had recently died sitting peacefully there. I thought it at best the substitution of willful fantasy for true prayer.
But she did consider herself a Christian and she did pray for her patients - imagining their cures, I suspect.
Reiki:
Reiki is one of the more widely known forms of energy healing. Energy Healing involves direct application of Chi for the purpose of strengthening the clients energy system (aura). Chi is the term used by the Chinese mystics and martial artists for the underlying force the Universe is made of. Mystics in all cultures have talked about the physical universe being made of an underlying form of something, much as modern physics research is now coming to understand the Universe is made of energy which is subject to (or affected by) thought. Just as modern physics says this energy is affected by thought the mystics also say this underlying form is affected by thought, going so far as to claim we create our own reality from our thinking and the thoughts we share between each of us every day.
Sounds like a bunch of New Age drivel that doesn't belong in the Church. When Jesus or His Holy Apostles healed someone they didn't practice Chinese mumbo jumbo. They did it through the power and will of God.