Morning Session:
Janet Wing, licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and Reiki Master; and Ava Wolf, Reiki Master, spoke first, offering their practical wisdom on how to integrate Reiki into a hospital setting. They had first-hand experience doing this in the Department of Oncology, Women & Infants Hospital, Providence, Rhode Island. They did not charge for their services, but did fundraisers to help support the administrative costs. Of particular interest to us were comments and suggestions based on the lessons of their experience: "Relationship drives the vision, follow the relationship thread," and "document people's stories."

Their path has been very similar to ours at CIM. It was great to hear such validation and to realize it takes an enormous amount of time and dedication to get service programs off the ground. Other suggestions were to write up a proposal describing who will be treated, what will be done, and for how long will people be treated, along with biographies of the treating staff. This plan also fits nicely with ReikiPartners' goal of describing our services, including putting biographies of our practitioners on our website and offering Saturday Morning Clinical sessions.

Next to speak was Patricia Benzinger, licensed clinical psychotherapist, hypnotherapy instructor, and Reiki Master. She is also certified as a Therapeutic Energy Healer by the International Council for Alternative Research and Education. She spoke eloquently on the role of integrative therapies, including Reiki, in psychotherapy and its use with emotional and mental disorders. During the recall of trauma, there is documentation of the shutdown of the left hemisphere (the ability to verbally analyze) and the activation of the right hemisphere (nonverbal, visual images, reliving the event). Children who are abused before the development of the left linguistic hemisphere are "locked in the experience." The corpus callosum (fibers connecting and conducting information between the two hemispheres) is smaller in abused people, suppressing whole-brain thinking.

Reiki applied in these situations slows down brainwaves in both hemispheres to the alpha/theta wave range. This increases the synchronous state between hemispheres, which in turn increases right/left brain functioning, allowing the emotions which are circulating through the channels of remembered trauma to be released. (Luann's comment: I was particularly excited by this talk because of my work with cognitive disorders and the practical knowledge of how helpful Reiki can be in reestablishing harmony within the traumatized system.)

The morning closed with Patricia Alandydy's talk. Pat is a certified operating room nurse and Reiki Master, and is the Coordinator of Complementary & Holistic Services at Portsmouth Regional Hospital, Portsmouth, NH. She is also co-founder of the Alliance for Integrative Medicine, a nonprofit organization which has created standards, policies, procedures and protocol guidelines for a variety of complementary modalities, including Reiki. Pat was responsible for starting Reiki services in the Surgical Services Department at Portsmouth Regional in 1997, with over 4,000 patients treated since then. The treating staff grew to more than 88 Therapeutic Touch and 92 Reiki Practitioners. Her move to bring touch into the hospital setting was to bring humanity back into the hospital and to empower patients.

To start she invited medical staff to the clinic two nights a week to familiarize them with what she was advocating and to gain their support. After two years she was able to move the service into the hospital by identifying patients at intake who might want Reiki before surgery to help prepare for surgery. During the pre-op nurse interviews (85% of which took place over the phone) Reiki was offered as a modality. Practitioners who gave Reiki in the hospital setting were given training and guidelines to assure competency, and the receiver of the Reiki treatment signed a disclaimer. Reiki started as a benefit wrapped into the surgical price and performed by volunteers at no additional cost to the patient. The community Reiki volunteers became hospital volunteers by taking a short volunteer training course at the hospital. The pre-op Reiki became pre- and post-op, and now practiced in every unit of the hospital, both inpatient and outpatient.

Pat also kept statistics on measurable results, including heart rate and blood pressure, to demonstrate the relaxation effect. She also insisted that Reiki volunteers touch only the head, shoulders, ankles and feet of patients to avoid any possible sensitive *touch* issues. Since Reiki flows to where it is needed most, it was felt that no area of the body would be neglected, and that any issues of inappropriate touch could be easily avoided. Reiki was presented as a modality which enhances the body's own wisdom and transcends all cultural, language, religious or belief background. Treatment times were from 2 to 20 minutes.

Another caution was to allow the person's body to use its own wisdom and to not diagnose, interpret, or have expectations of outcome. Doing so can get practitioners into trouble. The protocol was to just give Reiki freely and turn the experience over to the patient.

There has never been one complaint of a patient being improperly touched during their 4,000 treatments. The only registered complaints were 1) The patient didn't get their Reiki because of schedule conflict; or 2) they didn't feel they got a full treatment because it was interrupted.

Reiki was shown to improve patient satisfaction with hospital care and it served to improve customer relations. In their marketing brochure they were careful to use language that demystified Reiki. They also instituted half-hour and one-hour gift certificates.

Lunch brown bag discussions:
These looked interesting, but we were too busy eating, chatting and shopping at the vendor's booths and the bookstore to attend.

Afternoon Session:
In the afternoon topic related breakout sessions were given by expert presenters in the various areas.
I attended two great sessions:

Healing Animals With Reiki presented by Susan E. Hutcheson, Reiki Master
     Website: www.users.rcn.com/shutcheson.

Susan has extensive experience with all types of domestic animals and feral cats. She uses distant Reiki on larger or wild animals. Here are some tips and highlights of this hour and a quarter class. First she gave out a useful chart and booklist regarding treatment of a cat, dog and horse. Her philosophy is "All healing expands global consciousness. Healing is not in the action it is in the intention. Reiki turbo charges the healing." She was able to give specifics in describing a healing session with domestic animals accompanied by wonderful slides of the animals receiving their sessions. She expressed that the ritual of healing is a meaningful pattern to you, and you should find a comfortable way of working. How long to treat? Feel the energy rise and fall and learn to move your hands accordingly. Reiki is most helpful when you understand the anatomy and can apply it specifically. The positions for treating animals correspond to the seven major chakras as in humans, although location is described according to the anatomy of the animal:

crown ~ just behind the ears
brow ~ forehead, above the eyes
throat ~ below the jaw
heart ~ between the front legs; also between the shoulder blades
solar plexus ~ below the end of the ribcage
sacral ~ between the back legs
root ~ base of spine where the tail comes out
extra chakra tip of the tail

She also emphasized that there are many acupuncture points that respond well to Reiki, one example being in cats the three-point hold of crown and behind each ear responds well to light massage. Animals respond to the unconditional love of Reiki. You ask their permission by putting one hand on your heart and with the other hand send Reiki out to them and wait for their response.

Other suggestions: She highly recommends using healing music CDs. She has been using them in animal shelters to calm frightened animals with great success. Cats carry fear and security issues in the sacral area. Treat the base and tip of the tail. Flat fur in animals equals distress; fluffy fur equals happy.

Other chakra points are under the paws of cats and dogs and under the hooves of horses. With horses she also recommends treating all major joints. For traumatic deaths, give Reiki and ask for guidance to safety. Keep a healing book with names and pictures of animals who are lost or distressed from, for instance, West Nile virus or hoof and mouth disease (all those slaughtered animals); healing for animals in shelters who are euthanized; asking for intention that animals in shelters find a matching person.

Reiki Botanica: Combining Reiki and Aromatherapy for Personal and Planetary Healing presented by Debra Szporluk, Reiki Master.

Debra is a Reiki Botanica teacher and Director of Esoterica Aromatica, a home-study course exploring the spiritual dimensions of Aromatherapy. She has spent the last seven years building the Reiki and Aromatherapy systems together. She feels it combines the celestial energy of Reiki with earth plant energy. She provided a wonderful description of the Reiki ancestry through Dr. Usui, who researched and studied ancient texts, but received Reiki through his own intuition and meditation. Usui was "gifted" the Reiki energy, as anyone can be, but the attunement process condenses the energy-receiving process. She feel Reiki is "celestial" energy as Usui received it through the brow, and when you are giving Reiki you feel it most in the flow through the upper chakras.

According to Debra, botanicals connect us to the plant, earth energy. Earth energies then balance the celestial Reiki energy. She then delved into the history of anointing (essential) oils and their sacred use from early religious practices to modern times. She discussed safety dilution of essential oils (one or two drops of essential oil in a teaspoon of carrier oil, such as olive, grape seed, sweet almond or jojoba). She then discussed which parts of the plant are used and why: roots, stems, leaves, flower petals; and how the essential oil is extracted: cold extraction, steam distillation, solvent extraction, advanced vacuuming, or enfleurage. She described how to do a patch test (on a tthumb-sized area, apply diluted essential oil, cover with a bandaid, wait 24 hours) to determine the safety of an oil for you. Then she gave us a treat by passing around several essential oils as she described their function according to the chakras.

Anoint the body location in a clockwise motion:
     ~ Hands to increase energy flow
     ~ Crown ~ frankincense ~ invokes divine protection, deepens the breath, slows us down
     ~ Brow ~ lavender, clary sage ~ cleans, opens, heightens visualizing, dreaming, creativity
     ~ Throat ~ lemongrass ~ speak up, make conversation / eucalyptus ~ clears anger, negativity
     ~ Heart ~ palma rosa ~ opens the heart; allows grieving, emotional release,
          breathe through painful experience / melissa (lemonbalm) ~ warms the heart, sympathy,
          compassion, calms strong emotion
     ~ Solar plexus ~ juniperberry ~ protection, improves aura strength / lime ~ change will, happiness
     ~ Navel ~ ylang ylang ~ releases energy blocked at this level, playful, relieves frustration
     ~ Feet ~ root vertiver ~ deepen tranquility, temple of your being

She closed with a meditation using sandalwood and meditating on giving thanks back to the sandalwood tree.

Contact information for Debra Szporluk: P.O. Box 380522, Cambridge, MA 02238-0522, (617) 666-4317. She offers a correspondence course in Esoterica Aromatica: The Spiritual Dimensions of Aromatherapy (book and tape and one-on- one instruction). I highly recommend the book and tape.

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