Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

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From my POV the real problem is that there are phenomenon that apparently cannot be studied scientifically. Like Reiki. Now I'm not a scientist but I am a huge proponent of science. Carl Sagan is among my personal heroes, okay? I am in favor of science over superstition and irrationality.

One day I encountered a phenomenon that is as real and physically dramatic as, say, the electric field of a Van de Graff generator. Being a fan of science I went looking for the math/science/engineering for this phenomenon. Long story short, after a few years of research, I discovered that: 1) this phenomenon has been known since antiquity in a pre-scientific way; 2) several researchers had independently (re-)discovered it multiple times going back about 2.5 centuries; 3) each time it had achieved a certain notoriety but then been debunked and subsequently ignored or forgotten. The first was Mesmer & "animal magnetism", but there are several others including Baron Von Reichenbach & the "Odic force", and Wilhelm Reich & "Orgone". This is repeating today with several kinds of "energy healing" including Reiki (which is distinguished by being Japanese and unabashedly theistic (Rei means Divine)) where practice is widespread, but lacking scientific validation. As I say, I've felt Reiki, so I know it's real, but so far I've personally never been able to interest any scientists in studying it, despite offering to demonstrate it. And the studies that have been done haven't helped. The Wikipedia article for Reiki just straight up calls it pseudoscience.

To the extent that Reiki or any other alternative medicine technique actually does anything, it's easily explainable by the placebo effect.

You know what we call alternative medicine that works? Medicine.

The placebo effect itself is fairly spooky.

Not really.

It's all Descartes fault, essentially, by postulating the "mind" as distinct from matter.

More specifically, placebo pain-relief has been associated with endogenously produced opioids for approximately 40 years now (1978, I believe).

More recent research suggests that much of the variance in the effects of pain-killers can be associated with these endogenously produced opioids (when the patient was not aware of the pain-relief, responses were similar).

So essentially, the placebo effect is just a normal part of your body responding to medical treatment, regardless of the efficacy of said treatment.

I'm talking about pain because most of the research is on pain, but the principles are similar where placebos tend to be effective (not against infections, sadly but pain and depression seem to be extremely placebo-responsive).

I've heard that joke before, and it's not as funny as you might imagine.

But anyway, well, see, there you go. Meaning no disrespect, my whole point is that you and others like you cannot or will not "see" this thing, yet it's definitely "there".

I think it's got to be the "social side of science" somehow preventing otherwise-rational minds from seeing what's right in front of them (even during a scientific study of Reiki.)

I disagree: I've known some poorer folks, who swear by Reiki, which if I understand correctly is massage (proven in studies to accelerate certain types of healing) and maybe some herbal rubs. I and my rich coworkers, with good insurance, go to professional physical therapists and get real, proven Medicine, which mainly consists of massage and some prescription topicals.

I don't need either the placebo effect, nor mystical energy to explain Reiki. Ditto for most alternative medicines I've seen friends swear by.

How does feeling Reiki establish it is real? What sort of objective effect did it have?

> How does feeling Reiki establish it is real?

That's a good question. The subjective sensations correlated with various external events. What I mean is, I satisfied myself that I wasn't hallucinating.

> What sort of objective effect did it have?

Accelerated healing.

I've never tried to make a physical instrument to measure "chi", but the subjective effects of it on living tissue would be measurable with scientific instruments, I'm sure.

- - - -

edit to say: I don't want to hijack the thread but if you're genuinely interested AMA.

>> What sort of objective effect did it have?

> Accelerated healing.

Clinical trials of products designed to accelerate healing are so difficult to do that few products are developed with such an endpoint. Your own experience may satisfy you, and that is great, but it's extremely difficult to set a baseline against which to measure any speed up in "healing".

I have only anecdotes.

I can hold my hand a centimeter away from another person's hand and "channel" Reiki to them and they can feel it clear up to their elbow. But I don't know how to make a scientific instrument to detect that.

(BTW, it is great! I was careless taking a pan out of the oven a few months ago and burned my thumb pretty good. I "beamed" it with Reiki and the pain went away and didn't come back. "So I got that going for me, which is nice."

Quoting myself from back then:

> I burned the tip of my thumb the other day taking a pan out of the oven, 450°F. I was careless and didn't quite hold the potholder correctly, burn reflex overridden so I wouldn't drop the pan, it melted the fingerprint whorls. After I finished hopping up and down, pissed off at my own carelessness, I took a few moments to "beam" Reiki to my thumb, while concentrating on communicating with my healing and immune responses telling them to "get in there and clean things up". The pain went away and didn't come back. A very modest blister formed under the melted skin. The spot was tender, and it stung a bit if I let hot water touch it the first day, but after that there was no tenderness. Two days later the blister was gone. The skin is slightly rough, but it's not peeling, nor is it a scab. Day three I woke up and forgot that I had burned myself. The flesh apparently reconstituted itself. I'm not sure it will even leave a scar. [It didn't.] The skin still hasn't peeled.

> In sum, a minor second-degree burn, apply ten seconds of Reiki, result: no pain and accelerated healing.)

Can you explain in more detail the whole experience, along with how the effect was activated? Personal experience counts for something, since that's how we know everything else :)

My initial "initiation" (that's the jargon used) was unexpected. I was in Seattle, walking down the street, and I passed one of those shops that sells crystals, incense, and Tarot decks. On a whim I went in, and there was a sign about Reiki classes downstairs. I went downstairs and there was a kind of class going on, and the folks in the class were having some sort of exam or test. The teacher of the class looked like if Santa Claus ditched the red reindeer-hide coat and dressed as a pirate. He grabbed me and sat me down in a chair and some woman started waving her arm at me from about a meter away.

I feel a certain ineffable something "filling me up" with a kind of immaterial pressure or presence. I could feel it within the volume of my body and (somehow) extending into the space around me. It's difficult to explain in words what it feels like, people describe both warmth and coolness, presence and emptiness, tingling and relaxation, sometimes in combinations. The best I can do is that it felt like a high-tension electric field if you could somehow feel the field directly. Anyway, she started at the base of my spine and went up the center line to the top of my head at which point I felt a flower- or fountain-shaped field extend out from the crown of my head into the space around my body. Simultaneous with this I experienced a deep psychological change, comparable in intensity to a modest dose of "magic mushrooms" or LSD, that was deeply pleasant and healing. At that time in my life I was suffering from severe depression and now it lifted and I felt wonderful for the rest of the evening. The effect wore off but the depression was never as severe again after that.

So that was my first experience with this thing called Reiki. Nobody had told me anything. I had no beliefs about it going in. And it sure wasn't the "placebo effect" (whatever that is.) I had no idea what to expect, or even to expect anything at all.

After that I found a group that practiced and taught Reiki without charging the traditional fees and worked with them. I also, as I said, went looking for anyone who had "done science" to it, with the results I mentioned above.

There's a lot of variation (in my experience) between different Reiki sessions even with the same people. Most are pretty mellow, and other than a deep and abiding sense of peace and health there's not much you can point to and say, "there, that's the effect".

I can believe what you are saying. I know people who've experienced pretty incredible healing. I've healed quickly from running injuries, but I don't know what to attribute it to. Anyways, I find your account believable.

Cheers! Thank you. :-)

(Really, all I want or expect is for folks to not insult me to my face for sharing the experience. It's not like I'm claiming I rode in a UFO or had dinner with Bigfoot, y'know?)

It is strange how aggressive people can be against such ideas.

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