Category: Placebo effect
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The Biochemistry of Rage
CW: sexual assault When I was in my early twenties, a friend of mine started having neurological problems. Intermittent, acute idiopathic pain, fatigue, and intermittent paralysis. Doctors could not find a cause. Some accused them of making it up to get attention. At the same time, this friend started having flashbacks. Memories, long buried, of…
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Doing Voodoo On Your Spine (Not)
In the fifteen years since integrating Reiki with my bodywork sessions, I’ve only had one client get creeped out by it. Oddly, she was a craniosacral therapist, and thus (I thought), should have known better. Craniosacral therapy, like other forms of “energy work,” is..subtle, and attracts attention from Quackwatch. The practitioner puts her hands on…
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The Perils of Positive Thinking
Now, I’m not going to name any names. Let’s just say that There are Those Out There who will tell you, with great fluidity and earnestness, that you are what you think. That “your attitude determines your altitude.” That changing your mind will change your life. They will tell you this in a spiritual context,…
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Things I Didn’t Know
You learn something new every day: In Women, Hernias May Be Hidden Agony – NYTimes.com. Unlike hernias in men, which are far more common, those that afflict women are usually small and internal and rarely cause an obvious bulge. Symptoms can be suggestive of other problems — ovarian cysts, fibroids, endometriosis or adhesions from a…
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What Kind of Massage Should I Get?
The spa menu! Was there ever a thing so enticing, and simultaneously bewildering? ‘Bamboo Raindrop Swedish Scalp Treatment’! ‘Ayurvedic Aromatherapy Deep Tissue Scrub’! ‘Lavender Acupressure Intensive for Neck Pain’! ‘Meditative Earth Massage with Reflexology’? How in the world do you decide which one you need? The dirty secret is, 90% of all this is marketing.…
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Is Reiki Flaky?
Image via Wikipedia Recently I interviewed a colleague, Kathy Fleetwood, about her Reiki practice. She lit up. “It’s changed my life,” she declared. Last year, Kathy’s mother came down with something that doctors tentatively diagnosed as Parkinson’s. She lost weight, was too exhausted to work, ached all over, and walked with a shuffle and a stoop. Kathy…