Women and Reiki: Energetic/Holistic Healing in Practice

by MacPherson,Judith

• ISBN13: 9781845531546
• ISBN10: 184553154X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2014-08-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book is the first ethnographic study of Reiki and energetic healing in the British context. Overall the book argues that if we are to build up an accurate and comprehensive picture of healing thought and practice we must locate gender, representation and power as central elements of this project throughout. For to date, even though women healers predominate at the grass roots level in both local and international contexts, this key issue has been largely ignored in most academic studies of 'New Age' and alternative spiritualities - a major oversight. The narrative of women's power and consciousness of healing can be located in the debates between largely male dominated biomedical approaches to health and the apparently more egalitarian holistic discourses and practices (e.g. mind, body and spirit). The women in the study operate within fluid fields of force and engage in personal projects of redefinition, transformation and self-empowerment. Using the work of writers such as Michel Foucault and Meredith McGuire, the book shows that women healers are using Reiki and other healing spiritualities to actively engage in a politics of reclamation.

Author Biography

Judith Macpherson is an independent researcher. She has lectured on healing, women and power at the University of Stirling and has held a position as an Associate Lecturer at The Open University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Setting the Scene	p. 10
The 'New Age'	p. 24
Healing in the 'New Age'	p. 55
Energetic Bodies	p. 87
Writing Reiki History	p. 112
Doing Reiki	p. 134
Powerful Bodies	p. 165
Appendix	p. 223
Bibliography	p. 225
Index of Authors	p. 232
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