My partner had a similar experience once when a friend of ours lost her dog and he was able to tell us quite frankly exactly where the dog was by literally suddenly "being in its head" (it had found its way to one of the local Chinese restaurants and was rummaging through the bins!). My partner is a major skeptic mind, so he doesn't promote the fact that he has these "moments", but we joke about it sometimes and call it his "Jedi mind trick". Apparently it worked very well one time on a train journey in London when my partner had forgotten his pass and a ticket inspector was coming up the aisle - he totally didn't ask Mik for a ticket, even though Mik had just got on the train!
On a more serious note, a close friend of my Mum's was having triple by-pass surgery and it wasn't looking good. Mum woke up in the middle of the night and for some reason just "knew" that her friend wasn't going to die, even though by all accounts it was very much on the cards. She was so calmly confident that she in fact phoned his wife to reassure her. (we had him round for dinner last week!).
Notably my mother is also a skeptic (having taught Philosophy of Mind, of Religion and also Medical Ethics before she retired - she was also a nurse in her younger years). But she has lived all her life with Lupus and does feel drawn to a search for healing - which she believes can only be fundamentally found through the mind and through spiritual connection. (she's come a long way from being brought up in a very narrow-minded fear-inducing convent school in Vienna!) She constantly reminds me when we're in the process of talking about the Gnostic gospels, Mysticism, Joel Goldsmith, Krishnamurti, Alan Watts or whatever, how many of her former philosophy colleagues would be rolling about laughing at even the mention of metaphysics.
It still allows for good conversation and well, we're now both level III Reiki practitioners - I know the theoretical and conceptual explanation for how Reiki works but there is still always that element of mystery. It does definitely work in practice though and it is definitely not the placebo effect (I've treated extreme skeptics for migraines and it seems to have worked on them despite their indignation!)
I am understandably interested in how Reiki, Qigong and other forms of energetic healing have been performing in clinical tests in the West. I know that there are a number of initiatives in the UK's NHS to incorporate these practices particularly into hospice care (where it has apparently proven very popular). Maybe the proof will catch up with the pudding!
best wishes
Ingrid
