Usui Mikao is quoted saying in the Reiki Ryôhô Hikkei that the mind and body are one. Recent studies in the world of science are beginning to finally comprehend that statement. Brainwaves and body pulses and their role in stimulating healing can all be measured today allowing the concept of Reiki, as spiritual energy, to be more widely understood by the medical community. The growth of the system of Reiki is benefited by this community awareness and acceptance.
The introduction of Therapeutic Touch by Dolores Krieger into nursing in the 1970s has increased interest in other energetic systems such as Reiki. This in turn has boosted the amount of research that has recently been undertaken using Reiki and other forms of energetic work.
The system of Reiki is also being accepted into hospitals across the world. Patients can often either bring their Reiki practitioner with them or Reiki is made available to them.
The article ‘The first Reiki Practitioner in our O.R.’ by Jeanette Sawyer in 1988 in the AORN Journal describes the steps that were taken to allow a Reiki practitioner into the theatre at the request of a patient during a laparoscopy.
Also in 1988, patients were given the opportunity to experience a 15minute pre- and post- surgery Reiki treatment. More than 870 patients took part and as a result there was less use of pain medication, shorter stays in hospital and increased patient satisfaction. This was discussed in the article, ‘Using Reiki to Support Surgical patients’ by Patricia and Kristin Aladydy in the Journal of Nursing Care Quality.
Heart surgeon, Dr Mehmet Oz, has worked with Julie Motz who used Reiki on his patients. These patients had received heart transplants and had experienced open-heart surgery. She treated 11 patients in total and none of them had the usual post-operative depression. The bypass patients had no post-operative pain or leg weakness and the transplant patients experienced no organ rejection. Julie Motz has written about this experience in her book, ‘Hands of Life’.
Listed below are a number of trials tested on Reiki. For more research details there are some Reiki books with relevant research material, or personal observations, that have been written by both doctors and nurses. ‘Spiritual Healing’ by Daniel J. Benor has listed a number of Reiki trials as well as some very interesting trials on distant healing and healing through touch in general.
There are many aspects of Reiki that are being researched today. Some to see if Reiki speeds up healing, others to see if, how and whom it relaxes, to measure biomagnetic fields and to verify the concept of distant healing.
Here is a well-known trial completed using Reiki to examine its effect on human blood levels.
Human Hemoglobin Levels and Reiki Reiki Healing: a Physiologic Perspective Wetzel, Wendy (1989). Published in Journal of Holistic Nursing 7(1), 47-54.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of Reiki on human hemoglobin and hematocrit levels.
Procedure: The hemoglobin and hematocrit levels of 48 adults participating in a Level 1 course were measured. Demographics and motivation were also examined. An untreated control group was used to document the changes in hemoglobin and hematocrit under normal circumstances.
Findings: Using a t-test there was a statistically significant change between the pre- and post-course hemoglobin and hematocrit levels of the participants at the p 0.01 level. 28 % experiencing an increase and the remainder experiencing a decrease. There was no change for the untreated control group within an identical time frame.
Conclusions: That Reiki has a measurable physiologic effect. The data supports the premise that energy can be transferred between individuals for the purposes of healing, balancing, and increasing wellness. Some individuals found that their blood levels went up while others went down which is consistent with the concept that Reiki is balancing for each individual.
This trial tests Reiki on patients with chronic illnesses using electrodermal screening.
The Efficacy of Reiki Hands on Healing: Improvements in Adrenal, Spleen and Nervous Function as Quantified by Electro-Dermal Screening Betty Hartwell and Barbara Brewitt Published in Alternative Therapies Magazine, July 1997, Vol. 3, No. 4, p. 89
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the therapeutic effects of Reiki treatments on chronic illnesses using electrodermal screening. Procedure: This study was carried out on five patients with life-threatening and chronic illnesses: lupus, fibromyalgia, thyroid goiter, and multiple sclerosis. Eleven one-hour Reiki treatments using 4 different Level 2 practitioners and one Reiki Master were performed over a ten-week period. These Reiki practitioners systematically placed their hands over the same body positions including the neurovascular regions on the cranium, neurolymphatic points on the trunk and minor chakra points on the limbs. No new conventional or alternative medical treatments were given during this period. Initially, three consecutive treatments were given and then one treatment per week for eight weeks.
Findings: The patients were tested three times during the study. 1.Before the study commenced. 2.After their third treatment. 3.After their tenth treatment. Each individual was measured for skin electrical resistance at three acupuncture points on hands and feet. At the cervical/thoracic point the measurements went from 25% below normal to the normal range. The adrenal measurements went from 8.3% below normal to normal – some time between the middle and last measurements. The spleen measurements went from 7.8% below normal to normal after only three sessions. All the patients reported increased relaxation after Reiki treatments, a reduction in pain and an increase in mobility.
These trials are concerned with the effect of Reiki on pain relief and other symptoms.
Pain, Anxiety and Depression in Chronically Ill Patients with Reiki Healing Linda J. Dressen and Sangeeta Singg Published in Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1: 1998
Purpose: To measure the results of Reiki and its effect on pain, anxiety, and depression in chronically ill patients.
Procedure: 120 Patients who had been in pain for at least 1 year were trailed. Their complaints included: headaches, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, peptic ulcer, asthma, hypertension and HIV. Four different styles of treatment were performed on 3 groups of 20 people. The 4 styles of treatment were: Reiki, Progressive Muscle Relaxation, no treatment and false-Reiki. Each of the groups received 10 thirty-minute treatments, twice a week over 5 weeks. Patients were examined before and after the series of treatments. Reiki patients were examined 3 months after completion. Findings: Reiki proved significantly superior (p.0001-.04) to other treatments on 10 out of 12 variables. At the 3 month check up these changes were consistent and there were highly significant reductions in Total Pain Rating Index (p.0006) and in sensory (p.0003) and Affective (p.02) Qualities of Pain.
Conclusion: Significant effects of Reiki on anxiety, pain and depression are shown here. Some possible variables were not controlled.
Using Reiki to Manage Pain: a Preliminary Report alta.karino@cancerboard.ab.ca Cross Cancer Institute, Edmonton, USA Published in Cancer Prev Control 1997;1(2):108-13
Purpose: To explore the usefulness of Reiki as an alternative to opioid therapy in the management of pain. This was a pilot study.
Procedure: 20 volunteers experienced pain at 55 sites for a variety of reasons, including cancer. A Level 2 practitioner provided all Reiki treatments. Pain was measured using both a visual analogue scale (VAS) and a Likert scale immediately before and after each Reiki treatment.
Findings: Both the instruments showed a highly significant (p 0.0001) reduction in pain following the Reiki treatments.
This trial is interested in finding out if it is possible to gauge the experience of a Reiki treatment using normal trialing procedures.
Experience of a Reiki Session Engebretson J, Wardell DW University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, USA Published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. 8: 48-53, 2002
Purpose:To explore the experiences of Reiki recipients so as to contribute to understanding the popularity of touch therapies and possibly clarify variables for future studies.
Procedure: All Reiki treatments were 30 minutes long and performed in a sound proof windowless room by one Reiki Master. There were audio taped interviews immediately after the treatment in a quiet room adjoining the treatment room. The recipients were generally healthy volunteers who had not experienced Reiki previously.
Findings: The recipients described a conscious state of awareness during the treatment. At the same time, paradoxically, they experienced sensate and symbolic phenomena.
Conclusions: Conscious awareness and paradoxical experiences that occur in ritual healing vary according to the holistic nature and individual variation of the healing experience. These findings suggest that many linear models used in researching touch therapies are not complex enough to capture the experience of the recipients.
This particular trial is not specifically about Reiki but deals with the effectiveness of distant healing which is relevant to Reiki practitioners.
A Randomized Double-Blind Study of the Effect of Distant Healing in a Population with Advanced Aids Fred Sicher, Elizabeth Targ, Dan Moore II, and Helene.S. Smith Published in the Western Journal of Medicine, December 1998, Vol. 169, pp. 356-363.
Purpose: To find the effect of distance healing (DH) on AIDS patients during a six-month double-blind study.
Procedure: Forty patients with advanced AIDS were randomly divided into two groups. Half the patients received DH in addition to their usual medical care. They were not told they were being given DH. 40 healers from various locations throughout the U.S. with an average of 17 years of experience were used. The healers practiced a variety of healing methods including Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Native American, shamanism, meditative, and bioenergetics. Each of the treated subjects received DH for one hour a day for six days from each of a total of ten different healers, and this was performed over a period of ten weeks.
Findings: After six months, treated patients had significantly fewer outpatient visits and hospitalizations, less severe illnesses, fewer new illnesses, and improved mood.
Further Research This page is an excerpt from The Reiki Sourcebook.
If you’re new to forex, it’s hard to escape the fever that is forex robots. It has quickly become one of the biggest crazes in the trading world.
For people that don’t know or understand what forex robots are, they are an automated charting platform that buys and sells in the forex market. This is done based off a parameters that developers set up in the memory of the robot.
For example, many traders have their own personal favorite trading system. It could be based on indicators, price action, or some other trading method.
Obviously, in normal circumstances, traders would have to stay alert and follow the market on their computer or trading platform to see if the certain trading conditions matched the parameters set by their trading system.
These forex robots are automated. Your computer does everything for you, like you were doing everything yourself. With one exception, the robots know when it is a good time to buy and sell a trade. This is done by on parameters that were predetermined by the person who developed the robots.
If you’re used to traditional trading methods, it may seem strange to allow a computer to do all the work. But using automated systems has allowed many traders to do the trading they need to succeed while still spending time with their friends and families.
People really never think of a trading forex as profession that takes up a lot of time, they are totally wrong. This is a 24 hour a day job, this can take up a lot of your time. With these robots, you have more freedom and that is what real traders wish they had.
With the same system, you have essentially outsourced all the screen time to an exact duplicate trader, and, since these automated trading systems are essentially trading in the same manner.
The majority of the forex robots being sold can be used on a basic metatrader chart. Don’t worry its free. There are a ton of brokers on which you can get a demo of the software.
Once you have a forex robot uploaded to your Metatrader chars, all you have to do is turn it on, and it will start analyzing the markets and make trades for you, whenever the parameters are ready.
With so many different forex robots available in the marketplace, it can be hard to chose the right one. Some have shown great success in short term and long term trades, and then there are some that don’t have very good trade records.
INTRODUCTION
In a highly controversial split decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that the work product privilege does not protect a company’s tax accrual work papers from IRS discovery. In U.S. v. Textron Inc., ____ F.3d ____, 2009 WL 2476475, No. 07-2631 (1st Cir. Aug. 13, 2009), the First Circuit held that the tax accrual work papers are not protected work product because they were prepared to support financial filings and gain auditor approval, rather than for use in possible litigation. American in-house attorneys denounce the opinion, claiming that it eviscerates their ability to work with company auditors to ensure accurate and well-informed financials and accounting disclosures. The decision creates a split among circuits, making the issue ripe for Supreme Court review.
BACKGROUND
The IRS defines tax accrual work papers as “audit workpapers, whether prepared by the taxpayer, the taxpayer’s accountant, or the independent auditor, that relate to the tax reserve for current, deferred and potential or contingent tax liabilities, however classified or reported on current audited financial statements, and to footnotes disclosing those tax reserves on audited financial statements.” Internal Revenue Manual, Section 4.10.20.2(2).
A company’s tax and legal personnel generally create the tax accrual work papers in order to calculate the appropriate amount of total tax reserves. Textron’s tax accrual work papers included a spreadsheet listing each questionable item that might be the subject of possible dispute by the IRS, the dollar amount subject to dispute, and the estimated chance of success by the IRS on that item. The papers also included numerous backup materials, including documents written by Textron’s in-house counsel reflecting their opinion as to which items should go on the spreadsheet and risk of litigation percentage that should apply to each item.
During an IRS examination of Textron, IRS agents found that a Textron subsidiary had invested in transactions that the IRS determined to be tax shelters, and subsequently issued an administrative summons seeking all of the company’s relevant tax accrual work papers. Textron refused to comply, claiming that the tax accrual work papers were protected by the work product privilege.
The IRS filed suit in Rhode Island federal district court to force Textron to produce the tax accrual work papers. The district court determined that the work papers were protected by the work product privilege because Textron would not have prepared them “but for” the fact that Textron anticipated the possibility of litigation with the IRS. U.S. v. Textron Inc., 507 F. Supp. 2d 138, 150 (D.R.I. 2007).
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agreed with the district court in full, but at the IRS’ request, the First Circuit vacated its panel opinion and reheard the case en banc. After the rehearing, the First Circuit issued a 3-2 decision reversing the district court and concluding that the work product privilege did not protect Textron’s tax accrual work papers. U.S. v. Textron Inc., ____ F.3d ____, 2009 WL 2476475, No. 07-2631 (1st Cir. Aug. 13, 2009).
Work papers are not protected if not prepared for use in litigation
The majority in the First Circuit’s en banc decision did not inquire as to whether the tax accrual work papers were prepared “because of” the prospect of future litigation, as the district court and First Circuit panel had done. Rather, the en banc majority considered the actual intended use of the work papers, noting that even though the documents may have included legal thinking and analysis, Textron did not prepare the work papers “for use” in possible litigation. Instead, Textron had prepared the documents to quantify its tax reserves, support its financial statement, and obtain a clean audit. 2009 WL 2476475, *5. The majority concluded: “Any experienced litigator would describe the tax accrual work papers as tax documents and not as case preparation materials.” 2009 WL 2476475, *7.
The majority noted that Textron would have had to prepare the tax accrual work papers in order to comply with statutory and audit requirements, even if there was only a remote chance of litigation. 2009 WL 2476475, *6. Accordingly, the majority determined that the work papers were not protected by the work product privilege because “[t]here is no evidence in this case that the work papers were prepared [in anticipation of litigation] or would in fact serve any useful purpose for Textron in conducting litigation if it arose.” 2009 WL 2476475, *9.
The two judges representing the minority view – two judges who rendered the original panel decision – issued a strongly worded dissent. They wrote: “The majority’s analysis ignores a tome of precedents from the circuit courts and contravenes much of the principles underlying the work-product doctrine.” 2009 WL 2476475, *10. The dissent adds: “Textron’s litigation hazard percentages contain exactly the sort of mental impressions” that the work product privilege is designed to protect. 2009 WL 2476475, *14.
The dissent pointed out that the majority opinion contradicts its own First Circuit precedent of Maine v. United States Dep’t of Interior, 298 F.3d 60 (1st Cir. 2002), which had previously adopted the standard set forth by the Second Circuit in United States v. Adlman, 134 F.3d 1194 (2nd Cir. 2002). In that case, the Second Circuit protected similar work papers and held that the work product privilege does not only extend to materials prepared to assist in the actual trial, but to any document prepared in anticipation of litigation. 2009 WL 2476475, *18.
CONCLUSION
Shortly after the Textron en banc opinion was published, the Association of Corporate Counsel released a response “decrying” the decision, claiming that it “eviscerates practical protection of attorney work product for in-house counsel.” The ACC voices its concern that Textron actually encourages in-house counsel to avoid documenting or sharing information with accountants and auditors if that information could be used against the company’s interest later.
Indeed, many commentators are concerned that Textron could have far-reaching implications, particularly for publicly traded companies that are required to have their financial statements audited and certified. Though the IRS has an announced policy of self-restraint in requesting tax accrual work papers, this opinion may result in more such requests, leaving taxpayers without a viable means to protect their work product.
The implications could reach even further to the extent that the First Circuit has arguably changed the definition of work product originally set forth in Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495 (1947). The Textron decision might open the door for litigants to request an opposing party’s analysis of the business risks of the litigation, including the estimated cost of the litigation, since those documents would not have been created for literal “use in” the litigation.
It may be more likely, however, that the Textron decision will be interpreted very narrowly. A future court could easily look at the focus by both the IRS and the majority on Textron’s alleged use of tax shelters, and find that the Textron opinion should only apply in cases where the work papers sought relate only to tax shelters and are only those papers prepared in compliance with securities laws and auditing requirements.
In any event, the Circuit split created by Textron makes the issue of work product protection for tax accrual work papers ripe for Supreme Court review. As of the publication of this commentary, Textron had not yet filed a petition for writ of certiorari, which is due in mid-October 2009, absent extension.
Mr. Lager is a partner of Zuber & Taillieu LLP, where he specializes in tax law. He earned a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with distinction.
Scanned text documents are impossible to amend. People have often need to scan their documents to prevent the typing work. But soon they discover that images are not editable and they have to adopt the typing process again. The solution to this very problem is OCR software. OCR software has been developed using the optical character recognition algorithm that reads the image text and then converts it to editable format. This conversion takes very meager amount of time. OCR software is integrated to read text images and supports jpg, gif, tiff, png, bmp and all other major formats and converts them to html, text, doc, word and pdf format.
OCR software is very easy to use. A person with no special knowledge with software operations can easily operate OCR software. What you need to do is to select the scanned or captured image that contains text and then press the convert button. Within 5 seconds, you file will be converted to an editable format. OCR software is currently supporting 40 languages. It means that you need to worry about those documents that contain languages other than English. The converted file contains the same format, size, text and spacing as of input file. If the input file contains tables, images, text, layout in single or multi pages then they are parsed as same to the output file by OCR software.
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De Beers was founded in South Africa in 1888 and today is the largest producer and seller of diamonds. Almost from the beginning the De Beers company has had a strangle hold on the diamond industry and a huge advertising budget. Diamonds are not as rare as the advertiser would have you to believe. De Beers keeps a huge stockpile of diamonds and tightly controls supply.
De Beers started the very successful advertising campaign A Diamond Is Forever in 1947. The Advertising Age magazine has voted this to be the most recognizable advertising line of the twentieth century. This advertising campaign was designed to discourage diamonds owners from putting their old diamonds back into the market. The success of this campaign turned diamond into the symbol of eternal love and dramatically increased demand for the gems.
The ability to create cubic zirconium happened in the 1950 but it was not until 1979 that it became economically feasible to mass-produce and use them as a diamond substitute. Only a gemologist can tell the difference between a diamond created by nature and a diamond created in a laboratory.