Women and Reiki

Book excerpt: Women and Reiki is the first ethnographic study of Reiki and energetic healing in Britain. The book argues that if we are to build an accurate and comprehensive picture of healing we must examine the role of gender, representation and power. Although women healers predominate at the grass roots level these factors have been largely ignored in academic studies of "New Age" and alternative spiritualities. The acknowledgement of womens power in these studies is to be found somewhere between male-dominated biomedical approaches to health and apparently more egalitarian holistic discourse and practice. Using the work of theorists 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.