The Behavioral Corner
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano. And this is the Behavioral Corner; you're invited to hang with us, as we've discussed the ways we live today, the choices we make, the things we do, and how they affect our health and wellbeing. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner, please hang around a while.

Steve Martorano
Hi, everybody, welcome to the Behavioral Corner. I'm Steve Martorano, you know me, cuz I'm hanging here, I'm always on the Corner, running into some great people. That's what we do here. The Behavioral Corner deals with that issue of behavioral health. It's a huge topic. It covers a lot of things, from substance abuse to anxiety to depression, and the whole range of those behaviors and activities and choices we make that affect our well-being. What we've been doing in September, and this is probably the third or fourth edition of this September is designated as National Recovery Month that began as a pure substance abuse focus. We've expanded it to include recovery for whatever ails you and not only that, we've sort of taken, what we're calling paths less traveled, or alternative paths to wellness. In that vein, we have spoken to aromatherapists, crystal therapists, meditation has been a topic that we've talked about and acupuncture, a great show about acupuncture, and today we're going to take a look at something you may have heard of and may wonder a little bit more about what it is, or whether you should avail yourself of the practice of Reiki. And who better to do that with us here on the Behavioral Corner then a woman who is a master Reiki therapist, and the director of the school for Reiki training, which is centered in Philadelphia, The Reiki School + Clinic here in Philadelphia, we welcome Stephanie Palmer to the program. Hi, Stephanie.

Stephanie Palmer
Hi, Steve. How are you?

Steve Martorano 
I got most of that right, didn't I? 

Stephanie Palmer
Ahh, yeah. 

Steve Martorano 
Tell us a little bit about yourself. I know that you've trained in a few more disciplines beyond Reiki. But tell us about your...a little bit on your background, and a little bit about the school and how you came to own it.

Stephanie Palmer 2:20 
Um, so I was on my own healing journey. I had a music career for about 10 years. Didn't work out. I got into a deep depression. And I was just always searching and Reiki had been something that came across my path probably in like 2000..1999, somewhere around there. And I Googled...I said, all right, no, not in the band. I don't have all these commitments. Let me Google this thing and see if I can find a class that happened to be a 10-minute walk from my class. I found out the person that introduced me to it was a student of the teacher that I ended up with. So it was like this whole, you know, synchronicity thing where things just fall into place. So it made sense. I started taking classes. I thought I'll take level one, and then I'll be done. And I don't know if I'm going to take level two, I ended up taking it and I was at the student that I can't stand right now. It's the person that likes books at midnight the night before class starts. And when you rearrange and get all the paperwork in order quickly. So yeah, I was just kind of like following the breadcrumbs. And I ended up wanting to teach. Well, the year that I was graduating, our teacher, Kim Fleischer, started the school in 1999. She was moving out west, and this was probably 2014. So she'd been running the school for 15 years, she wanted to hand it over. So about six of us got together, we were gonna band together and buy it. And lo and behold, like, in the end, I was the only one standing. So now I run the school with my wife. Between us. We have like, probably 20 different modalities. We're both massage therapists. She's a clinical herbalist. I'm studying to be a clinical herbalist. I'm a Shiatsu practitioner. We both are very schooled in Eastern medicine. So that works well with Reiki, although you don't need that with Reiki. So we offer lots of different treatments and we continue in the tradition of the classes that you know that I was passed down -- the school that I took over, we teach the same curriculum, which is called Usui Shiki Ryoho. It's a Usui Reiki or it's as close as we can get to the original teachings of Macau Usui, the originator of Reiki. He started the practice in 1920. And by the time it came to the US, it was like during World War Two, as you can imagine, the information being shared out of Japan and from us to Japan was very limited, and there was a trust issue. So every year somebody comes out with a new book and we find out oh, this is part of our practice. We didn't know that this is part... so I'm explaining this because your viewers may think one thing about Reiki, that's actually not true, they may think something's not true about Reiki it actually is. There are lots of different lineages that have come out over the years I've heard people doing like fairy Reiki communing with fairy spirits and angels and aliens and then just like different styles like Tibetan Reiki, or if there's like a, like a different style in Europe. So it just grows and changes. And it's uh, it's interesting, we did a little pre-interview, you wanted me to kind of explain how it works and a little bit more of a technical aspect of it and there's really, I might be disappointed here, there's really not one. It's experiential. It comes...we say that your practice shows you how to practice. So there are hand positions, and there are exercises that we do to get into like the zone to do our practice. But sometimes certain things grow out of that, that is different from if that makes sense different from the original practice.

Steve Martorano
It does. Reiki is one of those many, many things that I thought I knew something about, or had a passing understanding of and it turns out, I didn't know anything about Reiki. 

Stephanie Palmer
I don't either. 

Steve Martorano
Well, you're learning as you go. Whereas I'm completely confused about and I suspect this is for people who have tried other things and are looking for something else. So that's why we reached out to Reiki, which I believe you agree it's not really well understood. Here in the West. You know, it's interesting about what we've been doing this month, and that is taking these trips down the other fork in the road. And almost invariably, at this point, the road heads East. And we always wind up, way back, way back, When they call this stuff New Age. Such a misnomer, because there's nothing new about this stuff. Everything old is new again and certainly, it sounds like Reiki is in that grand tradition. I know it's not chiropractic or it's not anything you say or study, even yoga where here's the pose and here's the position. We'll save the, you know the mechanics of it a typical session until a little bit later. So I understand from what you post on the school's website, and what I've read, is that put simply, Reiki is an energy healing technique. So my question is, is that true? And two, what energy are we talking about?

Stephanie Palmer
So I get this question from our students all the time. And I say, "Well, what's energy?" I mean, the table I'm sitting at is energy. My hand is energy. My muscles are energy. Everything is just, it's all atoms banging up against each other. Right? So in that sense, yes. Reiki is its first and foremost a self-practice. So in our level, one class, you do end up towards the end, taking clinical classes, where you're, you're treating people and you do learn how to give a session, but we're concentrated mostly on the self session to self-practice it feels similar to meditation. We clear our minds and we have little scenarios pop up and we just let them go. Sometimes you have a dreamlike scenario with information in it, just like a dream just like a meditation. And then sometimes you may get physical sensations. So you have that aspect of the body-mind connection, like meditation. The differences when we place our hands on different parts of our body, though this is what I believe right now it could change of any year, but what I've grown to learn and what I've experienced with my clients with my students, is um, we place our hands on certain parts of our body and certain body parts are storing traumas and storing memories and experiences that we might not even remember with our minds we might not recall you may...you may have a memory of like your fifth birthday party whenever you may just start to cry or start to laugh and have no...or get angry I have no idea why. My opinion, in like I said, it's not my idea I'm definitely not the first to come up with this, but in what I've read, and what I've experienced, is that there are traumas being released that we hold whether it's in like the myofascial system or the nervous system, wherever, and yoga speaks to that a little bit as well you get into these positions, you engage these muscles and ligaments and you're getting into joints, where a lot of things are stored. There's breathwork that gets into this as well. So, that's my theory. You do the self-practice, it is possible you get into your practice and you put your hands on someone else and you're able to do that for them. I had a teacher once joke that someone asked her what Reiki was she said well it's kind of like meditating someone. It's not that was a joke but it kind of gives you the idea of you know, the receiver doesn't have to...ever been to a Reiki session...not know what it is not believing anything. But people say I don't believe in that. Well, do you believe in massage Do you believe in breathing and moving I mean, it's nothing to believe in or not believe it's happening. Whether you believe it or not.

Steve Martorano
That's one of the other lessons that I hope we're learning by these programs on alternative paths is that the more you talk to people knowledgeable about this, you get a sense very quickly, whether we're dealing with snake oil or with something substantive. But one of the things, the lessons I'm coming away with, is that the more you open your mind to some of this stuff, the less it sounds like, magic, the less it sounds mysterious, or how could that possibly work? It sort of makes sense in your analogy, or your description of energy is spot on. I mean, there's energy inherent in all matter. And tapping into that energy to heal certainly makes a lot of sensitive business sound like voodoo to me. I know you don't want to do this, but I'm going to pin you down. "Hi, Stephanie, I'm here for my session." and then I want you to take me through that. But before we get into that, so people understand what we're talking about, what sort of benefits do we get from Reiki? What can we expect to get from learning how to do this?

Stephanie Palmer
So right off the bat with people that come in for classes that learn themselves, which means they're getting it every day, they're doing treatment, we have a lot of people that just quit smoking, we have a lot of people that their sleep regulates. Those are the first two things that I've experienced with people. We get a lot of clients and students that have like medical mysteries that they've been, they have the symptoms, they've been tested for everything, they have some chronic digestive issue, or, or an autoimmune issue that they've just been told, well, now you deal with this and for the rest of your life and medicate. Or there are people that just like, well, there's nothing wrong with you, we think you're making up the fact that you have pain. So they're just are at a point where they'll just try anything, we get a lot of people like that, and they find that the practice is helpful. We have a lot of people with addiction. several students we've had have been in recovery. A lot of clients are in recovery. Sometimes we get people with neurological issues. For a while I had a stint where I had a lot of children, not a lot, I don't see many children. But I had a stint where I was seeing children with ADD or on the autism spectrum. And that seemed really helpful for them. So I don't know there's an aspect of people on the autism spectrum, where touch is...

Steve Martorano
Yes

Stephanie Palmer
...it's very important. So maybe that's why it helped. But that this is gonna annoy you. because you're not gonna be able to pin me down on this. There's no known mechanism for Reiki. I wish I could tell you exactly how...and I will, I'm glad to tell you what a session looks like and what happens and what I feel sometimes and what the clients report back, but there's no mechanism. And you're never going to have a double-blind study done on Reiki, and you're never going to be able to pin it down. My guess again, this is my guess is it works....well, it's very relaxing. So I feel like when we can even just shut off and then a massage could do the same for some people. But you get into that zone with the parasympathetic response kicking in and you get into that rest digest mode, your body takes over and it starts doing things that it should do to maintain health.

Steve Martorano
That's a perfect example of what I was saying about it seems less mystical. When you think about that I don't care who you're sitting in front of for treatment, or what's wrong with you, one of the things they will tell you is that your frame of mind has a tremendous influence on how well you're going to do try to get better. We know that sort of intuitively, it's a shame that it takes a very long time to get to something that is based upon that. So again, I'm not trying to say, show me the trick, you know, show me... 

Stephanie Palmer
I wish I could.

Steve Martorano
...I mean to be real clear, so people understand. I also understand that for you know, there are doubters out there, Reiki-trained people to work with very substantial Western medical groups and hospitals, often in the complementary treatment of cancer patients, right?

Stephanie Palmer
Absolutely. And I would never tell anybody who is undergoing treatment for cancer to leave that all behind and come do an herbal console and Reiki sessions. I mean, all of these things complement each other. That's why they're called complimentarily, right? I believe we need a little bit of both: Eastern, Western. I think, um, you know, some people do great with just Western and some people do great with just Eastern, but I think the majority of people need a little bit of both.

Steve Martorano
We're going to move on with a couple of more specifics here. But I'm struck by some of these mood disorders that you were talking about anxiety and depression. What has been I think I know the answer to this, the impact on your work during the pandemic?

Stephanie Palmer
We've got a lot of people with digestive issues, believe it or not, that never had them before. And again, they're told Well, you don't have an infection. No, diverticulitis lightest no diverticulosis up, there's nothing wrong they've had scans and all kinds of tests, and there's nothing physically wrong with them -- Western medicine wise. But then you find... I practice Shiatsu, as well, and fear is held in the kidneys, according to Eastern medicine, and your kidneys are all out. And this is energetically I don't know if I assume that they've had scans and they were people have checked their organs. It's just very interesting that there's like this theme, you know, "worry" usually goes to the gut. Right? If you find out that something at work was due this morning, and you're not prepared. Where do you feel it, right? It's that worry, the panic goes to your gut. You feel it there because that's what's happening. So your...your immune systems mostly in your gut, your gut speaks to your brain more than we think. And we're finding out more and more information about this. So you can really just set off this domino effect and mimic the symptoms of chronic illness or even be acquire a chronic illness. The key to all of that, in my opinion, is just to stay calm, and stay grounded. With Reiki you just do...if you turn your brain off for three minutes out of an hour-long session, that's a huge accomplishment. When I liken it to meditation, it's not the same with it puts you in that place just like meditation. I think a lot of people a lot more people are familiar with meditation so that's why I bring that up. When you get into that space, into the void, or the Reiki space, your body just, you just kind of settle and you can take a break.

Steve Martorano
Athletes go that "the zone." 

Stephanie Palmer
Yep. Musicians, too.

Steve Martorano
It is. It's fascinating, I mean, there's just amazing stuff about if you can achieve that during competition, the phenomenon often described is one of time slowing down, being able to think and react one or two steps ahead of the opponent. Because of this sort of calmness, that you achieve. Our guest is Stephanie Palmer. Stephanie is the school director and she is a Reiki Master. The school is the Reiki School + Clinic located in Philadelphia. We're really grateful for her time. So again, it's important to point out that that shopping list of things that Reiki may benefit you in Stephanie's right up front talking about this is a complementary therapy. Anybody in any discipline that begins by telling you this will do it, and nothing else will, you're probably in front of the wrong guy, right?

Stephanie Palmer
Oh, absolutely.

Steve Martorano
So let me back up just a little bit, you said a couple of things in there that are fascinating, and they clash with our Western way of thinking about things: fears in the kidneys, the gut speaks to the brain. I think we're raised here to think that when something's wrong, the origin of it is in our heads. I mean, even if it's an actual physical ailment, if you're going to solve it, the problem is in your head. But it's not often the case if I understood what you just said. If the problem is if kidneys do store fear, then that's where I guess a Reiki session would focus -- not on the way you think about it but what's going on in that body part. Is that right?

Stephanie Palmer
So everyone practices differently. Traditionally, you start your practice with the head and move down the body. There's also a scanning technique where we can kind of feel radiation coming off of the body and by radiation. I mean, I mean, it's a heat signature. 

Steve Martorano

Yeah, right. 

Stephanie Palmer

Yeah. So sometimes you feel it is warm, sometimes you feel it is like a pins and needle type feeling. So I just like to call it radiation so that students are skipping over the pins and needles or the pain or whatever, and waiting for heat, like anything you feel over someone's body is something to address. I shouldn't have thrown that out there about the kidneys, because it could be confusing. It's just something that I've noticed with COVID that the fear is, in my opinion, the fear is definitely manifesting in people's bodies. Fear is like an uncertain future and fear of losing their job and fear of getting COVID. Fear of loved ones getting it. So we don't have a particular body part that we focus on, we just kind of feel to see where we go.

Steve Martorano
So this is what if I walked in for my first session, I guess it's a form of diagnosis, you say you begin at the head, and you try to sense the energy coming from...

Stephanie Palmer 
So this is where we get tricky too because lots of people practice lots of different things, and there are breathing techniques and there's a breathing technique we do to get into our zone. And in the beginning, you might have to do that for five minutes. I'm at the point where I do a couple of breaths and I get there and then I will do a scan over someone now. I mean, I would already have had a consult with this person and they tell me what's going on and so I'll have an idea of where I'm going to work if they say they're having digestive issues or I just had surgery on my knee That's interesting, too, you feel so much going on over an area that just had surgery or manipulation. But I've had a lot of people with like, hip replacements, knee replacements. So it's not like I'm doing a magic trick and finally I.... people do that, too, like it's a psychic reading, like they'll withhold information. Like, just tell me what it is so I know where going. It's funny. So yeah, I'll do a scan over the body. And I'll see, hmm, that feels interesting. There's...I'm looking for things that feel different. For the most part, your body will feel the same. And then something will stand out whether it's like a pulsing on the hand, are like a pins and needle type feeling, you'll feel the heat, sometimes you'll feel cold. Some practitioners, I don't experience this much, but some practitioners will actually feel pain in their hand, and then you take it away and the pain goes away. So I'll just do like a scan. Okay, that's interesting. And then I'll go to the head, and I'll work my way down the body and things shift and move, and you just kind of track it through the session and follow it. Sometimes people have emotional outbursts. Sometimes, for the most part, people will fall asleep or get to a point where they're about to fall asleep. Sometimes weird things happen. Like, you have a vision of oh, I saw a black dog with white spots on his paws. What was that? Oh, that was my neighbor's dog, or that was my dog when I was childhood, pet or whatever. So you do have these weird little psychic phenomena, I guess I'll call them that pop up. And I'm not sure why that happens. It certainly doesn't only happen with me. And I know people that have like full-on will touch someone's head and say, oh, there's something wrong with your liver, go to a doctor. And they do 

Steve Martorano
That's amazing. 

Stephanie Palmer
That's not me. That's awesome. Where we get into the woo kind of thing. We hear this stuff. And they think that's all that we do. But it can be you know, it's a very interesting, bizarre practice. And that's why I love it so much because it's always changing. And you never know, each session is different.

Steve Martorano
When we said we were going to do these shows we said upfront and immediately, it's worth repeating again, that the only way you're going to get any benefit from hearing someone like Stephanie, talk about Reiki is to keep your mind open, suspend disbelief. Always suspend disbelief, but for the purposes of this discussion, just believe, you know that a man can fly, and then you'll enjoy the Superman movie. Otherwise, you won't enjoy the movie. After that you can go back to knowing you know, guys don't fly. But for this purpose, we keep our minds open. So hope you're doing it in that spirit. Let's talk about is the there typical length of a session?

Stephanie Palmer
Yes, I mean, we usually get booked 55 minutes session, like an hour. That's pretty standard. But we have definitely done fairs and conferences, where we just are giving out free sessions. There might be 500 people there. You might have to cram in as many as possible. So we'll do like five minutes, 10 minutes, and people feel different. People feel it. You can go longer. We offer a 90-minute session. Once you get into that territory, it's...I feel, especially if someone's got issues, it's hard to just lie on the table for 90 minutes.

Steve Martorano
Is that the position that the client is always in?

Stephanie Palmer
So it all depends. If you can't lie on your back, we have you in sideline can lie face down, you can lie on it, however, you're comfortable, you could sit in a chair. We have one of those zero gravity chairs for people that can't do that... We've had a few clients that couldn't lay flat on their back even with pillows or anything like that. So we have to put them in the zero gravity chair and adjust them and... The most standard is on a massage table. You lie prone or supine and that's that but you know, and of course, we have like people on late-term pregnancy that just can't lay on their back row. So their sideline, it's pretty much the same as a massage.

Steve Martorano
In my reading, I noticed that they specifically make the point that Reiki unlike other touch therapies, applies no pressure or manipulation, is that right?

Stephanie Palmer
Correct. And there are no contraindications or no known contraindications of a Reiki session. 

Steve Martorano
Explain. 

Stephanie Palmer
So, for instance, in certain types of cancer, you can't massage certain body parts. For instance, like breast cancer, it's all the lymph and so a lot of times you can't massage the upper arms just as an example. But there are several more. Reiki you can do to get right in there and you don't have to touch you can kind of hover close to the body. So you can treat like right over someone's port. If they've got a port for cancer. Same as lymphedema. You can't message anybody with lymphedema and their legs. It's not that you can treat it with Reiki. So Reiki is not going to hurt you no matter okay?

Steve Martorano
Yeah, that's that that was the point people. Again they go well, what are they going to twist In turn, what about insurance? Do insurance companies cover this treatment?

Stephanie Palmer
I've had a couple of clients have asked me for an invoice so that they could submit it and see if their insurance would pay for it. I would bet you a million dollars that they did not. I never heard back. But I've had the same for massage a lot of people try when they're in, they've had an injury, let's say to like a leg, they've broken their leg and, and now they're doing physical therapy and they're doing massage on top of it. The massage is more likely to be covered than a Reiki session. And even so you have to have like the Cadillac of insurance, and even then they might kick it out. So...

Steve Martorano
Yeah. Some of that stuff is changing rapidly. I mean, there was a time not so very long ago when you know, insurance would pay for chiropractic therapy. They do that now. Yeah, so yeah, we can only hope I mean, you know, you the problem that you just stated much earlier on is that we're so data-driven in the West insurance companies need to know-how, what's the efficacy of these things? And how can we in fact save money by covering this stuff, when we get more information that they can you know, turn into a dollars and cents equation then you're going to get more people covered by it. I guess my final question with regard to a client coming in. Will you talk about energy and areas of the body where these problems may be centered and what your therapists are feeling for that energy? Does the client also have a physical sensation?

Stephanie Palmer
A lot of times Yes. And that's kind of one of the benefits of retraining having clinics we have public clinics so that they know that it's not just like their friend who's in class I know I felt that too. You know, we have feedback forms for everyone to fill out, and a lot of times even something as simple as I saw the color green through the whole session and that they so deny that's really interesting, or I thought I saw green your arm or wherever. So yeah. We definitely get that. It's not standard. It doesn't happen all the time. 

Steve Martorano
Right.

Stephanie Palmer
You know, but it does it happens.

Steve Martorano
You know, I mean I could go on and on. This has been just terrific. Exactly why I'm glad I reached out to someone like yourself, Stephanie Palmer. Stephanie, the school is in Philadelphia, you not only practice this, as an independent practitioner of this, but you also train people. If they want more information. We'll have your website up there, but tell us what it is. So that people who want to find out more about both Reiki at training for Reiki, how do they reach you?

Stephanie Palmer
Sure, it's TheReikiSchool.com. Go on to our events section for upcoming clinics, sound healings. Go under classes for our Reiki classes. We do have a batch starting next week. The next round will start in February. So sign up. We're at a reduced capacity due to COVID so I tell people if you're thinking about it. Sign up because chances are if you wait, the spaces can be taken.

Steve Martorano
Oh, you know that reminds me...unless I got some wrong here. There's telemedicine is obviously been a big factor during the pandemic Reiki, I don't think you could do that way could you've got to be in the room?

Stephanie Palmer
To an extent. There are some things we could do. But once we get on into the hands-on practice, it gets really difficult. So you know, we've put our Reiki one and level, two classes, pretty much on hold for a while during COVID. The upper-level classes you can do completely online.

Steve Martorano
Stephanie Palmer of the Reiki School + Clinic in Philadelphia, great again, when we went down this road is always fascinating. Thanks for your time. 

Stephanie Palmer
Thank you.

Steve Martorano
And thank for you all hanging with us on the Behavioral Corner. Don't forget to look for us, you know, wherever podcasts are had...follow us and do all that neat stuff. The Behavioral Corner. Thank you. See you next time.

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