Sparkle and the Reiki Miracle
by Ernie Miciak, DVM
"Do you have any pain?” a friend asked me. He was learning Reiki, an art of healing by the laying on of hands, and wanted to practice on me. I described an unusual dull pain in the palm of my right hand that had bothered me for several months, although it was not bad enough to send me to a doctor. My friend took my upturned palm and laid his hand over it for about five minutes. During this time I could feel the familiar dull ache plus the heat radiating from my friend’s hand. My scepticism was such that I began formulating a gracious way of thanking my friend for his attempt. Something like, “Yeah, I think that feels better, I don’t know what I could have done to it.” I didn’t need to say it, however, because the second he removed his hand from mine the pain disappeared.
I signed up for the next available Reiki course. If there was even a slight chance of taking pain away from a suffering animal the way my friend had taken my pain away, then I had to look into it. And all too soon, I would find a use for my new Reiki skills.
While I was away from home during the bitter cold of last January, my youngest Clydesdale filly, Sparkle, was stricken with diarrhea. My farm-sitters called a veterinary colleague who came immediately, diagnosed a dietary upset, and began treatment.
Sparkle and the other three weanlings shared a cozy log barn on my new farm, but as temperatures dropped to minus 38 Celsius that night, the watery feces began freezing to the long winter hair on Sparkle’s back legs. The attendants did what they could the next day, but without access to a heated barn, de-icing her hocks was futile.
When I arrived home a few days later, I transported Sparkle to a friend’s heated barn. The diarrhea had long since cleared up, but after twenty-four hours of letting the fecal ice balls melt from her tail and legs, it was obvious that the frostbite was serious. A large area of skin over the point of her left hock was devitalized and would surely slough, leaving a festering wound on a part of the equine anatomy that is in constant motion and difficult to heal. The point of the right hock fared a little bit better, but a patch over the gastrocnemius tendon, just above the hock, gave me a cause for concern.
All of my Clyde babies are handled and halter broken early in spring, but after a summer running free in the pasture with mom, the indignity of being weaned in the fall, and little handling after that, Sparkle had a mind of her own. So besides the wounds, I returned home to face a sweet filly who had become something of a brat.
For the week in which I took the Reiki course, I drove to my friend’s barn and treated Sparkle’s wounds the way I have successfully treated equine wounds for years keep it clean and-especially in a contaminated area like the hocks-bandaged.
At the end of the week, the point of Sparkle’s right hock was healing slightly. But the wound over the gastrocnemius tendon was becoming infected despite the antibiotic cream and was beginning to develop a tract of infection into the deeper tissues. I dreaded the thought of putting this unruly filly onto systematic antibiotics. There just isn’t a method of administering antibiotics to horses that doesn’t end up with the horse doing everything in its power to get away from you at treatment time.
It was a bright, sunny Saturday afternoon when I showed up, armed with injectable antibiotics and loads of dread. Sparkle did her usual avoidance routine when I went to catch her, but with a bit of patience and a bucket of oats I was able to get the lead rope on her. Getting her out of the stall was another story-it was impossible. That’s when I decided to try Reiki on her.
With no notion of where to begin a Reiki treatment on an animal, I placed the palm of my right hand over her “third eye,” the spot where the hair whorls on a horse’s forehead. I’ve always thought of the whorl as a kind of mystical connection to a horse’s centre of being.
Within a minute the heat was radiated from my hand (the other was freezing in my mitt). Sparkle’s eyelids and lower lip drooped as she nuzzled closer to my hand . This was the filly that five minutes before had been snorting at me!
I kept my hand at this spot for about five minutes before removing my mitt and placing both hands behind her ears, which normally she would not allow.
Her head was now hanging low. I then moved down her neck, over her withers and back, stopping for a few minutes over the adrenal glands, kidneys and lower back. The “treatment” took less than ten minutes.
Moving back to her head, I put my right hand back over her forehead, and with my left hand, gently tugged at the lead rope. To my total amazement, Sparkle followed me out of the stall and into the aisle of the barn. And not an oat bucket in sight.
Once I began to comprehend what had just happened, it became obvious that injectable antibiotics were not going to be needed. I began Reiki treatments directly to the wounds.
Over the next few days, I did not bandage or disturb the scabs that formed over the wounds. I used no medications. Instead, I spent about forty-five minutes a day giving Sparkle Reiki treatments like the first one, but I concentrated on the leg wounds, about ten minutes per leg.
By midweek, both wounds appeared to be closing up remarkably fast. The point of the left hock no longer concerned me; it was at a stage where I knew it would heal. The wound on the tendon looked as if it was coming together nicely , but I still hadn’t disturbed the scab, so I wasn’t sure what was happening under it. Finally, my curiosity and fear got the best of me. Gently, I removed the scab. There was no sign of infection at all let alone an infected draining tract, just nice healthy pink granulation tissue.
Ever since that dramatic initiation into the healing art of Reiki, I have continued to use Reiki daily in my veterinary practice, with my animals at home on the farm, on friends, and on myself. The results have been remarkable. In a lifetime dedicated to healing animals, nothing has given me the hope and excitement for healing that Reiki has.
Reiki, or laying on of hands in any form, is a scientifically proven healing modality that anybody with the desire can learn to use. It is natural energy and it is free. Sounds like a miracle to me!
Reprinted with permission from The Aquarium, Winnipeg
ISSUES-December 1995 & January 1996-page 04
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