April 11, 2025 • 50 mins
Join The Wizard this week as he discusses the pseudo-science of alternative medicine and energy healing.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM paranormal
podcast network. Now get ready for us Strange Things with
Joshua P. Warren.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM, employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do
(00:34):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Ready to be amazed by the wizard of weird. This
is Strange with j Warren. I am Joshua pe Warren.
At each week on this show, I'll be bringing in
brand new my glowing content, news exercises, and weird experiments
(01:17):
you can do at home, and a lot more on
this edition of the show, What's the Real Deal with Reiki?
You know, when I was growing up, the schools that
I went to in the rural mountains of western North
(01:38):
Carolina were pretty tough. There was a lot of fighting
that went on back then, and I didn't even realize
just how violent many of my school experiences were until
I met my wife Lauren, and she was like, nothing
like that ever happened when I went to school. So
anybody who went to the schools I went to during
(01:59):
the years I to them has seen some pretty bloody fights,
and I have been in some of them. That was
just the way it was. And now, frankly, I have
always been or growing up, I was always large for
my age, so that helped me quite a bit. But
(02:20):
on the other hand, you know, when you're a freshman
in high school and you're up against three seniors, that's scary.
You need to you need to have a little extra
understanding of how to defend yourself. And things really started
getting rough in middle school and then you know right there.
I remember one day I was in middle school and
(02:42):
the teacher came running in and the middle school was
next to the high school, and they just locked everything down.
Cops were all over the place because there were gang
wars and stuff like that, believe it or not. Yeah,
in the mountains of western North Carolina. So I when
I was quite young, I started studying the martial arts,
and I was very good at it. As a matter
(03:04):
of fact. You know, as I got older, I started
doing some wrestling in high school and I usually won.
And one day, when I was sixteen years old, I
went into this bookstore. This is right after I got
my driver's license so I could go wherever I wanted.
So I went to this bookstore in Asheville and they
(03:26):
had a big, nice section of martial arts books. So
as I was standing there perusing the books, there was
a woman who came in also to look at the books,
and she looked like she was maybe in her late
twenties or something like that, but she was wearing a gee,
which is, you know, like the robe with the belt
that somebody would put on to exercise martial arts. And
(03:50):
so we started talking to each other, and she brought
up the topic of chi chi. And I had heard
about she and read about she before when I was younger,
but I didn't I never really had any kind of
a personal interaction with itch Key Prada. It's the idea
(04:13):
that there is some kind of a bio energy field
around your body, and that that field is connected to
your physical wellbeing, and that another person who has a
certain talent, certain skill, can take his or her chi
(04:34):
and sort of project it onto your body in various
ways in order to well kind of heal you or
clear your chakras or help you in some way. And
she started talking to me about all these chi exercises
and she said, here, put your hand out, So I
(04:56):
put out my hand and then she held her right
hand over top of my hand and put her left
hand below my hand, and then she goes, all right,
are you ready? I said yeah, And in about two seconds,
it felt like my hand was in an oven. My
(05:18):
eyes lit up because I looked at her and I thought,
I understand people have body heat, but it's like she
flipped this switch, so to speak, and her bio energy
fieled and I felt this very significant heat and it
lasted for about ten seconds and then she shut it
(05:39):
off and I was like wow, and I was just
instantly amazed. That's one of the most That was one
of the most exciting moments of my life, to be
honest with you, to be you know, to experience something
like that at that age. And she started talking to
me about the reality of how you can train and
(06:01):
use this kind of energy field. And then of course
later on I ended up meeting Grandmaster Tom Cameron, who's
been on all these TV shows like Ripley's Believe it
or not, and we became friends, and he does these
demonstrations where he projects chi and can affect scientific instruments,
and he even goes so far as to do these
these demonstrations where he he appears to knock people down
(06:25):
without touching them. The reality of that is debatable, but
I could do a whole show about Tom Cameron and
some of the amazing things that I was able to
document by working with him. And of course this idea
of having a human bio energy field especially appeals to
(06:46):
me because I've always been a big fan of Star
Wars and it's it's similar in a way to the Force.
And you know, here, if you just look up the
Force on Wikipedia, it says the as a metaphysical, mysterious,
and ubiquitous power. In the Star Wars fictional universe, characters
(07:09):
refer to the Force as an energy that interconnects all
living things in the universe, maintaining cosmic balance. Particularly force
sensitive characters, usually through rigorous, self disciplined training and mindfulness,
are able to connect to the Force and thus access
and willed certain superpowers. You know, it's interesting because they
(07:32):
go on to say, and of course I wrote this
book called Use The Force, a Jedi's Guide to the
Law of Attraction, which you can read for free if
you go to Joshua Peewarren dot com and just you'll
see the book cover there somewhere and just click on it,
and it's multiple languages. But it says here that that
(07:53):
when Lucas he interjected the Force into his work, that
he wanted to quote awaken a certain kind of spirituality
end quote in young audiences, suggesting a belief in God,
without endorsing any specific religion. And it says he developed
(08:15):
the Force as a non denominational religious concept distilled from
the essence of all religions, premised on the existence of
God and distinct ideas of good and evil. Okay, well,
that's getting a little in depth here in terms of
how you make sense of all this. But you can
see again how that this concept was appealing to me
(08:38):
to think that we do have this subtle energy field,
and you might be able to control your field, and
you might be able to well improve your body, help
other people, heal other people, move object all that kind
of stuff. And of course, if you know, I grew
up in the Southern Baptist Church, and if any of
you have a Christian upbringing. Were actually in many many religions.
(09:01):
You've probably heard of the laying on hands. That's a
religious practice, and let's see, it's used as both a
symbolic and formal method of invoking the Holy Spirit, primarily
during baptisms and confirmations, healing services, blessings, an ordination of priests, ministers, elders, deacons,
(09:25):
and other church officers, along with a variety of other
church sacraments and holy ceremonies. And of course you know
the idea, and again this spans many different religions. There's
a whole list of them, and not they're even African
traditional medicine, Navajo religious ceremonies. It's not just a Christian thing.
The idea is that you can place your hands on
(09:49):
someone under certain circumstances and it's beneficial. It's a sacred thing,
some kind of power is being transmitted there. So all
of this kind of ties into this thing that I
started hearing about many many years ago called reiki and reiki.
(10:09):
If this is brand new to you, it's spelled r
ei ki. And there were people who would come to
me and say, oh, I'm a reiki master, So what
does that mean I say, oh, well, I can do this.
I can. I can give you this reiki session where
you just relax and basically I will use my hands
(10:37):
to manipulate your energy field in a positive and therapeutic way.
And there have been times where people would give me like,
I don't know, maybe a sixty second reiki sample, but
I didn't know what to think about that. Well, recently
I've had people emailing me saying, Josh, what exactly is
(10:59):
the real deal with reiki? Can you do a deep
dive on this? So I was like, you know what, Yeah,
that's a good I think it's time I want to
go and get an actual, in depth reiki treatment from
a professional reiki person here in the Las Vegas area.
But before I do that, well, I'm going to share
(11:23):
with you some of the what I've learned so far
about the reality of this and how it may or
may not work. And then I'm going to ask some
of you to give me tips if you know anything
about like where I should go because I don't want
to go get a reiki treatment and it sucks. And
then I come on the show and be like, oh,
Reiki's a bunch of baloney. I want to make sure
(11:44):
you know if I do it, I do it right.
So we're gonna do this deep dive into reiki and
if it might be able to actually help you and
me and all of us if we open our minds
a little bit more than usual. Hey, do you like
this show? It's free and if you want me to
keep doing it, you gotta support it. Go to Joshua
(12:04):
Pwarren dot com. Check out all the cool things in
the Curiosity Shop that you will not find anywhere else
in the world. And I have some new ones coming
out very soon, and trust me, you're gonna love some
of the new items. And be sure on the homepage
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and spam free e newsletter. Just put your email address
(12:25):
in their hit submit and you will instantly receive an
automated email from me that's got some free online goodies
that will help you start actually seeing the force is real.
You can attract more money, you can become magical, you
can feel better. Joshua P. Warren dot com is where
you sign up for that newsletter. I am Joshua P.
Warren and you are listening to strange things on the
(12:48):
iHeartRadio and Coach to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network, and
I will be right back. Welcome back to Strange Things.
(13:34):
Call the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
I'm your host, a wizard of weird, beaming into your
wormhole brain from my studio in Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada,
where every day is golden and every night is silver
Gietato Zume. And I'm telling you I believe in this
(13:57):
bio energy force. I believe there is such a thing
as chi or key or prana or oregon. There are
different names for it and different aspects of it. But
what is the reality of walking into a studio a spa.
(14:20):
I'm not sure a place where someone says I have
trained in this, I'm a level this or level that
you just relax and I'm gonna wave my hands around
you here and you're gonna feel better after this. How
realistic is that? And look, I always like to do this.
(14:44):
Let me just go straight back to Wikipedia and tell
you what Wikipedia says. Now, well, you should understand something.
Wikipedia is a convenient compendium of knowledge, and I think
Wikipedia is great if you are going to go and
look up kind of widely known mainstream facts like how
(15:08):
tall is Mount Rushmore or what year was Alexander the
Great born and when did he die? And you know
stuff like that, especially old stuff. Wikipedia, however, despite their claims,
the way it's edited by people collaborating it is very,
very biased when it comes to at least three things.
(15:29):
Number one is any kind of a current event. Number
two is anybody who is alive right now. And number
three is anything that whoever the editors are at any
(15:51):
given time, anything that they think does not fit within
the current superficial, mainstream scientific view, which is usually about
you know, fifty years old, going back to the way
(16:11):
the world is supposed to work. So, in other words,
if anything that is paranormal or supernatural or even any
I mean even things that involve spirituality and belief in God,
there's always like a bias against that stuff. It's a
very superficial, materialistic approach that's taken by the people who
(16:34):
choose to be to contribute to Wikipedia articles. And so
anytime you go and you look up any of these
strange things that I talk about, it's just like, oh,
this is bis and I mean it's like I don't
have a Wikipedia page which is fine with me. But
if somebody did create a Wikipedia page about me, it
would say, Oh, Joshua pe Warren, he is he is
(16:59):
a He's an insane man who makes dubious claims about
obvious pseudo scientific beliefs in ghosts and UFOs and psychic
activity and wishing machines. And he's just a horrible person.
You know. I think I'm gonna write my own Wikipedia
(17:20):
article and save them some time in trouble Someday that'd
be funny. I'm gonna get some friends and they're gonna
put together the most horrific Joshua p. Warren is the
biggest Well, I can't cuss on this show. Coast won't
let me. But anyway, bear that in mind because they
(17:41):
obviously take a very negative spin on reiki. Here's the
very first thing it says. Reiki is a pseudo scientific
form of energy healing, a type of alternative medicine originating
in Japan. Reiki practitioners use a technique called palm healing
or hands on healing, through which, according to practitioners, a
(18:03):
universal energy is transferred through the palms of the practitioner
to the client to encourage emotional or physical healing. It
is based on chi, which practitioners say as a universal
life force, although there is no empirical evidence that such
a life force exists. Okay, sure, yeah, how to we're
(18:26):
just running around here dancing and singing and telling jokes
without any kind of a life force involved at all.
All right, let's get back to the article. Reiki is
used as an illustrative example of pseudoscience and scholarly text
and academic journals. The marketing of reiki has been described
as quote fraudulent misrepresentation and itself as a quote nonsensical method,
(18:53):
with a recommendation that the American government agency NCCAM should
stop funding reiki because it has no substantiated health value
and lacks a scientifically plausible rationale. Wow, they're not holding
back on Ricky, are they. Clinical research shows it as
not effective as a treatment for any medical condition. Blah
(19:13):
blah blah. All right, so I think you see they're
saying this is this article is saying there's nothing to
this the etymology. And by the way, I got an
email a while back from an unpleasant lady in my opinion,
who said, well, I think every time you say etymology,
(19:39):
it sounds like you're saying entomology. Maybe it's just your
Southern accent or whatever, but she's telling me entomology is
the study of insects and etomologists, like, I know that,
and maybe it is my Southern accent. But amazing that
people will take the time to email you something. The
etymology reiki comes from a combination of let's see Japanese
(20:08):
word rey r ei, which means universal, and key, which
means vital energy. Okay, so universal vital energy, simple enough,
and says Reiki's teachings and adherents claim that she is
a physiological force. It could be manipulated to treat a
(20:31):
disease or a condition. There is no evidence that she exists.
Reiki is thus classified as pseudoscientific. How many times is
it's going to say pseudoscientific? Then they of course they
refer to some skeptoid podcast, says technique. A session usually
lasts for approximately one hour. A Level one practitioner places
their hand or hands on or near various parts of
(20:54):
the body for several minutes. During this time, a vital
energy is meant to flow from the practition into the
client's body. Level two practitioners alternatively may offer their services
at a distance with no skin contact. That's interesting. We
will come back to that later. So they placed their
(21:16):
hands very lightly on you or just near you. It
seems like, so where did all this come from? Well, okay,
so Wikipedia says, here's what and again and again I'm
going to go back and I think clarifying correct some things.
But Wikipedia says that this man and I have no
idea how to pronounce his name, This Japanese man named
(21:37):
Mikhail Usui originated the practice in Japan, and he was
born in eighteen sixty five and he died in nineteen
twenty six. And it says, according to the inscription on
(21:58):
his memorial stone, sue he taught his system of reiki
to more than two thousand people during his lifetime. And
then while teaching reiki and fukuyama, he suffered a stroke
and died. He was only sixty years old. Now that's
kind of interesting because this is a man who is practicing,
(22:21):
you know, this healing art in his in his opinion,
and yeah, he has a stroke and dies when he's sixty.
Now you might look at that and say, well, that's obvious,
as an obvious piece of evidence that this is not
working to help keep you healthy. But you also could
alternatively say that this guy had a limited amount of
(22:45):
chi he could tap into in his life, and he's
projecting it to thousands of people all the time. He's
giving his own life force away and cut his own
life short. I don't know which angle sounds more reasonable.
But does that mean that if you are a reiki
practitioner you're prone like not a reiki patient. But if
(23:09):
you're a practitioner, does that mean that you are prone
to die earlier? That would be an interesting study to
see if there is a list of reiki masters over
the past I don't know, fifty years or whatever it's
out there, and see how old they were where they died.
Did they die at a young age because they were
(23:30):
giving up their life force for others? And then it
goes on to say the first reiki clinic in the
United States was started in nineteen seventy by a student
of mikail Usui. That man's name was The first was
(23:52):
started by okay It was started by a student of
a student. So basically, mikhao Usui had this student named
Chujiro Hayashi, and then Chujiro Hyashi had a student who
(24:14):
really took it sort of more mainstream in nineteen seventy.
But what's interesting is, so you have this progression of minute.
I know that you're probably not keeping up with this,
and that's totally fine. But what's interesting is that the
guy who they're saying came up with this, he taught
it to this other guy named Chujiro. And Chujiro died
(24:36):
when he was fifty nine, and he died of suicide.
He committed sepulcha. Now, why in the world did he
do that? So the disciple of the guy who invented
the guy who invented reiki died of a stroke when
he was sixty. His student who went on to popularize this,
(24:59):
committed suicide at fifty nine. We got to take a break.
When we come back, I'm gonna tell you why he
did this. It's a wild story, and then we're gonna
dig even deeper. I'm Joshua P. Warren. You're listening to
Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM
Paranormal podcast Network, and I will be back after these
(25:19):
important messages. Welcome back to Strange Things called the iHeartRadio
(26:01):
and Coast to Coast am Paranormal Podcast Network. I'm your host,
Joshua P. Warren, and this is the show where the
unusual becomes usual. So they're saying here that the guy
who developed reiki as we know it was born in
(26:23):
eighteen sixty five and then in nineteen twenty six he
died of a stroke, and then he taught it. One
of his disciples was as this other guy named Chujiro Hayeshi,
and he was born in eighteen eighty. He died in
nineteen forty from sepeka, a Japanese form of ritual suicide seppuku,
(26:52):
and usually when a Japanese person commits sepucha, the person
takes a large knife or a sword and just disembowels
him or herself. It was originally reserved for samurai and
their code of honor. And now, of course that's a horrible,
(27:15):
horrible thought, isn't it to just take a take a
big blade and just cut your guts, you know, just
shove in there and slide it across your guts. But
sometimes I've I believe I've read that, you know, you
might have a buddy there with a big sword who
will just after you do that, go ahead and chop
(27:35):
your head off to prevent further suffering. And I thought, well,
why why did this guy who was like a stepping
stone and bringing reiki over toward the west, why did
he do that? And so I said, hey, Grok, because
it didn't say in the artist article why he did
Why would he do the groc You know my favorite
(27:55):
search engine now Grock, I said, why did this guy
commit suicide? Interesting? Says that he took his own life
on May eleventh, nineteen forty. The reasons for his decision
are rooted in a combination of cultural, personal, and historical factors.
Says he was a retired naval officer and physician who
(28:18):
dedicated much of his later life to developing and spreading reiki,
including his own clinic. He went to Hawaii from nineteen
thirty seven to nineteen thirty eight, where he taught reiki
alongside a woman named Hawaiiu Takata, and this was a
(28:39):
significant moment in bringing reiki to the West. However, upon
returning to Japan, he faced a profound dilemma as World
War II loomed. The Japanese military, aware of his time
in Hawaii and his naval background, reportedly pressured him to
provide strategic information about millilitary targets such as warehouses and
(29:03):
installations in Honolulu ahead of the impending conflict with the
United States. As a pacifist who had embraced Reiki's healing
properties and principles, Hayashi was deeply opposed to participating in
war efforts or betraying the trust of those he had
taught and healed in Hawaii. So, refusing to comply with
(29:26):
the Japanese military's demands, he was labeled a trader, a
grave accusation, and that to honor bound culture and in
this context losing face, bringing shame to himself and family.
This was intolerable. So sepacha was offered as a way
(29:47):
to preserve his honor and avoid further dishonor So how
about that. So here is this guy who apparently I
guess he was in good shape, sounds like it anyway,
probably that they were asking him for some type of
participation and the war effort there, and he says, no,
(30:11):
I'm not going to do that, and so he commits suicide.
But then his student was a woman named Hawaiio Takata,
Japanese American woman who was born in Hawaii and They
say that she was a huge part of actually popularizing
(30:34):
all the reiki stuff in the US, and says that
she actually lived to be a fairly fairly old lady.
She was born in nineteen hundred. She died in nineteen eighty,
so she was almost eighty years old. They say her
cause of death is not exactly known, but the grox
(30:54):
as some sources suggest that heart disease may have been
a factor. Thank you, all right, Now, this is sort
of like an overview I've given you of me trying
to understand, like where did this come from? And sort
of watch the story. But trust me, I'm not the
kind of guy who does research just from what kind
(31:15):
of free stuff I can find on the web. Now,
if I want to do research, I go out. I'm
not a cheap scale. I spend money. I buy books.
I sometimes hire professional researchers to go and dig up
files for me from courthouses. And I mean, honestly, that's
(31:35):
how I grew up. When I was doing research writing
my book Haunt at Ashville, I spent tons of time
in the libraries and the courthouses and in special collections
and learning my way around that world to go, you know,
get authentic stuff. So here's one book that I bought.
It's supposed to be a reiki master book here, and
(31:55):
it's called Simply Enough Reiki for Beginners, The step by
step guide to unlock Reiki's self healing and aura cleansing
secrets for deep healing, peace of mind, and spiritual growth.
This is by someone named row heat Sahu, and I
have nothing to do with this book or this author
(32:16):
or this publishing company. This is just something I bought
off of Amazon, like anybody else can, And I just
think it's interesting to go to what is supposed to be,
you know, an authoritative guide from a reiki master. It
says here, have you ever sensed the calming vibe of
another person? May feel it may feel warm, comforting, and
(32:38):
very therapeutic. And have you ever felt the same energy
inside yourself, whether in times of peace or during yoga practice,
when you can sense your own life or it'swhirling within you.
Reiki works similarly. It's a kind of energy healing that
goes back to the late eighteen hundreds, yet its advantages
easily apply to the modern world. Reiki is a compliment
(33:00):
reform of energy healing that originated in Japan. It is
a gentle but strong, hands on energy healing technique that
has grown in popularity over the past century. And then,
but here's something that's kind of interesting. Even though this
book starts out saying like the same thing that Wikipedia did,
that it goes back to the eighteen hundreds. Later on,
it says reiki's origins may be traced back to ancient
(33:27):
Chinese and Japanese medicine based on chi. It says people
have been practicing reiki for over twenty five hundred years.
So I guess that it's sort of like, you know,
the fella I was talking about, kind of focused on
it and branded it properly, and so they talked a
(33:51):
little bit about him in this book. Okay, So here's
something else that I didn't see online. Reiki principles. These
are five principles according to this book, and see if
you how do you feel about these five principles. Number one,
just for today, I release angry thoughts. Number two, just
(34:17):
for today, I release thoughts of worry. Number three, just
for today, I'm grateful. Number four, just for today, I
expand my consciousness. And number five, just for today, I'm
gentle with all beings. Number six is tomorrow, I'm going
(34:42):
to beat the crap out of everybody. I'm joking. So
sounds nice, doesn't it. You think you could do that
just for a day. Focus on the reminds you of
the hippono pono, which, of course all also is interesting
because it comes from Japanese roots, and so there's a
(35:03):
there's a great similarity perhaps in the way that the
Japanese culture treats their envisioning of the physical reiki energy,
and how that treats all of this as a as
a mental experience. Another section of the book, I Mark says,
(35:25):
there is a totally non physical component of you that
you may refer to as your spirit or soul. This
is the everlasting higher portion of you. It is a
multi dimensional and exists beyond the three dimensional realm in
which your body resides. Soul connects you to higher realms
such as creation, source, God, and divinity. The soul is
in charge of inherent abilities such as inspiration, intuition, creativity, love, compassion, kindness,
(35:51):
and humility. And the last thing I'll read you from
this because I can't read the whole book myths. It
says myth number one, reiki is a form of massage,
and they say that this does not that's a myth
because reiki does not intel bone or tissue manipulation. Healers
employ a gentle touch with their hands on their shoulders
(36:15):
or over the completely clothed bodies of their guests. They say.
Another myth is that reiki is a new age practice
with no scientific basis, and they say that they provide
their argument against that. They say. Another myth is that
it's very complicated practice. They say, no, it's not. Another
myth reiki is capable of curing anything. They say, it's
(36:37):
not a cure for anything. It just aids in the
induction of relaxation, response, and promotion of a mind body
balance favorable to healing. Another myth is that the benefits
of reiki are instantly felt. It says it can take
more than a single therapy session. So anyway, those are
(36:59):
some of the the myths. And they also say a
myth is giving reiki to others will deplete my energy. Oh,
there you go. They're saying that's a myth as well.
So anyway, Yeah, this book is called Reiki for Beginners,
And when we come back, I'm going to wrap up
this Reiki conversation, and then I got an email from
(37:20):
a listener that I want to share with you about
something that happened during a snowstorm that I don't know.
It's kind of cool, maybe a little bit eerie. And
then I might also have some time for some mental
man out. Why do you think actors say to each other?
Break a leg? I'm Joshua Pete Warren. You're listening to
Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM
(37:42):
para normal podcast network, and I'll be right back. Welcome
(38:21):
back to the final segment of this edition of Strange Things,
Oh the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM paranormal podcast Network.
I am your host, Joshua P. Warren. And I received
a lot of emails every week, and I do my
best to read every single one of them, but it
(38:45):
would be impossible for me to reply to all of them.
Having said that, I do want to go get a bonafide,
credible reiki session to report back to you on. And
so if you really know you know the behind the
scenes on reiki and like what I should be looking for.
(39:08):
I live in Las Vegas. I would like to visit
somebody in the Las Vegas area. Email me and let
me know what I should be looking for to find
somebody credible so that I can have the best experience
possible and not go get like scammed somewhere and come
back and give it like a bad review. And also,
I mean, it is very weird. They do say in
(39:30):
some of these books and whatnot that there are people
who can practice reiki long distance. And that is where
a lot of people say, Okay, that ends my suspension
of disbelief. I can't go that far. But he goes
back to what I was saying about how we define
you know, legitimate science these days, because if you talk
(39:51):
to quantum physicists, they will tell you the craziest stuff
you've ever heard is real. You know, entanglement, non locality cats,
it's you know, Schrodinger's cat, I mean, Heisenberg uncertainty theory
in a principle, all that stuff. So hey, look, you
got you gotta have a very open mind and just
(40:13):
try things out. And look if I go and have
an experience and it doesn't work at least, oh no,
and I'll have something that I can talk about. So
shoot me an email. Go to Joshua Pwarren dot com.
Scroll down at the bottom and you will find my
email address. Here is an interesting email that I received
(40:33):
from a woman named Susan Bossman, and this is about
incident that happened in Germantown, Wisconsin in nineteen seventy nine.
She said, I was driving home in a blizzard at
night as I approached an intersection where a tavern, an
old log cabin, a church, and an old cemetery were located.
(40:56):
I was out in the country where three roads cross.
The snow was almost blinding, but I could see the
outline of a person waving his arms up and down frantically.
I thought the person was trying to warn me that
there was an accident at the intersection. If this was
the case, I needed to help out. As we were
in the middle of nowhere, I pulled my car quickly
(41:16):
over to the side and it slid into the ditch.
I was scared, but I knew I could run to
the accident scene to get some help. I hurried over
to the intersection in the deep deep snow to find
there was snow man, not even footprints, just silence and
(41:37):
the flake's falling snow. I was enraged as I felt
someone had played a senseless trick on me. I went
back to my car and was able to rock it
back and forth to get it out of the ditch.
A decade later, I attended a church in the same
intersection for the grand opening of a museum of local history,
(41:59):
and taped to the front door was a news article
from approximately five years earlier saying that motorists should be
aware of a ghost who plays with the traffic in
the intersection. For ten years, I had been mad, thinking
some mean person had played a trick on me that
winter's night. This ghost allegedly also ventures into a tavern
(42:23):
in the intersection and throws dishes around. After reading this article,
I was almost embarrassed that I'd been so angry at
the stranger, now knowing it was a ghost. Well, thank
you for that report, Susan. And hey, well your anger
was warranted because that's a mean ghost. The ghost should
(42:47):
not have done that to you. Makes you wonder, though,
is this a conscious ghost that's playing a trick or
is it an imprint of some kind. Some of the
most haunted places I've investigated are theaters where you have
live actors who have performed on stage in some cases
(43:09):
for decades or even centuries, and I think they get
up on stage and they create this. They imagine things
so vividly, they create some kind of a tulpa. And
when I was in high school, going back to how
much I did not enjoy much of my high school experience,
(43:33):
even though I mean I was I had a lot
of friends, I was well liked. I just hated a
feeling confined. And I've always had a problem with condescending
authority figures. But I liked opportunities to do creative things
and escape from it. And so I got involved with theater,
and I would do plays when I was in high school,
(43:56):
and I learned pretty early on that it was bad
luck to talk well, to say the word Macbeth in
a movie theater. I'm sure some of you know that.
Instead you say, oh, the Scottish play and the Scottish
(44:17):
play or the Bard's play. Those are what they call
them euphemisms. Words you would say instead of saying Macbeth.
You know, William Shakespeare's play Macbeth. And the reason is that,
according to theatrical superstition called the Scottish curse, speaking the
(44:39):
name Macbeth inside a theater other than has called for
in the script while rehearsing or performing will cause disaster.
And apparently this goes back to the fact that, well,
I don't know if you've ever seen Macbeth, but it's
Macbeth is about partly about a coven of witches, and
(45:03):
the traditional origin is said to be a curse that
was put on the play by a coven of witches
angry at Shakespeare for using a real spell in his play.
And one hypothesis for the origin of this superstition is
that Macbeth, being a popular play, was commonly put on
(45:24):
by theater as in financial trouble, or that the high
production cost of Macbeth put theaters in financial trouble, and
hence an association was made between productions of Macbeth and
theaters going out of business. That's interesting, isn't it. And
there are even places where this has taken so seriously
that when the name of the play is spoken in
a theater, tradition requires the person who spoke it has
(45:49):
to leave perform a cleansing ritual and then be invited
back in, and those rituals ward off the evil that
uttering the play's name is feared to bring on and
that's true. I've been in theater enough to know that
that's true. In some places, that's taken very seriously, and
(46:11):
I started, I don't know. I was thinking about that
idea the other day that it's how interesting is it
that Shakespeare, he's a mysterious guy anyway in history, that
he may have somehow observed or come across this real
witch's spell that he had adapted into his play, and
that was like such a betrayal to those witches that
(46:33):
they put this curse on him. But there's a lot
of superstition, like, for example, for good luck, you often
say to an actor or a similar performer, break a leg,
and that's supposed to bring on good luck. Now why
is that? You know? If you look it up and
you start digging into it, there's no one solid, good,
(46:58):
proven explanation. One person here, let's see, who was an
expert on superstitions, wrote this published it in nineteen twenty
one in a British magazine. The stage is perhaps the
most superstitious institution in England, after the race course. The
(47:19):
latter is so superstitious that to wish a man luck
on his way to a race is considered unlucky. Instead
of saying good luck, you should say something insulting, such as,
may you break your leg? So they were so concerned
possibly that saying something good would jinx it, that you
(47:41):
would say the opposite. But it may be more like this.
Here's another resource that I found that's also kind of interesting.
I've never heard of this before, and I doubt you
have either. One of the more common theories about why
you say break a leg refers to the early days
of the theater, when the actors were cue to perform.
(48:06):
There is a line called a leg line, and if actors,
it's like an imaginary line on the stage. If the
actors were not performing, they had to stay behind the
leg line, which also meant they would not get paid.
But if you were to tell the actor break a leg,
(48:26):
then you were wishing them an opportunity to step across
that line to perform and get paid. So the sentiment
remains the same today, the term means good luck, give
a good performance. That kind of makes more sense to me, actually,
that there is this boundary because you know, everything is
worked out in rehearsal, and if you get that chance
(48:48):
to break through, well, you break a leg. All right,
my friends, here it is Relax. Listen to the good
Fortune tone. That's it for this edition of the show.
(49:21):
Follow me at Joshua P. Warren, Plus visit Joshua Pwarren
dot com to sign up for my free e newsletter
to receive a free instant gift, and check out the
cool stuff in the Curiosity Shop. All at Joshuapwarren dot com.
I have a fun one lined up for you next time,
I promise, So please tell all your friends to subscribe
(49:44):
to this show and to always remember the Golden Rule.
Thank you for listening, Thank you for your interest and support.
Thank you for staying curious, and I will talk to
you again soon. You've been listening to Strange Things on
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Well if you like this episode of Strange Things, wait
till you hear the next one. Thank you for listening
to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Welcome to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM paranormal
podcast network. Now get ready for us Strange Things with
Joshua P. Warren.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM, employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do
(00:34):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Ready to be amazed by the wizard of weird. This
is Strange with j Warren. I am Joshua pe Warren.
At each week on this show, I'll be bringing in
brand new my glowing content, news exercises, and weird experiments
(01:17):
you can do at home, and a lot more on
this edition of the show, What's the Real Deal with Reiki?
You know, when I was growing up, the schools that
I went to in the rural mountains of western North
(01:38):
Carolina were pretty tough. There was a lot of fighting
that went on back then, and I didn't even realize
just how violent many of my school experiences were until
I met my wife Lauren, and she was like, nothing
like that ever happened when I went to school. So
anybody who went to the schools I went to during
(01:59):
the years I to them has seen some pretty bloody fights,
and I have been in some of them. That was
just the way it was. And now, frankly, I have
always been or growing up, I was always large for
my age, so that helped me quite a bit. But
(02:20):
on the other hand, you know, when you're a freshman
in high school and you're up against three seniors, that's scary.
You need to you need to have a little extra
understanding of how to defend yourself. And things really started
getting rough in middle school and then you know right there.
I remember one day I was in middle school and
(02:42):
the teacher came running in and the middle school was
next to the high school, and they just locked everything down.
Cops were all over the place because there were gang
wars and stuff like that, believe it or not. Yeah,
in the mountains of western North Carolina. So I when
I was quite young, I started studying the martial arts,
and I was very good at it. As a matter
(03:04):
of fact. You know, as I got older, I started
doing some wrestling in high school and I usually won.
And one day, when I was sixteen years old, I
went into this bookstore. This is right after I got
my driver's license so I could go wherever I wanted.
So I went to this bookstore in Asheville and they
(03:26):
had a big, nice section of martial arts books. So
as I was standing there perusing the books, there was
a woman who came in also to look at the books,
and she looked like she was maybe in her late
twenties or something like that, but she was wearing a gee,
which is, you know, like the robe with the belt
that somebody would put on to exercise martial arts. And
(03:50):
so we started talking to each other, and she brought
up the topic of chi chi. And I had heard
about she and read about she before when I was younger,
but I didn't I never really had any kind of
a personal interaction with itch Key Prada. It's the idea
(04:13):
that there is some kind of a bio energy field
around your body, and that that field is connected to
your physical wellbeing, and that another person who has a
certain talent, certain skill, can take his or her chi
(04:34):
and sort of project it onto your body in various
ways in order to well kind of heal you or
clear your chakras or help you in some way. And
she started talking to me about all these chi exercises
and she said, here, put your hand out, So I
(04:56):
put out my hand and then she held her right
hand over top of my hand and put her left
hand below my hand, and then she goes, all right,
are you ready? I said yeah, And in about two seconds,
it felt like my hand was in an oven. My
(05:18):
eyes lit up because I looked at her and I thought,
I understand people have body heat, but it's like she
flipped this switch, so to speak, and her bio energy
fieled and I felt this very significant heat and it
lasted for about ten seconds and then she shut it
(05:39):
off and I was like wow, and I was just
instantly amazed. That's one of the most That was one
of the most exciting moments of my life, to be
honest with you, to be you know, to experience something
like that at that age. And she started talking to
me about the reality of how you can train and
(06:01):
use this kind of energy field. And then of course
later on I ended up meeting Grandmaster Tom Cameron, who's
been on all these TV shows like Ripley's Believe it
or not, and we became friends, and he does these
demonstrations where he projects chi and can affect scientific instruments,
and he even goes so far as to do these
these demonstrations where he he appears to knock people down
(06:25):
without touching them. The reality of that is debatable, but
I could do a whole show about Tom Cameron and
some of the amazing things that I was able to
document by working with him. And of course this idea
of having a human bio energy field especially appeals to
(06:46):
me because I've always been a big fan of Star
Wars and it's it's similar in a way to the Force.
And you know, here, if you just look up the
Force on Wikipedia, it says the as a metaphysical, mysterious,
and ubiquitous power. In the Star Wars fictional universe, characters
(07:09):
refer to the Force as an energy that interconnects all
living things in the universe, maintaining cosmic balance. Particularly force
sensitive characters, usually through rigorous, self disciplined training and mindfulness,
are able to connect to the Force and thus access
and willed certain superpowers. You know, it's interesting because they
(07:32):
go on to say, and of course I wrote this
book called Use The Force, a Jedi's Guide to the
Law of Attraction, which you can read for free if
you go to Joshua Peewarren dot com and just you'll
see the book cover there somewhere and just click on it,
and it's multiple languages. But it says here that that
(07:53):
when Lucas he interjected the Force into his work, that
he wanted to quote awaken a certain kind of spirituality
end quote in young audiences, suggesting a belief in God,
without endorsing any specific religion. And it says he developed
(08:15):
the Force as a non denominational religious concept distilled from
the essence of all religions, premised on the existence of
God and distinct ideas of good and evil. Okay, well,
that's getting a little in depth here in terms of
how you make sense of all this. But you can
see again how that this concept was appealing to me
(08:38):
to think that we do have this subtle energy field,
and you might be able to control your field, and
you might be able to well improve your body, help
other people, heal other people, move object all that kind
of stuff. And of course, if you know, I grew
up in the Southern Baptist Church, and if any of
you have a Christian upbringing. Were actually in many many religions.
(09:01):
You've probably heard of the laying on hands. That's a
religious practice, and let's see, it's used as both a
symbolic and formal method of invoking the Holy Spirit, primarily
during baptisms and confirmations, healing services, blessings, an ordination of priests, ministers, elders, deacons,
(09:25):
and other church officers, along with a variety of other
church sacraments and holy ceremonies. And of course you know
the idea, and again this spans many different religions. There's
a whole list of them, and not they're even African
traditional medicine, Navajo religious ceremonies. It's not just a Christian thing.
The idea is that you can place your hands on
(09:49):
someone under certain circumstances and it's beneficial. It's a sacred thing,
some kind of power is being transmitted there. So all
of this kind of ties into this thing that I
started hearing about many many years ago called reiki and reiki.
(10:09):
If this is brand new to you, it's spelled r
ei ki. And there were people who would come to
me and say, oh, I'm a reiki master, So what
does that mean I say, oh, well, I can do this.
I can. I can give you this reiki session where
you just relax and basically I will use my hands
(10:37):
to manipulate your energy field in a positive and therapeutic way.
And there have been times where people would give me like,
I don't know, maybe a sixty second reiki sample, but
I didn't know what to think about that. Well, recently
I've had people emailing me saying, Josh, what exactly is
(10:59):
the real deal with reiki? Can you do a deep
dive on this? So I was like, you know what, Yeah,
that's a good I think it's time I want to
go and get an actual, in depth reiki treatment from
a professional reiki person here in the Las Vegas area.
But before I do that, well, I'm going to share
(11:23):
with you some of the what I've learned so far
about the reality of this and how it may or
may not work. And then I'm going to ask some
of you to give me tips if you know anything
about like where I should go because I don't want
to go get a reiki treatment and it sucks. And
then I come on the show and be like, oh,
Reiki's a bunch of baloney. I want to make sure
(11:44):
you know if I do it, I do it right.
So we're gonna do this deep dive into reiki and
if it might be able to actually help you and
me and all of us if we open our minds
a little bit more than usual. Hey, do you like
this show? It's free and if you want me to
keep doing it, you gotta support it. Go to Joshua
(12:04):
Pwarren dot com. Check out all the cool things in
the Curiosity Shop that you will not find anywhere else
in the world. And I have some new ones coming
out very soon, and trust me, you're gonna love some
of the new items. And be sure on the homepage
to take two seconds to sign up for my free
and spam free e newsletter. Just put your email address
(12:25):
in their hit submit and you will instantly receive an
automated email from me that's got some free online goodies
that will help you start actually seeing the force is real.
You can attract more money, you can become magical, you
can feel better. Joshua P. Warren dot com is where
you sign up for that newsletter. I am Joshua P.
Warren and you are listening to strange things on the
(12:48):
iHeartRadio and Coach to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network, and
I will be right back. Welcome back to Strange Things.
(13:34):
Call the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
I'm your host, a wizard of weird, beaming into your
wormhole brain from my studio in Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada,
where every day is golden and every night is silver
Gietato Zume. And I'm telling you I believe in this
(13:57):
bio energy force. I believe there is such a thing
as chi or key or prana or oregon. There are
different names for it and different aspects of it. But
what is the reality of walking into a studio a spa.
(14:20):
I'm not sure a place where someone says I have
trained in this, I'm a level this or level that
you just relax and I'm gonna wave my hands around
you here and you're gonna feel better after this. How
realistic is that? And look, I always like to do this.
(14:44):
Let me just go straight back to Wikipedia and tell
you what Wikipedia says. Now, well, you should understand something.
Wikipedia is a convenient compendium of knowledge, and I think
Wikipedia is great if you are going to go and
look up kind of widely known mainstream facts like how
(15:08):
tall is Mount Rushmore or what year was Alexander the
Great born and when did he die? And you know
stuff like that, especially old stuff. Wikipedia, however, despite their claims,
the way it's edited by people collaborating it is very,
very biased when it comes to at least three things.
(15:29):
Number one is any kind of a current event. Number
two is anybody who is alive right now. And number
three is anything that whoever the editors are at any
(15:51):
given time, anything that they think does not fit within
the current superficial, mainstream scientific view, which is usually about
you know, fifty years old, going back to the way
(16:11):
the world is supposed to work. So, in other words,
if anything that is paranormal or supernatural or even any
I mean even things that involve spirituality and belief in God,
there's always like a bias against that stuff. It's a
very superficial, materialistic approach that's taken by the people who
(16:34):
choose to be to contribute to Wikipedia articles. And so
anytime you go and you look up any of these
strange things that I talk about, it's just like, oh,
this is bis and I mean it's like I don't
have a Wikipedia page which is fine with me. But
if somebody did create a Wikipedia page about me, it
would say, Oh, Joshua pe Warren, he is he is
(16:59):
a He's an insane man who makes dubious claims about
obvious pseudo scientific beliefs in ghosts and UFOs and psychic
activity and wishing machines. And he's just a horrible person.
You know. I think I'm gonna write my own Wikipedia
(17:20):
article and save them some time in trouble Someday that'd
be funny. I'm gonna get some friends and they're gonna
put together the most horrific Joshua p. Warren is the
biggest Well, I can't cuss on this show. Coast won't
let me. But anyway, bear that in mind because they
(17:41):
obviously take a very negative spin on reiki. Here's the
very first thing it says. Reiki is a pseudo scientific
form of energy healing, a type of alternative medicine originating
in Japan. Reiki practitioners use a technique called palm healing
or hands on healing, through which, according to practitioners, a
(18:03):
universal energy is transferred through the palms of the practitioner
to the client to encourage emotional or physical healing. It
is based on chi, which practitioners say as a universal
life force, although there is no empirical evidence that such
a life force exists. Okay, sure, yeah, how to we're
(18:26):
just running around here dancing and singing and telling jokes
without any kind of a life force involved at all.
All right, let's get back to the article. Reiki is
used as an illustrative example of pseudoscience and scholarly text
and academic journals. The marketing of reiki has been described
as quote fraudulent misrepresentation and itself as a quote nonsensical method,
(18:53):
with a recommendation that the American government agency NCCAM should
stop funding reiki because it has no substantiated health value
and lacks a scientifically plausible rationale. Wow, they're not holding
back on Ricky, are they. Clinical research shows it as
not effective as a treatment for any medical condition. Blah
(19:13):
blah blah. All right, so I think you see they're
saying this is this article is saying there's nothing to
this the etymology. And by the way, I got an
email a while back from an unpleasant lady in my opinion,
who said, well, I think every time you say etymology,
(19:39):
it sounds like you're saying entomology. Maybe it's just your
Southern accent or whatever, but she's telling me entomology is
the study of insects and etomologists, like, I know that,
and maybe it is my Southern accent. But amazing that
people will take the time to email you something. The
etymology reiki comes from a combination of let's see Japanese
(20:08):
word rey r ei, which means universal, and key, which
means vital energy. Okay, so universal vital energy, simple enough,
and says Reiki's teachings and adherents claim that she is
a physiological force. It could be manipulated to treat a
(20:31):
disease or a condition. There is no evidence that she exists.
Reiki is thus classified as pseudoscientific. How many times is
it's going to say pseudoscientific? Then they of course they
refer to some skeptoid podcast, says technique. A session usually
lasts for approximately one hour. A Level one practitioner places
their hand or hands on or near various parts of
(20:54):
the body for several minutes. During this time, a vital
energy is meant to flow from the practition into the
client's body. Level two practitioners alternatively may offer their services
at a distance with no skin contact. That's interesting. We
will come back to that later. So they placed their
(21:16):
hands very lightly on you or just near you. It
seems like, so where did all this come from? Well, okay,
so Wikipedia says, here's what and again and again I'm
going to go back and I think clarifying correct some things.
But Wikipedia says that this man and I have no
idea how to pronounce his name, This Japanese man named
(21:37):
Mikhail Usui originated the practice in Japan, and he was
born in eighteen sixty five and he died in nineteen
twenty six. And it says, according to the inscription on
(21:58):
his memorial stone, sue he taught his system of reiki
to more than two thousand people during his lifetime. And
then while teaching reiki and fukuyama, he suffered a stroke
and died. He was only sixty years old. Now that's
kind of interesting because this is a man who is practicing,
(22:21):
you know, this healing art in his in his opinion,
and yeah, he has a stroke and dies when he's sixty.
Now you might look at that and say, well, that's obvious,
as an obvious piece of evidence that this is not
working to help keep you healthy. But you also could
alternatively say that this guy had a limited amount of
(22:45):
chi he could tap into in his life, and he's
projecting it to thousands of people all the time. He's
giving his own life force away and cut his own
life short. I don't know which angle sounds more reasonable.
But does that mean that if you are a reiki
practitioner you're prone like not a reiki patient. But if
(23:09):
you're a practitioner, does that mean that you are prone
to die earlier? That would be an interesting study to
see if there is a list of reiki masters over
the past I don't know, fifty years or whatever it's
out there, and see how old they were where they died.
Did they die at a young age because they were
(23:30):
giving up their life force for others? And then it
goes on to say the first reiki clinic in the
United States was started in nineteen seventy by a student
of mikail Usui. That man's name was The first was
(23:52):
started by okay It was started by a student of
a student. So basically, mikhao Usui had this student named
Chujiro Hayashi, and then Chujiro Hyashi had a student who
(24:14):
really took it sort of more mainstream in nineteen seventy.
But what's interesting is, so you have this progression of minute.
I know that you're probably not keeping up with this,
and that's totally fine. But what's interesting is that the
guy who they're saying came up with this, he taught
it to this other guy named Chujiro. And Chujiro died
(24:36):
when he was fifty nine, and he died of suicide.
He committed sepulcha. Now, why in the world did he
do that? So the disciple of the guy who invented
the guy who invented reiki died of a stroke when
he was sixty. His student who went on to popularize this,
(24:59):
committed suicide at fifty nine. We got to take a break.
When we come back, I'm gonna tell you why he
did this. It's a wild story, and then we're gonna
dig even deeper. I'm Joshua P. Warren. You're listening to
Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM
Paranormal podcast Network, and I will be back after these
(25:19):
important messages. Welcome back to Strange Things called the iHeartRadio
(26:01):
and Coast to Coast am Paranormal Podcast Network. I'm your host,
Joshua P. Warren, and this is the show where the
unusual becomes usual. So they're saying here that the guy
who developed reiki as we know it was born in
(26:23):
eighteen sixty five and then in nineteen twenty six he
died of a stroke, and then he taught it. One
of his disciples was as this other guy named Chujiro Hayeshi,
and he was born in eighteen eighty. He died in
nineteen forty from sepeka, a Japanese form of ritual suicide seppuku,
(26:52):
and usually when a Japanese person commits sepucha, the person
takes a large knife or a sword and just disembowels
him or herself. It was originally reserved for samurai and
their code of honor. And now, of course that's a horrible,
(27:15):
horrible thought, isn't it to just take a take a
big blade and just cut your guts, you know, just
shove in there and slide it across your guts. But
sometimes I've I believe I've read that, you know, you
might have a buddy there with a big sword who
will just after you do that, go ahead and chop
(27:35):
your head off to prevent further suffering. And I thought, well,
why why did this guy who was like a stepping
stone and bringing reiki over toward the west, why did
he do that? And so I said, hey, Grok, because
it didn't say in the artist article why he did
Why would he do the groc You know my favorite
(27:55):
search engine now Grock, I said, why did this guy
commit suicide? Interesting? Says that he took his own life
on May eleventh, nineteen forty. The reasons for his decision
are rooted in a combination of cultural, personal, and historical factors.
Says he was a retired naval officer and physician who
(28:18):
dedicated much of his later life to developing and spreading reiki,
including his own clinic. He went to Hawaii from nineteen
thirty seven to nineteen thirty eight, where he taught reiki
alongside a woman named Hawaiiu Takata, and this was a
(28:39):
significant moment in bringing reiki to the West. However, upon
returning to Japan, he faced a profound dilemma as World
War II loomed. The Japanese military, aware of his time
in Hawaii and his naval background, reportedly pressured him to
provide strategic information about millilitary targets such as warehouses and
(29:03):
installations in Honolulu ahead of the impending conflict with the
United States. As a pacifist who had embraced Reiki's healing
properties and principles, Hayashi was deeply opposed to participating in
war efforts or betraying the trust of those he had
taught and healed in Hawaii. So, refusing to comply with
(29:26):
the Japanese military's demands, he was labeled a trader, a
grave accusation, and that to honor bound culture and in
this context losing face, bringing shame to himself and family.
This was intolerable. So sepacha was offered as a way
(29:47):
to preserve his honor and avoid further dishonor So how
about that. So here is this guy who apparently I
guess he was in good shape, sounds like it anyway,
probably that they were asking him for some type of
participation and the war effort there, and he says, no,
(30:11):
I'm not going to do that, and so he commits suicide.
But then his student was a woman named Hawaiio Takata,
Japanese American woman who was born in Hawaii and They
say that she was a huge part of actually popularizing
(30:34):
all the reiki stuff in the US, and says that
she actually lived to be a fairly fairly old lady.
She was born in nineteen hundred. She died in nineteen eighty,
so she was almost eighty years old. They say her
cause of death is not exactly known, but the grox
(30:54):
as some sources suggest that heart disease may have been
a factor. Thank you, all right, Now, this is sort
of like an overview I've given you of me trying
to understand, like where did this come from? And sort
of watch the story. But trust me, I'm not the
kind of guy who does research just from what kind
(31:15):
of free stuff I can find on the web. Now,
if I want to do research, I go out. I'm
not a cheap scale. I spend money. I buy books.
I sometimes hire professional researchers to go and dig up
files for me from courthouses. And I mean, honestly, that's
(31:35):
how I grew up. When I was doing research writing
my book Haunt at Ashville, I spent tons of time
in the libraries and the courthouses and in special collections
and learning my way around that world to go, you know,
get authentic stuff. So here's one book that I bought.
It's supposed to be a reiki master book here, and
(31:55):
it's called Simply Enough Reiki for Beginners, The step by
step guide to unlock Reiki's self healing and aura cleansing
secrets for deep healing, peace of mind, and spiritual growth.
This is by someone named row heat Sahu, and I
have nothing to do with this book or this author
(32:16):
or this publishing company. This is just something I bought
off of Amazon, like anybody else can, And I just
think it's interesting to go to what is supposed to be,
you know, an authoritative guide from a reiki master. It
says here, have you ever sensed the calming vibe of
another person? May feel it may feel warm, comforting, and
(32:38):
very therapeutic. And have you ever felt the same energy
inside yourself, whether in times of peace or during yoga practice,
when you can sense your own life or it'swhirling within you.
Reiki works similarly. It's a kind of energy healing that
goes back to the late eighteen hundreds, yet its advantages
easily apply to the modern world. Reiki is a compliment
(33:00):
reform of energy healing that originated in Japan. It is
a gentle but strong, hands on energy healing technique that
has grown in popularity over the past century. And then,
but here's something that's kind of interesting. Even though this
book starts out saying like the same thing that Wikipedia did,
that it goes back to the eighteen hundreds. Later on,
it says reiki's origins may be traced back to ancient
(33:27):
Chinese and Japanese medicine based on chi. It says people
have been practicing reiki for over twenty five hundred years.
So I guess that it's sort of like, you know,
the fella I was talking about, kind of focused on
it and branded it properly, and so they talked a
(33:51):
little bit about him in this book. Okay, So here's
something else that I didn't see online. Reiki principles. These
are five principles according to this book, and see if
you how do you feel about these five principles. Number one,
just for today, I release angry thoughts. Number two, just
(34:17):
for today, I release thoughts of worry. Number three, just
for today, I'm grateful. Number four, just for today, I
expand my consciousness. And number five, just for today, I'm
gentle with all beings. Number six is tomorrow, I'm going
(34:42):
to beat the crap out of everybody. I'm joking. So
sounds nice, doesn't it. You think you could do that
just for a day. Focus on the reminds you of
the hippono pono, which, of course all also is interesting
because it comes from Japanese roots, and so there's a
(35:03):
there's a great similarity perhaps in the way that the
Japanese culture treats their envisioning of the physical reiki energy,
and how that treats all of this as a as
a mental experience. Another section of the book, I Mark says,
(35:25):
there is a totally non physical component of you that
you may refer to as your spirit or soul. This
is the everlasting higher portion of you. It is a
multi dimensional and exists beyond the three dimensional realm in
which your body resides. Soul connects you to higher realms
such as creation, source, God, and divinity. The soul is
in charge of inherent abilities such as inspiration, intuition, creativity, love, compassion, kindness,
(35:51):
and humility. And the last thing I'll read you from
this because I can't read the whole book myths. It
says myth number one, reiki is a form of massage,
and they say that this does not that's a myth
because reiki does not intel bone or tissue manipulation. Healers
employ a gentle touch with their hands on their shoulders
(36:15):
or over the completely clothed bodies of their guests. They say.
Another myth is that reiki is a new age practice
with no scientific basis, and they say that they provide
their argument against that. They say. Another myth is that
it's very complicated practice. They say, no, it's not. Another
myth reiki is capable of curing anything. They say, it's
(36:37):
not a cure for anything. It just aids in the
induction of relaxation, response, and promotion of a mind body
balance favorable to healing. Another myth is that the benefits
of reiki are instantly felt. It says it can take
more than a single therapy session. So anyway, those are
(36:59):
some of the the myths. And they also say a
myth is giving reiki to others will deplete my energy. Oh,
there you go. They're saying that's a myth as well.
So anyway, Yeah, this book is called Reiki for Beginners,
And when we come back, I'm going to wrap up
this Reiki conversation, and then I got an email from
(37:20):
a listener that I want to share with you about
something that happened during a snowstorm that I don't know.
It's kind of cool, maybe a little bit eerie. And
then I might also have some time for some mental
man out. Why do you think actors say to each other?
Break a leg? I'm Joshua Pete Warren. You're listening to
Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM
(37:42):
para normal podcast network, and I'll be right back. Welcome
(38:21):
back to the final segment of this edition of Strange Things,
Oh the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM paranormal podcast Network.
I am your host, Joshua P. Warren. And I received
a lot of emails every week, and I do my
best to read every single one of them, but it
(38:45):
would be impossible for me to reply to all of them.
Having said that, I do want to go get a bonafide,
credible reiki session to report back to you on. And
so if you really know you know the behind the
scenes on reiki and like what I should be looking for.
(39:08):
I live in Las Vegas. I would like to visit
somebody in the Las Vegas area. Email me and let
me know what I should be looking for to find
somebody credible so that I can have the best experience
possible and not go get like scammed somewhere and come
back and give it like a bad review. And also,
I mean, it is very weird. They do say in
(39:30):
some of these books and whatnot that there are people
who can practice reiki long distance. And that is where
a lot of people say, Okay, that ends my suspension
of disbelief. I can't go that far. But he goes
back to what I was saying about how we define
you know, legitimate science these days, because if you talk
(39:51):
to quantum physicists, they will tell you the craziest stuff
you've ever heard is real. You know, entanglement, non locality cats,
it's you know, Schrodinger's cat, I mean, Heisenberg uncertainty theory
in a principle, all that stuff. So hey, look, you
got you gotta have a very open mind and just
(40:13):
try things out. And look if I go and have
an experience and it doesn't work at least, oh no,
and I'll have something that I can talk about. So
shoot me an email. Go to Joshua Pwarren dot com.
Scroll down at the bottom and you will find my
email address. Here is an interesting email that I received
(40:33):
from a woman named Susan Bossman, and this is about
incident that happened in Germantown, Wisconsin in nineteen seventy nine.
She said, I was driving home in a blizzard at
night as I approached an intersection where a tavern, an
old log cabin, a church, and an old cemetery were located.
(40:56):
I was out in the country where three roads cross.
The snow was almost blinding, but I could see the
outline of a person waving his arms up and down frantically.
I thought the person was trying to warn me that
there was an accident at the intersection. If this was
the case, I needed to help out. As we were
in the middle of nowhere, I pulled my car quickly
(41:16):
over to the side and it slid into the ditch.
I was scared, but I knew I could run to
the accident scene to get some help. I hurried over
to the intersection in the deep deep snow to find
there was snow man, not even footprints, just silence and
(41:37):
the flake's falling snow. I was enraged as I felt
someone had played a senseless trick on me. I went
back to my car and was able to rock it
back and forth to get it out of the ditch.
A decade later, I attended a church in the same
intersection for the grand opening of a museum of local history,
(41:59):
and taped to the front door was a news article
from approximately five years earlier saying that motorists should be
aware of a ghost who plays with the traffic in
the intersection. For ten years, I had been mad, thinking
some mean person had played a trick on me that
winter's night. This ghost allegedly also ventures into a tavern
(42:23):
in the intersection and throws dishes around. After reading this article,
I was almost embarrassed that I'd been so angry at
the stranger, now knowing it was a ghost. Well, thank
you for that report, Susan. And hey, well your anger
was warranted because that's a mean ghost. The ghost should
(42:47):
not have done that to you. Makes you wonder, though,
is this a conscious ghost that's playing a trick or
is it an imprint of some kind. Some of the
most haunted places I've investigated are theaters where you have
live actors who have performed on stage in some cases
(43:09):
for decades or even centuries, and I think they get
up on stage and they create this. They imagine things
so vividly, they create some kind of a tulpa. And
when I was in high school, going back to how
much I did not enjoy much of my high school experience,
(43:33):
even though I mean I was I had a lot
of friends, I was well liked. I just hated a
feeling confined. And I've always had a problem with condescending
authority figures. But I liked opportunities to do creative things
and escape from it. And so I got involved with theater,
and I would do plays when I was in high school,
(43:56):
and I learned pretty early on that it was bad
luck to talk well, to say the word Macbeth in
a movie theater. I'm sure some of you know that.
Instead you say, oh, the Scottish play and the Scottish
(44:17):
play or the Bard's play. Those are what they call
them euphemisms. Words you would say instead of saying Macbeth.
You know, William Shakespeare's play Macbeth. And the reason is that,
according to theatrical superstition called the Scottish curse, speaking the
(44:39):
name Macbeth inside a theater other than has called for
in the script while rehearsing or performing will cause disaster.
And apparently this goes back to the fact that, well,
I don't know if you've ever seen Macbeth, but it's
Macbeth is about partly about a coven of witches, and
(45:03):
the traditional origin is said to be a curse that
was put on the play by a coven of witches
angry at Shakespeare for using a real spell in his play.
And one hypothesis for the origin of this superstition is
that Macbeth, being a popular play, was commonly put on
(45:24):
by theater as in financial trouble, or that the high
production cost of Macbeth put theaters in financial trouble, and
hence an association was made between productions of Macbeth and
theaters going out of business. That's interesting, isn't it. And
there are even places where this has taken so seriously
that when the name of the play is spoken in
a theater, tradition requires the person who spoke it has
(45:49):
to leave perform a cleansing ritual and then be invited
back in, and those rituals ward off the evil that
uttering the play's name is feared to bring on and
that's true. I've been in theater enough to know that
that's true. In some places, that's taken very seriously, and
(46:11):
I started, I don't know. I was thinking about that
idea the other day that it's how interesting is it
that Shakespeare, he's a mysterious guy anyway in history, that
he may have somehow observed or come across this real
witch's spell that he had adapted into his play, and
that was like such a betrayal to those witches that
(46:33):
they put this curse on him. But there's a lot
of superstition, like, for example, for good luck, you often
say to an actor or a similar performer, break a leg,
and that's supposed to bring on good luck. Now why
is that? You know? If you look it up and
you start digging into it, there's no one solid, good,
(46:58):
proven explanation. One person here, let's see, who was an
expert on superstitions, wrote this published it in nineteen twenty
one in a British magazine. The stage is perhaps the
most superstitious institution in England, after the race course. The
(47:19):
latter is so superstitious that to wish a man luck
on his way to a race is considered unlucky. Instead
of saying good luck, you should say something insulting, such as,
may you break your leg? So they were so concerned
possibly that saying something good would jinx it, that you
(47:41):
would say the opposite. But it may be more like this.
Here's another resource that I found that's also kind of interesting.
I've never heard of this before, and I doubt you
have either. One of the more common theories about why
you say break a leg refers to the early days
of the theater, when the actors were cue to perform.
(48:06):
There is a line called a leg line, and if actors,
it's like an imaginary line on the stage. If the
actors were not performing, they had to stay behind the
leg line, which also meant they would not get paid.
But if you were to tell the actor break a leg,
(48:26):
then you were wishing them an opportunity to step across
that line to perform and get paid. So the sentiment
remains the same today, the term means good luck, give
a good performance. That kind of makes more sense to me, actually,
that there is this boundary because you know, everything is
worked out in rehearsal, and if you get that chance
(48:48):
to break through, well, you break a leg. All right,
my friends, here it is Relax. Listen to the good
Fortune tone. That's it for this edition of the show.
(49:21):
Follow me at Joshua P. Warren, Plus visit Joshua Pwarren
dot com to sign up for my free e newsletter
to receive a free instant gift, and check out the
cool stuff in the Curiosity Shop. All at Joshuapwarren dot com.
I have a fun one lined up for you next time,
I promise, So please tell all your friends to subscribe
(49:44):
to this show and to always remember the Golden Rule.
Thank you for listening, Thank you for your interest and support.
Thank you for staying curious, and I will talk to
you again soon. You've been listening to Strange Things on
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
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