No Fancy Doctor's Tools; Just Two Hands and Ki
by Ted Braude
Detroit Free Press / Body & Mind - July 20, 1999 - www.freep.com

9:45P.M AND MY 12-YEAR-OLD daughter has a fever and a throbbing headache. She cries, " can you do some Ki?"

I sit on the bet, place my hands gently on her head, inhale deeply to the area about 2 inches below my navel and exhale with a gentle hissing sound. A warm, tingly feeling begins to flow through me and out of my hands.

I continue the practice with each breath. Ten minutes later, her headache is gone and she is able to go to sleep. Ki or chi in Chinese, has a 3000-year history in health and medicine. It is the basis of traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Ki healers have tended to people throughout the centuries, as demonstrated in the 1995 PBS series, "Bill Moyers: Healing and The Mind"

My experience with Ki is through my teacher, the Japanese master Katsumi Niikura Sensei, whom I've trained, with for nine years.

Nikura Sensei was brought to the United States in 1984 by the U.S Olympic Team to train American contenders in karate. An expert martial arts, his true calling is ministering to the ill using Ki and teaching it. He sees 30 people a day at his school in Sterling Heights and travels worldwide serving the sick and teaching Ki.

People with pain, rheumatoid arthritis, sinusitis, colitis, joint and muscular injuries, respiratory ailments, heart disease and cancer have been helped by Niikura Sensei.

John Wood Cock, a 48 years old man I refereed to my teacher, had injured the disk between the forth and fifth vertebrae of his spine in a rugby accident when he was 18. He said, As the years went by my neck became increasingly immobile. I went to many chiropractors and medical doctors. X-rays indicated a damaged disk."

A magnetic resonance image showed a collapsed disk and severe calcification pressing on the spinal column and squeezing the nerves to the right arm.

" The neurosurgeon offered to operate for about $30000 but I declined, deciding to live out my days in chronic pain. I saw no hope for relief," Woodcock said.

At their first meeting, Niikura Sensei had Woodcock lie down on the floor, "He placed his hand on my neck and made extraordinary whooshing sounds alternating with a kind of strange whistling at every intake of his breath," Woodcock said. "I felt mild warmth on my neck through his hands. The treatment was quite pleasant and unobtrusive.

" He continued, " the session lasted about five minutes. I did not know what make of it but agreed to come back twice a week for ten treatments. I did leave feeling that he knew what he was doing even if I did not."

I met with the man today, four months after finishing his visits with Niikura Sensei. "My neck is fine. It has mobility, there is no pain in my arm."

Niikura Sensei is a man of few words, especially in English. When asked " What is Ki ?"He smiles and says, " Ki is love."