Stacy Davidoff, like many Reiki masters, refuses to call herself a healer. She prefers the term ‘healing facilitator.’

To some it may sound like New Agey semantics. But for Davidoff and her clients, the relationship between Reiki master and the person seeking treatment is vital to the healing process.

Key to the master/patient dynamic, according to Davidoff, is that patients be empowered to heal themselves.

Her job, then, as she views it, is to help her clients channel the universal healing energy alive in the atmosphere and to absorb it back into their bodies.

“It’s out there,” said Davidoff. “When you’re sick or depressed or out of sorts in any way, your chi is out of balance. The practitioner is here to ensure that [the client’s] own chi gets back into alignment. It allows them to self heal.”

Reiki is an ancient Japanese method that, similar to other Eastern healing treatments, has grown popular among active baby boomers whose chronic pain has outlasted doctors’ visits, physical therapy and many doses of over-the-counter and prescription pain killers.

On a recent morning in her comfortable basement office in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, Dadivoff lit several candles, adjusted the soft, creamy lighting and selected a CD of soothing Indian yoga ragas.

Then, after pulling a blanket snugly across the chest of a client lying face up on a massage table, she meditated for a moment, hands folded triangular, seemingly in prayer. 

For the next two hours she slowly and deliberately moved about the table, shifting the position of her hands from one pressure point to the next--the temples, the sternum, the pelvis, the knees, etc… -- channeling healing energy from the atmosphere into her client.

Not a word was spoken.

Davidoff’s barefoot but otherwise fully-clothed client, Maura Durkin, a 35-year-old pharmaceutical sales representative, said she turned to Reiki two years ago after tearing ligaments in her pelvis during an intense yoga session.

Trips to the doctor proved unsatisfactory, especially after one told her she’d have to give up yoga.

“I tried everything but they couldn’t help me any more,” she said. Acupuncture and Reiki have offered successful long-term relief.

While most of the pain has subsided from the original injury, Durkin said she continues to see Davidoff to relieve stress and provide balance to all aspects of her life.

“She’s been integral to me in my recovery from a physical injury, but I mostly see Stacy now when I need to center myself,” she said.

After her visits -- $130 for a full two-hours, or $85 an hour – Durkin said she is more at peace with herself and better able to manager her life.

Davidoff said that while mainstream U.S. medical authorities have yet to recognize Reiki and other methods of energy healing, many health care providers--nurses, for instance – seek her out to help their patients.

Cancer patients recovering from the powerful adverse side effects of chemotherapy and other invasive treatments are especially responsive, she said. Consequently she makes frequent visits to the oncology wards of local hospitals.

A goal of Davidoff’s and other practitioners of alternative – or complementary – forms of treatment is for these methods to be recognized by U.S. insurance companies so they can one day reach a broader market. As it stands, some insurance companies cover acupuncture and chiropractor sessions, but not Reiki.

“It would be beneficial for everyone,” she said.