Patient & Staff Testimonials

May 2013

• "On Sunday, we had a patient who was experience extreme anxiety, pain, and sleeping difficulty but did not want to resort to drugs.  I offered Integrative Therapy on her for 15 minutes.  She was just so amazed by the experience of the therapy.  It gave her total relaxation, relief from pain and anxiety, among other things." - Pilar (UCLA Trained Integrative Therapist)

May 2012

• "My two and a half year old daughter has been here at UCLA for the past two months. She was intubated the day we came because of respiratory distress. She was born with low muscle tone because of spinal stenosis; she has been under a lot of stressful conditions, was on many medications and having trouble sleeping. We were lucky enough to be introduced to Denise, an RN who also practices Reiki. I have always been a fan of alternative medicine but was not familiar with Reiki. I do know that it has a lot to do with the body's energy. Denise came in with some essential oils, soft music and began in bed movements with Lily. After a few minutes, Lily completely calmed down, her heart rate lowered and she was happy. The whole treatment was absolutely amazing. Ever since the first treatment, Lily has developed some sort of bond with Denise. Every time she walks by Lily calls her into the room. I think it has a lot to do with the positive energy exchange that was provided through Reiki. I completely support this idea of therapy and will continue to practice it with my family. It is an awesome addition to traditional medicine and should be used with every patient if possible."

• "A 2-day old baby girl went into respiratory failure and 12 hours after arriving in the NICU she was put on ECMO (like heart-lung bypass machine). By the time I met the mom, dad and the mom's sister, they were exhausted after holding vigil for 3 days at the baby's bedside. Once the baby was stable I was able to take each of them away to a private room for integrative therapy sessions.  Mom was first.  She told me that she couldn't sleep even though she was exhausted. She still had pain from the delivery, and her feet and ankles were very swollen.  We did very gentle movements of the feet then I supported her in a chair. Two minutes into the body scan, she was in deep sleep. She was amazed at how deeply she rested after such a short time and she felt calm and quiet.  Both dad and mom's sister went into deep relaxation during the session. They looked at each other afterwards and commented that they all looked very different; they said "the whole family is relaxed and calm, and that's what we want the baby to feel now because things are more under control today".  They felt that they now had the strength to be prepared for the worst."

• "I had a great experience working with a patient in the ER this week. She had a compound tib/fib fracture (it hadn't been surgically fixed yet), and hourly IV morphine wasn't touching the pain. I did a session with her, and afterwards she said that her pain was finally manageable and she begged for more Reiki. After the second session of Reiki, she slept soundly for two hours! Since she hadn't been relieved of pain enough to rest since her accident almost ten hours earlier, she was extremely grateful for the service. Take that, morphine! :)"
• "That really worked! The Reiki was so relaxing. I feel like that's the first thing somebody has done for me as a person since I came to the hospital."

January 2012

• "I was discharged after spending six days receiving continuous infusion chemotherapy for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. The care was excellent but as part of my treatment I was placed on high dose prednisone, a cardiac monitor, a PICC line, and exposed to frequent interruptions of sleep due to blood draws, ambient hospital noise, and other stimuli. I received integrative therapy techniques on two occasions, which demonstrated basic, effective methods of dealing with the stressors I was encountering as part of my hospital experience. I wish to express my gratitude for the help I received from the program and hope that the program's true value will be recognized and respected as an instrumental part of providing excellent healthcare at UCLA."