Twenty-year-old Marine Cpl. John, not his real name, fought in Ramadi, Iraq, and came back with wounds and post-traumatic stress. He is currently receiving treatment at Balboa Naval Hospital.
John said the one thing he looks forward to is Thursday. That’s when volunteers from the Tibetan Healing Center in Hillcrest offer Reiki, a form of eastern healing.
“It’s part of hospital life now. Everyone knows the Reiki ladies will be down in the lounge,” he said.
Everyone knows, but not everyone is eager to try the mysterious form of energy healing from the East. It was brought to the West 100 years ago by a Japanese doctor and is now finding acceptance in medical settings, where practitioners are taught to place their hands on energy centers, or chakras, on the receiver’s body. According to practitioners, universal healing energy is transmitted.
“At first you’re skeptical, but I thought, ‘What the heck, give it a shot,'” John said. “When you have lost so much in traumatic and life-changing events, it gives you peace of mind to relax and realize things are not going to be so difficult.”
Bob, 27, served in emergency relief during the tsunami in Thailand in January 2005. He worked on helicopters that were delivering aid to disaster victims.
“They were breaking down regularly and I was working without suits, gloves and respirators. I didn’t think twice about it, because I thought I was doing something good,” he said.
Bob came back with ailments that doctors have been unable to diagnose, possibly because of chemical exposure ” but also with back and lower leg problems and post-traumatic stress. He hasn’t been able to work for two years.
“With my Western medicine, I am on 15 meds a day, not including my pain meds, and I’ve kind of given up on them,” he said, adding that the Reiki sessions make him relax. “They give me some hope of getting relief after two years of chronic depression and pain.”
“When we first came here and started to do the Reiki, every single one of them immediately fell asleep. Most hadn’t slept in days. Many could sleep and many were able to recall their trauma, which they had been holding inside,” said Sondra Buschmann, founder of the Tibetan Healing Center, the first of its kind in the United States.
She came from a 30-year career as a financial planner, stockbroker and insurance expert. When a virus attacked her muscles in 1996, mainstream medicine didn’t help, and she couldn’t function.
Since 2000, their center has treated people up and down the coast of California, and the doctor is conducting research in multiple sclerosis and cancer.
“I tried for two years through different channels to offer my help to the men and women coming back from Iraq,” she said. Finally, a major at Balboa Naval Hospital invited her in.
Helping out are other San Diegans, including a professional musician and a psychologist. WalMart donated massage tables for the treatments.
Buschmann said that during World War II, while she was a young child, her father would invite wounded servicemen to their home in Berkeley on weekends.
“I figured it’s what I can do and what I would want my son to have if he were injured. What we see is chronic pain, anxiety, depression and anger, and the Reiki gives [the service men and women] a chance to reach a state of relaxation.”
“Those are the gateway emotions for substance abuse and psychiatric disorders,” new volunteer Alex Morales said. “I think in the military setting they come forward with what treatment they can ” a Band-Aid, a pill, medical intervention. What they need to address is the wounded spirit.”
Morales has just signed up to help. He is an occupational therapist “” but personally he knows a lot about trauma. Now 42 years old, he was the first victim of the notorious Unabomber.
He was 13 years old in 1977 when he walked out of a movie theatre in San Francisco and reached out to touch what looked like a Christmas present on the sidewalk.
It was a bomb. Morales lost his left arm and the sight in his right eye. The sight in his left eye was saved after 23 operations.
“I’m here to let them know it’s OK just to be,” Morales said.
And that the inner wounds need to be healed.
“Some people thought the Reiki was weird, crazy, voodoo. It makes me feel better. That doesn’t happen with anything else,” said Don, 20, who enlisted in the Navy a year ago and then discovered he had bone cancer.
“We’re not necessarily curing them, but we’re helping them feel relief and feel that somebody cares,” Buschmann said.

For more information, visit www.tibetanacademy.org.