I closed my eyes and lay back on bed, my body covered in a warm blanket, as sound of some kind of ethnic music, maybe Chinese, drifted

across room. I felt very warm, comfortable and relaxed, I lay there waiting for massage to start, I waited, no hands on my body yet, no touching,

but something was moving inside me. Words cannot explain this feeling, I later came to know it as Reiki effect, it was as though something had

grabbed hold of me, and pulled me back toward centre (of myself). From then for next 30 minutes hands were placed on various parts of my

body, for several minutes at a time, hands felt very warm, even hot at times, but never uncomfortable, in fact quite opposite.

I am sure we all have those moments when we wish that time would stand still, that how we feel could last forever, but everything has an ending, and so

it was with this, reluctantly I had to open my eyes at end of session, and find my way back to real world, reality as we call it. After several

minutes silence we started to talk gently, Sue and I about what we both felt, how session went and also about other things she had found in me, but

that is another story, this story in about Reiki, and this was my first taste of it.

Sue Luffman was Reiki practitioner that day, and she was later to become my teacher and friend, I think if I could use one word to describe Sue it

would be sparkling, she is full of life, energy, wit and vitality. She also has that look, again this is difficult to describe in words, it’s a connection you

make with certain people, as though you have known them all your life, it can happen with strangers you pass in street, never to meet again, but it is

something that goes very deep, anyway I digress.. back to Reiki….

The History…

Once upon a time in Japan, a long time ago (about 150 years) there lived a Dr Mikao Usui, he was a very good doctor but was also a very curious man,

he wanted to know how he could do his job better. His curiosity led him down many paths, and was fascinated by Christian religion and stories of

Christ’s miracles, in particular ones where people were healed, he wanted to know where these powers came from, and if he could access them. He

also knew something of teachings of Buddha, and stories relating to him regarding healing, so he inquired of various sects as to what methods

they used to heal, but found them all to concentrate on mind and spirit and no methods or practices for healing body (apparently they had been

forgotten centuries ago) which being a Doctor was thing he wanted. Despite this he studied Zen Buddhism for seven years, in those years he dug

deeper and deeper, learned Chinese to read original Buddhist texts (although Buddha being an Indian Prince texts were written in Chinese).

From there he went on to learn Sanskrit (the root of all languages) to read texts from ancient Tibetan Buddhists, here he found what he thought to be

keys for learning healing techniques. After some meditation on this it came to him that he should go to a holy mountain (Kuri Yama, near Kyoto) and

meditate for 21 days, so this he did, taking with him 21 stones to count days off. Each day he awoke before sun, threw a stone away, and

meditated and fasted for rest of day, and each day nothing happened, no revelation came to him. On morning of 21st day, as he cast

away his last stone, a light grew in sky, and four coloured bubbles came to him, each one containing a Sanskrit character. To cut a long story short

he found that using these characters greatly enhanced his healing powers, but after a while only concentrating on healing body he had another

revelation that told him to heal both spirit and mind, and gave him five principals of Reiki, and here they are…

Malaria remains one of world's most intransigent diseases, causing suffering and posing serious threats to development in some of world's poorest countries. Transmitted through bite of a female mosquito (Anopheles stephensi), it affects more than 300 million people and causes more than one million deaths each year, 90 percent of which occur in Africa. According to World Health Organisation (WHO), most of these deaths are among children under age of five. Pregnant women are also especially vulnerable to this disease, which is increasingly resistant to drugs used to treat it. Malaria is characterised by WHO as 'both a disease of poverty and a cause of poverty'. As no effective vaccination been developed and none is on horizon, situation seems to hold little promise for those whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by disease.

Now progress in field of genetics has led scientists from Imperial College, London, to map means by which it could be eradicated - not by treatment but by prevention. Genetically modified mosquitoes that do not transmit malaria were first bred under laboratory conditions three years ago. The hope has been that such a strain, if released into wild, would become absorbed into native population and spread gene that stops transmission of malaria parasite, thus transforming insects from 'disease carriers to disease fighters.'

Unfortunately this hope has so far been thwarted. It seems that transgenic mosquitoes do not have clout to dominate over their wild relatives. On contrary, they quickly die out if they breed freely with their unmodified counterparts. The Imperial College Study, in which transgenic mosquitoes were mated with unmodified insects showed that beneficial gene was lost over course of between 4 and 16 generations. Given short life-cycle of insects, this represents only a very slight time span. Infinite numbers of mosquitoes would therefore need to be released in a particular place to give them a hope of replacing wild, parasite-riddled varieties - meaning that scale and cost of such an activity would probably be prohibitive.