Healing hands at work for Villa Maria residents
The introduction of complementary therapy, Reiki, at Villa Maria’s O’Neill residential aged care facility seems to be helping ease the anxiety and stress felt by people with dementia.
Two weeks ago with a group of six residents, Reiki practitioner, Annemiek van de Kamp, started the hour-long sessions that help with stress relief and relaxation, as well as promoting general healing and wellbeing.
“The aim is to relieve pain and anxiety and to enhance residents’ wellbeing as much as we can. I’m not curing, but promoting wellbeing and happiness. Residents really enjoy the social interaction and feeling connected,” she says.
Some of the residents have severe dementia and are non-verbal, accessing ‘universal energy’, she places her hands upon the residents in a quiet, gentle and passive manner, changing positions frequently, to cover the whole body.
Mrs van de Kamp said the results were often “quite remarkable”.
“While I have just started at O’Neill, there is an older man with dementia at an aged care facility I practice at who used to be very emotional. I gave him a couple of treatments and after the first one his wife said he looked different and staff reported that he hadn’t cried for five days. Now he knows I’m coming and as soon as I start the treatment we connect and he is smiling and happy.”
While presently known as a ‘complementary therapy’, Reiki is fully accredited in New South Wales and Ms van de Kamp, a member of Reiki Australia, said it was close to becoming accredited in Victoria too. It is often used with cancer and leukaemia patients to help with pain relief, fatigue, nausea and breathing.
“I feel very strongly about the benefits of Reiki, I’ve seen miracles happen, I really have,” Mrs van de Kamp said.
Villa Maria residential services general manager, Carolyn McColl, said she looked forward to seeing positive outcomes for some of O’Neill’s 42 residents through the therapy.
“We are always open to any types of safe and gentle therapies which can improve the quality of life of our residents in each of our three aged care facilities,” Ms McColl said.
