There are not any cowboy boots for sale here.

In Kelly Jackson’s shop, The Blue Eyed Witch, there is quiet, instrumental music humming in the background, scented oils giving free aromatherapy to everyone who walks inside and a corner displaying potions and healing crystals waiting to be sold.

Then there’s reiki, a Japanese healing practice that uses energy from the universe to heal physical, emotional and spiritual ailments.

“Pretty much the way [reiki] works is I’m a channel for the universal energy available to use. I channel the energy through the body and out my hands,” said Jackson, who offers 45-minute reiki sessions at her shop.

“So as I’m working on someone I place my hands on them and the healing energy goes to where it’s needed.”

After 19 years of working for Arizona State Parks, Jackson decided to change direction career direction and open shop in Tombstone.

“I was led to go on a different path,” Jackson said. “It was just time.”

That’s when she opened The Blue Eyed Witch.

“I noticed this place was for rent, and I looked into the price and it was perfect. And the feel of it was perfect. And it just all fell into place, so I think it was meant to be,” Jackson said.

Jackson said she first heard about reiki when she was reading about different healing techniques and energy work.

Jackson began doing reiki for clients six months ago, but she has been practicing reiki longer than that.

After one more class, which she is taking in April, Jackson will be a reiki master.

In the meantime, Jackson has been donating her time and reiki abilities to Arizona Greyhound. She helps dogs with physical or emotional injuries with their transition from the racing track to resident life.

“They’re brought up different,” Jackson said. “They’re brought up in a kennel and they’re trained to race and all that kind of stuff. So when they transition from that life they’ve had to a residence, there’s some insecurities—there’s some mental and emotional things. So I’ve been assisting them with that,” she said.

Reiki is not just for racing greyhounds looking to start a new life, though.

Jackson said reiki assists healing on physical, mental and spiritual levels for people, too. And she does not even have to diagnose where or what the problem is.

“I don’t diagnose,” Jackson said. “Even the person may not know what they need healed.”

Ann Baldwin, a research professor with the Department of Physiology at the University of Arizona’s School of Medicine, explained why reiki practitioners can skip the diagnosis step.

“The energy has its own intelligence,” Baldwin said. “It goes through you to where it’s needed.”

Jackson said that reiki is able to help heal emotional struggles people have been carrying around with them since they were five. She said even something as simple as the death of a goldfish—detrimental to a five-year-old—may need to be healed, and a reiki session can release some of those emotions.

“It does heal over time,” Jackson said.

Reiki sounds kind of like the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious of health care. But there is research that shows it is more valid than just a spoon full of sugar to help the medicine go down.  

Reiki is being used in at least 100 hospitals in the U.S. and Europe, Baldwin said.

In Tucson, the University Medical Center uses reiki on cancer patients, and the Tucson Medical Center gives reiki treatments to patients that are going to have surgery, Baldwin said.  

“They’re finding patients don’t need as much pain medication and get out of the hospital faster,” Baldwin added.

She said some research has shown reiki reduces inflammation and blood pressure in humans and it improves their immune system.

Gerry Woodard, a traveling, registered nurse who lives in Sierra Vista said although it sounds a bit like hocus pocus, reiki works.

“I know it works, hands down,” Woodard said. “No pun intended.”

Woodard met Jackson in Tombstone after she had already been introduced to reiki. She said the name of Jackson’s shop intrigued her, and after learning Jackson did reiki, she made an appointment.

“It’s just a good way to put yourself back again,” Woodard said. “I’ve seen such beautiful things come from it.”

Jackson said she thinks people are becoming more aware of reiki and other alternative healing methods because they are frustrated with Western health care.

“What I find is when they go to their doctor and they don’t get the results that they’re looking for, sometimes it kind of pushes them in a different direction,” Jackson said.

“Western medicine, a lot of times, treats a symptom. This type of work, and a lot of Eastern medicine…treats the whole body—your whole body on those three levels that I talked about: the spiritual, the emotional and the physical,” Jackson added.

She also uses crystal healing—a method that uses stones as a tool to help balance energy—which she integrates with the reiki.

“It’s all healing, it’s all helping people—assisting people with making positive changes in their lives,” Jackson said.

She said that each person who practices reiki tends to be a little different.

“What I think is for some reason a person is drawn to a certain practitioner for a certain reason, and that meeting is supposed to happen. So whatever technique the practitioner uses is actually the right one,” Jackson said.

According to Jackson, the clients that find her are about 50 percent locals and 50 percent tourists.

She said there is a significant amount of interest in Tombstone. In six months she has had nine people sign up for classes to learn how to do reiki.

Jackson said she thinks reiki fits in Tombstone, “It’s new age and old traditional stuff combined.”