Now, I watch the races on tv and read a few cycling blogs and mags but do not follow the peloton religiously so I was unaware of Hayden Roulsten and his condition. After watching stage 7 of the Tour of California and hearing that Hayden Roulston (Cervelo Test Team ) had come back after being told to stop racing due to a heart problem I had to find out what his condition was and how he made it back to the peloton? From what I could find Hayden was found to have a rare heart disease, arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia, affecting the muscle of the right ventricle which can cause sudden death. Roulston was suffering shortness of breath and an irregular heart beat.
Hayden had a random life altering meeting with a lady in a cafe who turned him to the practice of reiki, a Japanese hands-on healing process, and Roulston is now a devout follower, convinced it saved his career. “When I first tried it, I trained the next day and felt something different.” says Hayden. Having ignored doctors request he pursed the rieki treatment and last March took 4th in the individual pursuit at the world championships in Manchester and a double medal winner at the Beijing Olympics. Along with his change in diet and lifestyle Hayden believes that rieki was real key to his commback “Reiki is the the be-all and end-all for me … it’s pretty amazing stuff.” he told the New Zealand Sunday Star Times. Some bloggers I have found have been skeptical of the rieki and credit his comeback due to his cleaner living. Either way why not try all of the options at your disposal.
I know that from first hand experience with rieki, healing hands, meditation and other unknown techniques to me I would not have been nearly as successful in my abilities after my own heart attacks without the attention to the mind and body connection that I received at various times.* Side note: I plan on writing more about my experiences with mind body healing soon.
Congratulation Hayden on your success at the Amgen Tour of California and for the inspiration I get from your unwillingness to let the medical community dictate your lifestyle and medical options.
Photos L-R; Cervelo Test Team, Cycling News.com, nzherald.co.nz/
To read more about Hayden view these links;
Two years ago Hayden Roulston was a dead man riding.
Roulston wins battle of heart and mind.
3news.co.nz video interview
The Reiki Digest story on Hayden.
heartattackrider.com 
What an awe inspiring story! I don’t know why people cannot simply that things work even though we might not quite understand how.
Sadly mainstream science and medicine still struggles to understand healing in its fullest sense. It looks for evidence and empirical proof, but really, what does that mean? People look up to doctors and scientists, sometimes almost as if they were God, so these people have a duty to put aside their personal prejudices and learn to embrace their vision, creativity and imaginations. It’s also hard to ignore the fact that there’s a lot of money in the pharmaceutical industry, so a lot of protectionism goes on.
On the plus side, there is a growing army of scientists and doctors who are taking that quantum leap of faith, and approach this from a completely different perspective. They are open-minded, excited about what they discover, and visionary.
I’m not a scientist, so sometimes I feel at a disadvantage arguing what to me is right. I know that Reiki and other energy healing modalities do work, but this is something that I know intuitively and through the evidence of those I work with. Looking forward to the day when the scales fall from everyones’ eyes…………..