What is slapping therapy? New self-healing philosophy said to release toxins from blood

An alternative medicine practitioner has been convicted of murdering a 71-year-old woman after she stopped taking her insulin in the hope that a tapping therapy would “cure her completely”.

Xiao Hongchi, 61, was introduced as “Doctor Xiao” during a workshop programme for the “Paida-Lajin Therapy”, which involves repeatedly slapping patients and slapping the patient themselves.

Following a trial at Winchester Crown Court, the 61-year-old was found guilty on Friday of the gross negligence manslaughter of Daniel Carr Gomm, 71, who died after attending an event at Cleeve House, Scene, Wiltshire, in October 2016.

The court previously heard how Xiao, from Cloudbreak, California, said “well done” when Kah Gom, from Lewes, East Sussex, told the group she had stopped taking insulin during the week-long retreat. Prosecutors had alleged Xiao failed to seek medical help when Kah Gom became seriously ill.

Teresa Hayes, a chef at the retreat, told jurors she heard “the sounds of slapping, crying, screaming and just very loud, roaring sounds of pain” when she passed Carr-Gomm’s room hours before her death on Oct. 20. “The sounds of the slapping sounded identical to the Paida slapping technique that participants had been using throughout the day,” she said.

What is SLAP Therapy?

Paida Razim is described as a self-healing philosophy in which it is believed that by hitting or repeatedly hitting oneself, the patient flushes toxins from the blood.

The therapy has its roots in traditional Chinese medicine, but critics say it has no scientific basis. Paida involves tapping or tapping the skin (called “pai” in Chinese), while rajin involves stretching the muscles in various positions.

Video of Xiao’s workshops in Malaysia shows participants hitting different parts of the body, particularly joints and heads, hard enough to cause redness and bruising.

Many of the participants slap themselves with such force that the sound can be heard briefly in the clip’s audio, after which some perform various stretches while lying on a table or on the floor.

Meanwhile, the other participants are brought onto the stage where Xiao addresses the audience and is slapped by the other participants present.

Xiao is a Chinese-American who runs the California-based Pailala Institute and hosts workshops around the world.

According to its website, the Paylala Institute is a non-profit organisation run by a team of unpaid volunteers with the aim of promoting and supporting Xiao’s Payda Razin self-healing method.

“Our mission is to awaken the innate ability in each of us to heal ourselves, making the world a healthier place by reducing healthcare costs and the potential side effects associated with them,” he adds.

Xiao has also written a book about the therapy, which includes illustrations showing how to administer the therapy. His first book was: Medical World: Paida Razin’s self-healing methodsThe publication of The Psychology in 2009 made Xiao a household name and his workshops have become popular throughout China, as well as in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore, and he has also held clinics in India, the United States and Germany.

But Xiao has faced harsh criticism from experts who have rejected his claims that Paida Lajing can cure a wide range of conditions, including geriatric diseases, physical pain, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, paralysis, kidney failure and even cancer and autism.

Detoxification and Lai Jin are linked to a traditional Chinese medical concept called “Sha,” the idea that blood can become “poisoned” by toxins and therefore needs to be expelled from the body.

Proponents of the therapy believe that paida and lajin can improve blood circulation and draw out “sha,” the appearance of which, according to Xiao’s theory, is a sign of “latent illness.”

But critics say slapping therapy results in little more than burst blood vessels and bruised skin.

Xiao has repeatedly spoken about “slap therapy” in interviews and videos posted online.

In a radio interview with Australian broadcaster ABC in 2014, he claimed he was not a “guru”. “I’m not a doctor or a healer. I just tell people how to do it. You learn it and you practice it,” he said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The court heard that the day before Mrs Kerr-Gomm’s death, others present had interpreted her condition as a “healing crisis” – a term used by the defendant to describe the process by which paida radzin starts to work.

Duncan Atkinson KC, prosecuting, told the jury that Xiao had written a book about paida radzin in which he said “doctors are being brainwashed by pharmaceutical companies to act as salesmen for their medicines”.

In the book “I Take Control of My Health! Yidao Paida and Rajin Self-Healing,” he states that the treatment should be “safer and more reliable than existing treatments, without the risk of addiction or side effects,” and that it “should be effective for almost any disease.”