A group of 9 skeptics visited the Mind Body Spirit fair (opens new window) in Taita, Wellington yesterday. We had a good time, and saw lots of weird and wonderful things on offer.

I was treated with some Reiki (and a picture of me now features (opens new window) on the Reiki NZ Inc Facebook page), and a new therapy called the Okano Alignment Technique. Many bad claims were made, and at an upcoming meeting we will be submitting Advertising Standards Authority complaints about some of the worse claims we saw.

Sue Nicholson, TV psychic, was at the fair, but I don't think she's forgiven me for her appearance at the 2013 NZ Skeptics conference so I decided not to go up and say hello to her.

One skeptic paid $20 for a 20 minute psychic reading, but was given a refund when the psychic failed to connect properly and was unable to give a good reading.

Interestingly, the more mainstream alternative health practitioners were absent from this fair - acupuncturists, chiropractors and homeopaths were nowhere to be seen. The kinds of stalls we saw were offering:

• Akashic Records (past lives)
• Reflexology (healing foot massages)
• Passive EMF treatments
• Psychic readings (including reading of animals)
• Purple rice pills
• Aura drawings
• Crystal healing