Mayo Clinic is expecting a huge turnout this weekend at the Mall of America.

Clinic staff plan a variety of alternative-medicine offerings today, some of which will be free.

Dr. Brent Bauer, Mayo Clinic Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program director, said it's an effort to learn what the public wants at the mall.

"There seems to be quite a bit of demand there," he said. "It's a nice place to kind of test, and push a little bit, the idea of how do we promote wellness."

Mayo has two storefronts at the mall, one a prototype retail store near the main-floor rotunda, next to the Build-a-Bear Workshop. The other, similar to a doctor's office, is kitty corner from the first.

The clinical site now includes integrative medicine, which is sometimes called alternative or complementary medicine. Acupuncture, massage therapy and counseling about supplements are included.

Mayo officials have divulged few details about plans for the mall site.Sports Medicine, Cardiology, Women's Health and Integrative Medicine also provide service at the mall.

"Everything we're offering there now, we already offer here on campus," Bauer said from Mayo in Rochester.But Mayo plans to branch out to services such as reiki, a Japanese technique of improving patients' energy through hand placement.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine says reiki is safe, though research into its effectiveness is ongoing.Patients should "not use reiki as a replacement for proven conventional care or to postpone seeing a doctor," the center says.

"We already know how to treat disease very well here," Bauer said. "How do we shift a little bit and also promote wellness equally as well as we treat disease?"

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Mayo Clinic's focus on integration on display at Mall of America