What is Reiki

Reiki is a simple but powerful method of aligning a person’s energies, to bring about healing on every level: physical, emotional/psychological, and spiritual. Reiki is able to heal every level of disease, no matter what you are suffering from.

It involves a set of received skills that assist people in deeply relaxing and connecting with the deepest parts of ourselves and the universe, and to access the healing energies that are found there. Generally, the receiver lies down, fully clothed, and the practitioner will gently rest her hands on the parts of the body that need healing. This is not always the part of the body that hurts.

Reiki is not massage, as the hands are only rested gently on the receiver. It is not one of the healing systems that involve the practitioner using her personal ki (energy) to heal. Rather, when the hands of a Reiki practitioner rest on the body of someone who is actively seeking healing, a high vibrational energy is manifested, which helps the receiver bring her body and spirit into the balance that she lost.

I speak of lost balance as the cause of unwellness. To understand Reiki, we need to understand why we became unwell in the first place.

Balance Lost

Disease (dis-ease) is not something to be afraid of. It is part of nature and is not unique either to humans, or the modern age. Dis-ease is the way our deepest selves call to us, saying that we have already lost our balance, and need to bring our attention to something so that we can find it again.

When we go through painful emotional experiences, we have the opportunity to fully live this experience, to go to the depths of pain it elicits in us, and as it passes, to let go. This is not what we are taught to do, however, and we keep a stiff upper lip during the experience; we deny its reality, or perhaps just run from the pain that we find unbearable. We cannot stand feeling bad, and do everything we can to feel good again.

By embracing the bad feeling it will pass and lift from us, but by hiding from it, or battling it, we give it power. We begin a lifelong struggle against pain and find that our bodies, emotions, minds and spirits, are riddled with it. Our energy systems are chock full of tensions, contractions, things we cannot face or do not want to let go of.

Over time, our deepest selves try to help us resolve these tensions in our energy system. Illness is our deep selves’ way of saying ‘something is wrong, slow down and pay attention’. A basic example is the sore throat we periodically get, perhaps the result of speaking too many confused words, not expressing the truth as we know it. We will keep getting a sore throat until we deal with the issue underneath. If we ignore it, or use pain killers to get rid of it, the problem is still there. (I am not saying pain killers are bad.) Over the years the sore throat might become tonsillitis, or a broken neck in a car accident. Our deep selves will not give up, and will keep on sending us messages until the very end.

Finding the way back

When we understand dis-ease, we can let go of some of our fear about being unwell. Instead of fear, we can bring our attention and our effort to resolving the issues that the unwellness is pointing at. There are many ways to do this, and Reiki is but one.

Experiencing Reiki for yourself will at first bring deep peace, and perhaps acceptance of the issues (physical/emotional) you are facing. From a place of acceptance, knotted energy will more readily free-up. Some people find themselves falling asleep during Reiki treatments, perhaps as they find a level of relaxation they haven’t felt for a long time. During the treatment you may feel tingling sensations or heat; this shows you that energy is starting to move about more freely. Your body and mind will relax deeply, although when you are ready, painful memories and experiences may rise to consciousness in order that you process them, and let go.

Over the course of treatments (or a course in learning Reiki), you are welcomed to explore your own self, and to give up things that you don’t need to carry any more – these things can be blocked emotional energies or thought patterns, or physical symptoms. The beauty of Reiki healing is not only in how healthy and good it feels, but in that it helps you face and resolve the root causes of your unwellness, so avoiding needing to feel unwell again.

I warmly welcome all who are interested to experience Reiki healing for themselves. All of these words are only pointers to an experience, and surely the experience is more beautiful and powerful than the words.