The Reiki Experiment

I first heard about Reiki many years ago and dismissed it as a bunch of hocus-pocus.  As I got older, there was something so mysterious about the whole thing that I decided to become a certified practitioner.  I wanted to experience the full gamut of how it worked and if it worked. Once I began doing this, it changed me forever.

Let me briefly share what Reiki is.  It’s pronounced ray-key. It is a subtle form of energy healing using a universally available spiritually guided life force energy. Reiki practitioners channel Reiki healing energy through their hands, practitioners are not the source of the Reiki energy. It is said the energy has its own innate wisdom and finding an experienced practitioner is paramount to anyone who wishes to receive a treatment.

The ability to channel and use the Reiki energy is passed on by means of an attunement process from teacher to student and should not be learned on the Internet. It must be taught in person, hands on, with many hours of training.   Currently, there are eight hundred hospitals in the United States that use some form of Reiki for patients. There is a link at the bottom of the page to read more about it and a PDF with a list of the hospitals that use it.

There was always a great deal of skepticism for me about people’s energy or energy healing. What does it mean?  I could get into all the metaphysical explanations, but then it becomes someone else’s words being regurgitated. Look up ‘Human Energy Field’ on the Internet and you will find that most information is redundant as if it just got passed around over and over and over.

Here’s my take on it.  In my own words.

I began doing Reiki on clients several years ago.  What happened astonished me and I learned more than I ever thought possible about the human condition. When people ask me about Reiki, I always explain it’s like getting a soul massage.  A treatment is so incredibly relaxing, that most of the time; I had to wake people up after the session.

Everyone has a distinct (invisible) field around him or her. Some may call it the soul. It’s there, I promise.  It houses the essence of you and I assure you it carries experiences, thoughts, emotion and the Divinity that we all possess.  It’s you without your body.  It’s where the pure version of you lives.  Yet, it intertwines with your physical body.  To someone who can sense or feel this, it’s like reading your story.  It’s the most sacred part of you-- the place where no illness exists, there is no judgment on who you think you are, social status doesn’t count, bank accounts don’t matter and difficulty doesn’t occur.

Once a session began, I started picking up all kinds of things about people.  I could go on and on about how I knew someone was desperately wanting a child by putting my hands over her womb, how someone was carrying around shame and guilt about being abused by a spouse or even one woman who was having great confusion about her sexuality. This message is bigger than that. I had tremendous gratitude that all this occurred at the right time in my life.  By this point, I had already learned to have a reverence for others experiences and not label or judge them through my own filter. 

So many people would cry afterwards that I began to expect it. It was a relief cry, or perhaps a release cry. It was both beautiful and profound to witness. For many, it was the realization they had just experienced an intense relaxation they had never felt before. We are all so oblivious of how much we actually carry around.  Just living daily life can stockpile stress, so much so that we don’t acknowledge it or take the time to release it. It feels normal.  It didn’t take long for me to conclude that Reiki energy washes through you and over you and pulls at pieces normally too small or quiet to notice, it releases those little things that you carry around and ignore without saying a word.

Most of the time, I would feel an intense almost indescribable feeling after working with someone. It was like a yearning for people to see themselves as I saw them. I was given the privilege of seeing the true inner beauty that people had; their Divinity, in the purest sense. Experiences don’t define your true essence.  They are something that is presented in your life to give you choices.  You work with them or against them.  You become so attached to them, they become your identity-- it’s a lie you tell yourself. You own and carry them in either a negative way or a positive way.  They merely exist for no other reason than for you to choose to grow. Underneath all of that…those experiences… is an exquisitely perfect, beautiful human being.  I know.  I see it.  I believe it.

http://rehab.ucla.edu/workfiles/Urban%20Zen/Research%20Articles/Reiki_Really_Works-A_Groundbreaking_Scientific_Study.pdf