Whilst there is currently a “trend” towards alternative medicine, I believe it’s because people, particularly women, have found a boundary of Western medicine where care seems to fail them. Reiki is probably one of the most disdained by skeptics as it involves gentle hovering or touching of a healer’s hands to subtly shift energy in the body.
An extremely brief history of reiki:
Theories of reiki had been around for thousands of years, but a Japanese buddhist monk named Dr. Mikao Usui is widely acknowledged as the founding father of modern reiki. Reiki steadily arose to prominence in Japan in the early 1900’s. Matiji Kawakami wrote one of the first books on reiki healing called “Reiki Ryoho to Sono Koka” (or “Reiki Healing and Its Effects”). For Dr. Usui, reiki was a path to finding your true self: he adjusted his teachings and practice to suit each individual student. Reiki spread to the West with the help of Mrs Hawayo Takata. Mrs Takata was a Hawaiian woman of Japanese descent. After the death of her husband and sister, she became extremely ill and she traveled to Japan in order to find the best doctor to perform an operation on her. Once in Japan, Mrs Takata began having regular reiki treatments and her health improved. She eventually trained as a healer herself and moved back to Hawaii where she started treating and training others until her death in the 1980s.
What do you experience:
You’re supposed to feel completely calm mentally throughout the session, with your physical body being very relaxed. I will fully admit that between my solar plexus and throat, I feel asleep. This is normal. Your practitioner will keep working. Your practitioner might opt for light touch or no touch (or touch just at the head and feet). I went through light touch at the head and feet. What you feel when contact is made is not a barometer of how effective treatment is proving to be. Some people say they feel heat, or a tingly sensation. Others feel nothing at all. I didn’t experience much when my practitioner touched my feet, but I felt a lot of heat at the crown of my head later. But that’s just me. Everyone will be different.
I also experienced what I can only call a very vivid wakeful dream. I had extremely detailed visions of what seemed to be an argument that a woman was having with her partner. She was a complete stranger to me. (It was so detailed that as I was coming round I had assumed that I was somehow just hearing a fight that was happening in the office next door, and then it dawned on me that there was no way I’d be seeing it visually as well.) And that’s one of the fascinating things about reiki in my experience, it can unlock your subconscious and help you confront worries, fears and other self-discoveries.
After my session I felt very present in my body physically, but a bit woozy in the head. Personally, I’d advise not having anything planned for after your session because if my experience is anything like yours, I came home, made some quick notes of how I felt and then promptly fell asleep. (This was at about 3pm as well.) Some people find it as relaxing as a massage, so that might be something to keep in mind if you are booking a session.
Some people claim that people only feel benefits of reiki because of the placebo effect. But what really is the placebo effect? It isn’t really about trickery, deception and nothingness. “What’s going on in the patient’s [mind] is that the rituals of medicine, the symbols of medicine, and a warm, empathetic doctor (in the context of a clinical encounter) activate neurotransmitters in the brain, activates specific quantifiable and relevant brain regions that release these neurotransmitters.” [Source] So its potential placebo effect is actually its psychological power. (The same argument is often applied to acupuncture treatment as well.)
Sessions tend to be fairly long. From all my research 60-90 minutes seems to be about the average. I’d advise wearing comfortable, loose clothing. Whilst I’d never recommend ignoring doctor’s orders and skipping lifesaving treatments and surgeries, I think reiki has the potentially to be a beneficial complementary medicine, in my own personal experience.
Would you ever go for a reiki treatment session?
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