In last week’s blog post, I gave a little introduction to the idea of how brain waves, and their different speeds and vibrations, relate to healing and to reiki.

What inspired me to write these were some amazing articles that Frans posted on his website, and which were also posted on LinkedIn. The article on LinkedIn is a summarised version, easier to understand for those new to the material, I think, but missing some fun illustrations.

The article on LinkedIn

So, if you want to read the full article, the better version is here on the International House of Reiki website.

Judith Pennington does scientific research on brain waves. Her very interesting website can be found here. Using an EEG machine, an electroencephalograph (say that ten times fast!), she looked at healers to examine the brain wave frequences that I reviewed in the previous blog: beta, alpha, theta, delta and gamma waves.

In a series of studies in 2011 with modern reiki healers in New York City, she found that while giving reiki, they produced brainwave patterns that reflect higher states of awareness, patterns only seen in meditators, energy workers, spiritual seekers and highly creative people.

Biophysicist and inventor of the Mind Mirror (an EEG designed to study brain waves), Max Cade identified the Awakened Mind pattern and describes it as the shape of a human. He also said that the appearance of a “higher-state brainwave pattern such as the Evolved Mind stabilizes lower stats such as the Awakened Mind”. This says to me that the more work that I do on myself, the more awakening and evolution I achieve, creates building blocks, meaning I could get into the higher states more easily or frequently. Come to think of it, I think this would be an argument for reiki clients who feel that reiki helps them to have regular treatments; and that it should be easier for the body to tap into the same healing energy as previously rather than, say, starting from scratch.

In any case, when Pennington studied Frans in 2011, she saw something she’d never seen before: whether he was healing or telling a joke, his brain wave showed the slowest delta waves, with only the slightest display of theta, alpha and beta waves, a ‘yoga nidra state’, or a ‘psychic sleep’. So, it was energy from the deepest place of meditation, a dreamless sleep. When I looked at the picture of this, the ‘no mind’ state, it was so simple that I didn’t really pay attention the first time. It’s simply this pattern on the left!

Apparently, this pattern can be seen before someone enters transcendence and their brainwaves go into an open circular pattern, an ‘evolved mind’ (pictured above).

I don’t know if it’s useful but these days when meditating, I sometimes picture my mind simply turning into a circle, the brain waves stilling to this perfect form … In any case, Pennington sees this place as one where an exchange can take place with the ‘collective unconscious’ or ‘the field’.

Here’s a little video of Frans and Judith chatting about the experience:

Pennington concluded at the time:

[R]eal healing is occurring through Reiki. We know this because brain wave frequencies are not confined to the brain, but cascade via harmonic wave motion into every cell and atom in the body … The frequencies conducted by the healer jumpstart the “body electric” and instruct repair systems to do their repair work. In the process, light flowing into every level of one’s being carries intuitive insights into the mind, love into the heart, and illumination to the spirit.

Researchers have shown that an increase in the strength of brain waves, whether from the awakened and evolved mind patterns or gamma waves, increases the output of energy from the fingers and this energy ripples into infinity, with the consequence of healing the world. While this is a precious service to humanity, just as beautiful is the ability of energy work to heal and evolve the healer’s consciousness as much if not more than the person being healed.

Of course, no one needs to see brain wave patterns to know that healing has occurred. We can feel, experience and know this. And yet, it’s always good for the doubting ego to logically understand the process, so that it can unreservedly believe, trust and surrender to the divine Light which so deeply loves and heals us and all things.

In 2015, Judith returned for more brain testing on Frans. What she discovered is that Frans’s continued daily practices of meditation and healing had increased his theta waves, and increased his gamma waves: “increased amplitudes of gamma at 30-38 hertz and newly visible gamma amplitudes appearing at up to 64 hertz”. In her report, she describes this as evidence of neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to change itself (a topic which I’ve read about and has interested me over the last years). She also reports on Frans’s experience in 2011 of, what some people might call, enlightenment. I found this a fascinating story but perhaps we’ll explore it another time!

In her first reports, Pennington drew a distinction between the healing brainwaves that she found in modern reiki healers (and other healers) and Frans and a few of his other students from the International House of Reiki, where she found the former’s healing brainwaves were operating at the theta and alpha speeds (meditation, and presence in the ‘now’) as compared to IHR practitioners’ brainwaves which showed evidence of the slowest waves, beta, the deepest meditation, just before the entrance to the collective unconscious and gamma waves, the fastest waves, associated with universal love and guidance.

In a video made after the first experiment, Frans would describe the reason for this as a focus by traditional Japanese reiki therapy on spirituality and on daily practice to embody reiki in every moment of our lives. It is an internal practice to be as often as possible in an open, interconnected space, more than just meditating or being in the present (though these practises are good and admirable too), and cultivating oneness and a lack of separation. Instead of seeing healing between a reiki master and a client, we become one. We create a healing space recognising our connectedness, and tapping into the universe.

Judith described that she requested some healing from Frans, having just been through surgery and being in pain. She described afterwards being in no pain and her mind being “sharp, clear and flowing with higher awareness”. She also noted “The best thing about gamma is that once it is experienced for a sustained period of time, it can return.” This explains for me, in a way I didn’t quite understand before, why the effects of reiki often carry out for many days after the treatment (and can even create a permanent shift in energy and being).

Pennington finishes her 2015 article with advice for achieving your own neuroplasticity: meditating can help the brain evolve by developing your attention and eliminating negative thought patterns; then, she says, remember a time when you were happy, inspired and filled with bliss and creativity – this represents your awakened or evolved mind. Remembering and reliving these experiences can lead to being in touch with your gamma brainwaves and a “leap in your consciousness”.

Sounds good to me.

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment.

Clients come from all over Sydney to see me, and I’ve also had clients who are visiting Sydney from Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast come and see me while they’re here for business, conferences or meeting families. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

My teacher, Frans Stiene, posted some really interesting articles about an experiment that a researcher did on brain waves, in fact on his brain waves! That information has slowly been seeping into my brain! And I think it’s an interesting way of understanding how reiki works.

So, different wavelengths of our brain operate at different speeds, and are associated with different activities.

Delta waves are generated in deepest meditation and dreamless sleep.

Theta waves are also in deep meditation, but more a dreamlike state, a gateway to learning and memory and where we hold our ‘stuff’.

Alpha waves are found in quietly flowing thoughts. They are the thoughts in the present, in the now.

Beta waves are the normal brainwaves of our waking consciousness: mental activity and decisions; they can range from low beta waves (musing) to beta (engagement) to high beta (excitement and anxiety).

Gamma waves, the fastest, high-frequency waves, are the simultaneous processing of information from different brain areas, and researchers have discovered them active in higher states of consciousness like altruism and love.

A good summary of this (and where the above descriptions come from) is in this 2015 article from Share Reiki.

So, how does this apply to reiki? Well, the human body has electrical and magnetic energies that flow through it and around living tissues, creating a magnetic field around the body. Researcher Bernadette Doran describes that it was found that magnetic or energy fields can create healing. In this article, she says that:

Pulsing magnetic fields from the hands of Reiki therapists are in the same frequency ranges that are optimal for stimulating tissue repair. Biologically optimal levels of electromagnetic frequencies for stimulating human tissue repair are all in what’s called the extremely low frequency (ELF) range. They have been documented as 2 cycles per second (Hz) for nerve regeneration, 7 Hz for bone growth, 10 Hz for ligament repair, and 15 Hz for capillary formation.

She presents another theory that says the brain waves of energy therapists are synchronised with the earth’s magnetic field, about 7.83 Hz, which is just at the top of the Theta range, above (dreaming) and a smidge below Alpha (being in the ‘present’): ‘Some scientists call it the “tuning fork” of the planet, claiming that it generates natural healing properties when living things are entrained to its rhythm.’ Another researcher, Pennington, clarifies that while healing energy travels from 0 to 30 Hz, it tends to be concentrated at 7.8 Hz, where ‘peak meditation and healing take place in the human body, mind and spirit.’

Both Doran and Pennington describe research that says that different techniques used by reiki practitioners, such as intention, compassion and visualising symbols, can amplify the magnetic fields.

This leads me to think of what I tell my clients, “Reiki brings you what you need at the time”. So, some clients might have a need of physical healing, and the healing frequencies of reiki get targeted where they’re needed, for example, as said above, at the nerves, bones, ligaments or capillaries. Other clients, to address anxiety and worry, may need to be brought into the present moment, where there are no anxieties and worries, and so their bodies may tune into Alpha waves. And still others may need to release some issues from the sub-conscious and past, and may need stimulation with Theta waves.

In next week’s blog, I’ll explore what happened when researcher Judith Pennington tested Frans’s brainwaves!

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment.

Clients come from all over Sydney to see me, and I’ve also had clients who are visiting Sydney from Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast come and see me while they’re here for business, conferences or meeting families. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.