Reiki (pronounced ‘ray – key’) is a spiritual practice developed by Usui Mikao in Japan in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is a way to live a life of contentment and gratitude, and to work to be free of anger and worry. It includes meditation, mantras (chanting) and mindfulness. Part of reiki is hands-on healing, although most people have come to understand reiki as only the healing part of the spiritual practice.
Reiki healing can be understood in many ways. My teacher, Frans Stiene, describes it as uncovering a client’s great, bright light: your positive energy that is your true self that may have been covered up by day-to-day worries and stress, or even forgotten. Being in touch with your true self can be healing, calming and affirming, and can remind of of your direction.
I have come to think of reiki as a healing practice that is similar to others, or at least has the same intent.
Research has found that our brainwaves operate at different frequencies and that some of those wavelengths, or frequencies, or vibrations, are more healing than others.
So, at the slowest frequency, Delta waves, the brainwaves can be associated with meditation, healing and regeneration. Theta waves, also slow are similar but also associated with dreams and intuition. Alpha waves are the present moment, the resting state of the brain.
We spend most of our waking consciousness in Beta waves, solving problems and making judgements, possibly fretting about something that we did in the past, or worrying about what might happen in the future. It’s not that this way of being is not necessary, but if this is where we spend most of our time, it’s also probably not very healing.
Finally, gamma brainwaves, the highest frequency, are associated with the higher virtues of altruism and connecting with love and the universal, a universal consciousness.
I believe that in the treatments I give to my clients, I tune into healing energies and frequencies, the same ones that we seek in meditation, yoga, qi qong, tai chi and even acupuncture and other healing and energetic practices. I do this from my years of studying, giving treatments, meditating and chanting. Being in this same healing, vibrational space, a client can tune into the same healing energies and then …
Well, it’s different for everyone. Frans uses another metaphor, that of a thermos, to say that reiki brings you what you need at the time, just as a thermos will keep a hot liquid hot, and a cold liquid cold. So, some clients just need allow themselves to be quiet, in order to achieve a greater calm and peace, while others might be inspired towards greater understanding of what they are going through from being in a dreamlike state. With the mind-body connection, some clients will feel physical sensations and healing, or different kinds of energy, sometimes a release, or sometimes feeling more energetic and focused.
So, if you’ve stayed with me all the way through this explanation, you might have gathered that reiki is different things to different people with different effects. You could think of it as something as simple as sort of like a massage but with energy instead or as profound as getting in touch with your true self. Sometimes, it’s not necessary to be precise!
Many people imagine a reiki healing of energy being transferred from me to a client (and therefore that it must be tiring). This isn’t the case. My role is to facilitate a healing, quiet place for your body’s natural intelligence to do what it needs to do.
Many clients also think that reiki is about removing blocks or getting rid of bad energy. I’ve come to have a different view of reiki than some. I don’t think it’s useful to believe in bad energy or energy blocks. We have tangible and understandable reasons why we might feel bad – for example, stress in our jobs or relationships, or conflict with family, or an accident or a health issue. I don’t think it’s useful to think of these as ‘blocks’ or ‘imbalances’ or that we innately have bad energy or luck. So, I hope that reiki can provide a space for calm or reflection where a client might be able to begin to tackle those issues in a practical way, rather than magically solving a set of problems.
To learn a little more about the history of reiki, visit here.
To read the reiki precepts, visit here.
To learn about my reiki teachers, visit here.
Finally, there’s lot more information about reiki, reiki treatments and Reiki Surry Hills here in my blog posts, which I try to write regularly.