All About Reiki
What is Reiki?
Reiki is a form of hands-on healing that promotes stress reduction and relaxation and helps create balance and healing. Reiki is an ancient Japanese technique that treats the person as a whole, including the body, mind, emotions and spirit. Reiki assists the body in its efforts to maintain homeostasis (or the body's natural ability to heal itself), resulting in deep relaxation, a feeling of well-being and a shift toward physical health.
Reiki can be used to support the healing process of any illness or emotional problem and to increase general wellness. A treatment feels like a wonderful warming radiance that flows through and around you. It is a safe, painless, non-invasive practice that doesn't interfere with any medical treatment and can be combined with other healing techniques and/or enhances medical procedures and treatments.
Reiki is a simple, natural and safe method of spiritual healing and self-improvement that everyone can use. Reiki is delivered via a simple hands-on method that can be learned by anyone. Once you learn the technique, you can use it on yourself and others. Its use is not dependent on one's intellectual capacity or spiritual development; it has been successfully taught to thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds. It is an amazingly simple technique to learn.
While Reiki is spiritual in nature, it is not a religion. It holds no doctrine or creed and there is nothing you must believe in order to learn and use it.
What is a Reiki Treatment Like?
During your Reiki session, you will relax on a massage table in a dimly lit space, sound tracked by soft music as you receive Aromatherapy with organic essential oils. You will remain fully dressed during the session, as the Reiki Practitioner will apply gentle touch with the aim of directing Healing Energy to different parts of your body. You will also receive a combination of Crystal Healing & Bowl Vibration Sound Therapy.
After the treatment, you will have the chance to share your experience as well as discuss general wellness approaches. At the end of your Reiki session, you should feel relaxed, soothed, and rejuvenated.
When receiving Reiki, the recipient lies fully clothed on a treatment table while the practitioner rests his/her hands on a series of places: on the head, both sides of torso, and the limbs as needed. A full treatment is typically 60 minutes. There are twelve hand positions, and about five minutes is spent in each one but the treatment protocol is very flexible and can be abbreviated to fit any care setting, such as chemotherapy or surgery. In acute situations, even a few minutes of Reiki can be supportive to patients.
During a treatment, a minimum of talking or conversation is desirable. Reiki can also be modified to be performed while the patient is seated, lying in bed or standing. It can even be practiced on unconscious recipients in a hospital. The benefits of Reiki treatment can be dramatic when used on patients awaiting emergency medical treatment. Reiki is sometimes administered to people who are passing away, with the goal of instilling a sense of peace.
How Reiki Works?
Life force flows within the physical body though the chakras or energy centers. Life force nourishes the organs and cells of the body, supporting them in their vital functions. When this flow of life force is disrupted, it causes diminished function in one or more of the organs and tissues of the physical body.
The life force is responsive to thoughts and feelings. It becomes disrupted when we accept, either consciously or unconsciously, negative thoughts or feelings about ourselves. These negative thoughts and feelings attach themselves to the energy field and cause a disruption in the flow of life force. This diminishes the vital function of the organs and cells of the physical body.
Also, childhood traumas, cultural conditioning, limited belief systems, restrictive or exhausting habits, and physical and emotional injuries contribute to chakra blockage causing disharmony on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels.
Difficulties abound in life, and for each one, we develop a coping strategy. When difficulties persist, these coping strategies become patterns, anchored in the body and psyche as defense structures. Eventually these defenses create holding patterns in our musculature that restrict the free flow of energy, even when real threats cease to exist.
Reiki heals by flowing through the affected parts of the energy field and charging them with positive energy. It raises the vibratory level of the energy field in and around the physical body where the negative thoughts and feelings are attached. This causes the negative energy to break apart and fall away. In doing so, Reiki clears, straightens and heals the energy pathways, thus allowing the life force to flow in a healthy and natural way, restoring the body, mind and emotions to wholeness.
Benefits of Reiki
Each person's path of healing and experience is unique, and the benefits that people attribute to their Reiki treatment are varied. Besides the immediate feeling of profound relaxation, the following benefits are commonly reported:
improvements in sleep and digestion
effective pain management
reduction of side effects of medications
more comfortable breathing
clearer thinking
support in recovery from addictions
enhancement of self-esteem
greater self-acceptance and self-awareness
increased satisfaction in relationships
sense of spiritual connectedness
Reiki and Medicine
The use of Reiki therapy in hospitals is on the increase. The general consensus on what the medical teams and patients are reporting about Reiki is very significant, namely that Reiki therapy is having very beneficial effects on the health of patients.
Reiki is offered to patients in hospitals, community centers and at the leading cancer treatment facilities such as:
Sharp Memorial Hospital Inpatient Cancer Support Services, San Diego, California
Citrus Valley Medical Center Cancer Resource Center, Covina, California
Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, Massachusetts
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York
Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Connecticut
M. D Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas
Duke Integrative Medicine, Durham, North Carolina
New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, New York
Columbia University Medical Center Campus, New York, New York
Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Connecticut
Reiki treats the "Whole Patient" with the aim being to support and encourage the body's natural mechanisms to recover from illness, by addressing the needs of the mind, body and spirit.
Reiki treatment has no medical contraindications. It does not involve the use of any substance and the touch is non-manipulative. When necessary, as in the case of burns, Reiki can be offered with the hands hovering above the body. Reiki will not interfere with medical treatments, but will encourage the re-balancing of the patient's entire system, which may lighten side effects and increase tolerance to invasive procedures.
Reiki can be combined with any complementary or alternative therapies such as acupuncture, chiropractic, or homeopathy. A Reiki treatment will enhance these therapies' effectiveness without creating interference.