What is Reiki?
Reiki (pronounced ray-key) is a beautiful and simple practice. It’s a way of healing yourself or others and directly translates as “universal life energy”. It originating from Japanese, Buddhist and Shinto cultures and has been used for 3000 years.
The origins of Reiki.
Reiki was only formally described in the 1920s by the academic Dr Mikao Usui. During the late 1800s, Japan ceased to be a Closed Culture opening up it’s borders allowing Japanese nationals to travel outside of Japan and opening up it’s trading boarders. Dr Usui was charged with capturing and preserving the ancient traditional healing technique and went on to establish reiki clinics in Tokyo.
Reiki was introduced to the West by Mrs Hawayo Takata, who was born in Hawaii to Japanese parents. In 1935, a series of bereavements led Mrs Takata to Tokyo where, in ill health, she discovered first hand the benefits of reiki. Mrs Takata returned to Hawaii in 1937 and established a Reiki foundation and in the 1970s began training in mainland USA. Without Mrs Takata, Reiki may never have left Japan so we have a great deal to thank Mrs Takata for.
Reiki is a hands on healing and is now used around the world to ease both physical and psychological symptoms, as well as to invite in spiritual and energetic growth. It works with energetic flow around the body. In Reiki we use the terms energy, life force, divine energy or Universe interchangeably. You may hear the term prana, used within traditional Indian influenced yoga teachings and Qi (or chi) is the Chinese word. It’s all the same thing.
I encourage not getting too bogged down in the terms if you’re new to energy work. Keep an open mind and simply experience a treatment without getting too caught up in your head trying to “understand” or “explain” such a profound healing using Western societal and medical concepts.
What are the benefits of Reiki?
There are many benefits of receiving Reiki, the most immediate being a sense of relaxation, peace and security. I believe it can help us connect with our true purpose and can be a wonderful treatment if you are considering any sort of life or career change. It can improve a sense of psychological wellbeing as well as improve physical health symptoms. I continue to be blow away by what the healing, from the Universe, can bring about.
Examples of benefits:
- Release of physical and emotional tension
- Decrease in pain levels
- Decrease in stress and anxiety
- Improved energy levels
- Improved sleep
- Improved concentration
- Restoration of energy balance in the body
- Emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing
All of these benefits can help us at an individual level and in our interpersonal relationships with loved ones and work colleagues.
What do reiki sessions feel like?
Reiki sessions are very individual and each person experiences Reiki differently. Most individuals experience a sense of deep relaxation. Some experience Reiki as sensations of heat or coolness, tingling or itching in parts of the body, or experience seeing colours or visions. Others can have an emotional response, indicating that shifts are taking place, allowing balance to be restored.
You may become generally more sensitive to all of your senses with some sounds within the space, and outside the space. Sometimes sounds will be amplified and sometimes they’ll quieten. I have had feedback regarding my Sacred Space that this is particularly the case and I hope you will feel very safe and held within a bubble of nature. You may hear the sound of birds, the wind blowing gently through the trees, the rain on the roof. I invite in Reiki healing and the wonderful elements of Mother Earth to ground us, air to fuel us and fill us with life force, water to cleanse up and purify us and fire to bring us home to our hearts, to nurture and soothe us.
What happens in a reiki treatment with me.
Reiki is performed by a practitioner placing their hands on, or slightly above their client in a series of light touch or non contact hand positions. I will typically not make contact between the chest to the upper thighs. During a session, Reiki energy is flows from Source, through the hands of the practitioner and into client. Reiki energy will always flow where it is needed most.
Reiki isn’t “woo woo”, it is scientifically proven.
The effects of Reiki can be explained scientifically and particle physics can demonstrate the impact of Reiki in creating high frequency energy and it’s impact on anything from a glass of water to human cells. There is significant amounts of research around the impact of in person and online reiki on various aspects of wellbeing. Specifically, reiki has been proven to improve sleep, reduce pain, anxiety, stress, depression and improve a sense of wellbeing, connection and purpose.