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Reiki for Healing

Understand what Reiki is, what to expect from your Reiki session and explore the use of Reiki for healing.

woman receiving reiki treatment

This article explores Reiki as an Energy Healing method and what to expect from a healing session. If you're curious about learning Reiki as a path to enlightenment, you'll love this article.


If you'd like to understand energy healing more fully, please read this post then come straight back!


What is Reiki?

Reiki is loving, spiritual energy that gently supports the healing of your whole being - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.


Reiki (pronounced Ray-kee) is a word of Japanese origin that can be translated to mean “spiritual energy”. This spiritual energy - Reiki - is the essence of who we are, weaving through the entire universe connecting us to each other and all things. Reiki is limitless, infinitely intelligent, unconditionally loving and powerfully creative.


Reiki is love, love is wholeness, wholeness is balance, balance is wellbeing, wellbeing is freedom from disease

- Mikao Usui, Founder of Reiki.


Receiving Reiki during a healing session makes more of this spiritual energy available to you, allowing your body, mind and soul to manifest health and well-being.


Reiki for Healing

We have personal life-force energy (Ki) flowing through our energetic pathways and energy centres all the time. These pathways are like rivers that carry energy throughout our being. Energetic blocks are like boulders in the river that disrupt the natural flow of energy. When this happens, problems begin to manifest in our mind and body. Free-flowing energy is the goal for optimal health and wellbeing.


Energy blocks can be formed by trauma or recurring negative thoughts, beliefs and emotions. As demonstrated in the Energy Healing post, our thoughts have a measurable physical effect on our body.


As divinely guided spiritual energy, Reiki can dissolve these energetic blocks from all layers of your being simultaneously (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual). Reiki raises your vibration to a highly positive state, transmuting blocked energy to flow freely through it's natural channels once more. An unrestricted energy flow supplies your mind and body the energy it needs to continue it's self-repair efforts even after your Reiki session.


The Benefits of Reiki

The unconditional love of Reiki promotes feelings of calmness, wholeness, balance and clarity. The deep relaxation that Reiki induces creates the ideal environment for your body's natural self-repair mechanisms to activate.

Healing means 'to make whole'. This means unifying your mind, body and soul. Because Reiki is the spiritual energy that makes up the entire universe, and is the essence of who you are, it is the unifying factor that will bring you into alignment.

Receiving Reiki regularly will flush your energy pathways and centres clear with divine, loving, spiritual energy. The frequent influx of Reiki energy not only supports your physical and energetic health, but it helps you to stay in alignment with who you really are, and why you're here. As someone who wants to help lightworkers and change-makers step fully into their power and purpose, this is one aspect of Reiki that I absolutely love!

People often receive Reiki when they'd like to experience:​

  • A deeper connection to their spiritual nature.

  • Feeling held in unconditional love.

  • A feeling of unity with a higher power.

  • A moment of serenity allowing clarity to arise.

  • Energy pathways and centres that are clear, charged and balanced.

  • Reduced levels of stress and a greater sense of calm.

  • Reduced levels of anxiety and a greater sense of peace.

  • A great night's sleep, waking up refreshed.

  • Replenished energy levels with a sense of vitality.

  • An enhanced sense of wellbeing and happiness.

One of the ways that Reiki is tremendously helpful is by triggering our body’s Relaxation Response. This response can be considered the opposite of the Fight or Flight Response. Doctor and Author, Lissa Rankin informs us:


Your body’s natural self-repair mechanisms ONLY activate when your body is in a Relaxation Response.

- Lissa Rankin, Doctor and Author.


The problem with the Fight or Flight Response is that after any perceived threat, life-threatening or not, our bodies continue to process the hormonal concoction released for at least 20 minutes and sometimes up to a few days. It is well known that a chronic state of stress will take its toll on our bodies, so activating your body’s Relaxation Response through methods such as Reiki is vital for optimal health.


Reiki as a Complementary Therapy

Reiki is becoming increasingly popular as a complementary therapy, and I’m thrilled to see it being used in many hospitals around the world to reduce pain, fatigue, pre-treatment anxiety for surgical/chemo or radio therapy treatment, and to improve post-operative recovery in the case of surgical interventions. In New Zealand, you must visit a private Reiki Practitioner if you wish to receive Reiki as a complementary treatment.


As the scientific and medical communities are learning about the benefits of Reiki, we are finding that more and more research is being undertaken. The Center for Reiki Research provides a current list of evidence based research published in peer reviewed journals along with summaries of each of these studies. It states, “there is evidence to support Reiki as a therapeutic modality in conditions relating to pain, stress, anxiety and mood”.


Reiki research “consistently supports the efficacy of Reiki for use in stress management and depression. In the most recent study, Reiki was demonstrated to have therapeutic effects comparable to regularly prescribed drugs in coronary care patients. Studies into the effect of Reiki on cancer patients have found that Reiki treatment improved tolerance to pain, reduced fatigue and anxiety, and generally improved their quality of life. Other studies report a reduction in pain and anxiety associated with invasive procedures, such as endoscopy and abdominal hysterectomy”.


How We Create Healing With Reiki

Healing is a co-creative process between yourself and the Divine (you may call this God, Spirit, the Universe, the Creator, Source etc), with the aide of a Reiki Practitioner.


The trained Reiki Practitioner maintains an energetic alignment with Reiki, while bringing you into that space too. In this space of unconditional love, Reiki is shared with you with the intention that you will receive everything that you need.


Because the healing is spiritually guided, the results may manifest in unexpected ways. The Divine knows your life lessons and purpose, and has a deeper understanding of what is going on with you. Your soul knows better than you or me, the best ways to bring you healing. I completely trust in this process and allow it to unfold naturally.


During a Reiki session you don’t need to do anything except relax and receive. You will lay fully-clothed on a massage table (or sit comfortably on a chair) as the practitioner shares the Reiki energy with you. This is done by gently laying hands on your body, or away from your body and sending it through your aura.


Reiki is completely non-invasive.

As you relax deeply, you may become perceptive of Reiki moving through and around you. You may experience tactile sensations such as changes in heat, tingling, pulsing or buzzing. You may see colours or other visions. You may receive insights to problems, or have an emotional release. You may even fall into a relaxing sleep! Everyone experiences something different, and you will probably experience each session differently too. Whatever you experience is perfect for you, at that time.


Distance Reiki

The divine intelligence of Reiki is infinitely vast and isn't limited by time or space. Reiki is spiritual energy that is the essence of everyone and everything. This unconditional love at the core of everything is what unifies and connects us all, allowing healing to occur from anywhere.


Reiki can be sent to you wherever you are in the world.

As discussed in the Energy Healing post, we are all made of energy. The same energy that makes up our entire universe also makes up our physical body, therefore there is a One-ness in all things. We are interconnected to each other, and all life.


Through our interconnectedness and our specialised training in sending Reiki via Distance Healing, Reiki practitioners can share healing energy with you wherever you may be.


Want More?

Experiencing Reiki for yourself is the best way to come to your own understanding of what it is and how it affects you. If you're curious about receiving Reiki, I'd love to meet you for a session. As the famous poet Rumi suggested "respond to every call that excites your spirit!"


Ever wonder if there's more to life? Read this article and see how Reiki can help your personal and spiritual growth.


With love and gratitude,

Charisse






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