Reiki is a spiritual practice of energy healing originating from Japan which has recently gained a lot of popularity in the West as New-Age idealism has begun to dominate the world's cultures.
It is believed by practitioners of Reiki that the human being is comprised of the physical body, and a series of energy bodies which help maintain the health and general well being of the physical body. This view is certainly the most accepted theory amongst the spiritual community, and evidence gathered from esoteric practices such as Reiki, Yoga, Acupuncture seem to suggest that this may not be far from the truth.
The below video provides an interview I undertook with a teacher and practitioner or Reiki, Christine from UntieTheString.com. She has had much experience dealing with the entire energy body system, and has helped many of her students and patients learn to recharge and optimise the energies that govern their lives. From helping her own body recover more efficiently from damage caused from cancer, to assisting with the separation at the time of death for a terminally ill dog, Christine certainly has a great wealth of knowledge on the subject unlike myself, so I took the opportunity to learn more about Reiki from her, and certainly intent to attend a session of her's to learn even further.
Whether you are a believer of the energy body theory or not, this is certainly a very interesting interview and a great introduction to Reiki, what it is and how it works.
My Experience
After conducting the interview with Christine, she kindly offered to give me an introductory Reiki session free of charge to assist me with my research in such things. I am a very strong advocate of learning by experience, and always being willing to try something that you perhaps are very skeptical of or don't believe in, to help confirm or challenge your current beliefs. Therefore, I shortly followed up on her offer and attended the session with her in early November. Christine has been a practitioner of Reiki for many years, and runs one to one sessions with her clients, as well as holding workshops in her area where she actually guides and teaches groups of people looking to learn the art themselves.
Energy healing and the general idea of Human beings possessing "Auras" or energy fields has always been something I've struggled to believe as there is really very little quantifiable evidence to back it up. Of course, such evidence does exist, but it is difficult to draw any conclusions. However, there is enough accounts from those who have undertaken Reiki and claimed positive affects that I jumped at the chance to have an experience myself and find out myself if there's anything to it.
The Experience
Before the session actually began, we had a quick chat about the basics and what to expect. Christine had prepared a glass of water for me as well as a raised table to lie down on for the duration, I removed my shoes, hopped up and lied down. I was offered a blanket as generally being covered gives most a sense of security and comfort as opposed to just lying down, however I mentioned that I'd rather not have this as I usually generate a lot of body heat anyway and didn't want to interrupt the session at all.
Untie The String Natural Healing
Heat
Christine made her way across the table, standing by my head and began tuning into the Reiki energy via a series of arm movements presumably to optimise the energy flow through her. This didn't take any longer than a few seconds to a minute or so. At this point I still had my eyes open as I was curious to see what would happen. As she brought her hands down over my head, the first thing that struck me was the very unnatural (for want of a better term) amount of heat that radiated from her open hands. It felt as if she had held her hands against a hot radiator for a while before, or had small heaters installed in her palms. Of course, many people do generate a lot of body heat naturally, myself being one of them, but this was beyond the normal amount. I had been told by other people who had previously had Reiki experiences elsewhere that they had also noticed this heat and had been completely shocked by the sensation. For this reason I was actively looking for this as it started, and I was certainly not disappointed. One could argue that this was a synthesized response due to my expectations, but to me this would be an unreasonable explanation as the radiant heat was certainly coming from an external source. If you have ever held your hands out to a radiator or heater, this was a very similar feeling to that, and certainly not a "brain trick" or any other such illusion.
Never the less, this thought did strike me, so from here I closed my eyes with the intention of attempting to locate the positions of her hands as she moved using just the sense of heat. She lifted her hands away from my forehead, and the heat decreased substantially. I initially felt this drop in temperature and opened my eyes to confirm that indeed her hands had moved away. I closed my eyes again and waited for the next step. With my eyes closed I felt the heat again begin to hit my ears and temples, and when I looked I found that Christine had indeed moved her hands to either side of my head. To me this was confirmation that the heat I was experiencing was not a response of expectation and in fact a genuine sensation. Of course, I cannot state definitively that Christine doesn't just generate that much heat from her hands all the time, but to me if she did it would mean that her body had some heat regulation issues.
She would first hover her hands over a particular area around my head and upper chakras (supposed energy centres in the crown, brow and throat), and follow by physically placing her hands on the areas. Again, it was very noticeable that her hands were certainly very warm beyond what I would class as "normal". As she moved down from my head to my chest, abdomen, and finally legs and feet, the heat would very easily permeate through my clothing. It felt as if each time she would put her hands on me, she was in fact placing a hot water bottle instead. I continued the practice of trying to identify where her hands were without sight, going by the feeling of heat alone, with very accurate results each time.
Other Sensations
Aside from the sensation of heat, I noticed that I was beginning to get quite a bad headache. As someone living with a generalised anxiety disorder, this was not surprising to me as being in an unfamiliar place, completely devoting my trust to somebody else and being totally vulnerable, one would fully expect an anxiety response. I don't believe this had anything to do with the "Reiki energy", but the usual anxiety I often experience. However one experience that did seem unusual which occurred as Christine was working on my legs was a very strange sensation of "bubbling" on both sides of my jaw. It's a difficult thing to explain but I think the word "bubbling" is as close as I can get. Again, this could have been a result of an initial slight sensation magnified by my attention to it, again with no relation to the Reiki. However this was a sensation I had never had noticeably before, so I am completely open to the possibility that there was something from the Reiki influencing this sensation.
These described sensations were pretty much all the unusual experiences I had during the session, and did not notice any clear benefits or feelings of calm in any part of the body affected. Of course, after one session I would not at all expect to do so. Reiki is something that generally takes multiple sessions and experiences to begin noticing substantial benefits to the body and mind, and to expect such outcomes after one hour would lead to an unfair conclusion. Once the session was completed, I sat up and was hit by a sensation of dizziness and heaviness throughout my whole body. It must be noted that for the past hour I had been lying down in an unfamiliar place with my eyes closed... so this was likely a result of the anxiety which had built up unconsciously during that time.
Conclusion
Although I did not immediately, or since the session, notice any substantial changes or improvements to my physical health or mindset (as mentioned earlier, to expect any results after a single session would be very unfair and unrealistic), the amount of heat Christine generated from her hands left me with substantial evidence that something indeed was at work. Many people see Reiki as an illogical, nonsensical practice with no concrete proof of effectiveness, which is a perfectly fair statement when looking at the theory of it. However, the sense of heat was a very real phenomenon which leads me to believe from my own experience that perhaps there is something more to it, and we should not put it down simply to a kind of placebo effect, at least without further experiences. I believe the next course of action for me to take would be to perhaps continue having sessions of Reiki and to note any changes to my life, body or mind that may result from it, or not so. Following this, I may further attempt to learn how to "channel the Reiki energy" to help push my understanding of it even further.
If you have never had a Reiki experience and/or are very skeptical or even outright disbelieving of such things, I would strongly advise that you at least try it out. In doing so you won't be losing anything, and may even be surprised by the results, and leave with something to challenge your beliefs, something to ponder.
If you are interested in finding out more about Reiki, you can find Christine at Untie The String Natural Healing, or contact any local practitioner near you.
No comments:
Post a Comment