How Does Reiki Help?
When you go to the doctor, she treats your complaint — sore throat, upset stomach, insomnia, whatever brought you to see her.
When you go to a Reiki practitioner, she treats you — the person suffering from the complaint (or the person who doesn’t have any complaints but knows she will if she doesn’t take care of herself).
The Reiki practitioner will likely place hands on the part of your body that hurts (with your permission, of course). But she won’t stop there. Most Reiki practitioners will also access a series of hand placements on your head and the front and back of your torso.
You may notice sensations where the practitioner’s hands are. People often do. Heat and subtle movement are common experiences.
Or you may notice that area of your body become more open, feel more comfortable. If you had pain, it will likely diminish, and possibly disappear, even if the Reiki practitioner hasn’t yet touched the painful area.
Reiki healing is balancing
How is it possible for pain in one part of your body to be relieved when the Reiki practitioner’s hands are somewhere else?
No matter where the Reiki practitioner’s hands are, no matter how delightful that light contact may feel, the most important benefit of Reiki healing is what’s happening behind the scenes, inside your own body, where it’s remembering what it knows best — how to heal itself.
Unlike the oppositional approach of conventional medicine, which sends an intervention to directly counter the problem, Reiki healing does not target symptoms or conditions directly.
The parasympathetic what?
Instead of opposing any complaint head-on, an approach which often brings unwanted side effects, Reiki practice is balancing to your whole system. When your body is balanced, your own self-healing mechanisms function at their very best.
While a Reiki hand rests lightly on a particular area of your body, whether or not there is a discernible local response, there is an overall response as your system shifts into parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) dominance.
This is important why?
When the PNS is dominant, the body is in rest and digest mode. This means its priority is to recover, to heal, to deeply nourish and restore itself. The body knows well how to do these things, but our busy lifestyle keeps us in reactive sympathetic nervous system (SNS) mode, where the body’s priority is coping (fight or flight), not healing.
Our bodies simply cannot cope and heal at the same time. It’s fight/flight or rest/digest — not both at the same time.
Can Reiki healing help YOU?
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Click here for a version of this article you can print out and share as is with your clients and students.
Related reading:
Yale research shows Reiki helps cardiac patients.
Reiki speeds recovery from surgery.
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Thank you Pamela. This is a very good, short and to the point, explanation of what Reiki ‘does’. I’ve posted a link on my Facebook and Pinterest pages as I am asked this question at least once a week. Your medical perspective is very helpful to those of us who work with clients who have issues with anything the least bit woo-woo. I now have additional words to explain the difference between PNS and SNS and how Reiki is able to influence the shift.
Thank you for a beautifully eloquent yet simple explanation. So useful in demystifying Reiki for the curious.
So happy to know you found this helpful, Marie and Zinnia. We don’t know everything about Reiki practice — it is, after all, a spiritual practice and thus much of it remains mysterious — but there is much about the human response to practice that we can notice and understand and which has been documented.
I hope that having a basic practical outline will help many people explore what Reiki practice might offer them.
Thank you, Pamela. Well put. I’m posting it to my reiki page. I look forward to seeing you next Thursday in Chicago!
Rose,
I am so looking forward to meeting you in person, and the Chicago Reiki community.
And thank you for sharing this post. I appreciate your support getting a credible perspective around to practitioners who are interested, and the public in general.
We may know in our hearts that Reiki practice helps, but it strengthens our conviction to have some practical understanding of how it helps.
Thank you Pamela for such an articulate explanation of how Reiki works. I have posted it on my Facebook page and with your permission will copy it to place as a handout in my office.
You inspired me, Linda! There is now a clickable pdf at the end of the article that people can printout and share.
Thank you, Pamela! Would it be possible to always add the clickable pdf?:) Your articles are excellent and a breath of fresh air for the reiki community!
Sorry to disappoint you, Christine, but no. Writing and publishing the blog takes a lot of time.
I will continue, however, to watch for articles that can directly support Reiki practitioners and teachers, such as the ones I asked Colin Powell to write about Japanese writing and the Reiki kanji, or this one, and make them available as pdfs with permission for reproduction, as long as they are used as is, with no changes.
Pamela, Great explanation of Reiki. I have posted a link to the LifeSpark FaceBook page.
Thank you, Sandy! There is much we don’t know about how Reiki works, but we do know this much.
I love your writing work with Reiki and you explain it in a clear manner.
Wonderful post, Pamela! Clear and concise, with great information for anyone who practices, receives, or wants to learn about Reiki. Thanks, especially for the printable version…it surely will find a place in my Reiki room.
Thanks for the great post and the super useful PDF, Pamela! This will be very helpful.
Thanks Pamela, for the PDF.
Thank you for this explanation and for allowing us to share it with others.