How Long?

What’s the ideal length for a Reiki treatment?

Simple answer: as long as is needed.

But how frequently is that an option?

More often we’re looking at how much time we have. Reiki professionals need to finish before the next client arrives — and we’ve given enough treatments to know how far apart to schedule — but even sharing treatment with a friend can have scheduling constraints.

My totally unscientific poll of practitioners indicates that full treatments are generally forty-five to seventy-five minutes long. Treatments by staff to hospital in-patients are usually shorter.

Rather than looking for the ideal, consider what is a good fit for the situation at hand (pardon the pun). Do what you can and go on with your day.

And remember Mrs. Takata frequently said a little Reiki treatment is better than no Reiki treatment.

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8 thoughts on “How Long?”

  1. Diederik van der Boor

    My Reikimaster tought me to perform a series of treatments to heal chronic diseases and conditions. This way, she rarely had to perform more then 8 sessions in practice to heal something. The scheme is:
    – week 1: 3-4 sessions in consecutive days
    – week 2: 2-3 sessions, preferably consecutive
    – week 3: 2 sessions, spread over the week
    – week 4 and following: the same, as long as needed.

    The important thing is, Reiki flows out (or leaks out) of the body after a day, so that’s what makes treatments in consecutive days so important and effective. It is intense, but I’ve seen this scheme published in a book too because others get similar effects with it.

    1. I agree with the general approach of starting with frequent sessions close together and gradually tapering as the person stabilizes, but it’s important not to be formulaic, and to evaluate each person’s needs not only in the beginning, but continually, scheduling sessions accordingly.

      The idea is to consistently encourage the person’s self healing response, to remind the system to heal before it has exhausted its response to the last treatment.

      There is no basis in fact for saying Reiki leaks out of the body after a day. There is, actually, no basis in fact for speaking about Reiki as if it were a thing. It’s a practice.

  2. At our clinics our basic treatments are about 60mins or 30mins with two practitioners working. When giving reiki treatments in the workplace we give 10mins on the shoulders, this has amazing results.

    We did experiment with one of our practitioners once who has chronic arthritus and working on a rota basis for 51/2 hours of Reiki treatment. The results were palpable as she was completely pain free for a while.

  3. Most recently, I’ve been doing 15-minute chair treatments. In the past, I’ve done an hour, hour and a half, half-day and all-day treatments. So I appreciate John’s “marathon” treatment. For the long treatments, we don’t make a competitive challenge of it — we take breaks whenever we want, and finish when client feels complete.

  4. When I started they used to last from 60 to 90 min. I perform my sessions on a chair not in a massage table. People are always hurried and they don’t have much time neither patience to long sessions. I have noticed less healing is more, I mean, the energy body needs time. Some people complains about feeling overwhelmed so I decided to go slow and do more sessions of little length. So now my sessions last from 30 to 45 min approximately.

  5. John Janssen, Reiki Master

    Hey, Pamela;
    My basic treatment usually lasts around 70 – 80 minutes, but I have done several treatments lasting over 3 hours(and always with the prior permission from the receiver). I have also been part of a ‘Reiki Marathon’ – a concept I first heard about from Dr. Elizabeth Rule, Reiki Master from Australia. She told me the story of her Initiating Master of using the marathon treatments and I related the story to a person undergoing chemo for breast cancer that had returned. I coordinated a 12 hour session for her, and she was on the table for all of it except for two 10 minute bathroom breaks. It was an amazing experience for both me and her. She was in and out of awareness, but later related it was very comforting and wonderful to drift off with several people treating her(anywhere from 1 to 4 at a time) and come back to wakefullness with different people doing the Reiki.

  6. Ellen Sosinski

    My treatment usually last between 1 hour and 10 minutes and 1 1/2 hours. I try to leave at least a 2 hour block of time for each treatment in case someone is late, someone needs more treatment on a given day, etc.

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