Reiki Therapy 101: Uses, Benefits, Side Effects

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What’s Reiki?

Reiki is an ancient healing technique that restores your energy balance, reduces stress, induces relaxation, and promotes healing on many levels. Reiki started over 2,500 years ago in Tibet, and a Japanese doctor named Mikao Usui brought it to the West in the late 1800s.

This healing technique doesn’t use any tools, instruments, or devices. Reiki, on the other hand, only uses bare hands that won’t even touch you.

What’s the Secret?

It uses pure energy, the life force energy, Qi and it “works” with it around your body (without touching you). Reiki works with energy on the physical, energetic, emotional, and spiritual levels. Also, you have to know that these are all interconnected. Every cell in your body has energy.

Everything is energy (Einstein said it, not me, and Quantum Physics reinforced it), that vibrates in different degrees, at different frequencies, from lower to more refined. If you vibrate on a lower level (having negative thoughts, for example, or being angry or sad) you automatically attract negative things to you.

What Does Reiki Do?

A Reiki healer works with the hands around your body, trying to “feel” the energy, and where you need help so he can improve, clear, and purify your energy flow. Reiki only restores the energy balance. When it feels a disease in your body (felt like a “hot spot”) it will send you to the doctor to check it, because it doesn’t treat or diagnose. It only balances and maintains the energy levels in your being.

What Happens During a Session?

Many people have never heard of Reiki, and so, when they go for the first time to a Reiki therapist, they expect a massage or something like that. They’re amazed that they are not touched and that the therapist goes with his hands in the air around the patient’s body.

What Does a Reiki Therapist Do?

A Reiki session lasts typically between 30 to 90 minutes, depending on the person. Usually, the therapist will talk to you in the beginning, informing you about the process and asking about the health problems that you would like to address.

Now it’s the moment to let him know about what you experience, what are your symptoms, if you did tests, and if you have a diagnosis. You should also inform him about your past injuries, surgeries, or any places that you are sensitive to when touched. He won’t touch you, but it tells him about energy imbalances in that specific area.
During the session, you are required to lie with the clothes on a specific bed, and it may cover you with a soft blanket or sheet. Ambiental music may play in the background.

There will be silence during the session, but if you feel something, you may your therapist about it.

Then the practitioner lays his hands above your body, especially over your main energy centers or chakras. There are seven chakras, Sacral chakra, Sexual chakra, Solar Plexus chakra, Chest chakra, Throat Chakra, Third eye chakra, and Crown chakra. The therapist is trying to feel your energy balance and any possible imbalances in the body.

However, the Reiki therapist is not guiding the energy. He is just a channel that lets the energy flows through him towards the patient, wherever they might need it.

You may experience tingling in your body, especially your arms and legs, warmth at the base of the spine or other places. You may “see” colors or images. Specific hidden memories connected with a particular emotion or chakra your Reiki therapist is working on may resurface.

What to Wear to a Session?

Take a shower before going to your Reiki session, then put on clean, comfortable, preferably cotton clothes. Don’t wear tight pantyhose, pants, skirts or tops, as they block the energies.

You will probably be required to take off your shoes, metal jewelry, and glasses before the session starts. Switch off your mobile phone as well.

Take a bottle with water to rehydrate during the session, if you feel thirsty.

Reiki Levels

There are three levels of achievement in Reiki:

  1. When the practitioner completes the first level, he can practice for others in their home.
  2. After the practitioner achieves the second level, they can practice Reiki in their patients’ house or another location.
  3. Whoever masters the third level is considered to be a master and can teach Reiki to others.

Benefits of Reiki

Reiki is an energy healing method that:

  • Relaxes the body
  • Eliminates stress and anxiety
  • Decreases depression
  • Relieves fatigue and increases the energy levels in the body
  • Reduces pain (back pain, shoulder pain, joint pain, wrist pain)
  • Calms down the sympathetic nervous system (that triggers the fight-or-flight response)
  • Strengthens the parasympathetic nervous system (that controls rest and digestion)
  • Reduces anger, fear, sadness, and other negative emotions
  • Improves memory and focus
  • Helps with behavioral problems in kids
  • Improves sleep troubles
  • Improves digestion and metabolism
  • Decreases inflammation in the body
  • Cleanses the organs and tissues of toxins (energy
  • Lowers blood pressure
  • Helps regenerate broken bones
  • Balances menstrual problems
  • Reduces side-effects of chemotherapy and medication
  • Improves the quality of life in people suffering from cancer
  • Stimulates and accelerates the body’s natural ability to heal itself

Side-Effects of Reiki

Generally speaking, Reiki is a safe, non-invasive technique that doesn’t harm people. There are no known side-effects.

During the session or shortly after, people may experience lightheadedness, tingling in arms and legs, tremors. These feelings are due to the energy blockages in the body that release through the practice, and then they go away quickly.

Other “detox” effects can include sadness, crying without a reason, anger, cranial pressure, heaviness, chest pain, diarrhea, and runny nose.

A real “side-effect” is the possibility that the patient develops a psychological dependency on the Reiki therapist, thinking that he can’t do without him.

Becoming a Reiki Healer

If you want to learn Reiki yourself, find a master in your local area. You can do only the first level to practice at home for yourself and your loved ones. Or you can go further and do all three levels.

You are not required to have a health board license to enroll in Reiki classes.