Reiki

 

Reiki, (pronounced Ray-Key), is a simple Japanese energy-balancing method. In its original Japanese form, in the early 1900s, Reiki was very much about working on yourself: it was a system that you could use for self-healing, self-development and spiritual development. But when Reiki was first taught in the West in the 1970s, and since that time, Reiki teaching has focused much more on Reiki as a treatment technique - something that you do to other people – and the system appears to many people to be a sort of oriental spiritual healing, a hands-on treatment method that involves channelling energy. Reiki is now being classed as a sort of complementary therapy, so people might practise Reflexology, or Aromatherapy, or they might practise Reiki.

 

To understand Reiki, you need to get your head around the idea that there is a subtle energy that permeates us and surrounds us, an energy which we can learn to experience and direct, an energy which we can move through our bodies and channel through us into other people. While this may seem to be a strange thing to believe from a Western perspective, it is a central belief in many Asian cultures and underlies many exercise systems, meditation practices and healing or treatment methods.

 

In China, for example, this energy is referred to as “chi”, which you may have heard of. Chi is used in a whole range of Oriental practices, for example:

 

• Feng Shui (the art of placement)
• Acupuncture
• Tai Chi and Qi Gong
• Martial arts

 

Feng shui is a way of arranging your living environment to allow for the smooth flow of chi through the rooms of your home, eliminating areas where ‘stagnant chi’ might accumulate, and slowing down the speed of fast-moving chi, for example. This chi is external to you.  When you visit an acupuncturist they insert fine needles into various points to encourage your own chi to flow properly through a series of meridians or energy channels that run the length of your body. Tai Chi and QiGong are graceful Chinese exercise systems that are designed to build up, or cultivate, your personal reserves of chi and circulate this energy smoothly throughout your body, breaking down any blockages and bringing things into balance on all levels.

 

In Japan the energy is called “ki” and they have their own version of acupuncture – Shiatsu – which uses massage and finger-pressure on acupuncture points. Japanese Martial arts techniques like Karate and Aikido work with chi, with the practitioner building up their reserves of chi and focusing it in a martial context, and the Japanese version of Qi Gong – called kiko – also works through the practitioner cultivating and moving this energy through their body.

 

In India the same energy is referred to as ‘prana’ and breathing exercises, meditations and yoga techniques have been developed to bring your energy system into balance. In India they do not think in terms of meridians, but of chakras: energy centres running the length of your body from the crown of your head to the base of your spine. There are seven main chakras and further subsidiary ones in other locations, situated on energy channels known as ‘nadis’.

Reiki is something to do with this energy, this ‘chi’, but Reiki is different from Tai Chi and Yoga, and Reiki treatments are different from Shiatsu and Acupuncture treatments.

 

When people practise acupuncture or shiatsu they are using their skills as a practitioner to detect subtle imbalances in energy flow and using considerable knowledge of the meridian system to direct them in making specific and precise ‘invasive’ manipulations of the client’s energy system.

 

But when someone practises Reiki as a treatment method they are not detecting and diagnosing and intervening. When the practitioner treats someone with Reiki they are allowing an unlimited external source of ‘energy’ to flow through them into the client. The energy is drawn through them ccording to the client’s need on that occasion: they are not directing the energy, they are a conduit through which the energy flows, they are creating a ‘healing space’ that the client can use to bring their own energy system into balance, without conscious and deliberate intervention on their part.

 To receive Reiki the client lies on the treatment table and the practitioner will gently lay their hands on the body in a series of hand positions on the head, torso and legs, sometimes hovering the hands rather than touching.  Each hand position lasts for a few minutes. 

 

Reiki is deeply relaxing, eases stress and has a calming effect. It can accelerate the healing of physical problems and help to balance the emotions. Reiki energy is a gentle energy and can be used by the newborn, pregnant women, surgical patients and the frail and elderly.

 

Treatable conditions:

 

Anyone can benefit from a course of Reiki treatments no matter what their age or state of health.  Reiki can produce deep relaxation, reduce stress and anxiety, boost energy levels, provide a feeling of inner calm, contentment and serenity and speed up the body’s natural healing processes.

 

For further information please contact us here at the Earlsdon Practice.