What is Reiki Healing?
Reiki healing is a modality intended to bring balance, alignment, and love back into your mind, body, and spirit. By restoring your inherent universal life force energy, your body’s natural healing abilities kick in.
You can be both a reiki recipient, and a reiki practitioner. Anyone can be either, or both! A reiki practitioner is not any more “special” or more “spiritual” than a recipient who isn’t attuned to reiki.
Reiki healing is very accessible, easy to learn and bring into your daily life regardless of current life circumstances or religious beliefs.
Similar to yoga, reiki includes a philosophy we can adopt in order to live good, fulfilling lives. But it is not a religion–there is no worshiping in reiki. Even though it does have a tendency to open us up to a force greater than ourselves. This is a beautiful thing!
To practice reiki is to come back to balance, serenity, and connection with All That Is. Reiki is the thread that connects all life forms together, all throughout the Universe, back to the Universe Itself.
Think of reiki healing as simply this: welcoming in more of the loving life force energy that is already within you. This has a domino effect in your mind, body, and spirit. And indeed will ripple out into society.
What is Reiki Good For?
Reiki is a great complementary therapy for healing and growth in all areas of our being, as well as our lives. Reiki is good for every single thing you could ever possibly think of!
Because at its purest form, reiki is loving life force energy. And everything is connected to this energy of the Universe. Even ambiguous things like thoughts, beliefs, concepts, etc. can benefit from receiving reiki.
There are many benefits to practicing reiki in a practical sense. But the most important application of reiki is bridging the gap between our earthly energies and our divine energies.
The energies within our bodies and minds being brought together with the energies of our intuition and spirit.
Reiki is good for anyone who is currently experiencing immense amounts of dis-ease in their emotions and/or bodies. Or the complete opposite–reiki is good for anyone who is in a good place in life and would like to absorb more loving energy. Or somewhere in the middle–reiki is good for anyone who is getting through life, but could use some help or guidance in particular areas.
Reiki gets the ball rolling, but your own body and emotional prowess do most of the work. This does not mean that we can completely rely on reiki and should ignore modern medicine and therapy altogether.
Remember, reiki is meant to be complementary. It heals in a different way than pharmaceuticals and doctors do, but that does not invalidate the entire field of medicine or professional therapy. If possible, all these things should be working together in tandem for best results.
Reiki for Mindset and Emotional Healing
Reiki is an amazing first step in making mindset shifts. Whatever limiting beliefs you’re dealing with, reiki can help you pinpoint, release, and replace them.
Healing reiki can offer you all kinds of emotional support, validation, and guidance. This is yet another way Source and our Higher Selves speak to us, through elevating what is already working within our minds.
If you’re in the midst of making major mindset shifts, or you’re wanting to do so, reiki will soar past the surface level thoughts and emotions into the inner layers of your psyche. This is where deep healing takes place.
Experiencing reiki will help you hold space for these wounds, no matter how old they are, and give you permission to dispel them. It’s like reiki is your own personal, energetic counselor who is guiding you through your own healing at your own pace.
As vague as this might sound, reiki is well known for simply making people feel better. It allows for energetic shifts to occur, promoting relaxation, stress relief and alignment.
Reiki cannot really work on the emotional body until it works through the physical body. It’s holistic in this way because it meets you where you are.
The deeper reiki goes, the more it uncovers. You may not have conscious awareness of what exists beneath the surface, but you definitely experience its profound effects externally and in your body.
Once these inner workings are unmasked, reiki continues to support your healing journey. It brings out your inherent healing abilities. You’re allowing your physical and emotional body to heal themselves simply by shining a light on what lies deep within.
Reiki for Physical Healing
The thing about reiki, and most spiritual modalities, is that they take a holistic approach. Nothing is isolated or by accident.
We have been conditioned to focus only on symptoms, or outward expressions of whatever is ailing us. The western model of medicine is the perfect example. Your doctor is likely to prescribe medicine and perhaps a few medical tests/exams, but not much beyond that.
Modern medicine is very important and necessary. However, it almost never tells the whole story. And it’s not up to the medical doctors to figure out how our physical ailments are related to our emotional and spiritual ailments.
That’s our job! That’s where reiki comes in. This is why it’s considered holistic complementary medicine.
Physical and mental symptoms all carry energetic and emotional correspondences. You would be downright arrogant to think that our spiritual and mental health has no effect on our physical health.
There are many books out there connecting physical and emotional ailments. Start with Louise Hay and work your way up from there if you’re looking for the meaning of a specific ailment.
Reiki can similarly treat surface level symptoms, such as pain, inflammation, or conditions. The magic happens during the continued use of reiki in treating these symptoms.
Every time you receive reiki healing energy, the healing goes deeper and deeper, eventually going past the surface level symptom. Unlike modern medicine, which is meant to manage only those symptoms.
Reiki is not symptom management. Reiki is whole body healing, putting equal emphasis on emotional, spiritual, and physical wounds.
Reiki Spiritual Healing
On a subtle level, reiki is opening up our native spiritual connection. No matter how strong the connection was prior to receiving reiki, the connection grows stronger.
It’s the type of thing you can never have too much of, but you can certainly have too little of. A complete lack of spiritual connection causes a myriad of issues in our lives: lack of purpose or direction, a sense of meaninglessness, an overemphasis on material gain, selfish tendencies, heaviness, loneliness, corruption and sabotage to name a few.
Spiritual well-being can be hard to conceptualize in words. But when the transformation happens (or even just begins), it is unmistakable.
How do you know when a spiritual shift is taking place as a result of reiki? Easy answer: your outer world begins to change to reflect your inner world.
This is always true, regardless of your spiritual beliefs. Circumstances around you and how you perceive them are mirrors for your current state of being.
As your spiritual connection strengthens with reiki, you’ll likely feel lighter, happier, more optimistic, generous, enthusiastic, and so on. These changes will be reflected in what we choose to see and focus on outside of ourselves.
Opening up to reiki means we are welcoming in esoteric experiences. Chances are, you wouldn’t be guided to reiki if you weren’t ready to receive these higher blessings of connection and intuition.
Reiki enhances all manner of psychic awareness, empathy, and links to Source and Spirit. Reiki is never dangerous, and can never do harm, so you’re always held in a safe space with it.
Bridging the gap between our earthly energies and our divine energies will always result in heightened intuition. This is just one of the many gifts of reiki healing energy.
Reiki Symbols
The reiki symbols are signs that are drawn by the reiki practitioner, either in the air or somewhere upon their or the recipient’s body, and are intended to enhance their intention.
Depending on the branch of reiki being practiced, you may or may not ever feel called to use the symbols. They are meant to be reiki enhancers, and are not necessary to channel healing energy from Source.
During a session, a reiki practitioner may draw a symbol if they feel intuitively guided. They may do this directly over a certain chakra or body part, or within the energy field of the recipient.
If you are studying reiki, you probably won’t learn any symbols until you reach level two. But they are still helpful to know and understand regardless if you’re just beginning to learn or receive reiki.
There are many variations of each symbol, depending on the flavor of reiki you’re learning or receiving. The following symbols are the most common.
Reiki Chokurei
Pronounced cho-koo-ray, this is the Power Symbol. It is typically used when focusing on physical healing within the body. It’s a versatile symbol that can come in handy in most any session.
Any pain or trauma can be treated with Chokurei. It’s also good for giving a boost of energy, grounding the body, providing clarity, and during any instance where an increase in vital life force energy is needed.
That being said, this symbol isn’t typically used when there is energy in excess, such as on a cancerous tumor, insomnia, or during an anxiety/panic attack.
Reiki Sei he ki
Pronounced say-hey-key, this is the Emotional Symbol. Essentially the opposite of Chokurei. This symbol provides harmony and peace when invoked. This is a helpful symbol because most ailments stem from emotional dis-ease.
This is the symbol of intuition and Divine guidance. If the recipient is a psychic, or wants to become one, Seiheki can assist. By calming the ego mind, the subconscious/intuitive mind has the opportunity to blossom.
Seiheki can also be used for protection, comfort, release, humility, cleansing, and inviting in love. A beautiful symbol to work with because its healing energy has no boundaries.
Hon sha ze sho nen Symbol
Pronounced hon-sha-zay-show-nen, this is the Distance Healing Symbol. It seems complicated at first glance, but the connection it builds between distances is undeniable and worth the effort.
This symbol works to release emotional blockages and harmful patterns. Without these getting in the way, reiki can flow freely to wherever it’s needed. Even if that is very far away from where it is currently being channeled.
The connection between the practitioner and recipient is formed between their Higher Selves. On an energetic soul level, we lift each other up higher towards peace and enlightenment. Which is really just a state of being where suffering doesn’t exist.
Reiki Hand Positions and Meanings
The reiki hand positions are meant to direct the energy in a certain way, targeting a specific body part or chakra. There are endless amounts of hand positions available to use during a session.
Most often, the hand symbols are meant to “bridge” two body parts of chakras together to allow reiki to bounce back and forth. The hand placements are completely guided by intuition and intention, there is no right or wrong.
There are best practices of course. Such as not ever touching certain private or sensitive parts of the body (inner thigh, lower belly, sternum, throat, etc.). Other than that, reiki hand positions are entirely up to the practitioner.
Again, the hand positions aren’t even necessary for reiki to be channeled into the recipient. The practitioner could simply hover their hands over the recipient’s body and allow the reiki to flow freely where it needs to go.
But sometimes, putting a little bit more intent behind the flow of reiki can make a big difference to the outcome of the session. Here are some examples of common reiki hand positions:
- Both hands on the back of the head
- One hand on either shoulder
- One hand over either temple
- One hand on the outside of each hip
- One hand on either foot
- Both hands resting on each shoulder blade
- One hand on the shoulder, the other on the hand of the same arm
- Bridging any of the chakras, one hand per chakra
- One over the hip, the other hand on the foot of the same leg
Making physical contact with the recipient isn’t necessary with reiki. It’s up to the practitioner to decide if they want to do hands on, or hands off. As a recipient, you can always tell them your preference as well.
When I do my distance reiki sessions, I use a cute little stuffed teddy bear named Flashdance Bear as a surrogate. Because my clients are all over the world, I rarely have the pleasure of being in the same room as them.
So I take Flashdance bear, and place my hands on her little furry body, which translates the energy to the client’s body. Even though her body is much smaller than my clients’, I still utilize most of the above hand positions as I feel guided, and the energy goes where intended.
