What is Reiki and how does it work?

If you're like many of our clients, you keep hearing the word “reiki”. It's attracting you but you have no idea what it is or if it's even a real thing.

Reiki is an energy healing modality that promotes well-being on physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels.

Read on to find out what the word means, what happens in a reiki session, what it's good for, and a bit about our best guesses as to the Art & Science of Reiki (because if someone tells you they definitively know, they're lying).

What does Reiki translate to in English?

The word Reiki comes from the Japanese root words “Rei” & “Ki”. In almost all articles about Reiki, you'll find that they translate to “Universal” and “Life force energy” respectively. If that satisfies you, skip to the next section, but if you want to understand a bit more, read on.

Ki is the Japanese version of something that's been described by different cultures as qi, prana, life force, anima, chi, ruh, inner wind, pneuma, or holy spirit. Although they carry some distinctions, cultures all over the world and throughout history have concepts for “energy that animates and flows through living beings”.

Some cultures have succeeded in mapping the pathways this energy takes through the body (these maps coincide closely to the maps of the nervous system we now have). Others have created elaborate healing practices that build on this understanding. Across most cultures, however, the understanding is this energy animates all living beings (and often contains a signature that perdures after the death of these beings) and that the stronger this energy and the better it flows, the more vitality the person exudes.

In Reiki, we work with a universal loving & healing energy to help unblock, unlock and restore this vital energy. In so doing, people find their way back to physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being.

Already hooked and want to know everything? Check out Healer: Awakened, our Reiki I training, here.

What happens in a Reiki session?

Every practitioner has their unique flow (so if you want to be sure, ask the healer you've chosen to see) but in general, a session goes something like this:

• You arrive to the healing session and spend a minute getting acquainted with your healer, orienting yourself in the space. You chit-chat a bit about what brought you there and get present together.
• Together with your healer, you set an intention for the session. This can be as broad as: “helping heal whatever needs to come up for me today” (and this is the default intention of any Reiki session) or as specific as: “helping heal my dermatitis”. An intention directs the healing energy a certain way. If your practitioner doesn't prompt you for this, you can set an intention on your own, it will direct the energy.
• You will lie down on a cozy, well-prepared massage table. You remain fully clothed. You may be invited to take a few conscious breaths and to let yourself relax and feel held by the table. You get to let go of all expectations at this point and let the Reiki do its healing magic.
• The reiki healer will do a few things to allow the Reiki to move through them. These may be visible to you or not. They may include them drawing a series of symbols in the air, placing their hands in a prayer position or them muttering a short prayer. When they're ready, they may scan your energy with their hand by passing it about a foot above your body or immediately hone into where your energy is calling for the Reiki most. They may work from the top of the head to the feet (this is traditionally the way), or may work intuitively.
• You may or may not feel the different sensations associated with Reiki as they work. These include but aren't limited to: tingles, waves of warmth or a pleasant cool, slight pins and needles, sensations of release, wells of emotion moving through, tremendous calm, relaxation, falling asleep and many others. You may notice awareness bubbling up, certain memories making themselves to the forefront of your consciousness, or on the contrary a wave of peace taking over your mind. There's no way to tell what you'll feel. It's highly different from session to session, & from practitioner to practitioner.
• As they work, your energy healer may tell you what they notice or not. At the beginning of the session, you can usually let them know your preference. If your mind tends to be very busy it can be helpful to have something to imagine and work with while the healing energy is working. If you are craving a moment to yourself and want to deeply enter your own experience, it's better to ask them to work in silence. They may also touch you lightly, or not. Again, this is something you can indicate your preference about at the start.
• After the reiki energy is transmitted, the healer will let you know it's done and guide you on how to come out of the session. You may be invited to drink some water (always a good idea after energy work!).
• You and your practitioner share experiences. This can be as elaborate or stay as simple as you like. On occasion, this portion of the session can be soulfully revealing, helping you gain valuable insights into your process.
• Finally, you'll receive a few after-care indications: things like “make sure you drink a lot of water”, “give yourself some grace as you move through the rest of the day… it's not abnormal to feel a little vulnerable after a session”, or an invitation to help you integrate something you've discussed.
• Here at Reiki Cleveland, it's our aim that you always leave feeling empowered about the healing session you've received.

What is Reiki good for?

If you ask the internet, Reiki is great at helping people with anxiety, depression, chronic pain, insomnia, IBS, and much more. It's all true. … and yet, as a healer with over ten years of experience who has seen over 500 different clients, I can tell you that what people really seek to (and succeed to) heal with Reiki is often described differently. Here are some situations in which Reiki is a fantastic healing modality:

• When you can remember the joyful person you used to be and you've lost touch with her.
• When you haven't been feeling yourself.
• When you're feeling stuck and blah and foggy and unclear.
• When you're repeating the same patterns over and over and not knowing why.
• When you've burnt out and are in a period of deep spiritual reevaluation of how you spend your energy.
• When you seem to be way more sensitive to the unseen worlds then your friends or family are and are made to feel crazy about it.
• When you're feeling like something is missing from your life, but you can't quite pinpoint what.
• When you're struggling with a health challenge (mental or physical) and are hesitating about the proposed allopathic routes available to you because you feel there's a deeper dimension to your suffering.
• When you're sensing that you have the power to unlock your own healing, but need a little nudge in the right direction.
• When you're wanting to manifest something amazing into your life but you're not quite there yet and know there are some blocks underneath the surface.

In my experience, Reiki is absolutely incredible in working with all of these issues. Find a practitioner that you click with and that has the experience you need and you're in for a gorgeous life changing ride. Here's a real world example by Elizabeth, who tremendously changed her relationship with anxiety through reiki healing.

The Science of Reiki

Does Reiki work?

Now for the big question, does Reiki work and what does science have to say about it? Before I attempt to answer, it feels important that you know where I'm coming from. I have been a Reiki practitioner since 2010 and have conducted thousands of healing sessions. I also have a Masters in Neuropsychology. At the start of my journey, fresh out of my B.Sc. in Psychology from McGill, I was deeply skeptical of the practice. Yet, something (call it my intuition…!) kept pulling me further. Therefore, part of my path has been to explore two journeys in parallel: A personal, spiritual, healing journey facilitated by Reiki on the one hand and an intellectual journey of inquiry on the other hand. It's my hope that you knowing my background will help you form your own idea. That said, here is my nuanced and complex answer to: “does Reiki work?”. Each point is an answer I came to from my clinical observations and I aim to elaborate on it with the science I'm aware of.

• It depends on how you approach the practice. When you're studying something new for the first time, you're looking for some kind of evidence that the intervention does something, that it beats a comparable placebo. Indeed, a review of 20 clinical studies suggests that Reiki is more effective than placebo, especially for patients with chronic health conditions for reducing pain, anxiety, and depression, and for improving self-esteem and quality of life. So, yes, across the board, it seems that Reiki beats a placebo. That said, I've observed from my clients that how you approach your reiki sessions matters. The more my clients were involved in setting their intentions and the more they were actively invested in their own healing, the more long-lasting and far-reaching the results.
• It depends on what you're asking it to do. The studies so far are promising. They “support the ability of Reiki to reduce anxiety and pain, and suggest its usefulness to induce relaxation, improve fatigue and depressive symptoms, and strengthen overall wellbeing”. The reality, I think, is more multidimensional. It's happened many, many times that someone comes in with one healing intention and they end up finding healing in so many other areas of their life. Reiki is by nature multidimensional and individualized. Working on your energy affects every single aspect of your life. This is very difficult to study quantitatively.
• It depends on your fit with the Reiki practitioner. One of the more established findings in the field of psychology is that the fit between a client and their therapist matters a great deal. It is in fact one of the biggest predictors of client outcomes. I have observed from experience that the same seems to be true for Reiki practitioners and their clients. When you're at the start of your energy healing journey, it's worth investing the time in getting to know your healer and feeling out if you're a good fit. Discovery calls are an incredible way to do so.

How does Reiki work?

The science on this is simply too young, but a few theories are often mentioned as possible pathways to understanding how Reiki works. Before I go into each one, I wish to say that most of these fields of study are still very young themselves and to say they definitively explain Reiki is too much of a leap for this quite conservative scientist. The truth is: while we don't know how Reiki works in a western, scientific sense of knowing, ancient civilizations and thousands of practitioners around the world know from their experience that there is most definitely something to Reiki.

• Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). IPNB views the mind as a process that regulates the flow of energy and information through its neurocircuitry, which is then shared and regulated between people through engagement, connection, and communication. This is remarkably close to the way at least some teachers (myself very much included) view the practice of Reiki: energy, with a loving healing intention, flows through the practitioner to meet the receiver.
• Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). PNI studies the interaction between psychic processes and the immune, endocrine and nervous systems in the body. It offers a pathway to understand what energy healing often helps with: connecting the dots between your intention, how your energy is flowing, what's going on in your life, and what is happening medically.
• Polyvagal theory. One of its key insights is that other people are instrumental in helping us regulate our nervous system — not only as babies, but as adults. In a Reiki session, the practitioner gets into a meditative, ventral parasympathetic state associated with open-heartedness, calm, connection and curiosity, which helps pull others into it as well.
• Quantum physics. Often invoked to “prove reiki is scientific” — I don't agree. That said, the field is reaching conclusions about the very fabric of reality that spiritual traditions had come to through different means. The parallels become very interesting with distance Reiki. They are in remarkable sync, and I cannot wait to see what more we learn in the next few decades.

The Art of Reiki: how to find the right practitioner for you

If you've been reading this article to help you decide whether Reiki is the right next step for you, trust yourself. Trust your pull. Trust yourself to find a practitioner you feel right with. Maybe you need someone who totally owns their “woo” and will pull out tarot cards and candles and talk to you about spirit guides. Maybe you need someone who stays super grounded with you and doesn't do any of that. You know you. You know what you need at this stage of your journey.

Here at Reiki Cleveland, we have a number of practitioners at your disposal. Review them, book a discovery call or two (or a session directly) and let yourself be transported into the magic of Reiki. If you feel it's for you, it likely is.