What is Reiki?

the spiritual practice

Reiki is a form of spiritual practice that was established and developed by Mikao Usui in Japan in the early 20th century. Derived from the words Rei for “spirit” and Ki for “energy”, Reiki embodies the universal life force that flows around us and through us.

Reiki in that sense is also a healing system taught to create balance in our emotional, physical and spiritual lives. A trained practitioner will use hands-on healing, mantras, their intuition and other techniques to balance the flow of energies. They are also here to hold a safe space for our bodies to heal and to encourage transcending our notion of separateness to find our way home to our True Self. The rest is in your hands!

Mikao Usui left us with five core Reiki principles that help us heal and find our way back to our magical selves. There are many different translations, here is one version:

Just for today,
Do not be angry
Do not worry
Be thankful
Do what you are meant to do
Be kind to others

different aspects of reiki

There are many different aspects of Reiki practice. The treatment aspect of Reiki revolves around laying-on-of-hands as healing practice on yourself or on others. This encourages energy blocks to be released and can contribute to bringing back a balance to your body.

It is not unusual for Reiki to stir up a certain curiosity about the understanding of our bodies and its relationship with nature and the wider cosmos. Barriers and limits that we set ourselves may be questioned and challenged, and the engagement with this new-found knowledge may allow for an expansion of ourselves and the world around us. We begin to re-develop and more actively construct the world we want to live in. On the journeys along your borders and during the practice, you will inevitably come in contact with Source and your spirit will engage in conversations with any energy body around. For many, Reiki is the stepping stone to wander further along their spiritual path - it carves the space for connection and healing to start.

benefits of reiki

Every journey is different and Reiki is just one way to enhance spiritual connection - isn’t that the beauty of it all? Spiritual practices are the pillars across all religions and faiths. Think of martial arts like Aikido, Jujutsu or T'ai chi ch'üan (the ‘Chi’ being the ‘Ki’ in Reiki), meditation and breath-work, any form of prayer, tea ceremonies, fasting, yoga, anything that is an expression of your creativity (and everybody is creative) be that writing, chanting, singing, playing an instrument, dancing (think of the wonderful whirling Dervish) – there are endless ways for us to develop an environment of self-care and self-love, to foster a state of relaxation for our bodies and our minds to find connection with the Divine and ultimately our True Selves.

Connecting to Reiki can help with balancing the energies in our body, which will awaken its natural self-healing functions. It can help increase a state of relaxation and meditative state which will reduce stress and anxiety. Reiki will inevitably promote personal awareness – isn’t now the best time to wake up and realise the power that is slumbering patiently within us?

the sessions

hands-on

In a “hands-on” Reiki session, you relax, fully clothed, into a lying or seated position. The practitioner will gently place her hands on your body and work through your chakra system with the aim to bring balance back to your energy centres. Some people don’t feel anything, some people relax deeply or even fall asleep. Other people feel all kinds of things. It is not uncommon to feel heat, cold, tingle and other sensations during a treatment.

Ultimately, your body and your body’s needs are what drive the session and the energies through and around your physical, emotional and spiritual body. It knows what it needs and will move and adjust to harness the healing energy flowing through the safe space held by your practitioner.

remote session

This may astonish you but remote Reiki sessions work just as well, if not more intense in certain cases, as a 1:1 session. The principle of every particle in our vast universe being connected, the power of intention and the openness to receive such treatments lay at the core of remote sessions.

Whether you are familiar with 1:1 sessions and would like to give a remote session a go, I’d be so happy to welcome you from a distance.

All I ask of you is that you find a quiet space where you are able to relax for the length of our session. I will message you before I start and then again once the session is completed with any feedback (sensations, thoughts, images, memories etc.). I will guide you through this if it’s your first time.