A Beginners' Guide to Reiki Healing: Meaning, Benefits & FAQs

Do you know 1.2 million American adults had some type of Reiki treatment in 2007? It’s a century-old energy healing technique that’s getting popular quickly these days. Today Reiki is given to people, animals, and even plants. What is the meaning of Reiki healing? How does it work? What can it do?🧐

👉🏻A Japanese energy healing technique, Reiki is conducted by a certified practitioner who lays or hovers their hand over the body of the patient in different shapes and gestures. While the aftereffects of Reiki are indeed relaxing, the process itself may not be that pleasant depending on your body, mind, and its mechanisms. For instance, sometimes energy release is a painful process and other times you won’t feel a thing.

In order to know more about this energy healing technique, you need to start from its beginning by learning its meaning, history, Reiki principles, how it works, what you need to do, how you feel after it, and what you will get from Reiki sessions.

These are the topics we’ll target to clarify Reiki today:

• What is the meaning of Reiki and Reiki healing?
• Are there scientific proofs of Reiki?
• What are the benefits of Reiki healing?
• When is the right time to get Reiki healing?
• How does Reiki compare with other energy healing techniques?
• What happens when you combine Reiki with crystal healing?
• Ways of doing Reiki healing
• Frequently Asked Questions about Reiki

What is Reiki, and Reiki healing?

A form of energy healing that uses the methodology of sensei (teacher) passing on knowledge to students, Reiki is a spiritual practice.

Here, the Reiki practitioner isn’t the source of healing. In fact, the practitioner is just a channel that helps to awaken your own life force energy so that it can enable self-healing. Once the energy flows into you, it will automatically clear blocked points in your body.

Technically, the word Reiki is a combination of two Japanese words—Rei and Ki, where "Rei" refers to the "higher power" and "Ki" is the life force energy. It’s interesting to note that "Ki" is the same as "Qi" found in Chinese traditional medicine and "Prana" in Hinduism.

Reiki energy healing technique was introduced by a Japanese monk named Mikao Usui in 1922. It’s a relatively new technique that can cost anywhere from $30 to a few hundred dollars per session based on the practitioner and your location.

The process of Reiki involves the transmission of energy and it’s popular for relieving pain, anxiety, stress, and fatigue besides enhancing the physical and mental health of the subject.😇 It’s done in such a way that the energy channeled into your important parts will attempt to unblock energy on your own.

During Reiki, the practitioner lays their hand over the three important areas (vital organs, chakras, and meridians) in your body or hovers it over your fully-clothed body. You might be asked to sit or lay down during the session. Some practitioners might use smoke, crystals, and several others methods to guide the flow of energy into your body.

Truth be told, there’s no universal way every person reacts to Reiki. Your body will react to Reiki the way it’s programmed to release energy, both physically and mentally. You might feel a rush of warmth, tingles, spasms, electricity, cool air, and other feelings when a practitioner unblocks your energy channels. For some people, the same might push them into a trance or lucid dreaming too.

Each session typically takes between 20 to 90 minutes. The truth is, most people need a few sessions of Reiki for complete unblocking of energy, especially if they’ve never done it or have chronic ailments.

Is there scientific proof of Reiki's healing powers?

While Reiki is often regarded as a pseudoscience, there are many published studies that prove the physical to emotional and spiritual benefits of Reiki.

Take a look at it below.

• The empirical data provided by Tulay Sagkal Midilli and Ismet Eser revealed women who received Reiki within two days of cesarean delivery experienced reduced pain, pulse rate, and usage of analgesic pain medication.
• A randomized trial conducted by Susan Thrane and Susan M. Cohen proved that Reiki may have helped decrease anxiety in subjects.
• A study by Melike Demir, Gulbeyaz Can, Ayhan Kelam, and Aydın Aydıner found Reiki helped cancer patients who received five Reiki sessions of 30-minutes per week to manage pain better than those without them.
• The research by Farnaz Jahantiqh, Abdolghani Abdollahimohammad, Mohammadreza Firouzkouhi, and Vahid Ebrahiminejad found that Reiki was efficient as physiotherapy but faster and more cost-efficient on patients with herniated discs.
• Using a small study, Léia Fortes Salles, Luciana Vannucci, Amanda Salles, and Maria Júlia Paes da Silva in Brazil proved that Reiki had a healing effect on hypertension.
• A single-blind trial conducted by Deborah Bowden, John Gruzelier, and Lorna Goddard found that Reiki improved the moods of 35 subjects.
• A study conducted at Yale University concluded that subjects with a history of heart attacks had improved heart rate variability and mental health after Reiki sessions.

What is Reiki healing good for?

Most people feel better throughout their body after a Reiki session because of the way this technique helps to relax the mind. Cancer Research U.K advocates this may have to do with the soft touch of the therapist than the tension of invasive routines commonly found in healthcare locations.

Overall, Reiki affects all the important parts of your body and mind. What are the advantages of getting a Reiki session from a good practitioner?

• First off, Reiki doesn’t just affect your mind, it’s a chain reaction that touches your physical and spiritual states too.
• For instance, Reiki can relax your muscles and bring relief from pain. When pain disappears, stress also does. Without stress, you end up in a good mood that helps you sleep well at the end of the day. With sound sleep and stress-free days also come good heart health.
• Moreover, Reiki improves the self-healing abilities of your body. This is why it’s an immune-strengthening practice that can help your body get stronger.💪🏻 It can also help you defend against diseases like infections, asthma, fatigue, inflammation, hypertension, migraines, arthritis, sciatica.
• Your overall health improves and so does the clutter in your mind. Without clutter and tension, it’s easy to focus your mind on things you actually want to do. You’ll soon start feeling more positive when your physique, mind, and spirit are balanced after a Reiki session. It makes you harmonious and gets rid of anxiety, depression, manic mood swings, and other mental issues you have.
• The best thing about Reiki is you don’t always need a practitioner to do a session. Once you learn the technique, you can also do it for yourself.

When do I need to receive Reiki healing?

Because Reiki is a way to clear energy blocks, the best time to get it when you feel you need energy clearing.

The causes of energy blockages are many. It can be from negative thoughts, events, reactions, and actions like anger, trauma, frustration, and so on. Even stress can be a cause of blocked energy. For instance, stress can prevent you from being positive and creative. Your energy may even be blocked if you aren’t forgiving someone or feeling guilty as well.😠

Reiki helps you access the energy reservoir within you. It’s not recommended as a single alternative medicine, but complementary to other treatments.✅ Moreover, Reiki is good to help with the symptoms like pain, stress, depression, anxiety, and so on stemming from other causes.

If you have chronic problems, Reiki can help in accelerating healing. It’s essentially helping your immune system to help to heal yourself.  Any time you feel a break or want to clean the mind, Reiki can help.

Reiki healing vs. Other types of energy healing

We are all beings made up of energy.🌌 That’s why there are scores of techniques to work on it.

Let’s look at how Reiki compares to other energy healing techniques.

Healing Technique	Duration	How is it done?	How often to do it?
Reiki	20+ minutes	Touch / Hovering Hand	Once in two weeks
Acupressure	60+ minutes	Pressure	Daily
Craniosacral Therapy	60+ minutes	Pressure	Two to three times per week
Yoga	20+ minutes	Posture / Gestures	Several times a day
Meditation	20+ minutes	Self	Twice daily
Breathwork / Prana	15+ minutes	Self	Three times a day
Quantum Healing	180+ minutes	Touch / Thoughts	Whenever you wish
Chromotherapy	30+ minutes	Sight	Once in two weeks
Light	20+ minutes	Sight	Three to four times a week
Qigong	3 minutes	Breathing / Meditation	Once per day
Music Therapy	20+ minutes	Hearing	Daily
Crystals	A few minutes to hours, days, weeks, months, etcetera	Self	Daily / Weekly / Monthly / Yearly

Take a closer look at these energy healing techniques and how it fares against Reiki below.

Acupressure

A form of energy healing treatment where pressure is applied using fingers, palms, elbows, feet, or even devices, acupressure is quite different from Reiki. The former uses immense pressure or massages to relieve physical energy blockages as opposed to Reiki’s soft touch.

Craniosacral Therapy

Also called CST, craniosacral therapy uses hands-on pressure at a higher rate than what you experience in Reiki. This helps the movement of fluids around the brain to relieve tension, pain, and even swelling.

Yoga

A combination of body posture, breathing, and meditation is yoga. It’s a form of exercise that accelerates the flow of energy, hormones, and fluids through the body and mind for balance. Doing yoga can help you relax and get healthy. Unlike most forms of Reiki, you can do yoga yourself.

Meditation

This is a technique where you combine other techniques like breathwork and gestures to enter a heightened sense of being. It’s a good way to improve mindfulness, focus, and attention span. As opposed to Reiki, you can meditate on your own or sign up for guided meditation using a mentor or the audio of a mentor.

Breathwork / Prana

Also called "Pranayama" or "the control of life force", this technique focuses on breathing in specific ways to increase the flow of oxygen into different cells in the body. You can combine it with yoga, meditation, crystal healing, Reiki, and other forms of energy healing therapies.

Quantum Healing

A delightful combination of meditation, philosophy, eastern medicine, psychology, neurophysiology, and quantum science, energy is shifted at a quantum level here. It helps to strengthen the life force energy to protect and nourish, much like Reiki.

Chromotherapy

When you use visible light to heal the emotional, mental, and physical areas, it’s called color therapy or chromotherapy. It helps to balance energy imbalances like Reiki, heal organs like the thyroid, tonsils, inflammation, and neck using different frequencies of colors.

Phototherapy

A combination of heat and light energies, light therapy is where you are subjected to light waves from an artificial source that’s calibrated for different effects. Just like Reiki, it can improve mood, sleep, anxiety, and mental health issues.

Music

Sound can affect you in different frequencies much like light and colors. Ranging from drumming to singing or even listening to Reiki music at different frequencies influences your body and mind. Music and sound can also heal problems like anxiety, insomnia, stress, and even high blood pressure.

Qigong

Movements, meditation, and breathing come together to form qigong (pronounced chee-gong) healing therapy. It facilitates the movement of the life force energy (Qi) as you’ve seen in Reiki. The added benefit is it can move blood and oxygen in the body too.

Crystals

Healing crystals are created inside the Earth and filled with different chakra energies that can interfere with our own and provide healing to the body, mind, and spirit.

The relationship between Reiki and crystal healing

If you’re an avid crystal lover, it’s common to have come across "Reiki stones". What does Reiki have to do with healing crystals?

Both crystals and Reiki work with the movement of energy throughout different areas in the body. While crystals are born with energies that can charge your chakra, Reiki can do so with your own energy. Imagine what would happen if you combine the two.😊

Many practitioners use crystals to enhance the power of their Reiki sessions. They do so by carefully placing crystals on the subject’s body that require immediate attention, followed by their usual rituals. By doing so, the practitioner is not just channeling the life force energy within you, but the energy of crystals into you as well.

Using crystals in Reiki is an advanced technique where the practitioner starts by charging each stone with an intention, crystal wand, moon energy, or any other crystal charging techniques. You can even wear Reiki jewelry to keep your energy flowing throughout the day.

Here are a couple of popular crystals used in Reiki healing practices:

• Rose quartz helps you enhance your emotions with the help of heart chakra and is placed over your heart.
• Citrine is the harbinger of joy to you and it’s often kept over your stomach.
• Red jasper and bloodstone are both balancing stones that help you ground your thoughts. It’s kept over the abdomen.
• Amethyst is used by Reiki practitioners to absorb energy or push in energy by placing it on the forehead or eyebrows.
• Aquamarine is placed on the neck to create a sense of relief over the body and mind.
• Sodalite is a good crystal used in Reiki for acquiring a strong voice and healing the throat and hence, it’s placed over the same area.
• Carnelian is best placed over the pelvic area to direct the flow of kundalini energy within you.
• Clear quartz is a great stone that absorbs negativity and can hence cleanse you from top-to-bottom. It may not be kept over your body, but circled over you during Reiki. However, some practitioners also keep it on the forehead.

How to do Reiki healing?

Reiki is simple but becoming a Reiki master isn’t a cakewalk. It’s usually taught by certified Reiki practitioners for over ten to fourteen hours for beginners. However, becoming a “Master Reiki Healer” might require over three years of practical experience too.

If you’re smitten by the healing technique of Reiki, then you’ll love learning it even more. Based on the level of learning you do, you can move from treating yourself and others (Level 1) to manifesting intentions (Level 2). In the Usui system, there are two more additional levels called "Advanced" and "Master" too.

When you’re finished with Reiki training, you receive the ability to channel energy and offer Reiki treatments and this is called attunement.

Here’s a rough list of interesting techniques used by Reiki masters for healing purposes:

• Scanning: In this technique, the palm of your hand acts as a sensor to detect problems. Here, you move the hand slowly from the head of the subject to other parts of the body about three inches farther from their skin.
• Beaming: This is a way to clear the aura of the subject from afar and beaming doesn’t require touching.
• Centering: Also called grounding, this is where you might need a grounding crystal to center yourself and the client.
• Clearing: A Reiki practitioner uses a crystal or guided meditation to clear the energies of the person or that of the space.
• Focusing: Here, you place or hover your hand over different areas to focus the energy with slow movements.
• Infusing: This is where other energy healing techniques like light, sound, crystals, etcetera are infused with Reiki energy to create a powerful medium.
• Raking: Typically used for "aura healing" such a technique energetically rakes your aura to shed the negativity and accentuate the positivity.
• Smoothing: A usual last step in Reiki sessions, this is where the practitioner smoothes the aura by beginning on the head and moving downwards.

Interested in Reiki healing? Subscribe to our blog right away because interesting articles such as Reiki symbols will be published soon on JewelryTalk.

Frequently Asked Questions about Reiki

Is Reiki healing safe?

Yes, Reiki healing is completely safe for the practitioner and the subject. It’s not invasive like acupuncture or harsh like CST because Reiki healing typically uses soft touch with the palm of the hand. There are even Reiki healers who don’t even touch to heal their patients.

In what cases is Reiki healing not recommended?

If you come across a healer who isn’t certified, it’s best not to seek Reiki treatments from them.

Amateur Reiki doesn’t typically cause problems but may lead to unprofessionalism and lack of results. It’s also not a good choice to replace Reiki with any medicines or therapies you’re currently undergoing for medical problems. Reiki is best used as a complementary therapy.

Does Reiki have any side effects?

A completely natural and non-invasive energy healing technique, Reiki doesn’t harm you in any way. However, there could be discomforts during a session based on how your body and mind are programmed to release energy. That being said, discomforts experienced during Reiki are minor.

Alternatively, when a person with a chronic problem receives too many Reiki sessions too soon, there can be a period of poor energy, fatigue, and a return of symptoms afterward. Traditionally, this is believed to be a healing process of the body where it simulates symptoms.  

Where can I find a Reiki practitioner and get Reiki healing?

If you’re new to Reiki, it’s very important you find a qualified Reiki healer first. The best place to find well-reputed Reiki practitioners is via your family and friends.

You can also check with your healthcare service providers because over 800 hospitals in the U.S offers Reiki since 2007. There are nurses and doctors who provide Reiki sessions as a part of their services nowadays too.

In case you don’t find any leads, head over to social media to filter out high-rated companies, teams, and individual healers in a click or two or type "Reiki healing near me".

What happens during a Reiki session?

Generally, the practitioner might ask you to sit in a comfortable position on a chair or lay down on the bed for the session. If you’re a crystal user, you can bring your crystals and ask the practitioner to use them for enhancing the healing session.

Once you’re settled, the Reiki healer will scan your fully-clothed body with their palms. It will help them find areas that need energy healing. They will then move their hands over your body, sometimes with a slight touch. Based on how your body reacts, the healer will use different techniques to focus the energy over your important organs, chakras, and energy points for healing.

You might feel strange sensations or see weird dreams when your body releases the blocked energy. The whole thing might last for an hour or two.

Does Reiki healing apply to people of all ages?

Because children and the elderly can easily learn and practice Reiki easily, Reiki sessions are also ideal for people of all ages. The New England Naturopathic Health even recommends it for children with high excitability, depression, anxiety, fear, and lack of concentration. It’s even used on plants and pets nowadays.

How long do the benefits of Reiki last?

For healthy people, the effects of a Reiki session can last over a month or more. However, if you’re battling physical, emotional, or spiritual hurdles, you might need recurrent Reiki sessions up to a few times every week.

What to wear when you’re going for a Reiki session?

The goal of Reiki is to relax you and that’s why it’s best to wear whatever you’re comfortable in. If you wear something that clashes with your aura or energy, it can negatively affect the energy healing process of Reiki.

Most people who go for Reiki sessions typically wear loose clothing. The best option includes apparel made from natural fabrics that are also cruelty-free. Also remember to remove metals, stones, jewelry, and other accessories before starting your session.

Can Reiki be done from a distance?

Yes, it’s possible to do Reiki healing from a distance. Because Reiki healing includes learning the "distance symbol" that allows the practitioner to heal the subject from a distance, it can cross both space and time. The energy of Reiki can be projected onto anyone at any place and at any time with Reiki distance healing. You can send Reiki healing vibrations to your friends and family as well as yourself in the past or future too.

What happens after a Reiki treatment?

While most people feel at ease or energetic after a Reiki session, it’s not uncommon to feel tired or drained too. Fatigue and weariness are a sign of healing according to healers. In any case, most practitioners recommend staying hydrated after an intense Reiki session.

Getting started with Reiki

Does Reiki work? Absolutely!

An eastern energy healing technique, Reiki is typically conducted by Reiki masters with years of experience. Reiki meaning is channeling energy by using the palm of the hand on important parts of the body like over the organs, chakras, etcetera.

While most people who don’t know Reiki well might label it as a pseudoscience, there are many scientific studies that prove it’s a good practice to alleviate pains, sleep problems, mood, and other mental health issues like anxiety and depression.

When you engage in a good Reiki session, it can help to heal your mind, body, and spirit. It’s best to undergo Reiki after events that block your energy like anger, trauma, frustration, depression, manic mood swings, etcetera. It’s equally efficient as other energy healing practices like yoga, CST, acupressure, meditation, breathwork, Qigong, and crystals.

You can even combine Reiki with healing crystals to enhance the power of energy that flows through you for healing.✅

Now you know what is Reiki healing, it’s best to enroll for a good session with a certified Reiki master to reap Reiki benefits. If you want to do Reiki on your own, sign up for educational classes. It’s safe, powerful, and healing for the body and mind.

Get started today!