Reiki is an energy healing technique that promotes relaxation, reduces stress and anxiety through gentle touch. Reiki practitioners use their hands to deliver energy to your body, improving the flow and balance of your energy to support healing. To encourage a state of wellness, reiki can stabilize the energy systems of the body. Reiki can be used to discover where stress and emotions are being held and incite a feeling of peaceful bliss. This type of healing is very gentle and allows the practitioner and client to focus on releasing traumas and emotional blockages.
Mikao Usui developed reiki in the early 1900s, deriving the term from the Japanese words rei, meaning “universal,” and ki, which refers to the vital life force energy that flows through all living things. Now, reiki is used all over the world, including in hospitals and hospices, to complement other forms of health treatments. The multi-leveled, rapid response to Reiki suggests a complex process that engages many body systems, simultaneously or in quick succession, shifting the body from domination by the “fight or flight” (stress) response to the relaxation response, and supporting the body’s own healing mechanisms. Some researchers theorize that Reiki’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing effect is triggered on a sub-physical level, perhaps in what science refers to as the biofield.
Reiki practice is extremely passive. The Reiki practitioner’s hands are still for most of the treatment, moving only to change hand placements. The Reiki practitioner is neutral, making no attempt to fix the recipient or to change the biofield. Additionally, the practitioner does not in any way control Reiki energy; she/he merely rests her hands lightly on the body (or just above the body if needed, for example, in the presence of an open wound or burn).