Updated: Feb 14
I try to think back to what I was expecting when I received Reiki for the first time and I really don’t recall. I think I was in a place where I knew I needed change - something, anything - so very badly that I didn’t care, as long as it helped. It did, of course, or I wouldn’t be here - but that’s another story for another time. I just hoped for someone to help with the stress and emotional pain that was weighing me down.
What I can tell you now is that I didn’t really feel so much in the moment outside of drifting relaxation. It was one of those times where you wonder how long this will take and then the next second it's over and you aren’t sure how the time flew by. I am a good napper now, but back then was not at all and yet it seemed I instantly fell into a rehabilitative slumber only to awaken with energy and zero stress.
Seriously, I arrived at my sessions with a racing heart, frantic mind (thoughts ping-ponging around my skull at a frenzied pace), a clenched jaw and an overall hardness that I don’t know how I withstood it for so many years, so many decades. During the workday, I absorbed and clung to every stress, every act of aggression or slight that occurs in a competitive corporate environment and was just so brittle from it all. My sympathetic nervous system was almost perpetually engaged. While racing to a Reiki session after leaving work far too late to make it on time, I often screamed obscenities at other drivers on the road as though everything happening to me (and it was, in fact, happening TO ME - not just life occurring around me) was their fault.
And yet I never left a session with any of that, truly. I felt softer. Lighter. It was as if I viewed the world through a gauzy lens because it just seemed that much gentler and less aggressive toward me. I slept well on the nights I received Reiki (a rarity for me at the time) and I generally felt more present with my family. I can even recall laughing at drivers who would have made me lose my mind not even an hour and a half prior.
Will this be your experience? I think so. Believe it or not, people actually profess to have far stronger sensations during sessions. Some feel warmth or tingling in various parts of their body. Others feel whooshes of relief as energy moves within them, releasing from a stagnant place. Even others feel emotions arise or bursts of clarity in the stillness (a solution to something nagging in the back of their mind). It can range from profound to merely relaxing as hell.
What will occur in your session with me is this - you will lie down fully clothed and I will gently place my hands on you (or not, if that makes you uncomfortable in any way). The session should be calming and quiet and hopefully you will enter an almost meditative state. Afterwards we will talk about anything that arose for either of us. I often see or feel things when I’m working with you and will share that with you at the end, along with the areas where I felt compelled to spend time. There will also be time for any questions you may have.
I love sharing this with you because I truly believe that Reiki can help to heal a world that is hurting so very badly right now. There is pain, fear and anger and we need help in releasing that. We need each other, as humans, and I’m grateful to have my small part in helping with that.