Reiki Really Works!

My first Reiki experience was purely by accident. I wanted to feel better and a friend recommended this woman that does this stuff…”it was great”.  So I booked an appointment and went to her.  That one session was amazing.  I didn’t find out what she did until after the session was over and the Reiki part was really only about 20 minutes long. I was in love with the work and ended up taking it on as a new career.

Back then-10 years ago, when I offered people a Reiki session or told them was a Reiki Master, literally no one knew what that was.  So I was left to explain about a metaphysical process–passing life energy thru my hands, when received would feel really good, like a heating-pad, and that energy would help them heal. All I could tell them was anecdotal stories about experiences of my clients and my friends clients successes.  “Just try it, you’ll love it”.  It was a bit of a stretch for many people.

Starting a few years ago, there was enough Reiki-awareness, in general, that when I told people, “I’m a Reiki Master”, almost everyone has heard the word “Reiki”. They may not know what it means exactly, but they’ve heard the word. It wasn’t just a strange combo of consonants and vowels. It had some context. It made my explaining job easier, because people are more receptive to hearing about the semi-familiar.

And in the background, there have been researchers trying to prove or disprove the effectiveness of Reiki.  Does it really help healing, when measured scientifically, double-blind studies and all that stuff. Or are the anecdotes of my clients just one-off successes?

They are validating the Reiki table experience: It does feel good, it does help, it should be part of standard practices of healing. 

Articles such as this one are being published in respected journals. This article reviewed the results of a collection of clinical studies on Reiki.

Reiki Is Better Than Placebo and Has Broad Potential as a Complementary Health Therapy

Placebo? They measured getting Reiki [Reiki from a Reiki attuned practitioner] versus getting fake or sham-Reiki [an actor that mimicked the hand positions and procedures of a real Reiki session]. The sham-Reiki served as the placebo, the sugar pill, that will have a neutral effect.

What did they measure?

  1. Physiological responses to Reiki
  2. Use of Reiki as a complementary therapy for a chronic condition
  3. Use of Reiki as a treatment for a chronic condition
  4. Use of Reiki as a complementary therapy for an acute condition

I’ll let you read the article for detail information and jump to the results 🙂

What did they find?  Reiki can be effective in

  • “Activating the parasympathetic nervous system, as measured by reduced heart rate, reduced blood pressure, and increased heart rate variability”
  • “Reducing pain, anxiety, and depression, and for improving self-esteem and quality of life”

‘These effects are due to higher parasympathetic nervous system activity, mediated via the vagus nerve”.

” Reiki has the potential to provide valuable support for a broad range of chronic health conditions”

“Reiki should be regarded as a complementary therapy that can be implemented alongside all other medical and therapeutic techniques.

Further research is recommended to help optimize the application of Reiki for specific health conditions and to examine the benefits arising from provision of multiple Reiki sessions over an extended period of time.”

Lovely! Yes, this is what most of us in the Reiki community have been saying for years.

  • It’s a wonderful (and powerful) complement to any treatment or medical protocol that a person may be under.
  • There are no-contraindications–everyone can benefit from Reiki.
  • Reiki can happen anywhere, literally anywhere, home, hospital, clinic, barn, etc
  • it feels like the best massage you’ve every gotten without all the rubbing 🙂

Don’t hesitate to try Reiki and add it to your current wellness regime, especially if your challenge is tackling pain, illness or disease.

Also I’m sending out a big thanks to all those Reiki Researchers who are proving it’s validity! 🙂

Are You Ready for Reiki’s Help?

Book a Reiki Session Today

Pains in the body–what do they mean?

trappedEmotionsWhy do we have pain and weakness in one part of the body and not another?  When you fall or trip, is it always on that one side? do you always seem to land on that one knee? tweak that same ankle?  OR when working with your hands and arms, does that one elbow see to take the brunt of the work? is it the wrist that seems to complain first? OR does your lower back seem to give out before anything else?

This is your body trying to send you a message about the underlying emotional – mental issues that are unresolved.

When we have any kind of unresolved trauma or drama in our lives, the memory and energy of that fight-or-flight-or-freeze stress remains, stuck in our tissue.  If we don’t do any physical or personal emotional work to release that stress, it will slowly grow with time by accumulating additional instances.  At some point the “pool of stress” will effect the surrounding tissues with enough impact that pain, dis-function and maybe dis-ease will result.  Unresolved it will get louder and louder and until it gets your notice–enough for you to pay attention to it.

Here is the pattern of any chronic issues: it started with a small annoyance, was ignored, it got more frequent, was ignored, it got larger (louder), was maybe superficially treated–but really just ignored, etc…until finally it seems all of a sudden, there is this big issue. and we wonder where it came from.  hmmm….?

So here it is. It hurts. What to do?

There are lots a charts and graphics around (like the link below) that can point you in the general direction.

  • Shoulders = carrying a burden that is too heavy, given to you by your family, the world (right side) or your self(left side).  what and why are you carrying it? what happens if you put part if it down or ask for help? remember that it takes a village?
  • Hips = support in your life, financial(right side) or emotional(left side). what kind of support do you need? must it come from others? or can you support and love yourself? who is not capable of supporting you?
  • Heart = love and connection. where are you disconnected from yourself, your family (given or chosen), community, your maker?  how are you experiencing shame, loss, lack, anger?  who can make you feel loved? how do you connect with yourself and others? what blocks are in the way?
  • the list goes on….

The trick is to do this emotional work ALONG WITH the physical together.  Doing this work from two arenas, emotional and physical, you will create a spreading spiritual effect.  The results are greater; swifter strides towards releasing the agony.

In my clinic, we do this with work with good results.   Reiki, Quantum Touch or general Energy work for the physical side and talking though bubbled up sub-conscious images that the theta state brings for the emotional side.

This is exactly the kind of work that represents the first energy work session I ever had and kept me coming back for more.  It eventually lead to me learning and taking it on as a profession.

It’s great stuff. and body pain tells you where to start the path.

Reiki for your journey thru cancer








Calming Restless Legs

You’re laying in bed, just about to drop into sleep, and there’s the itch or twitch that startles you back from slumber.  or the knee jerks that make you RestlessLegSyndromefeel like a puppet with someone else pulling the strings. Some legs get wild enough to force sleeping in a bed separate from their years-long partner.  Whether on the sofa or in bed there seems to be no escaping the legs that want to move.

I’ve helped clients with Restless Leg Syndrome.  I’ve done it using Energy and Bowen, individually and both in separate sessions.

Bowen helps neurological issues by loosening fascia which restores tissue hydration and unrestricted communication with the limbic system. Moist tissue can respond to our activity demands, recover from those exertions and rest when “in waiting”.

Fascia also holds our body memory or muscle memory- the patterns or reactions that we carry out without conscious thought.  It also hold the somatic memory of injuries and trauma that we have incurred.  Balanced fascia is more fully in communication with our limbic system which houses the emotional-mental portions of the injuries and traumas.  The feedback between the fascial and limbic systems integrate the physical and emotional-mental responses to new and chronic injuries. This will make healing responses more appropriate, releasing cascading inflammation, edema and chronic muscle spasms.

Energy sessions help rest the spirit and can reveal the spiritual reason for the physical manifestation.  Our work on this plane is activated by our family and friends when we are young, usually by age 7 through misunderstanding and trauma. If we don’t respond by facing and resolving the issue, it will be presented to us time and again, louder and more painful each time, until it gets our full and complete attention. 🙂 Each of us have a unique and varied life course. Energy work can help “lift the lid” on those unresolved reactions that we buried in our bodies and memories.  As adults we have more control over ourselves and our environments and have better tools to help remove these bundles of pain and sorrow.  Our itches and twitches are our sub-conscious trying to tell us something.

Either way, getting some relief from the itch, pain and twitch in yours will help you get needed rest and feeling better!










The body’s mediator: fascia

I talk a lot about how fascia is important. It’s where the knotted patterns of our life and life style lay encased in living tissue.   The impact and fascia6remnants of physical injury is in the fascia. Emotions are felt and trauma lies buried in our fascia.  Our energy bodies are attached to our physical bodies via our fascia.  Right after we are a bunch of cells, the first organized tissue is fascia and all other tissue is formed as slips of tissue off the fascia.  It surrounds, holds, support and shields every structure in our bodies. It communicates information faster than our nerves–much faster.  And it provides transportation for fluids, to keep itself and every thing under it’s supervision hydrated and strong.

What’s not to like about fascia?

I ran across this article some time ago, like July 2010 and found it again in a saved folder.

Listening from your Fascia

Energy Work
Which is interesting, since I’m coming to believe that all the energy work I perform with my clients is really just fascia work. Meaning, when I  project energy from my hands or through intention, my target is the connection between the physical body aka fascia to the etheric body, the first level of our energy body.  As physical beings, sometimes we don’t “feel it” until it actually becomes physical.  When the fascia relaxes, the mind can let go and the spirit is relieved.  Which make perfect sense.  With energy work, I’m coming from the spiritual to the physical.  I just didn’t have a clear idea of where that interface took place.  It works something like this:

  • opening the energy field, activating the physical connection to fascia with Reiki, crystals, essential oils and sound, stimulating information about locked patterns from the sub-conscious, voicing – bringing into the conscious-physical level – the mental or emotional injury, releasing it from the body,  restoring light-ness and peace to the aura and physical body.

Bowen Technique
With Bowen Technique, bodywork that targets fascia using acupressure point access, it works in the opposite direction. In a Bowen session there can be lots of prerequisite moves and procedures, but the sequence that results in the “final” pain release also usually triggers emotional and trauma related discharges.  Usually the originating injury happened years ago and the chronic tension pattern had later erupted into pain from a more recent and relatively benign over-stretch or twist.  It’s this old impairment that is let go. With Bowen, it works like this:

  • stretching muscles & tendons, dragging fascia along for the ride, releasing chronic physical patterns & pain,  discharging suppressed emotions and trauma, relieving the heaviness of life burdens from the body.

So I’m observing this wonderful synergy in practice: Energy work and Bowen.

Same work from two different direction.  I see it more clearly and more in-depth with each client.

The fascia is the bridge between…a truly wonderful thing.hands-light

What is Reiki doing?

At this point most people have heard about Reiki, even if they don’t have a clue what it is, what it does or how it feels.  Most of the stuff you find “outReikiHands-smilingWoman there” is anecdotal and elusively described.  I ran across this description which is pretty concise, if a little understated–meaning the depth of each paragraph can be explored in volumes–but that would defeat the concise part 🙂

Anyway, take a read to get the 50,000 view of whats going on when a Reiki Practitioner puts there hands on you.

How Reiki Works

This is a great description of how we are made and clue to how healing can be conducted.

I work with all my client’s energy systems in every session.  Bowen sessions focus on the physical-myofascial interface to the fluid and piso-electric systems of the body.  Intuitive and dowsing sessions focus on the subtle energy of sub-conscious and super-conscious bodies.  Reiki and Energy work sessions focus on the bio-energy of the auric bodies and their chakras. From the “focus level”, the results will ripple though the rest of the body levels-physical, emotional, mental, spiritual.

It’s all parts of the same metaphysical/physical system that makes up our body and experience here.  Each method is a just different way to get in touch with the physical pain, spiritual cramp, emotional cramp or life-path derailment.  When you affect one level, all levels are affected as well–presenting opportunities to grow and expand our experience by releasing the old patterns and obstacles.

