Reiki for Self-Love and Healing
The first time I heard about Reiki was as a child when my dad was dating the beautiful, kind, all-around wonderful, Nancy. She was a Reiki master, and I wasn’t sure what that meant at the time, but I remember how she made me feel. As a 12-year-old kid afraid to go to her dad’s house because of his intermittent rage and chilly aloofness, Nancy was warm protective sunshine. At 5 feet, 10 inches with her big blue eyes and bright blond hair, she was my tall angel.
Years later, when I first started to reconnect with my spirituality, the word Reiki rattled around in my mind like a loose marble. I knew I had to learn more about it.
I started my exploration of Reiki by booking a session with Lillie at Healing Touch “L”. Her website was one of only a few that had information about the healing modality – as someone who loves to learn and engage my conscious mind in the logical processes of the woo-woo work, I appreciated that I could read a little something about it before hopping on a body work table. On her website at the time, she called herself as a “purple” person, which is how she described the color of the energy she resonated with most often, and she specializes in seeing the color of everyone’s energy field, which helps her balance the chakras. I have since learned that chakras are little energy centers throughout our bodies, and the 7 largest ones line up along our spine. Each chakra resonates at a different frequency and as such is a different color. For me, it helps to think of the chakras as resonating with the energy flowing in and out of the organs and internal structures surrounding them. To balance these chakras is to help the energy to move freely in, out, and through them.
When I did meet Lillie for a healing session, there was little conversation – I didn’t have a clear intention other than to indulge my curiosity. I went in with a good idea this was something I’d benefit from, if for no other reason than that it connected me back to Nancy. As I lay on the table, eyes closed, Lillie placed her hands gently on my body in strategic places to facilitate energy flow – my lower abdomen, my belly, my heart, my neck, my head, etc. I could feel the warmth from her hands, and it was such a comfort. She mentioned that my root chakra was well-balanced, but she recognized a disconnect between my solar plexus and heart chakra. She encouraged me to visualize what I really wanted, to allow myself to fully see the goal I was reaching for and feel that love and joy in my body. I got a little teary eyed in this release, and she perceived a shift and greater flow of the energy there.
When she moved up to place her hands on my head, I could see purple behind my eyes – was this a trick of my imagination? Or was it a real perception of her aura? I don’t really know in the end, but to me it was real enough.
I can’t say I had any great epiphanies or moments of clarity, but it felt so good have my body honored in this way. It felt like after being touched by Lillie’s warm and gentle hands, I could give myself permission to love my body. I knew I wanted to be able to give this to folks too.
After my experience with Lillie, I set out to find a Reiki teacher to become attuned, so that I could learn and share this gift. Not all Reiki practitioners can attune someone else to Reiki – that honor is reserved for Reiki masters, folks who have spent considerable time practicing Reiki and learning under another Reiki master. Lillie was not teaching at the time, so I had to go elsewhere to find a path forward. I set the goal to become attuned to Reiki 1 and Reiki 2 in the 4 weeks between leaving my job at Lowell Community Health Center and starting my new job at Mass General Brigham, and wouldn’t you know? I couldn’t find a single teacher who was teaching during those 4 weeks, and I was looking as far away as New York City while I live in northern MA!
In the end, I had to give up my expectations and know that I would find the right teacher at the right time. At the right time, I found Clara.
Clara has a passion for animals as much as humans, and she frequently volunteers at a farm in Pepperell, MA to give the animals Reiki. Her approach is a little different from other Reiki teachers in that she draws out the attunements over a longer period of time. I have seen some Reiki masters teach both Reiki 1 and Reiki 2 in the span of a weekend, but Clara does Reiki 1 over two days one week apart and then Reiki 2 after 6 months have passed since completing Reiki 1; Reiki 2 is again done over 2 days a week apart.
I suspect this more drawn-out attunement process was the right way for me. It allowed me to ease into the gift. A good friend of mine had the faster Reiki attunement – Both 1 and 2 over 2 days. She ended up projectile vomiting in her car on the way home the second day. I think it can be a powerful purge on the order of ayahuasca if you’re a sensitive soul and you go the approach of drinking from a fire hose. Reiki is gentle but powerful energy moving through your body, pushing through blockages with the force of that unconditional love. Energy that is no longer serving you gets loosened up and has nowhere to go but out.
During the attunement, my peers and I sat with eyes closed and hands held together in front of us as if in prayer while Clara softly spoke the words of attunement and made the accompanying hand gestures. A past version of myself might have thought this was all a little silly, but as I waited for my turn to feel Clara gently touch my head, I believed in it all. I was ready to open myself up to the possibility that I too can be a channel for unconditional love and give what I’ve received to others. What could be better than that?
Between the stories of our Reiki lineage, we wandered out to the farm to share our new gift with the animals. It may have been my imagination, but they seemed more sensitive to us. As I brushed a little pony’s coat, I could see his skin wrinkle and quiver before I touched him – he felt something before my hand made physical contact. And then, as I practiced the hand positions on a volunteer, Logan the farm cat came to join us and sat on my volunteer’s legs. Clara said that cats know Reiki well – they channel it too.
Throughout 6 months between Reiki 1 and Reiki 2 and beyond, I found Reiki to be the best thing I have ever encountered for learning to love my body. I put my hands on myself in the car and before bed and on the couch and while meditating (and really all the time), and it feels like they are magick love mitts. I just put them where I feel I need some regulation or relaxation or attention, and then I feel peace flow in. You may be thinking I could have put my hands on myself before Reiki attunement, and maybe it would have had the same effect, but the point is I didn’t. It took me believing in the power of my own hands to heal myself to start actually doing the work of healing.
Perhaps Reiki is a placebo, and perhaps it is the warm loving energy that I feel it is. Either way, it’s as powerful as we allow it to be. I choose to allow for the possibility that we have the capacity to heal ourselves and each other with our own loving hands. I choose to believe in this kind of magick.
The sum of it:
Reiki is energy, and people have different ways that they describe this energy – some call it a divine energy, or universal life force energy, but to me, it feels like unconditional love.
A person’s body can be attuned to channel Reiki just like a radio channels radio waves, and that energy flows out through the practitioner’s hands.
And even if this all sounds a little out there, at the very least, Reiki is a way to feel your body honored by yours or someone else’s compassionate touch – and this is powerful medicine all on its own.