Healing: Our body and our life
Yes, Reiki can heal! There is an abundance of proof. Doctors at the Charité, Berlin’s University Hospital, for instance, concluded a few years ago that complementary therapies could speed up healing time, reduce the need for painkillers and generally improve the wellbeing of patients. (They could probably cut costs too, as patients could vacate their hospital beds earlier.) Unsure which therapy to go for, the doctors trialled a number of them and analysed the patient feedback. With 85 per cent of patients reporting a reduction in pain, Reiki scored the highest by far. Today, the hospital runs a specialist Reiki department with five permanent staff.1 The results are extraordinary.
Many health organizations now acknowledge the benefits of Reiki. Treatment (often provided by volunteers) is offered in many hospitals in the UK and the USA. A number of clinical trials have demonstrated its benefits, including a reduction in the side effects of cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
And of course there are the reports from numerous individuals about how they have benefited from Reiki. Take Alistair, for instance, a student of mine who suffered from heart palpitations. He first came across Reiki on the internet. A practitioner had advertised free distance treatments to people in need. (What a wonderful idea!) Alistair got in touch and, as he was an accountant by training, kept a meticulous journal of his palpitations. After a few weeks of Reiki, he found occurrences had reduced from 28 times to three or four times a month. And of course he’s no exception. There is so much evidence that Reiki works.
In scientific terms, reports like Alistair’s are categorized as anecdotal evidence. An anecdote is an individual experience. With Reiki, however, we have millions of such anecdotes. And many report very similar results. That means the anecdotal becomes empirical. Quantifiable. Measurable. Hence scientific.
So, there is scientific proof that Reiki works. And yet, despite many theories, there’s no simple scientific explanation of how it works. When we look at the results, the reason for that becomes clearer: it doesn’t work in one way but many. Just as we humans can be quite complex…
I am very grateful to Reiki teacher Penelope Quest for introducing me to the concept of holistic healing. In other words, not just looking at the body but at the whole person. Working holistically means we don’t just focus on a symptom but take into account cause and effect. After all, if we treat the symptom and not the cause, it will inevitably reappear.
With regards to Reiki, four levels of healing are commonly distinguished:
I would like to add a fifth (very practical) level: life circumstances (through unexpected changes or out-of-the-blue encounters, often summed up as synchronicity).
In many, if not most, cases, the levels are interconnected. For instance, a physical problem (a painful knee) may have been caused by another physical problem (a twisted ankle that affected the balance of the knee). Physical problems can also affect our emotions (I am depressed because my painful knee keeps me from taking a walk in the sunshine) or vice versa (I am sad and my body posture reflects this, leading to tension and headaches). The body–mind connection has been the subject of much research recently, including into the healing effects of positive thinking and the dangerous effects of stress.
For Reiki, this means there’s often more behind a symptom than meets the eye and we need to stay open to the possibility of healing on more than one level.
This happened to my student Dee, who treated a lady for a frozen shoulder. She was one of her first clients and Dee was full of anticipation. She was hoping to cure the pain, but nothing happened. Instead, during the treatment her client found herself constantly thinking about money. In the subsequent conversation, it emerged that she was self-employed and was deeply worried about the lack of work coming in.
A few weeks later they met again and the client reported a great surge in jobs and therefore in money coming in. The frozen shoulder had been a sign of ‘shouldering’ all this responsibility for her family! And of course the symptoms then eased too.
Let’s take a little challenge. Say someone suffers from a cough, goes to the doctor, gets a prescription of antibiotics and painkillers and takes a few days off work. The cough eventually disappears. Person healed, case closed. This is the classic approach of Western medicine: you diagnose what is physically wrong with a person, find a cure (chemical substances, new technologies, often surgery) and the symptoms leave the body. The person is healed.
But are they really? Of course they aren’t coughing at present. Is this healing? Let’s look into this a little more deeply.
What if the cough comes back a few weeks later? You may say, ‘That person was unlucky to catch a cough twice in a short time.’ But what if the person didn’t actually ‘catch’ the cough? The cough may be a consequence of their lifestyle: not eating healthily, not getting enough vitamin C, smoking, not sleeping enough, getting stressed at work or at home, worrying, venting anger, not exercising or not getting enough fresh air. What if they live in a damp flat? Or work in an environment where chemicals are used or dust is produced? Does healing then lie in curing the symptom temporarily or in a change of circumstances?
Imagine the person actually wants to have a cough. (This is possible, though the decision would be likely to be made subconsciously, rather than as a result of logical thinking.) They want to be a patient. Want to be cared for. Want to be pitied. Want to be the centre of attention. They may feel this is the only way to get attention and love. Or they may be – consciously or subconsciously – looking for an excuse not to work. Not to shoulder responsibility. Not to communicate with people by whom they feel threatened. Does healing then lie in curing the symptom or in listening and accepting and showing love and affection?
Let’s look more deeply now… What if none of the above applies – and the cough still keeps coming back? Or just stays? What if tons of antibiotics can’t get rid of it? What if the person has a mental or emotional problem and doesn’t know how to deal with it? Could the cough be the only thing the body can come up with in its attempt to rid the person of it? Where would healing start then? Maybe in a long conversation? In providing an open and understanding environment?
We can look even more deeply. What if the patient had a cough in their childhood during a phase when they suffered problems at school and abuse at home? Could the persistence of the cough be a sign that the emotional scars haven’t yet healed? Is the cough a sign of the trauma hidden inside?
And let’s take one last look. Imagine the person has died from tuberculosis in a previous life, lived in a damp and cold refugee camp or been a medieval prisoner of war…
A cough may be a simple example. But it proves how deeply we might have to investigate. And how far off we can be when just treating the symptoms. Reiki often leads us to discover the root of a problem (see Getting to the root of a problem). And the healing journey can take a turn for the unexpected.
There’s a strange thing about healing, no matter which therapy we use: it never works completely. Of course, if we have a broken leg, it may get fixed and heal, and after a few weeks be perfectly usable again. But that won’t prevent us from breaking an arm a while later. Or losing our job. Or going through a painful divorce. And even if we’re having a relatively easy time in our own life, we just need to watch the news to destroy our sense of happiness. Only this morning I heard that some debris from a plane has been found in the sea near Borneo. All 162 passengers are dead. How can I be happy if others aren’t?
Life is never free of problems. It almost seems to be designed to have them. But why? Is there meaning behind it all?
I believe there is. And the meaning is: learning. Every time we encounter a problem, we are prompted to rethink. We reflect – and often change. We change our lifestyle, our thought patterns, our path…
Of course it’s much more pleasant not to experience problems in the first place. But if we look back honestly, would we be where we are today if we hadn’t gone through challenging times?
I find it helpful sometimes to take a moment, look back and ask myself: ‘Have you learned from the difficult times?’ If I could turn the clock back, would I really want to avoid all my problems? I wanted to avoid them when I was right in the middle of them, of course. And quite a few of those difficulties are still so traumatic (or embarrassing) that I would rather erase them from my memory altogether. But I’m sure they all served their purpose. Even though some just make me think: Never again.
Some (rather advanced) people even look at an illness or a problem in a positive way: ‘What a chance for me to develop! Maybe that illness was much needed! Maybe true healing lies in acceptance rather than curing.’
In terms of Reiki, this means a result may not always be exactly what we expect or hope for. After all, do we really know what we’re supposed to learn in this life? If there wasn’t a lesson waiting for us here, I suppose there wouldn’t have been much reason to incarnate in the first place. After all, the spirit realm seems to be a much nicer place to stay.
When we look at the Buddhist influences on Reiki, of course the idea of reincarnation comes to mind. Once we consider this lifetime as just one of many, we tend to get less attached to it. And find it easier to see life as a learning opportunity. (Incidentally, the concept of reincarnation isn’t exclusive to Buddhism; it has been part of many religions – including Christianity for the first 500 years of its existence. In the middle of the sixth century, the Second Council of Constantinople erased all references to it from the Bible.)
So, there is healing, and there is learning. And the two are somewhat connected. Reiki works for both: it brings healing in very practical ways and also makes us more aware of the path of learning that we follow. As millions of ‘users’ all over the world have testified, we become healthier and happier as a result of Reiki, and often see our life path more clearly. Even large steps may be taken: we learn the qualities of patience or love, compassion or acceptance. Or whatever our incarnation is supposed to focus on.
Often we feel more ‘whole’. Because healing, ultimately, is wholing. ‘To heal’ comes from the same source as ‘to become whole’. And, as so often, the meaning unfolds on different levels. As we explored in the last chapter, there is the physical body – and it only functions properly when we look after all its parts. Then there is the energy body – and the two are interconnected. We move from body to person, and now include mental and emotional aspects, attitudes and feelings. Our thoughts, our mind, can majorly influence our physical and energy body. And we become aware of intuition and guidance, and realize that we are somehow connected to the spirit realm. We are both body and spirit. Or, in Reiki terms, heaven and Earth energy, connected to the entire universe. We may (at least in theory) realize that we are connected to every other being. That the whole universe is one.
And yet, this is not being whole. It simply describes the set-up of the universe. We may feel one with everything yet still wonder what it’s all about. After all, we are also one with sorrow and tragedy. Oneness therefore means having compassion – and sharing other people’s problems. But is this enough ultimately to heal us?
I think the following example shows what becoming whole really means. One of my first students came to Reiki to find relief for his back problems. He’d damaged his spine a few years earlier, without noticing straight away. His back had got worse and worse and eventually a disc needed to be replaced by a metal tube. The wound had not healed as well as hoped and he’d been in great pain and off work for several months. Which was when he decided to join a Reiki course.
On the course, when I talked about the messages an illness could have, he started to reflect. For the rest of the weekend he pondered over what he was meant to learn from his condition and how he was meant to change. And after a while, the symptoms started to ease.
By the time he came on the Reiki 2 course, he’d gone beyond change and entered a phase of realization. His main comment was: ‘No matter what happens, the problems are just in my body – they don’t affect who I really am.’
Healing had become spiritual awakening. And he’d started to become aware of the ultimate lesson: realizing who we really are. We can only be whole when we find this truth.
And what a lesson for me: he’d become a Reiki Master without taking the Master-level course!
Awakening isn’t about taking a course. It can happen at any moment.
This student had realized that healing wasn’t to be found in change but in the unchangeable. He’d had a glimpse of a presence – of the eternal now – and realized that this was beyond the universe we live in.
This is all pretty deep. Don’t be concerned – Reiki can be used to most wonderful effect without any of these considerations. But you may find that at some stage some of these deeper questions will arise. Then it will be helpful to find that Reiki can provide so many answers. After all, Mikao Usui never looked for physical healing to start with. His quest was to uncover the connection to the unchangeable. He was just as surprised as every Reiki student today when he suddenly found himself with healing hands. The heart of his teachings was using Reiki for spiritual development.