A Reiki Sense of Well-Being
For its practitioners, Reiki offers an ongoing path towards well-being.
In his usual disengaged manner Harry said, “I have the same numbness in my arm.” He sat down as I began to set my intention for the Reiki treatment. With quiet ambient music filling the silence, I stood and raised my hands, palms up, to connect to reiki energy and then placed them, palms together in front of my face. I meditated, asking quietly that the reiki energy be directed through me and go where it was needed. With my intention set I placed my hands on specific locations every few minutes, cupping them side by side over Harry’s eyes, his jawline, and the back of his head. I then placed my hands on his left arm. Within seconds of starting, the familiar warmth grew in my hands; my hands were not just on fire, soon they were the fire. As I wondered if Harry felt this sensation, he looked up with wide eyes and enthusiastically said, “Do you feel that? My arm is on fire!” We were both momentarily engrossed by this intersubjective connection.
Adapted from “Hand.” Mikhail Kim/ Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Classed as a complementary and alternative medical (CAM) modality in the West, Reiki practice and notions of healing are constitutive of well-being. This stands in stark contrast to health which is often regarded as a biomedical, physical state with a clear-cut notion of disease and cure. Practitioners often conceive of their practice as spiritual, with a defining outcome of well-being. The process is described as connection—connection to oneself and connection to an “other.” In striving for healing, there is no single definitive state of health; rather notions of connection serve as a cornerstone for an ongoing path towards well-being. Suggestive of how people engage in a transformation of the self, this “pilgrimage of the soul” (Rose 1990) encapsulates the ways in which practitioners seek to actively shape themselves through healing.
Connection through laying on of hands
Reiki is a Japanese term comprising two concepts: rei, translated as universal or spirit, and ki, translated as energy. The term Reiki is used to distinguish the practice (written with upper case “R”) as well as the reiki energy (written with lower case “r”) or agent of healing and surrender (Beeler 2017). It is a form of hands-on-healing with roots in a Japanese tradition promoted by Usui Mikao in 1922. First brought to the West in the 1930s by Takata Hawayo, by the early 1980s Reiki was being widely taught in the UK. Julie, an Usui Shiki Ryoho (USR) Reiki master (one of hundreds of Western Reiki traditions) located in Shropshire England, reflected on her early days in Reiki practice in the 80s, “One of the things that first struck me when I was giving treatments was the feeling of connection with the person I was treating.”
My hands were not just on fire, soon they were the fire.
Spiritual practice forms a differing and common thread amongst diverse Reiki traditions. Practitioners often describe this as a felt sacredness, as Julie did when recalling her first experience giving a Reiki treatment, “I remember the very first time I felt Reiki coming through my hands…it felt significant…I had this experience of a feeling of connection, bits of connection, a feeling of inner peace, of something special.” The embodied and subjective experience of Reiki is distinctly understood as a special or spiritual connection. What is being connected to will vary based on the context of the experience. An experiential example is captured in Reiki Master Patricia’s explanation that for her, “[Reiki] is a model of health and well-being…it felt to me as if disparate parts of my being come together.” This value of a special connection between practitioners and something both inside and outside themselves is a salient quality of well-being within contemporary, Western forms of Reiki practice.
The significance of well-being and spirituality for Reiki practitioners is detailed through these subjective experiences and mediates the disparities in people’s lives that cause disconnection. For example, Patricia—Reiki master, accomplished mental health professional and mother, with a poster celebrating her singing debut on the wall, and a menorah beside a Buddha statue on the shelf—told me, “I felt in touch with parts of myself that I hadn’t, that I obviously felt connected to before, I felt myself more deeply.… And I thought the potential of my own healing.”
For Matthew in Suffolk County, this narrative takes a subtler path. During his time working as a hospital chaplain, a patient requested him by name and asked him to perform a service, not in his official religious capacity, but as a Reiki practitioner instead. He initially declined, as he was not employed to conduct Reiki treatments by the hospital. Nonetheless, he did provide the treatment and combined his gift of healing with his role as chaplain. Two potentially conflicting aspects of his life coalesced into one special moment in which he found himself able to provide healing through his religious vocation and his Reiki practice. As Matthew explained, “Everything is connected.… But to my true self, or connected to the moment, or to reiki, or to the universe, or God, or Jesus and them lot… And spirituality is everything because it is the stuffing of everything.” Similar notions of settling the disparities in one’s life through spiritual connection resonate through many of my interviews with Reiki practitioners.
This connection is not an end point in itself as suggested by the idea of health, rather it forms the basis of a continuing path to well-being and the subjective values that support it.
Curing and healing
Reiki practitioners are clear about the nuanced distinction between health and well-being. For example, Denise, a Reiki master in London, explained that there is a difference between curing and healing “in so far as you may be healed but you may not be cured.” Practitioners’ concept of a cure was generally aligned with notions of health, whereas healing was considered as situated firmly in the realm of well-being. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. In this context, to be healthy is to be in a static state, which encompasses well-being; the two begin to blur, intertwined.
In contrast, Reiki practitioners tend to distinguish between these two terms, health and well-being. One does not encompass the other, but on occasion they do overlap. Health for them is related to a cure, a static state to be achieved, whereas well-being is an active pursuit, a condition of being (Beeler 2016). This pursuit and the practice of spirituality are linked in that they both involve a journey, as Patricia offered, towards the “balancing of mind, body, spirit, and emotion.” Practitioners work towards well-being in the interest of healing broken connections, not necessarily broken bones. This activity is “always moving on the spiral of life” as Patricia called it, and seeking to regain an “original state of grace” (Rose 1990).
Reiki practitioners evoked the idea of an “original state,” explaining that the practice nurtures acceptance for whatever their original state is in their pursuit of well-being. In some cases, this original state constitutes whatever the present state of health is, although they are quick to add that this does not infer a search for a cure for physical or mental ailments. Denise told me that “People might not use the word spiritual, but if they feel they are connected with something greater than themselves then there’s a sense of spirituality in that.” Thus, the spiritual practice connects practitioners and clients to something greater than themselves and to something special in relation to their present place in the world. This shaping of the original state, however conceived, is accomplished through a subjective experience that has the capacity to connect.
Through the laying on of hands, the body forms a gateway for Reiki practice. This gateway opens practitioners to something of a sacred or special quality that begins their journey, substantiating the significant relationship between spirituality and well-being. This connection is not an end point in itself as suggested by the idea of health, rather it forms the basis of a continuing path to well-being and the subjective values that support it. Indeed, spirituality emerges as an important element in how we understand the subjective and shifting nature of well-being. In connecting to herself through Reiki practice, Patricia participates in the spiral of well-being and realizes her own healing. In connecting through Reiki, Matthew is able to combine his religious vocation and his spiritual practice, resulting in a life of well-being. By connecting first through the hands, second, and simultaneously, through reiki energy and the self, practitioners realize their capacity for healing. They engage in a “pilgrimage of the soul,” connecting disparate aspects of their lives and identity and transforming into an original state in their journey towards well-being.
Dori Beeler is a medical anthropologist interested in the social determinants of health and well-being. The research included in this article was conducted during her doctoral research at Durham University. Currently a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, she is conducting health experience research within Cancer Epidemiology, Prevention and Control.
Cite as: Beeler, Dori. 2018. “A Reiki Sense of Well-being.” Anthropology News website, January 24, 2018. DOI: 10.1111/AN.747
http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2018/01/24/a-reiki-sense-of-well-being/
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