Reiki: Let the Beauty We Love Be What We Do

Melissa and I chatted about it and decided this post would be about Reiki and its benefits. I practice Reiki and have for close to fifteen years, after an aunt introduced it to me at the hospital where she worked. Staff were being trained to use it on patients in the oncology unit. At that time in my life I was deeply in need of answers, stress management, a guide, anything! All these years later I now provide Reiki Consulting. I want to tell you all about it, but before I get to that part, it is really important to me to explain why I think Reiki works.

Let the beauty we love be what we do:

The mystic Rumi said, Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. I take this to mean that having a sense of sacred in our life, whatever this means to us based on the details of who we are, generates beauty and love. I for one, am committed to the practice of meeting myself everyday, of showing up to me. It has become a practice of embodying the sacred ordinary. Every morning I light a candle and greet myself where I am at, funky, tired, content, excited, sad, hungry, stressed, checked out. Maybe all of those at once! I meet me, and spend the time to nurture awareness of what is going on, because that is what is sacred in my life. For me, sacred is not something that’s coming, something to plan for, it’s my actual real life, it’s what already is. The sacred ordinary isn’t about trying to be something I’m not or headily planning for a day other than today. It’s not about transcendence or a plateau of spiritual wellness that I much reach. It is so much more wholesome and instinctive than that. It is recognizing that here, right now, I myself exactly as I am, I am sacred, I myself am example of this odd and stunning mystery of life, I myself and the teeny, silly details that compile my one single life, these are the things that get to be the beauty I love. Practicing this, it takes commitment to two principals. Stillness, and silence. And both of those require time.

The benefits of Reiki:

So what does Reiki have to do with this? EV-VRY-THING! Reiki is a Japanese system of healing that involves the laying on of hands. It is a stress-relief process using human touch. Hands are laid gently on you to facilitate relaxation and awareness. It is quieting, can be deeply meditative, and very restorative. I’ve had friends and family fall right to sleep when I give them treatments! More than anything else, I personally believe its main benefit is that it gives my clients time, sacred, sweet time to be still. Being still with ourselves is an act we each deeply need.

I also add a consulting piece to my Reiki sessions. Meaning, I want to learn about, and am fully present to truly hear of the details alive in your life. I want to know about you, about your life, and especially if you give yourself quiet time, if you approach life with this level of reverence, enough so as to honor your very life as a walking awe-filled mystery. Tell me about the time you spend to honor and nurture you, to cultivate the reverie and wonder that lives within. Tell me what is keeping you from making conscious this embodied sense of being alive to your own life, or tell me what it’s like to be following your own golden mystery, your own sacred threads. Tell me about the people you love and the responsibilities to which you commit. Then together we can explore how to make this function, of silence, gentle communion, of commitment and nurturing and love, of the sacred ordinary, a cherished responsibility, too. Your loved ones and responsibilities will only benefit, at least the ones that arise out of or are connected to this space within because that is what is most true. Even without the Reiki, consulting wakes people up from the inside in a way that revitalizes them.

Studies have shown the efficacy of Reiki on everything from physiological problems to emotional imbalances and stress management. Please refer to my website for a few examples of full articles on this research. More than that, though, is the ample amount of research, particularly in the neurosciene field, that shows what cultivating a self-awareness practice–stillness with yourself–can do for you. It can even reverse some signs of aging! So if nothing else, consider what you can do today, just one little thing, to begin within. Make the time. Start there, and do it because you deserve to be the most worthy example of the beauty you love.

Photo courtesy of Balance Massage Buffalo