How is it that Reiki heals?

I have been working as a full-time Reiki practitioner since 2016 and I absolutely love it.

The satisfaction I get from seeing my clients’ smiles and shiny eyes after a Reiki session is an ever-renewing joy. And I am filled with gratitude for the fact that image has been a constant in my practice.

But what exactly is it that makes for those smiles and shiny eyes. Well, simply put it is life!

We tend to think of people as being either living or dead, but the fact is that most people’s reality are a mixture of both living and dead energy.

What makes one’s heart pump and the whole machinery of the body move is life force energy; it’s life itself. What makes for the hampering, distortion or complete suppression of the body’s functions is the lack of life, that is death.

For as much as some like to make it complicated, at the most basic level health is really only about enhancing the quality of one’s life. It is about cultivating the energy of life. And it is about feeding all areas of our reality - such as body parts, but also relationships, activities, etc. - with the energy of life.

While it is not possible to define this "energy of life" with words, let alone only one; for the purpose of understanding its essence we will do just that and say that life force energy is joy.

Life is where joy is. Death is where joy is not.

Joy requires energy to be manifested and energy is generated through purpose. The greatest thing about life is that it flows with purpose. That’s how you tap into life-force energy, by a sense of purpose.

The lack of purpose is the presence of death. Purpose makes for movement, which makes for energy, and energy is life. Death is often invited instead of imposed. That invitation is signaled by the soul of a person who is devoid of a sense purpose and therefore feels there is no reason to keep going.

Reiki sessions infuse you with new joy. You gain clarity, insight and inspiration as to why keep going. Your sense of purpose is reinvigorated.

Purpose makes you want to be alive even when life doesn’t seem to have any positives. It gives you endurance and resilience.

There is an instance in the story of Jesus where a disciple says “master, you haven’t eaten!” to which He replies “my food is to do the Will of My Father”. I imagine Jesus being a man full of health and vitality, completely motivated to do what He needed to do, even as He faced a variety of hardships, which would've easily taken down less purpose-driven persons. But for Jesus, the physical bread was a lesser nourishment than the spiritual bread coming from the life-giving energy of purpose. That bread - the bread of life - gave Him the joy to keep going.

Ok, so life-force energy is what makes for health and also what heals. And life-force energy can be tapped into by a sense of purpose and is felt by increasing levels of joy. So again, how does Reiki heal? Well, Reiki is life being given. Reiki is life given from the Source of Life. And it is also the temporal life of the Reiki practitioner, as he/she participates in that great cosmic act of giving life.

The giving of life is love - in fact nothing defines love better. Love is a giving of one’s life for the purpose of another’s life. But this can be the subject of another blog entry. ;-)