Hands-on healing, Exhaustion and More

A common complaint that many Reiki practitioners have is that they appear to have side effects from performing hands-on healing treatments. This includes feeling exhausted afterwards, or nauseated throughout the treatment. You’ll find these complaints often voiced on Reiki Forums or at gatherings. Why is this?

There are numerous reasons as to why this is so. Let’s look at a few of them here.

First of all, many teachers do not teach this: to be able to perform hands on healing on others well, you must first work on yourself. The Japanese system of Reiki indicates this by initially teaching the Reiki precepts (see the japanese precepts in the image above) and then the technique, Joshin Kokyu Ho.

Meditating on the precepts we begin to let go of our issues and become a more stable vehicle for the hands-on healing session to take place. For example, a practitioner might worry during a session: “Am I doing this okay?”, “Is my client feeling something?”, “I hope my client gets better”, “Are my hands in the right position?”, “Am I going to pick up my clients negative energy?”, and so on… Through our worries we become an unstable vehicle, possibly resulting in exhaustion, feeling nauseated, or other side effects.

Joshin Kokyu Ho is a Japanese Reiki meditation which focuses on the hara/tanden. This is a few inches below the navel and is the centre of our body/being. The more we practice this meditation, the more centred we become which aids in facilitating a more stable foundation for our hands on healing treatment.

By practicing the Reiki meditations daily we strengthen our inner energy system through which the energy flows when we perform a hands on healing treatment. In the beginning our energy system is not that strong or well developed. It is like a muscle that needs its regular gym workout to make it stronger. The stronger and clearer our inner energy system becomes, the easier it is to maintain a healthy state during and after a hands-on healing session. With lots of personal practice you might even be able to perform 8 one-hour hands-on healing sessions a day and leave, at the end of the day, strong and refreshed.

Imagine an old electrical wire which lights a 40 watt light bulb. One day the light bulb breaks and you buy a new one. You buy a 100 watt light bulb as you’ve always wanted more light to read by. What starts to happen to the old wire soon after you have replaced it with the brand new stronger bulb? It begins to melt. The old wire is burning as too much energy is being drawn through it. It isn’t strong enough to deal with the amount of energy that the new bulb requires.

This is the same when we perform a hands-on healing treatment on others. We are not used to being a vehicle for the energy to flow through, like the old wire, so we need to make sure that our own inner wiring is refreshed, strong, and open. If not, we leave ourselves vulnerable to exhaustion, dizziness or nausea.

So, if you are interested in helping others, make sure that you have a solid daily practice that includes the Reiki basics; meditating on the Reiki precepts and the practice of Joshin Kokyu Ho.

©2016 International House of Reiki Used with permission