Q: How Much Can Reiki Help?
A: We don’t know. It’s not up to the person offering the healing to decide the limits of Reiki to help someone, or in what way the energy is going to work. Sometimes it works on deep emotional levels that take a while to surface. Other times, a person receiving Reiki may experience profound relief from physical pain. There could be cumulative effects when Reiki healings are received regularly. The effects could be subtle or powerful.
In my experience, we are not consciously in charge of the way the energy works. Therefore, we are not in charge of knowing or affecting the limits of the effectiveness either.
A profound example of this happened to me a year ago when I met a woman, Deborah, who was in serious pain from many problems. She was in constant pain and had a very difficult time walking. I gave her ten minutes of Reiki at an expo, at the urging of her friend. After the brief energy session, Deborah was able to turn her head, when she had not been able to before – at least without a lot of pain. She was impressed.
Four months later I saw her at another expo. She was a new person – walking tall without her cane, smiling. She told me that since our meeting she had been seeing a local Reiki practitioner for an hour a week, every week. The improvements were significant each week, which was encouraging to Deborah and kept her coming back. Her neurologist had told her that her problems would only get worse. Meanwhile, she was improving and needing the meds less and less, until she wasn’t taking anything for pain or sleep.
Deborah told me that she was starting as a Reiki student the following week.
I was at the same expo last weekend, a year from the first time I met Deborah, when I saw her again. She had just finished her level 3 training in Usui Reiki, and was still doing great. She let me video record her talking about her experience and the profound change that Reiki made in her life.
Here she is:
The bottom line is that the less we try to define or understand the possible limits of the effectiveness of Reiki, the better. Let it happen, and ask that the recipient receive the healing that is needed. Then just be grateful for the opportunity to be involved in the process.
