1/31/12—Healing With Energy

Today's Draw: The World from Tarot of the Sidhe. Have you ever had an energy healing session? Do you believe that humans can transmit universal healing energy to each other? Would you be surprised to learn that 15% of hospitals in the US offer reiki and Dr. Oz says it's his favorite alternative medicine?

The World card is about completion and wholeness...the ending of a successful journey. In this particular one, Emily Carding's image evokes the perfection and wholeness of God, nature and the universe. It speaks to a divine force or power that has come to you as a result of your spiritual journey. 

The spiral that overprints the tree in this image gave me an immediate impression of something. The same spiral is on the backs of her cards and, even though it's upside down and has more turns, it's very evocative of Cho Ku Rei, which is a symbol used in Reiki. 

Reiki (RAY•key) is a form of energy healing that channels universal life force and concentrates it for use on healing others. While this may sound like BS to some of you, it's becoming more and more accepted by the mainstream medical community. Dr. Mehmet Oz is probably the most well-known proponent of reiki and one source I found said it's now being offered in about 15 percent of hospitals nationwide, including the Cleveland Clinic, Children's Hospital in Boston and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Some of you may know the phenomenon better as "laying on of hands". Reiki is similar, but without all the drama.

Whether your issue is physical or emotional, reiki can be used to help heal it. Before anyone gets their panties in a knot, no responsible reiki practitioner or doctor would recommend you stop traditional care in favor of reiki. Reiki is usually used as a supplement to medical care. 

Reiki symbol Cho Ku Rei.

In a typical reiki session, you would visit a practitioner in their home or office, lay down on a massage table, then the practitioner would move their hands over parts of your body (usually not touching you) and send you the healing energy through their hands. What you would feel would most likely be intense heat wherever their hands were. An interesting note to reiki is that it works whether you're in the same room with the practitioner or not, so it can be transmitted over distance.

You become a reiki practitioner by being "attuned", which just means that a reiki master gives you the energy. There are three levels of reiki attunement, Reiki 1, Reiki 2 and Reiki Master. It is a skill/ability that is passed down, person by person, and there is great reverence and ceremony in the passing down. It doesn't belong to any religion, but it can be considered a spiritual practice. It is certainly always approached with that sort of reverence and respect.  

So, back to Cho Ku Rei. There are many symbols reiki practitioners use, whether they picture them in their head or draw them on their hand with their finger, to address different circumstances. And the Cho Ku Rei symbol is like the light switch that turns the power on. 

There are many different kinds of energy medicine other than reiki. Each month I receive two energy healings, each of which is intended to help me maintain an emotional and spiritual balance...like recharging my spirit. One session is a form of reiki and I get that over the phone, the other is a form of music energy healing I receive in person. No matter how I feel entering these sessions, I feel much better upon leaving them. They do shift my moods. And the one I do over the phone....she used to live locally, but moved. There is no difference in the effect now that we do it over the phone.

Magick Moonbeam swears by reiki for curing hiccups.

I've never used energy healing for a physical issue, but I once took a class from a man who had his own form of energy healing that he taught. I was more skeptical back then, so I asked him to do something I could feel. He put one hand behind me at my ribs and when he put his other hand in front of me, I SWEAR it was like he threw a baseball through my gut. I didn't imagine it. He sent a ball of energy through me so intense I could not only feel it, but I could tell you its size and shape. It made me catch my breath. Since then I've become attuned to reiki and have taken a few other energy healing classes. 

Anyway, in this past weekend's post, I said that once you create a space within you to allow for new possibilities, you begin to see and recognize things you didn't know were possible before. If you're not familiar with energy healing, maybe this is a good time to consider it, along with other alternative healing methods like acupuncture, guided imagery, meditation or therapeutic massage. If you're not getting the results you want from traditional medicine or treatment alone, it may be worth the try.