How Reiki Works
Reiki is the Universal life force energy that surrounds us all. It is a less quantifiable form of energy that can only be intuited, at least right now as science continues to progress. It is felt. And feeling comes through the body.
I used to think that to release my traumas, reform my thought patterns, get rid of shame, and become more spiritual I needed to get out of my body and into my head. Meditate more, go to therapy, let something or someone get inside my head with me to sort it all out. Anyone else with me on that?
With time, practice, patience, and a lot of trial and error when working towards healing, I came to understand that you cannot ignore the body. Our body is the gateway into the mind. It cannot be forgotten. It holds all of the clues!
See, your Nervous System rules your body. It is is how you take in stimuli (say heat on your hand, a loud siren through the ears, a taste on the tongue, or the striped light through the shades). It is then how you respond to every stimuli your brain deems valid enough to start thinking about (remove your hand from the hot stove, cover your ears, enjoy the food, feel gratitude). Now we take in every piece of information around us at all times. This is truly too much information, so every moment our brain decides which is worth noticing and which is worth letting pass through unnoticed or considered.
Now through time, our brains develop systems to protect us. And no one has the same system built. For example, my first boyfriend had an old red Forerunner. Whenever I’m driving, I rarely notice what type of cars are around me. But when a red Forerunner comes into my vision field, I remember this. I think of him. And my thoughts have suddenly shifted away from the driving and into memories. This red Forerunner is not something worth noticing for everyone— this is just from my past.
Similarly, if people have specific traumas, anything could be a trigger for them and their memories. A smell, a taste, a sight, a feeling… you can never know what it is for someone else. And often, people don’t even recognize what it is in themselves. All they know is that all of a sudden, they’re angry. Or they’re scared. Or they’re sad. Whatever it is, this is the brain reverting back to the old pattern that was once built to protect you but no longer serves you. It no longer serves you because it brings you out of the presence and into a trauma response.
When your body enters a trauma response, your nervous system reacts to support the physicality of this. Meaning, your heart starts to race. Your adrenaline pumps and cortisol follows. You stop digesting, your pupils dilate, your blood pumps to your muscles and avoids other places like the brain that won’t help you fight or run away. So critical thinking can be hard in these moments too.
The bad thing is, evolution hasn’t caught up with us in the Nervous System. Your NS doesn’t know the difference between fighting a saber tooth tiger and a passive aggressive text from the boss. The same amount of stress hormones will pump through your body, the same breathing pattern will happen, and the body will tense up in the same way. There is no spectrum. It’s all or nothing.
When your body is stuck in this Sympathetic Nervous System (“fight or flight or freeze”) response for long periods of time (i.e. a stressful job, trauma patterns coming up often, etc), the cortisol levels in your body stay high. This puts stress onto your body, causing inflammation. You can gain weight, you can have brain fog, you can begin to develop diseases that are predicated on stress (which is truly almost ANY disease, as stress means your body can’t focus on healing itself when cells start to act up).
Reiki is one of many tools to help you get out of a trauma response, let go of these patterns in the body that do not serve you, and to rebuild better and stronger. Through breathwork, meditation, visualization, deep presencing and more, you can learn how to tune into your body and observe your own nervous system shifting as stimuli come into your scope of awareness. Maybe you will find the exact trigger, but maybe not. You don’t have to know where something comes from in order to heal it.
It provides you with coping mechanisms, and it also is a process of working through those traumas so that the nervous system will begin to let them pass through you instead of holding on when they come up and initiating the stress response. Training the body to stay relaxed when discomfort comes up will help rewrite old patterns in the brain and NS so that you can be more relaxed during more of your life, regardless of what comes your way.
It is the duality of Science + Surrender. As a practitioner, with intention, presence and curiosity can tune into your own energetic field, feel or see or know what is going on, and help realign you and your energy so you are in a place of healing.
But let us be clear— you have the power to heal already within you. We as Reiki Practitioners are just here to help you access it. To harness it. We are not your healer— you are.
Now if you are hoping to learn more about the quantum physics and energetics of why Reiki works you can find this in my Distance Reiki Blog.
Thanks for being here, and for being you,
Eden of Roaring Fork Reiki
Asheville, NC 28806
704.928.5507