I came to Reiki late and sceptical. Why I changed my mind and what a session's like.
Many energy healers start with Reiki, progress through it, and maybe add on some other modalities. I came to Reiki quite far down the line, on the back of a recommendation from a Balinese healer I met out there. I was actually always a little sceptical of it, but he said it would help to fit together a lot of the other things I was already working with, and it would give me the piece of paper to say I'm a "real healer." So I did the training and initiated into the 8th generation of the Usui system of natural healing.
I got to the center in Thailand and it was wild. A whole bunch of shamanic and magickal energies had been waiting for me, and I spent that time downloading both the Reiki energy system and my own personal set of energies. I also got to experience the pure Reiki attunements and the power of a classical Reiki session without any fancy frills or modifications. I saw how a healer's ego can get in the way, and how actually the power of the traditional hand placements of the Reiki system and the forces that work on you is really more than enough.
Reiki is the most structured thing I offer. If my shamanic sessions are the open field, Reiki is the garden path — specific hand positions, specific order, specific duration. You know what's coming, and you know when it's done.
The word comes from Japanese: rei (universe, spirit) and ki (life force energy). It was developed by Mikao Usui in Japan in the early 1900s and has a formal degree system — Reiki I, Reiki II, and Reiki Master/Teacher. I'm trained to the highest level, Master Teacher Level IV, and I work within that framework.
When I was doing practice healings in my training, my instructor pulled me aside and told me off. I was going too far from the protocol, doing my shamanic thing. I'd start in the standard hand positions and then go off into the cosmos — moving my hands somewhere the sequence didn't call for, adding a sound, doing something with my body that wasn't in the manual. She was right. I had to learn to reign it in.
That's the whole point of Reiki, and it's also what makes it different from my shamanic work. In a Reiki session I'm not necessarily rigidly following the set sequence, nor am I walking around the room making sounds or calling on allies. Whether it's remote or in person, I'm staying pretty much on the body and in the auric field, channeling and doing simple but powerful energy work.
In person, you'll be lying down or sitting comfortably while I work through the hand positions — typically starting at the head, moving down the body, and finishing on the back. Most people describe it as deeply relaxing, with a warm or tingling sensation under or around my hands. Some people fall asleep. That's fine.
Remotely, it's the same sequence, same positions, same intent. The energy doesn't care about distance.
I don't diagnose in Reiki. I'm not reading your energy body the way I might in a shamanic session, or the way a Chinese Medicine practitioner would. I'm working with the energy where it is, in the order the protocol prescribes, and trusting that the system knows what it's doing. I often receive impressions or messages for you around what's going on, and if there's anything you need to know I'll share that with you at the end of the session.
If you want something structured, predictable, and contained — if you'd rather know exactly what's going to happen — this is the one. It relies purely on the energy I'm channeling, and it's the gold standard transmission that Reiki healers all over the world use from a great lineage. It will do what it does. But it's limited to that. If you're comfortable with the "I don't know what's going to happen but I trust the process" element, my shamanic sessions are there and open up other possibilities for healing — calling back lost parts, placing more deliberate intentional energies, and whatever else wants to come through.
