The Everything Reiki Book: Channel Your Positive Energy to Reduce Stress,

Promote Healing and Enhance Your Quality of Life

At first glance The Everything Reiki Book may seem a bit out there if you’re not familiar with holistic healing or energy work. Author and Reiki Master, Phylameana lila Desy, our About.com guide to Healing, acknowledges that this treatment option is most suited for open-minded people who tend to adopt innovative treatments, and who don’t require reams of journal research to know that something works. She agrees that close-minded skeptics may be reluctant to try reiki before fully understanding its intricacies. Once you delve into the topic of reiki under Desy’s deft guidance, however, I have no doubt that skeptics and believers alike will all find something to take away from The Everything Reiki Book. And those who are interested in holistic health and the relationship of energy to health will find the book particularly helpful and insightful.

Reiki (pronounced “ray-key”) is used world-wide, though it originated in Japan with the work of Mikao Usui. The term reiki comes from the Japanese syllables for energy source (rei) and energy movement in the body (ki).

Reiki is considered universally popular by its practitioners and recipients because it:

• complements other healing modalities
• is always available
• requires no special equipment (though options exist)
• promotes balance in all aspects of your life
• offers unconditional love

Reiki is, basically, energy, like the Chinese medicine concept of “qi.” According to Desy, it is the source of “universal life energy,” of which there is an unlimited supply that everyone can tap into. Reiki is not a religion, but it is said to have emerged from the Creator.

The truth is, nobody knows exactly how or why it works. Practitioners explain that reiki fills and flows through the body like wind. It can’t be seen but it is felt. Various theories exist to explain how it enters the body. Desy’s book explains each. To effect healing, Reiki’s energies flow out of the practitioner’s palms as they pass over or touch the recipient’s body. Practitioners believe that the source is infinite so they are never depleted.
According to Desy, reiki practitioners do not take credit for healing, they only facilitate it. Reiki responds uniquely to each person and works according to the level of acceptance that person maintains. Healing depends on how readily you channel the qi, the force that animates all living things. In reiki theory, when you body is attuned to accommodate qi you can experience:

• replenished vitality
• decreased causes and symptoms of illness
• relief from stress, grief or discord
• reduced insomnia
• enhanced intuition
• boosted immunities

Reiki healers use standard hand placements on the face, neck, and torso. Some healers’ hands become very warm. Hand placements are adapted for self-treatment. When receiving reiki, you may report feeling either a rush of warmth or cold. Tingling, mild itchiness and a push of force are other sensations that can occur.

Tracing the five Reiki symbols is another part of treatment. The hand placements and symbols are clearly detailed through charts, large illustrations and/or careful, step-by-step descriptions.
Self-treatment with Reiki is an option after you have undergone a reiki attunement. Attunement is an initiation process through which a reiki master transmits knowledge that awakens and expands the recipient’s internal passageway through which the Universal Life Energy travels. Desy describes in great detail how you can:

• meet, interview and select a master
• prepare for attunement
• understand the 10-step initiation ritual
• handle the 21 days of purification and detoxification

Chapter 10 addresses a wide variety of both acute and chronic complaints that Reiki can help release or transform into positive energy. Of particular interest to readers with chronic disease, including thyroid conditions, are the sections dealing with:

• treating hard-to-reach areas
• managing chronic pain
• using prescription drugs
• dissipating anxiety and frustrations