A friend of mine is a very talented massage therapist but she had to temporarily retire her magic fingers several weeks ago due to the Corvid-19 pandemic. No touching allowed! Social distancing a must! Her regular clients are bemoaning the situation. She feels bad that she can’t help them, but she has found a solution. She is looking into becoming an attuned reiki therapist. Why? Because Reiki can be performed without actually touching a person. In fact, you don’t even have to be in the same room or even the building to perform reiki or receive reiki. You don’t even have to be in the same city or the same country. This is called “Distance Reiki” and it’s the best therapy around while we all have to take a collective social interaction pause and practice social distancing!
What Is Reiki and How Is It Different Than Massage?
Reiki is the most popular form of energy healing. While it is based on ancient Tibetan practices, the more modern practice of reiki was developed by a Japanese Buddhist monk named Mikao Usui around 1922. By the 1940s, reiki had already become popular in Hawaii and from there it spread to the rest of the United States. By the late 1970s, reiki had become popular in parts of Europe as well.
During a reiki session, a client remains fully clothed while the Reiki practitioner clears their energy, removes harmful energies, and beams positive energy into their body and aura. While some reiki practitioners use crystals or other objects to manipulate energy in their clients, or in themselves before a session begins, all that a reiki practitioner really needs are her hands (or in-person Reiki) and the mental connection with universal chi.
Massage involves the physical manipulation of the muscles and the connective tissues around the muscles. Reiki involves the manipulation of a person’s energy, also called the chi or qi. The chi can feed energy to the muscles and connective tissues and thus heal them in a different way than a massage would heal them. While a massage therapist may learn about the anatomy of the human body and how different muscles are worked or strained, a reiki therapist must learn how to receive universal energy and then transfer this to their client. She must also learn how to harmonize the chi within and around a person and remove any harmful chi that may exist.
The goal of a reiki session is to bring about balance and harmony to the life force or chi that is closely connected to your being. In doing so, this allows the body to restore itself. A reiki professional will be attuned so she has learned how to receive and give energy. When reiki is performed in person, the reiki practitioner may lightly lay her hands on their client. However, most Reiki practitioners simply hover their hands over their client without actually touching them. While this is usually done with the hands hovering about twelve inches above the body, you will learn in the next section that it is actually not necessary to hold the hands so close to the body. You can receive the same benefit from reiki if it is delivered by a practitioner much further away.
How Can You Receive Reiki While Social Distancing?
Here’s the beautiful part about reiki during this period of social distancing. A reiki master can be in Paris France and give reiki to a person in New York City by way of phone or through a Zoom meeting or via FaceTime. This is called distance reiki and it can be performed by any qualified reiki professional on any willing client anywhere in the world.
Without getting too technical, when a person becomes “attuned” in reiki, they receive certain mental symbols from their reiki master who trains them. These symbols allow a reiki practitioner to dial into anyone’s energy no matter how far away that person is. They are able to send and receive energy across any space. In fact, a really good reiki practitioner can actually send and receive reiki across time too! Yes, we’re talking about a reiki time machine! Sending reiki across time actually allows the Reiki practitioner to manipulate their own energy at an earlier or later stage in life. They can do the same for you as well.
When selecting a reiki professional for distance reiki, look for one that has been practicing a while because they tend to get better and better with practice. An experienced Reiki practitioner who uses distance reiki will get to the point that distance reiki becomes second nature as drinking a glass of water.
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It is worth mentioning here that distance reiki is just as effective as reiki performed in person. In fact, many people who are used to receiving their reiki in person are discovering this fact during the Covid-19 crisis. The new normal after the Coronavirus emergency is finally over will likely be that more people receive their reiki through distance reiki rather than in-person reiki. It’s far more convenient and you suddenly have a vastly larger choice in who you receive reiki from because they can literally be anywhere in the entire world!
Are There Any Similarities Between Reiki and Massage?
Yes! Both Reiki and massage are natural methods of healing without the interventions of modern medicine like prescription medications or surgery. Both Reiki and massage help the body heal itself, so both are a holistic approach. After a reiki session, most people feel deeply relaxed, so much so, they sometimes fall asleep before the reiki session is over. At the same time, they may immediately feel completely invigorated after they finish a reiki session. So, in the sense of how the therapy makes a person feel, reiki and massage can be very similar as well. In both cases, oxygen and blood will be flowing better in the body and the chi will flow more freely as well, although energy will flow even better with a good reiki session.
Both Reiki and massage help eliminate physical and mental pain so the results can be similar although the methodologies are entirely different. People suffering from painful conditions such as fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome can benefit a great deal from regular sessions of both types of therapy. During the Covid-19 induced stay at home orders, many people are suffering from depression due to their financial circumstances and their lack of social interaction. Reiki can be a good substitute for a massage to wipe the Covid-19 blues away. Those inflicted with high blood pressure can also benefit from a distance reiki session as it does tend to calm a person and lower their blood pressure. People suffering from migraines and other severe headaches can also benefit from a good reiki session with no massage needed.
While reiki may be viewed as an ancient healing method, distance reiki is pre-adapted to our new world of Coronavirus social distancing. Even when governments open up massage businesses again, many people will hesitate to have a massage again for a very long time, especially if they have one of the underlying ailments, such as type 2 diabetes or lupus, that puts them in a high-risk category of serious consequences if they become infected with Corvid-19. For these people, distance reiki is a true blessing and one that doesn’t come with any risk.
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Most of the health benefits you can obtain from massage can be obtained with distance reiki which makes it the perfect substitute if you’re missing your regular sessions with your massage therapist. Further, since reiki helps energize and harmonize your chi more so than physical massage, it has additional health benefits that you do not get with a massage. It connects the mind, spirit, and body through the manipulation of the chi running through your body and through your aura. In fact, distance reiki helps connect your chi to the universal energy force which allows you to tap into a universal healing force.
Here’s something else to keep in mind for when the Coronavirus goes away and we get back to our normal lives where social distancing is no longer needed. Many massage therapists who have added reiki training to their skill set report that their clients are more satisfied when they give them reiki before, during, or just after their physical massage. So, reiki and massage can be combined into one therapy session if you look for a professional who is trained in both of these natural healing therapies.
Danica Jackson got her first telescope when she was only nine years old. She's been fascinated with all things celestial ever since. Her studies on history and anthropology give her unique perspectives on astrology and personal growth.
