Reiki
What Does Reiki Feel Like?
Practitioners’ descriptions center on deep relaxation. The International Center for Reiki Training says experiences vary from person to person, but that deep relaxation is usually felt by all, and that many people also describe a “glowing radiance.” Some fall asleep. Because accounts vary, the most reliable guide is your own experience.
What do recipients describe?
According to the International Center for Reiki Training:
- Deep relaxation, which it says is usually felt by everyone.
- A sense of radiance, described as “a wonderful glowing radiance that flows through and surrounds them.”
- Letting go of tension, with a feeling of peace and well-being.
- Sleep: some people drift off during the session.
- Unusual experiences: some report floating outside their bodies, visions or other mystical experiences.
The ICRT says that at the end of a treatment, people feel refreshed.
What do practitioners say they notice?
Practitioners can describe sensations in their own hands too. In one practitioner’s account quoted in the Wikipedia article on Reiki, she describes scanning a client’s body for areas of intense heat, unusual coldness, tingling, or a pull that seems to draw the hands toward a particular spot.
How do researchers separate the experience from the setting?
By comparing real Reiki with a sham version. In the trials gathered by a 2022 review of placebo-controlled Reiki studies, a person with no Reiki training imitates the practitioner’s hand positions, while the room, lighting, timing and sound are kept the same, and participants do not know which they are receiving. The review gives the purpose of this design as controlling for the effects of clients’ expectations.
The Wikipedia article on placebo notes, for example, that a caring, friendly practitioner who expects a treatment to work can strengthen the placebo response. None of this tells you what you will feel; it explains why researchers design studies the way they do.
What if you feel nothing?
Then you are not doing it wrong, by the ICRT’s own account that experiences vary. You can judge a session simply by whether you found it restful.
Rate your own experience
If you try a session, rate how tense you feel from 0 to 10 just before and just after, and note anything you noticed: warmth, sleepiness, nothing at all. Over two or three sessions, the numbers give you a better answer to “what does it feel like for me” than anyone else’s description.
This article is general information, not medical or psychological advice; talk with a licensed clinician about your own situation.