My First Experience with Reiki

Although Reiki has been around for almost a century, I never felt inclined to give it a try until I relocated to Tamarindo, Costa Rica for a month after quitting my job. Not surprisingly, this drastic life change was leaving me with a lot of stress and anxiety about my future – the opposite feeling I wanted at this stage in my life. I wanted to embrace this experience and use this time away to reconnect with myself, so I turned to Reiki in hopes that an energy healer could help.

For those of you not familiar with Reiki, it involves a healer gently hovering their hands over the body to move and transfer energy throughout the seven chakras, the spiritual energy centers located at the top of your head down to the bottom of your spine.

For my first Reiki experience, I went to a local spa in Tamarindo that had great reviews. I was greeted by my healer who asked me if there was something specific I was seeking Reiki to help with. She had me lay down and told me to just relax. It was about 5 minutes in that I started seriously doubting that I was going to feel anything. My mind began to wander and I had left the experience behind.

I have no idea how long it was until I was reconnected with this experience by a tingling sensation in my forehead. The sensation got stronger and stronger - it felt like my skin was being separated from the center outward and that feeling was there pretty consistently for the remainder of my session.

Additionally, a little later into the session, my chest got really warm – almost like there were two hands resting on me even though I felt my healer working at my feet.

After the 30 minutes had ended, my healer asked me to open my eyes and slowly sit up. I began thinking in this moment, the skeptic that I am, that all those feeling were probably just a placebo effect, but then my healer began to talk me through everything she had felt. That was when I knew how powerful this practice really was…

She said that she, with the help of her spiritual guides, worked to open my third eye, located at the center of the forehead. She said she could feel that I was stuck and opening this chakra should help me live in the moment and visualize a path forward, step by step. She then told me that she didn’t know what I had just been through, but felt that my heart was heavy. It was clear she knew I had recently lost someone very important in my life.

This intuitive woman that I spent 30 minutes absolutely turned any doubt I had about Reiki away. I left feeling relaxed and reassured that we are all in some way connected in this world.

I encourage others to give Reiki a try, at least once. I will definitely make Reiki a more regular part of my life.