I was giving a Reiki treatment yesterday when one of those nagging thoughts got into my head that just wouldn’t quit, and through the course of the evening it grew itself into what you are about to read.

The patient came to me with complaints of insomnia, high blood pressure, stress and inability to focus… you know… the usual. So we were both surprised (actually me more than him because he was asleep in 5 minutes) at how quick the relaxation process was. He had been complaining of it for over a month and the medication he was taking for it let him sleep (to all appearances) but it wasn’t that deep, restorative sleep that only the natural sleep process yields. When he awoke about 20 minutes later he said he felt more rested than he had in over a month and couldn’t believe only 20  minutes had passed.

How many times have you had someone fall asleep while giving them Reiki? Is it a usual occurrence in your Reiki practice? Is it a rarity? When they wake do they feel like they’ve been asleep for 20 minutes or for 8 hours? Do those that slept feel there was something special about the sleep? Personally speaking, when I first started giving Reiki treatments I treated the phenomena of the 80+% that go right to sleep as a given. Being the “expert” it wasn’t my position to be surprised or intrigued by what was occurring. After quite a while, once the ego was laid to rest, I started asking questions about the experiences they were having. That was the key… asking questions enabled me to learn more than just sitting back and watching and I’m determined to perfect the process.

So what is it about Reiki that causes this sleep phenomenon? Is it just the depth of relaxation that it brings or is there something more? For myself its something more akin to a deep state of hypnosis than a deep state of meditation. As touched on yesterday these two are markedly distinct, and my guess is that Reiki would be closer to meditation, but that hasn’t been the case in my experience. I’m an advanced meditation practitioner as well as a certified hypnotherapist, and although the two are similar in many ways, there are several important differences…

Hypnosis requires a hypnotist to bring you down whereas meditation is generally not a team sport. Hypnosis is concerned with specific thoughts and thought patterns while meditation is concerned with a state of no thought. Hypnosis generally has a goal in mind, meditation just takes you where it will (wherever that is). Hypnosis involves control, in meditation you relinquish all control. There are also measurable differences in brain wave patterns while under the influence of meditation or hypnosis.

In a Reiki treatment specific outcomes are sought and control is given to the Reiki practitioner. Those who relinquish control are more than likely to enter a profound state of relaxation while those that don’t are less likely. In both hypnosis and meditation the patient is always one step away from sleeping, however if one enters the sleep state the effects lose their quantification so it is necessary to remain that one step away. In Reiki this is not necessary, so sleep is fine and I believe it actually adds to the healing as well.

For further explanation or discussion, your thoughts are most welcome and highly encouraged, please feel free to comment below!!!