Synergistic Healing With Hypnosis: Hypnotic Reiki

by Deborah Yaffee

What is Reiki

It is absolutely exciting to see how many hypnotists are becoming students, even masters, of the gentle healing art of Reiki. The word, Reiki (pronounced ray-key), means “universal life energy” and the practice of giving Reiki to clients can be a powerful support for the work we do as consulting hypnotists.

Reiki is also the name of the Japanese healing method of the non-invasive transfer of the universal life energy. This transfer is accomplished directly through either the laying on of hands or at a distance. Reiki energy permeates all things and a practitioner is one whose hands have been “attuned” to its frequency through a specific formula that activates one’s ability to use it. One of the main particulars that distinguish Reiki from other hands-on techniques is that one’s own personal life energies are not being drawn upon. When giving a Reiki treatment, the energy flows through the practitioner much like electricity passes through a wire or like water through a hose.

Today there are many versions of Reiki practice but the original method was discovered by Dr Mikao Usui in Japan at the end of the 19th century. In 1935, Mrs. Hawayo Takata, a Hawaiian-born woman of Japanese descent, traveled to Japan and learned Usui’s healing technique from one of his main disciples, Chujiro Hayashi. As a Reiki Master Teacher, Mrs. Takata introduced Reiki to America in the early 1970’s. Of my esteemed Teachers, John Harvey Gray was one of the first four students that Mrs. Takata trained to the Master Teacher level. At the age of 92, he and his wife, Lourdes, continue to teach Reiki as it was originally transmitted by Mrs. Takata.

Hypnosis and Reiki

Reiki has proved to be effective for stress reduction and for putting the body and mind into the kind of deep relaxation that revitalizes the body’s cells to facilitate healing. In my experience, hypnotic deepening and delivering suggestions during the Reiki session enhances these effects exponentially. Likewise, because Reiki assists the body with self-balancing, giving a Reiki treatment during hypnosis can have a powerful impact on speeding the clearing of old stuck energies and issues.

Here are just a few of the ways that I enjoy integrating Reiki with my hypnosis practice:

• Inner Child work: Send or apply Reiki to calm the Little One while calling in the resources of Grown Up.

• Root Cause: Reiki may be applied to help neutralize the energy disturbance generated by the root cause of an issue. This may be done directly after uncovering the root cause, or indirectly by directing Reiki to the root cause via one’s intention to treat it.

• Vitalize the future by giving Reiki to the client’s desired outcome: Future pace the client in your usual ways. When the client is in full sensory and emotional immersion of their desired future, apply Reiki. If the client knows Reiki, she can even anchor her future state with a basic self –treatment pattern and practice this daily so that her body and mind rapidly manifest this state at the cellular level.

• Support goal achievement by sending Reiki to one’s goals and action steps.

• Pain Relief: Preliminary studies show that Reiki helps to reduce the perception of discomfort. Potentiate this effect with hypnotic suggestions for pain relief.

• Pre and Post Surgery: Take client through a hypnotic rehearsal of the various phases of their coming experience and combine appropriate suggestions for calmness, confidence, successful surgical experience, and rapid recovery while delivering Reiki.

• Weight Release: Reiki enhances the effect of the hypnotic suggestions by strengthening the energetic blueprint for manifesting one’s intentions. Digestion and absorption of food is enhanced by Reiki treatment.

• Ongoing support for client: After the session is over, provide ongoing support via absent treatment, particularly the Mental and Emotional Treatment.

Reiki and hypnosis combine to provide a powerful protocol when working with chronic pain clients. Formal experimental study of Reiki’s impact on physical and mental health concerns is still in its infancy but preliminary research has demonstrated an association between Reiki and:

• Subjective improvement in pain, anxiety and fatigue

• Better mood and sense of increased functionality in depressed patients

• Decreased heart rate

• Decreased levels of stress hormones

• Improvements in blood pressure

• A reported sense of over-all enhancement of well-being

The Four Healing Powers of the Mind

Buddhist healing techniques that use the power of the mind are very effective and can be a valuable resource in expanding one’s hypnosis techniques. In his beautiful and profound book, Boundless Healing, Tulku Thondup identifies four healing powers of the mind that strengthen the healing process. Hypnotists will surely find these four powers to be familiar elements of our profession. The four powers of the mind are:

1. The power of Positive Images: Maintaining positive images in our minds communicates our desired result to the subconscious mind (SCM) and gives positive direction to our focus. The SCM uses the language of imagery to make profound and lasting changes in the body.

2. The power of Positive Words: We use our words to declare what is. Using the power of Positive Words we create positive perceptions and assert the positive meaning and quality of our experiences. We also use words to give the SCM the clear message of what it is we are asking it to do for us.

3. The power of Positive Feeling: Generating the feeling puts our cells into action to bring about the imagined condition.

4. The power of Positive Belief: We rest in trust that our intention is accomplished.

I very much enjoy incorporating these four healing powers of the mind in my work and am happy to share the way that I use them as a guideline when doing a Reiki session with chronic pain clients.

Hypnotic Reiki™ Healing Technique Using the Four Healing Powers of the Mind

Assist your client in creating the healing statements that are personalized to their needs and to their readiness to accept their healing. You will be speaking these back to the client during their session. Often, simple concept words like “health” or “clearing” can give a powerful positive direction to the SCM without evoking any objections.

During the intake, at each session, discover what specific benefits the client wishes to experience if their issue were satisfactorily resolved.

The method outlined here assumes that the client begins the Reiki session lying face up on a massage table. After checking for the vitality level and scanning the auric field for “zings”, begin the Reiki treatment. Direct your client through Steps 1 and 2 as you proceed through Reiki pattern one.

Step One: Bring calmness to the mind and body with an induction and deepener appropriate to your client. As they receive Reiki in the first pattern positions, help them use the power of Positive Words by repeating their healing statements in a soft voice. Pause after each statement in order to allow them time to gently repeat the healing statements in the privacy of their own mind.

Step Two: Proceeding through the first pattern positions, ask the client to imagine a special Source of Power to support healing. The Source of Power is an image from which healing energies will flow and is entirely personal to the individual. It may be a spiritual object or being or concept. It may be an object or ideal that holds a positive quality for the client. It may even be the nature of a peaceful, open, relaxed mind. The Source of Power may be different from session to session, but it is best to stay with one image in any given session. Ask the client to raise a finger or softly speak or smile when they have identified a Source of Healing Power for this session.

Steps 3 and 4 are given in the positions of the second pattern. If you are a student of the Usui Shiki-Ryoho system, Steps 3 and 4 are given as part of the Mental and Emotional Treatment in this pattern (the Sei Heki channel will be opened at the start of this section and then closed after Step 4).

Step Three: Instruct the client to imagine a shower of blessing lights emanating from the Source of Power and flooding the body with a warm, blissful healing energy that purifies, replenishes, revitalizes and returns their entire body-mind system to a remembered state of wholeness. Direct them to see, feel, think, and believe that each cell is being filled with light and healing energy. Imagine this flood of healing flowing from cell to cell, as if in great waves that sweep through the body, clearing blockages and carrying away all the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual impurities that are contributing to the client’s issue. Imagine cleansing and healing taking place….all areas of discomfort or of special concern now dissolving and being washed away.

Step Four: With strong, loving, encouraging tones, guide your client to step into the power of Positive Belief and receive their good news NOW! Future pace them to the experience of all the benefits they came into your office to receive. Continue to ask simple guiding questions and allow the client to fill in the details to create their own reality. “That’s right….Notice where you are and how it feels…what you are doing…What do you see? What do you hear? Are you alone or with others? How does the air feel on your face? Is there a special taste?” Review the scene, again and again, in all perceptual modalities, until the client gives you the “signal smile” that indicates that they are experiencing all this goodness as if it were real.

This ends the Mental and Emotional Treatment, and it is time for the client to turn over and receive Reiki in the positions of the third pattern.

Step Five: Ask the client to relax deeply into the feelings of peace and joy and vitality of their positive future. As they continue to rest in this state, work through the positions of the third pattern (back, legs, feet) while delivering ego-strengthening patter and compounding suggestions specific for the client.

When you have finished the third pattern, ask the client to turn over so that they are lying on their back. Smooth the energy.

Step Six: Place your Reiki hands over the client’s heart center. Deliver Reiki as you emerge the client to normal waking consciousness with post hypnotic suggestions for continued comfort and healing, self confidence, joy and total transformation.

Conclusion

There are so many wonderful ways to integrate hypnosis with Reiki. I encourage all of you who practice both Reiki and hypnosis to explore this harmonious combination of healing arts. Let your Reiki hands guide you and your hypnosis skills guide your clients in the release of self-defeating patterns and limiting beliefs. I know I will continue to share my experiences and findings with you. In the meantime, let us all practice what Chujiro Hayashi called the Five Ideals of Reiki:

• Just for today, do not anger

• Just for today, do not worry

• Just for today, count your blessings

• Just for today, do an honest day’s work

• Just for today, be kind to all living things

© 2009 Deborah Yaffee, all rights reserved