Reiki: What is Energy Healing?
By: Ryan Dejonghe
Tags: Energy, Spirituality, Health, Reiki, Energy Healing

Reiki: What is Energy Healing?

One thing you need to know is that you are the healer

Photo by Rainer Eck

My job is to demystify words like chakras and Reiki. I believe the lives of millions of people would improve if they believed these two things:

Your body is 99% energy and less than 1% physical matter. There are more than five senses.

I’m not a nuclear physicist, but I’ve learned some basic science principles, such as atoms making up everything. This knowledge is paramount in understanding energy healing.

You are 99% energy

Watching shows like Cosmos are pretty incredible. We are beginning to see the magnitude of the universe. It doesn’t end. There are billions of galaxies, which is the same as the number of neurons in your brain. The DNA in our bodies, if stretched out, would go to the sun and back, yet if we combined the DNA of the world’s population, it would fit into a grain of rice.

We are small compared to the earth. We are minuscule compared to the universe. I say that to highlight the deception of appearances. Bundles of molecules form our bodies. Within these molecules are atoms.

An atom is a nucleus surrounded by an electron field. An electron doesn’t spin around the nucleus like the earth orbits the sun. The electron is somewhere in that field, moving with energy.

If we took a hydrogen molecule and made the nucleus (proton) the size of a basketball, then the electron would be buzzing around about 2 MILES AWAY! That’s a lot of space. That’s a lot of potential energy.

Think about all that space

Imagine holding a basketball in your hands and then trying to look 2 miles in the distance, where there is nothing — absolutely emptiness — between you and that 2-mile distance. That’s how much emptiness, or better yet, how much energy is in each atom of your body.

Because there is energy in the atom (there is movement), we perceive matter as solid. In reality, nothing is solid. We need to define objects for our analytical minds to perceive them.

Your body is not solid; it is energy. The chair you are sitting in is energy. If an atom is 99% space and atoms make up everything, everything is 99% space. Then, everything is atoms in motion. Everything is energy.

There are more than five senses.

I teach that thoughts are not real, but emotions are real. A thought does not define who you are. However, once you hold onto that thought and believe it, an emotion occurs. An emotion produces a tangible, chemical reaction in your body.

There’s a reason we call emotions feelings. We feel them. But, do we touch, taste, hear, see, or smell them? No. How do we then feel them? Through our other senses.

Some people call this a sixth sense. I believe there are a lot more than six senses.

Have you ever felt like someone is watching you? Have you ever walked into a room and felt the tension in the air? Have you ever been overwhelmed by the feeling of love? What about sadness or grief?

Energy and emotions are related

It is not just some hippy idea to say raise your vibration. We tend to label emotions as good or bad vibes, but there’s no line distinguishing between good and bad vibrations. Instead, there are different vibrational frequencies.

The lowest vibrations include guilt, fear, and shame. On the other hand, one of the highest vibrations is love.

Ponder this: when you are afraid or sad, you feel slower and lethargic; when you are in love, you are zooming. This is energy!

What is energy healing? Is it the same as Reiki?

Considering all the above, energy healing is a method of raising your vibration frequency or energy. You will feel better when you raise your energy.

Energy healing isn’t limited to emotions; it heals physical impairments and ailments, too. We can no longer deny that stress damages the body. As a person stays in the lower frequencies of fear, doubt, and shame, they will experience physical symptoms.

There’s no limitation on how a physical symptom can manifest from staying in prolonged stress (lower energy frequencies). Here are a handful of unlimited manifestations of low vibrational energies:

Headaches

Insomnia

Back pain

Constipation/stomach issues

Colds and flu

I’m scratching the surface. Energy healing has helped people cope with cancer chemotherapy, PTSD, and even COVID-19.

Note: energy healing is not a replacement for traditional medical treatment. Energy healing is a modality that pairs wonderfully with medical and psychiatric interventions. For example, studies have shown energy healing, such as Reiki, speeds up the recovery time from surgery.

The difference between energy healing and Reiki

At the base of it, there is no difference between energy healing and Reiki. Two quick things:

Energy healing modalities are like religions; they draw the same water but from different wells. Energy healing and Reiki are not religions. There are no gods to worship, and it doesn’t depend upon your beliefs.

Energy healers have been around for almost as long as humans have been walking the earth. They’ve appeared as everything from shamans to pranic healers.

Reiki is a Japanese word meaning “rei” (universal) and “ki” (life energy). The practice began in the 1920s after Mikao Usui went up Mount Kurama and fasted for 21 days.

This secret will kill my business

You don’t need me or any of the healers on my site. You can heal your own energy. You don’t need to fast like Mikao Usui. You don’t need to attend a sweat lodge or drink liquids that make you puke. The key takeaways from this entire article:

You are 99% energy.

You can raise your own energy.

I’m still a believer in adding other people to your energy-healing circle. Part of that philosophy is about feeling (there’s that word again) love from another person. But you certainly don’t have to pay me for it.

Love yourself. Raise your energy.