At the start of every session I perform I give my clients a run-down of the things they may experience while they are getting their reiki treatment. I give this overview to new clients as well as ones who have gotten sessions with me before. I do this because no session is the same. Whether you’ve gotten reiki done 0 times or 100 times, you’re going to have a different experience every single time.
This could mean that at your first session, you felt a warm sensation over your body but the second time you felt nothing at all. It could mean that at your 5th session you heard birds chirping but at your 10th you saw colors. Maybe you’ve gotten 20 sessions and never felt a thing but on the 21st, you felt a cold sensation while I was working on one of your chakras. Each reiki session you get removes some of the negative energies you are holding onto, bringing you into a higher vibrational state so depending on what you are releasing, you are going to experience something different than the last time.
Which brings us to the topic of this article. What is a healing crisis? This is something that I talk about at every session as well and I believe I’ve briefly mentioned it in another article but I think it’s important to talk about it in more detail. A healing crisis is something you might feel during your session but it can also extend to after your session too.
A healing crisis can best be described as an unpleasant feeling experienced during or after a reiki session. It’s something that can be felt by either the practitioner or client. But “unpleasant feeling” is a very broad term and for good reason! It can be an emotion that you feel like anger or sadness, or actual pain from a current or prior injury you received. I want to dive into this a little more to give you a better idea but I have a personal healing crisis story to share with you that may give you a better idea of what this term really is.
As I’m sure you all know, Alexis and I regularly perform reiki on each other. We get together at least once a month and dedicate a whole day to our business (and ourselves!) but one of the first things we do before we start the day is give each other sessions. A few months ago on one of these business days, I was at the tail-end of my session on Alexis and I was sending reiki to her knees. A little fun fact that you may or may not know: all of your past lives are held in your knees! We like to send some reiki to the knees to help clear any negativity that may be surrounding a past life which in turn, helps the root chakra.
Occasionally when I do these mini-sessions on the knees, I’ll have a client who sees or experiences something from a past life. A vision, if you will. Alexis is one of those clients! So on this business day, while I’m working on her knees, I feel an intense pain in my left shoulder and arm. So I asked Alexis if she was feeling any pain or seeing anything and she responded that yes, in fact, she was. She was seeing a little girl with her father standing behind her, gripping her left shoulder and causing her pain! That my friends, is an example of a healing crisis. I felt pain in my body where Alexis experienced pain in a past life.
But that is only one version of a healing crisis. Other forms as I briefly mentioned above are emotional outbursts and feeling pain in your own body. For example, let’s say you went through a really bad breakup and still have a lot of hurt in your heart. You’re getting a reiki session and suddenly you feel an overwhelming urge to bawl your eyes out. That is a healing crisis! That’s those beautiful, reiki energies moving throughout your body, healing you and helping you to release the negativity surrounding your breakup, helping you to move on.
One of my dear friends got married in August and after the wedding, she was jumping on the couch with her new husband in their hotel room. Well she ended up falling off the couch and bashing her head on a nightstand. It was bad guys. She messed herself up good. Black eye, broken blood vessels, her whole face was a mess. She probably should have seen a doctor but she is stubborn and never went and after her eye stopped looking like a bloody mess, I actually forgot it happened. Of course she didn’t though and she was having pain and issues with it for months after the ordeal. We work together at my day job so when it’s slow, I give her little mini reiki sessions through her crown chakra to her whole body. I hadn’t given her one in a while after the wedding so we sat down to do it and as soon as I touched her head, she felt a searing pain in her head where she hit it on the nightstand. How crazy is that? But the craziest part is that after she felt that, her head actually felt better! That’s a healing crisis!
Are you starting to get the idea of it yet?
Sometimes when I tell a client that there is a potential they may feel pain in a session they get scared or upset but I am here to tell you that while it can be startling in the moment, going through a healing crisis is a GOOD thing! Sometimes it’s necessary to revisit those old wounds, whether physical or emotional, to examine them and release them for good.
A healing crisis can occur after your reiki session is finished as well. This could be an emotional release or it could be a physical one. After you get a reiki session, your body needs some time to finish shedding those negative energies so it’s very, very important to drink lots of water in the days of the session to help flush everything out. The day after your session you feel a healing crisis in the form of flu-like symptoms meaning you feel tired or achy. Ps. this can happen after you get a massage too!
So what do you do if you experience something like this during a session? Embrace it and release it! Rolling with those emotions or embracing any pain you may feel and then letting it go is a part of the healing process and I promise you, it’s worth it.
If you were thinking about getting a reiki session but are re-considering after reading this article, please do get the session! These are things that could potentially happen at a session but this is a question I get asked about a lot so I felt compelled to write this. And even if you do experience one of these crises during your session, remember that you are in a safe, loving environment and that reiki always goes where it’s needed most.
You may not even experience a healing crisis during your session! There are plenty of people who get regular sessions and don’t experience any of the things I listed above. But I think it’s important for everyone to be prepared for what could happen so they aren’t surprised or scared during a session.
What about you? Have you ever experienced a healing crisis during a reiki session? Let us know in the comments!
Namaste, friends!
Michelle
