How Reiki Can Help Your Relationships

If you’ve never been to a Reiki session before, you may be wondering what happens during a typical session. Reiki sessions are conducted to enhance your experience of healing. Your Reiki practitioner pays attention to ensuring the environment is designed to make you feel relaxed and at ease. This includes soft music, soft lighting, and subtle scents. Your practitioner’s room should be quiet and not contain any distracting, offensive or loud objects.

Reiki sessions typically last 30-60 mins. A Reiki session will offer a useful amount of time to allow you to relax into receiving Reiki, as well as provide the practitioner enough time to work on the basic hand positions. Your Reiki session may also involve a short time of discussion with the Reiki practitioner about what you can expect before, during and after a session.

Reiki is typically conducted in your practitioner’s therapy room, however, Reiki can also be conducted in any location as well as by distance where you are not in the same room as your Reiki therapist. Regardless of the location, Reiki is best received in a quiet environment without distractions.

A healthy relationship does not exist without effort. A good relationship requires that we pay attention to effective communication and developing a strong connection with each other that is supportive.

Healthy relationships are not perfect all the time. Sometimes even our most connected relationships can experience difficulty. The sign of a healthy relationship is whether these difficulties can be overcome and continue to grow into the future.

Despite our innate desire to be connected, the skill of forming and nurturing healthy relationships is a learned skill that we develop throughout our lifespan. We learn how to communicate, how to support each other, and how to interact using developed social skills.

If this social learning is dysfunctional in our upbringing, this can negatively impact the way we interact in future relationships. It then becomes our challenge to relearn new skills and untrain ourselves from continuing negative relationship patterns. We don’t have to be perfect in this endeavor, and our best efforts will always provide us with a better path to healthy relationships.

Below are some of the common elements that are present in all types of healthy relationships:

• Acts of kindness
• Shared interests
• Willingness to compromise
• Respect for each other
• Motivation to nurture the relationship
• Acceptance
• Encouragement
• Empathy
• Seek to resolve conflict
• Commitment to the relationship
• Shared feelings of love
• Trust
• Honesty

Not all relationships contain every element listed above, however, most healthy relationships contain a good ratio of the positive elements listed above.

Reiki can help us develop and nurture healthy relationships. It can also help us when our relationships are in turmoil and impacting our mental health.

As Reiki refers to the universal energy in life, it can play an integral part in the energy that a relationship between two people can develop. Additionally, we also contain our specific life energy which interacts with others. When our relationships are harmonious, then our energies are synthesized. When our relationships are in conflict then our energies are negatively impacted by disharmony.

Most relationship issues often relate to fear that exists within one or both parties in the relationship. These fears compound each other and begin to create confusion and chaos. By using Reiki, we can disrupt this confusion and chaos and become more aligned with our desire to achieve harmony and balance within our relationships.

PHYSICAL SYMBOLS

Relationship disharmony is an intangible experience, Unlike a broken foot or a cold, it is difficult to physically identify the symptoms and presence of relationship disharmony. Therefore, it is sometimes easier for people to think beyond the abstract and use an object or physical symbol to represent the relationship.

This physical symbol might be a pebble, bell, branch, candle, photograph, jewelry item, coin, or anything small and portable that can represent the relationship you wish to focus on. The item you use should be something you can easily detach from because you are connecting it with difficult feelings. In the future, you may not want to keep this item if the relationship ends.

REIKI SYMBOLS

As you put mental energy towards your relationships, you can use the Reiki symbols that are most actively aligned with creating harmony in relationships.

These Reiki symbols are listed below:

1. Sei he ki
Sei he ki is defined as the harmony symbol and seeks to redress imbalance.

2. Dai ko myo
Dai ko myo is the master symbol that has the power to initiate healing, enlightenment, and empowerment.

3. Shika Sei Ki
Shika Sei Ki represents the heart and is good for those who are experiencing emotional distress and trauma.

You can activate these symbols in your practice through the following methods:

• Drawing – physically on paper or in the air
• Visualizing – establish a clear image of each symbol in your mind
• Chanting – chant the name of each symbol. Engage in deep breathing also to time your chanting of each symbol.

METTA MEDITATION

Meditation is also an effective way of focusing on positive relationship growth. One way to provide ourselves and others with compassion is through lovingkindness meditation – also known as metta meditation. Lovingkindness meditation encourages thoughts of goodwill, health, and safety towards ourselves and others.

Below is a metta meditation to use:

As we begin this practice start by sitting comfortably. Let’s begin by taking a few moments to sit comfortably. You can choose to close your eyes or simply relax your eyelids.

As you begin to sit and relax, take a few moments to notice what’s happening in your body. Take note of any tension in your shoulders and relax them.

Feel how your body feels sitting in your chair. Feel how grounded your feet are.

In this meditation, we are going to bring ourselves and another person into our mind to extend compassion toward. The first person to bring to mind is ourselves. We want to start this meditation by giving ourselves the gift of kindness and compassion.

We can send kindness to ourselves in the form of a verbal mantra. Your mantra may be personal to you and provide messages that are relevant to what you need.

A typical set of lovingkindness statements includes:

• May I be healthy
• May I be happy
• May I be safe

Repeat these statement to yourself as your way of being compassionate to yourself:

• May I be healthy
• May I be happy
• May I be safe

The next person you want to send lovingkindness to is a loved one. This may be your partner, parent, child, family member, or friend. Someone you love and care about and who cares about you.

Picture this person with you and in your presence. Feel your connection to this person and the love that you feel towards them.

Give your statements of lovingkindness to your loved one as you keep them in mind:

• May you be healthy
• May you be happy
• May you be safe

Repeat this mantra over as you keep your loved one in mind.

When you’re ready, open your eyes and come back to your present.

You may also extend this metta meditation to:

• someone you know and care for. Maybe a good friend, or a work colleague you enjoy spending time with.
• someone you may not personally know. This may be someone who serves you at a store.
• someone you may have struggled with in the past or struggling with now. This may be a person you have difficulty communicating with.
• to all beings as a whole. You might want to include every living being in your thoughts such as people, animals, and plants.

There are many ways in which you can engage in Reiki and other self-care activities to help foster healthy relationships. The most important aspect of your relationships is ensuring that you are extending compassion, understanding, and empathy towards yourself.

As you extend these elements of grace you can begin to explore what you have learned about the function of relationships over your lifetime. Use this insight to make changes and work towards more healthy relationships in your life.