KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

Imag­ine be­ing ill, and know­ing that the way to get bet­ter didn't in­volve pre­scrip­tion drugs or a sur­gi­cal scalpel. It wouldn't in­volve herbs or drink­ing con­coc­tions cre­at­ed in your grand­moth­er's kitchen. To get bet­ter, some­one would put their hand on you and you could be well again. It might sound a lit­tle like one of Christ's mir­a­cles but it's ac­tu­al­ly a tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese heal­ing tech­nique called Rei­ki.

The word Rei­ki is de­rived from two Japan­ese words, Rei, mean­ing uni­ver­sal and ki, mean­ing life force. Rei­ki it­self is a spir­i­tu­al heal­ing process which is said to use uni­ver­sal en­er­gy, chan­nelled through a trained Rei­ki prac­ti­tion­er, to heal a pa­tient, ei­ther phys­i­cal­ly, men­tal­ly or emo­tion­al­ly. It is a heal­ing tech­nique that re­quires on­ly a Rei­ki prac­ti­tion­er's touch. Na­dia De Leon De­onar­ine has been a Rei­ki prac­ti­tion­er for the past 12 years. She start­ed a Rei­ki course af­ter see­ing an ad in a lo­cal pa­per and is now a cer­ti­fied Rei­ki mas­ter. She was cer­ti­fied by Lyn God­dard, a Cana­di­an Rei­ki mas­ter prac­tis­ing in T&T. "Rei­ki does not re­place con­ven­tion­al med­i­cine. It is a com­ple­ment to it," said De­onar­ine. She en­cour­ages her clients to con­tin­ue fol­low­ing their doc­tors' or­ders.

De­onar­ine said peo­ple were made up of en­er­gy and Rei­ki's pur­pose was to bal­ance that en­er­gy to al­low the body to heal it­self nat­u­ral­ly. She said peo­ple came for Rei­ki treat­ments for a va­ri­ety of ail­ments. "Some peo­ple know about Rei­ki and so they know what to come for, and a lot of peo­ple just have a prob­lem and are re­ferred to a Rei­ki prac­ti­tion­er by a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber. "A lot of peo­ple come to see me for de­pres­sion, anx­i­ety and sleep­less­ness and phys­i­cal ail­ments such as arthri­tis, back pains and oth­er types of pain. Rei­ki is holis­tic, it works on the phys­i­cal, men­tal, emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al as­pects of our be­ings." She said she doesn't al­ways have to phys­i­cal­ly touch pa­tients, as en­er­gy lev­els can rise to the out­side of the body. In these cas­es she al­lows her hand to hov­er over the client's body and works with­in their en­er­gy field. De­onar­ine be­lieves Rei­ki al­ways works but not in the way clients ex­pect. "It is in­tel­li­gent en­er­gy, and goes where it is need­ed. Some­times a client may have a phys­i­cal prob­lem and it­ is ac­tu­al­ly the man­i­fes­ta­tion of a men­tal or emo­tion­al is­sue. Rei­ki will work on the men­tal is­sue as op­posed to the phys­i­cal." She said the Rei­ki prac­ti­tion­er had no con­trol over how Rei­ki worked, but rather was used as a chan­nel for the en­er­gy. "We are taught not to have ex­pec­ta­tions when we use Rei­ki. We chan­nel the en­er­gy, but the en­er­gy works ac­cord­ing to the client's con­scious­ness.

"It doesn't af­fect us in a neg­a­tive way. We don't feel the client's pain but we can sense where the en­er­gy needs to go." De­onar­ine works from home, but has had a room built sep­a­rate from her house for her Rei­ki prac­tice. In the room is a sin­gle bed, where her clients are asked to lie down-ful­ly clothed-and re­lax. Some­times she plays mu­sic, and usu­al­ly she ad­justs the light­ing so that the room is dark­er and more con­ducive to re­lax­ation. All she asks is that her clients keep an open mind. Dur­ing the ses­sion, De­onar­ine's hands hov­er over the client's body, as she al­lows the en­er­gy to guide her to the client's ail­ment. She prays be­fore she be­gins and af­ter the ses­sion is com­plete. A Rei­ki ses­sion takes about an hour, and De­onar­ine usu­al­ly rec­om­mends one ses­sion a week for a month, but gives her clients the op­tion to re­turn for more if nec­es­sary. She said Rei­ki worked dif­fer­ent­ly with each per­son. "It can work in one ses­sion for some­one's pain, and take a lot longer for oth­ers. That usu­al­ly de­pends on how long the client has been ill." She en­cour­ages all her clients to learn Rei­ki them­selves so that they can deal with small is­sues with­out hav­ing to come to her. "I have fam­i­ly mem­bers who were sick and in pain and came to me for Rei­ki and I did it, but I al­so en­cour­aged them to learn, and now they do it them­selves. My whole fam­i­ly does Rei­ki."

De­onar­ine said she burned her fin­ger in hot oil a few years ago and was in pain for days, but con­stant­ly used Rei­ki on her fin­ger.

"Af­ter a few days the pain had gone away and I nev­er got a scar, there was nev­er any swelling or any­thing. My kids see that and when­ev­er any­thing is wrong they say: 'Mum­my, Rei­ki it please.' They pre­fer Rei­ki to the doc­tor." She said un­like med­ica­tion, Rei­ki had no side ef­fects. She ad­mit­ted that there would al­ways be dis­be­liev­ers but said she had seen Rei­ki work in many lives. "My clients feel it work­ing and so they come back for Rei­ki treat­ments." De­onar­ine gave me a Rei­ki demon­stra­tion-but as I had no med­ical com­plaints at the time, I can't say whether or not I felt it work­ing. What I did feel was heat em­a­nat­ing from her hands, where they hov­ered over my waist. She said, though she couldn't ex­plain the rea­son for the heat, she had no­ticed that clients usu­al­ly felt it when her hands were near prob­lem ar­eas. Asked to com­ment, Dr Bu­jai Bal­li­ram, a gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er from Pe­nal, said al­though he had no ex­pe­ri­ence with Rei­ki, he had heard of the ben­e­fits be­ing sim­i­lar to those of yo­ga, and that it could help pa­tients re­lieve stress. "I don't be­lieve in us­ing Rei­ki or any oth­er tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine as an al­ter­na­tive, I be­lieve things should work to­geth­er. "We can take the good from both con­ven­tion­al and al­ter­na­tive med­i­cines and make them work."