Episodes on Episodes: How head-butting a predator led me to the wonders of Reiki.
Although reiki is synonymous with pseudoscientific hocus pocus, I came across it through an NHS nurse in 2018. It was the nurse’s recommendation that made me take it seriously.
On this occasion, I must tell you how I got to A&E.
Picture this: It’s 2018.
It’s the hottest summer on record.
The England men’s football team might not actually be shit for the first time since 1966 are through to the semi-finals of the World Cup.
Love Island has captured the imagination and vocabulary of the entire nation.
The trash monkey I was seeing decided to end our short fling. He didn’t do it through the medium of speech however. Instead he opted to deliver the message by necking the new person he started seeing at the pub in plain sight. I even got a wink when he came up for air. Although horrific for anyone’s sense of self-worth, this was not the thing alone that landed me on the NHS’s doorstep.
It was an encounter with the dark side of English football. A few days after London’s most boring Casanova had struck, I walked through a well-lit alleyway in the middle of the day, and found myself cornered by three men who initially wanted me to sing Fat Les’ ‘Vindaloo’ with them. It escalated to one of them forcefully pinning me up against a wall for a kiss.
All’s well that ends well: like the lovechild of Zinedine Zidane and a London rat, I head-butted the man who had me, and managed to peg it onto the busy neighbouring street. They were as shocked as I was.
By Monday afternoon, it had all caught up with me. I had a terrible headache, I could communicate in only ways Yoda would understand, and a familiarly crippling sense that I was unlovable, defective, and inadequate in every way took over.
So, there I was at St Thomas’ A&E being strapped up to an ECG machine. The Nurse showed me my heart rate and blood pressure was normal, even though I was hyperventilating.
‘Look, it’s all in your head’, she the nurse concludes.
I raised an eyebrow. She realised that this probably wasn’t the most helpful thing she could have come out with.
‘You know what would do you good? Reiki.’
And because I’ll try anything at least 4 times, I made a promise to her that I’d check it out.
Now, it’s worth noting, I’m skeptical here.
I can’t seem to figure out what Reiki actually is, never mind how it works, or what it’s meant to do. It’s all a bit mystical. The internet is so impossibly vague, and there’s always one who just dismisses it because it’s not ‘real’.
Look I’ll show you:
“Reiki, a healing practice codified in the early 20th century in Japan, was until recently an unexpected offering for medical centers around the US. In Japanese, rei roughly translates to “spiritual”; ki is commonly translated as “vital energy.” A session often looks more like mysticism than medicine: Healers silently place their hands on or over a person’s body to evoke a “universal life force, and this promotes healing.”
What does that all even MEAN? It’s also the best one I could find, and it still tells me very little.
The internet presents me with a reiki practitioner called Justine Nolan, who runs her practice ‘East London Reiki’, out of … well, East London. I asked her a bit more, and she explained that the internet’s vagueness is down to the fact we simply do not know how it is for each individual, because it’s different, even from session to session.
When I met her, she was wonderfully gentle and oozed compassion; the sort of person I’d have no doubt would shift a toddler tantrum from 100 to zero in a few seconds. I am since hugely indebted to her.
What happens in the session
Justine asked for my consent to put her hands on me at points in the session, and then explained that I was to lie on her massage table, to close my eyes, and that she would do the rest. I was rest assured it was a non-invasive practice.
It takes a few minutes to relax into the session. When you’re in, it felt like being under the sea, in that you feel suspended between waking life and being asleep. But you’re protected; you won’t drown. It’s as though you’re comfortably wrapped in cotton wool.
I could see that it was recomended by said nurse: When you’re panicking, you tend to disassoicate. You can’t feel your body. Reiki encourages you to inhabit your body, just as mindfulness and psychotherapy does.
Sometimes, I experience wild colours — loads of oranges, purples and turquoises. My body temperature drops where I’m quite cold (even in heatwaves). Other times, I’ve experience wildly electric bodily sensations, and movement throughout my being. I’m usually hyperaware of my hands; I jolt sometimes, and my tummy ALWAYS puts on a big rumble show. There was one time where I was in such a trance-like state, my body felt like one large relaxed and interconnected blob. It feels a lot like floating.
I came out at peace with myself and saw Justine for a few sessions. She got me back on my feet. It gives you the space to have a safe connection with another human; it’s designed to get people to relax so their bodies can relax and repair. It gives you the opportunity to ‘shed’.
The one thing I was encouraged about: reiki doesn’t pretend to be a miracle cure. It’s less snake-oily than many skeptics posit. Rather, it’s there to promote healing and positive wellbeing.
I returned to reiki after I walked in on my recent ex shagging someone else at a house party (grim stuff). A friend reminded me about the powerful nature of reiki on the night, which has contributed hugely to my recovery.
I identified a vital pattern: when I’m discarded or abandoned in this very specific way, I’ve got a real need to be looked after and cared for by an authority or a grown-up. I just haven’t got the self-parenting tools to soothe myself at my disposal.
Reiki is just that. It fills a long-standing emotional hole in life which provides softness. It’s a safe place where you’re soothed by someone else, and nothing can possibly hurt you in that hour.
This makes reiki the perfect role in care: it fulfills a genuine need to be looked after in times where we’re alone.
It’s also likely to work for a whole host of other things that I don’t quite understand. I certainly can’t explain the shooting sensations, temperature drops, wild colours and the sense of peace you feel afterwards.
When I’ve felt least like myself, reiki has presented me with the closest I’ve come to a glimmer of a self who used to live a little.
It’s an important tool in our Mental Health swiss army knife. It’s useful in times of crisis and alongside therapy. It’s not like online grocery shopping though: when you can’t access therapy, it’s not a ‘like for like’ substitution. Rather, it’s a crucial addition.
Justine now runs East London Reiki out of St. Joseph’s Hospice on Mare St https://www.eastlondonreiki.com
