Reiki Helped Me Heal From the Trauma of Sexual Assault
Reiki might be a woo-woo wellness treatment, but I still believe it helped me—and doctors agree.
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Trigger warning: This article contains descriptions of sexual trauma.
I’ve recently become one of those people who are into Reiki—aka “energy healing,” a form of alternative medicine. This is a complete shock to me. I generally raise my eyebrows at mentions of “chakras” and “attuning”—but I'm now that girl. Whenever it comes up in conversation that I’ve not only tried Reiki but find it really powerful, I tend to get one of two responses (both of which involve raised eyebrows). Version one goes, “Oh, I’ve always been interested in trying that!” Version two goes, “Oh, wow,” accompanied by a studious sip of a drink.
I first encountered Reiki about nine and a half years after I was raped at a party. I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t realize that’s what it was (I'd told myself it was my fault for drinking underage, for going to his room). I chalked it up to a Bad Night.
For seven years I didn’t think about it much until it hit me while getting sunburned on a beach in Malaga: Of course it was rape; I had just been conditioned to see it otherwise.
This was right before #MeToo took hold in late 2017, and as the movement rose like a tidal wave, its presence was constant in my life: in my weekend work editing and writing, in group messages with friends, on the news screens in the subway as I rode to yoga. It felt like something real, something wild, was happening. But the rape, something I had thought about only occasionally for all that time, suddenly began to persistently haunt my thoughts—always pacing, waiting for a vulnerable, split-second lull to barge in. And when it did, it took up the room.
Yoga, which I once looked forward to as a way to slow down my thoughts, devolved during this time into a game of roulette: Either I would find peace during the vinyasa flows or deep yin sequences, my mind swaddled in calm—or frames from the Bad Night and the morning after would replay, visual and emotional impressions looping like a nightmare GIF. Once, I had a panic attack; a few times, I cried.
I did think about seeing a therapist several times throughout 2018, but I would find an excuse not to: I was tending to a fledgling start-up I cofounded, I was trying to build a travel-writing career, I was navigating a long-distance open relationship. I just didn’t have the energy to figure out finding a therapist in a foreign country (I live in Germany)—and my insurance, very much basic-need coverage at the time, wouldn’t have covered it anyway.
A year and a half later, I and my mental defenses were worn down. Thoughts about my assault were breaking through more and more often, to the point that the traumatic memory GIF was an almost constant presence in the back of my head. I felt drawn out. So I booked a weeklong yoga retreat in Thailand. I told friends and family I was taking a social-media-free vacation, doing yoga, reading a Kindle-pile of books, and drinking gin on the beach. Privately I was also intent on an exorcism of the trauma. I was hoping that by putting myself through six days of yoga, I’d somehow have a breakthrough, whatever that looked like. I signed up for yoga and Pilates classes and, on a whim, a Reiki session.
During a session sometimes I’ll feel washes of emotions or physical sensations, sometimes there are points I don’t feel anything. Most people who can speak credibly to Reiki agree that it’s a healing method that uses energy, but further specifics are murky. “I believe that it helps to relax a person, turn on the parasympathetic nervous system, and quiet the flight-or-fight response,” says Josie Znidarsic, D.O., a family medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic. “This, in turn, allows the body to heal or calm down.”
If you’re thinking that sounds pretty unscientific, you’re not wrong—there is no scientific explanation of how Reiki works, or even that it does work. But here’s what I can’t deny about it: Each time I have a Reiki session, I gain some clarity and some insights about what I’m struggling with and some gentle guidance about how to address those issues. During my first session in Thailand, I felt a huge weight on my chest and a panic struck me as it got increasingly difficult to breathe; seconds later, insanely pleasurable waves of relief—like nonsexual mini orgasms—washed over me, and I couldn’t stop smiling from how fucking good I felt in that moment.
After the session my therapist told me she felt like there was a communication block with my parents. She also informed me that it seemed like there was a secret I’d been thinking about and the weight of that was the anvil I’d felt on my chest; the release, she informed me, was the effect on my body—the lightness—finally telling whoever it was I needed to tell would bring.
Later that night, as I tucked my mosquito net into the sides of my mattress, it seemed to me like finally telling my parents—something I’d come close to doing a few times—might be what I needed to do to finally stop thinking of it. It took me a few months to work up the courage, but eventually I told them. It was hard, but the words came tumbling out before I could stop them. I was met with love and compassion, like I knew I would be (my parents are great). I felt lighter the minute I told them; I cried after the call, out of wonder that that could have been so easy, out of anger that I had waited so long.
So Does Reiki Work?
I’m the first to admit that Reiki seems like a practice more likely to be discussed in the offices of Goop than in medical school, but mainstream hospitals are starting to incorporate it into their patient-care strategies—Johns Hopkins, Yale New Haven Health, Cleveland Clinic, and UCLA Health all offer Reiki. At Cleveland Clinic, Znidarsic says Reiki is sometimes incorporated into pain-management programs, whether through individual or group sessions.
When it comes to Reiki, it might not matter as much whether it capital-W Works as whether you feel you personally benefit. “Anecdotally, I have a patient who undergoes an infusion monthly that leaves her with severe fatigue for three to four days. However, if she gets Reiki right after the infusion, the fatigue lasts just one or two days. That's significant if you have to get back to work or take care of your family. And I don’t know of any Western medicine therapies that could replicate that,” says Susan Payrovi, M.D., a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University’s Center for Integrative Medicine, adding that patients typically need to be open to the practice to feel like it has benefits. “I encourage patients to seek what they are drawn to—and if Reiki works for them, then by all means they should utilize it.”
But anecdotal evidence is just anecdotal—actual science behind Reiki is shakier. “There is no hard evidence it works, but there are lots of small studies that point to its efficacy,” Payrovi says. “Reiki has no negative side effects, so I think that even without a lot of hard science behind it, it’s worthwhile for people to try,” Znidarsic adds. “We all live in a very stressful, overstimulated environment, so anything that can help to decrease that stress response can be helpful. It also provides a level of human connection that is often missing in today’s busy world.”
Reiki isn’t a magic wand. I wasn’t mystically freed from my trauma by the healer’s hands. But it did give me a burst of clarity, allowing me to make some meaning out of the intrusive thoughts I was having and cope with the trauma of my sexual assault in a new way. Even if it is placebo effect, the correlation is hard to ignore. “Reiki and other energy modalities can help someone explore the connection between their mind and body and start to understand how emotional issues can cause physical symptoms,” Znidarsic says. The point is, I feel better—as long as I know when to draw the line between self-care as a powerful wellness practice and therapy as a needed one.
Eight months after my first session (and three Reiki sessions later), I rarely think about the Bad Night now. I seem to have gotten the weight of it off my chest. It still does come to mind on occasion (like right now, writing this), but I feel more in control. I can send the thoughts away when I’m done with them—and they go. In fact, there have been wonderful stretches of time when I realize I have been thinking of nothing at all.
(Original article posted on glamour.com)
