As an advanced level Reiki practitioner, I have understood the value of giving and receiving Reiki treatments for a variety of physical, emotional and mental challenges. However, I had no way of assessing the impact of the healing power of Reiki when done in conjunction with major surgery. That is until I made my decision to have total hip replacement surgery to be done on October 3, of this year.
I had been privileged to be a member of a team of Reiki practitioners working with Ed Roebuck and Dennis Dunn both of who had also made the decision to go ahead with major surgery. With Ed and Dennis, the thing I remembered most was their positive attitude and the giving over in trust the work of the Reiki practitioners. I learned from Ed the importance of setting a clear intent for the Reiki work as he sought to bring about a balance of mind and heart energy. I was struck with Dennis’s conviction in the healing power being channeled by the Reiki practitioners.
I requested to have a series of Reiki sessions the week before my scheduled surgery and set as my intent to use the work of Reiki to heal at the physical, emotional and mental levels. I remember my first of many sessions leading up to and after my surgery with great clarity. As I focused on my intent, I felt an incredible wave of love coming from my heart and begin to permeate my entire physical body. I felt so full of the healing love that I thought I would burst. The room where the practitioners were working seemed filled with white light and felt light as a feather and unaware of my nagging physical pain I had come in with. I don’t pretend to know what unconditional love is and I had a clear sense of what it might be. Along with the healing love was a peace that was as warm as a summer sun and as quiet as a still, still night.
I had a frame of reference from which to approach each succeeding Reiki session as the day of my surgery approached. There was a part of me that was scared going into the surgery and that part was calmed with the incredible love coming through the Reiki. I remember waiting outside the operating room after having received Reiki the night before and a few minutes before being wheeled down the corridors of the hospital and feeling a deep sense of calm. My conversations with the anesthesiologist and surgeon attending to my surgery had the tone of knowing I was in the presence of a loving presence I had experienced throughout the week. As I was returned to my room from the recovery room I was greeted by my immediate family and family of Reiki practitioners. Their loving presence help me to sustain the feeling of peace and calm as I set about my recovery period.
I continued to receive the healing power of Reiki in the days that followed and it is my sincere belief that the love present throughout this traumatic surgery prevented the grasp of fear from ever taking control of my physical body, emotions and mental body. To all those who gave of this love and of the their time, I am eternally grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
John Collings