NEED SLEEP? REIKI TO THE RESCUE!
Mind-Body Therapies Can Help.
If you’ve been anywhere online lately, I’m sure you’ve heard the now cliché phrase “Self-care is the new healthcare!” particularly where preventative care is concerned. But what does that mean and how can you get the right kind of care to keep your immune system boosted and your body healthy?
Self-care by definition means taking an active role in protecting ones health, wellbeing and happiness, particularly during times of stress. Let’s face it, in today’s politically charged, Covid-19 filled day-to-day, who isn’t stressed? More Americans than ever are finding it difficult to sleep and even more difficult to get that all important restorative sleep known as REM. Yet others are struggling to reduce anxiety in the face of new global challenges or combat depression in a world where everything seems to be going wrong.
American’s aren’t getting enough of the right kind of rest and it’s setting us up for illness.
American’s are getting less sleep and there are serious implications for our health. “When we do not sleep long or well enough, our bodies do not get the full benefits of sleep such as muscle repair and memory consolidation…even slight deprivation can affect memory, judgement and mood.” On average most Americans were getting 90 minutes less sleep than the average recommended long before the 2020 Pandemic, but today, a staggering number of Americans are missing the mark by up to 180 minutes, getting as little as five hours a night on average. Illness, extreme stress, vitamin deficiency, fear, loneliness, over-thinking and more are to blame. In a 2019 article for Women’s Health Magazine© entitled Reiki for Sleep? it was noted that another huge problem with not getting enough rest is the increased flood of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that deluge the bodies of the stressed, making quality sleep illusive. It goes further to note that Reiki healing’s ability to relax the nervous system, thusly helping the body to release relaxation hormones including dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin, is a significant factor in how Reiki can help provide sleep related health benefits.
Less than ideal sleep also contributes to high blood pressure which is a known underlying risk factor for many illnesses and weakens our immune response. Having an on target blood pressure (80/120) is considered a main preventative goal by the American Medical Association when it comes to the prevention of heart attack and stroke which means that, like it or not, the right type of rest is crucial for preventing both physical and mental illness.
Reiki Healing and other Mind-Body Solutions can help.
Reiki is a Japanese healing technique that promotes deep relaxation and aligns the mind-body-soul for optimal health. Mind-body therapies such as energy healing, Reiki healing and meditation often light up the same areas of the brain as sleep, when viewed by scientists studying these practices. This begs us to ask : can an hour of Reiki or Meditation replace an hour of sleep and can it provide significant health benefits as a result?
A Forbes© article from 2021 titled What is Reiki and How does it Work? detailed a Harvard Medical School study where they determined after studying a group of 99 patients that after even one a single Reiki session there was a significant reduction of the following symptoms: anxiety, depression, insomnia, pain and nausea. A previous study in the Indian Journal of Positive Psychology found that after ten weeks, study participants who received weekly Reiki sessions made significant improvements in quality of sleep and reduced their symptoms of depression, in comparison to control participants in the study who did not receive Reiki at all. In a 2017 article titled Reiki is Better than Placebo on the NCBI website backed by the National Institute of Health, author David E. McManus, lodges a strong argument for Reiki as a complementary therapy in many circumstances of wellness from insomnia to cancer treatment. In this extensive paper, he asserts that after extended research there is evidence that Reiki is doing much more than “getting in your head” (Placebo). Patients who received actual Reiki from trained practitioners received health benefits much more often than those where an untrained person placed hands on or above the body of a study participant.
In the era of Covid-19 and Post Covid Syndrome (colloquially ‘long haul symptoms’) it is also important to note that Mind-Body therapies may be helpful in resetting the autonomic nervous system and relaxing the Vagus Nerve, both which suggest that trying Reiki as a part of your healing routine may reap huge benefits during your recovery.
More research is being done each year on the benefits of Reiki and the results are in: there is much to be gained in terms of complementary and preventative care and with no side-effects.
Relaxation alone has huge benefits and the right kind may help replenish our sleep bank.
As we discussed, many Americans sustain long periods of time with little opportunity to rest and recuperate. It doesn’t take a medical doctor to know that our constant negative emotional response to stress is bad for the body. One study followed Reiki Healers in New York City, and observed that receiving a series of Reiki sessions appears to help the brain choose more effective patterns for processing information and creates alpha and delta patterns associated with sleep giving the client a kind of ‘sleep replacement’ for certain parts of the sleep cycle; it also lowered blood pressure and clients who received these treatments on a regular basis showed healthier patterns and perspective in the following areas: problem solving, grounding, work life balance, conflict resolution and more. (It should be noted that similar studies have been done on those who mediate showing similar helpful effectiveness; suggesting that Reiki could even be likened to a shared meditation experience for those who are new to the practice and want to further understand it.) While there are no conclusive scientific studies that show Reiki alone can “replace” sleep altogether (we need certain forms of deep sleep to maintain true functionality and of course you need regular sleep!), there is evidence to show that regular Reiki and or Meditation practices help regular practitioners and recipients sleep better when it is time to turn in for the night, due to lower overall stress levels.
An ounce of prevention is priceless when it comes to your health!
Interestingly enough, when I ask people why they don’t pursue alternative, non-invasive, relaxation related solutions before popping sleeping pills or going directly to antidepressants without so much as a consult, the answer is usually something like this: Those sessions cost so much and they aren’t covered by my insurance.
Yes there is a price involved in paying a practitioner for their time and in a high cost of living area, wellness services can really add up. On the other hand, what is the cost (physically and financially) of failing to manage stress, worst case, developing a serious illness? Sleeping pills and antidepressants have a cost too. One could even argue that in non-serious cases those pills are “bandaids” more than solutions and could cost more in the long run. In addition, there is the side-effect cost. While Reiki and other Mind-Body Solutions have no known side-effects, chemical solutions have many and varied potential health risks. As such, in non-serious situations (non acute cases), it seems a non-chemical approach might be advised first.
Another positive, Mind-Body Therapies tend to help the client deal with the root causes of stress, chronic fatigue, fear, mild chronic depression and may be more effective than chemical solutions long term. From this perspective of prevention, all self-care methods and preventative health methods (standard or alternative) seem cheap if they are effective!
In truth, complementary and alternative Mind-Body Therapies are accepted more widely in countries where they are part of the full medical system (such as Japan, China, Canada, Sweden and the UK). Many Americans never consider Mind-Body Solutions because there is an assumption that because they are not covered by insurance, and sometimes under studied by the medical community, that they are somehow invalid.
Fortunately, the tide is turning and more Americans each day are experiencing the tremendous benefits of Mind-Body Health Services.
Citations:
1 National Sleep Foundation. (n.d.). What happens when you sleep? Retrieved from http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/how-sleep-works/what-happens-when-you-sleep.
2 Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and WGBH Educational Foundation. (n.d.). Consequences of insufficient sleep. Healthy Sleep. Retrieved from http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences.
3 American Psychological Association. (2004, May). More sleep would make most Americans happier, healthier and safer. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/research/action/sleep-deprivation.aspx
4 American Medical Association. (2017, November). AMA updated guidelines for measuring blood pressure. Retrieved from https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-statement-updated-guideline-measuring-blood-pressure
5 Reiki Surry Hills Blog. (2018, September). Reiki Brain Waves - what happens in Fran’s Brain? http://www.reikisurryhills.com.au/reiki-brain-waves-what-happens-in-franss-brain/
6 The International House of Reiki. (2011, July).The Brain Waves of Reiki. https://ihreiki.com/blog/the_brain_waves_of_reiki/?v=7516fd43adaa.
For those who are interested in more articles about the benefits of Reiki Healing, Mind-Body Healing Services and more, I’ve included links to a couple of other articles below.
All About Reiki
https://www.everydayhealth.com/reiki/
What is Reiki and How Does it Work?
https://www.forbes.com/health/body/what-is-reiki/
The Brain Waves of Reiki
https://ihreiki.com/blog/the_brain_waves_of_reiki/?v=7516fd43adaa
The Energetic Heart is Unfolding
Sleep Enlightened
https://www.saatva.com/blog/sleep-stages/
Reiki is Better than Placebo
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5871310/
What Happens in Fran’s Brain?
http://www.reikisurryhills.com.au/reiki-brain-waves-what-happens-in-franss-brain/
