Have you ever had that moment in a Reiki session where your client is going through a major crisis in their life and you just don’t know what to say? I have and it can be hard to know to hold onto our presence and continue to really show up when clients are going through their worst moments.
Even though I have been doing healing work for over thirty years, and I keep thinking I have seen it all, I still experience times when a client’s tragedy overwhelming. It happened just the other day when I was with a new client. Deborah, came in for a Reiki session and psychic reading as she was trying to process the loss of her husband and son in a car wreck that happened on Thanksgiving Day.
I can tell you, it took all my training not to burst into tears with her, but instead to continue to show up and hold space with her. I knew that I needed to stay grounded, keep breathing and really be there for her and support her when she needed it most.
And yet, Reiki practitioners, energy healers and intuitives, we will encounter individuals facing a spectrum of challenges—from the acute stress of an emergency room visit to the enduring struggle of chronic illness. Whether it’s a short-term upheaval or a long-term personal challenge, our calling remains the same: to be a steady, healing presence in the midst of a crisis.
Clients in crisis comes in many forms. It might present as:
- A severe bout of anxiety, depression or other mental health breakdowns.
- Or possibly a deep spiritual or psychic awakening that changes them completely and creates an upheaval in their life.
- Physical health emergencies, a terrifying diagnosis or the stress of chronic illness.
- And the emotional distress caused by financial woes, relationship endings, and family troubles.
- And we also see more and more catastrophic issues brought on by climate change, violence and hate crimes.
There is a lot going on in the world that can bring people to seek help in a crisis and here are a few foundational practices we can use in our Reiki practices to help serve those who find themselves in the eye of the storm.
Listening and Holding Space
The first thing we can do is to simple show up with our full presence, our heart open and really listen. There is immense healing in the act of holding space, where our grounded presence can offer solace. By practicing active listening and reflective responses, we help clients process their experiences. It sad but true that most of us just don’t get enough of someone really hearing and seeing us. The it is profoundly healing to have someone truly listen and care.
This was certainly true for my client Deborah, who found that although many of her friends and family members have been attentive to her, some of them just couldn’t seem to handle what Deborah was going through and we talked about how difficult it is for many of to stay present in the face of such painful, heart wrenching grief.
As healers, we have the opportunity to be among those who do not turn away from the unimaginable and the tragedies that other people avoid. And that brings up to the next step of being fully present, which is to create a safe space for our clients feel and express their full range of emotions.
Allowing Clients to Feel and Express Emotions
People who are in a crisis need a safe space to really feel and express their grief, pain, anger, confusion and frustration, and as healers, can create that safe space.
When emotions overflow, we provide containment, guiding them back to their breath, and thus, back to the present moment. If a client becomes overwhelmed, we are there to ground them, often with a simple touch, reminding them that they are not alone in their experience.
And this is going to easy or hard for you as a healer- depending on how comfortable you are with your own emotions. One of the best things you can do to increase your skills as a healer is to handle your own unprocessed feelings and keep doing your inner work. Our clients can tell how deep you can go with this, by the way… they will feel out your capacity to process your own feelings quite unconsciously and so they will only go as deep with you as you can handle.
If a client is deeply releasing emotions in a session, try these techniques. (It also works if you are doing remote sessions too of course…)
- Hold one hand on the top of their head and one on their heart too. Send Reiki to them and make sure you are breathing and grounded too. Ask them to breath really deeply from the feet all the way up their spine and out their mouth. This helps release emotion and regulate the nervous system and it helps them feel really held.
- To release and process anxious, try a bridge position with one of your hands on the heart and the other on their solar plexus and send Reiki to both points. Moving energy between these two chakras can bring anxiety relief quickly.
- Holding on to their feet and drawing the energy down their spine will help ground someone who has left their body- which is a common trauma response and can happen a lot to someone facing a crisis.
- Try a navel chakra ‘sandwich.’ (One hand on top of the lower belly and one hand on the sacrum) to help someone access their emotions if they are feeling numb. This will also work with someone who is flooding and can’t stop crying as it regulates our emotions.
Practicing Our Energy and Psychic Hygiene- Before and After Sessions
It’s so important to practice good psychic and energy hygiene, both for ourselves and our healing spaces. Preparing our space and ourselves energetically ensures that we can be fully present for those in need. This means prepping for a session by grounding, clearing and protecting ourselves before our clients come in, especially when we are working with someone in a crisis.
After the session is over, go through your ground, clear and protect routine again and also make sure you cleanse your room of any residual energy. There are so many ways to clear your energy and your space- and it’s wonderful to use these techniques to clear your clients too before they get up off your table.
- Smudging is always effective. Try palo santo if you want to avoid the pungent smell of sage, and there are many beautiful and effective clearing sprays too. This helps cleanse their energy fields from any emotions, thoughts or physical pain that they might have released in the session.
- Sound works well too. Try a little chime, a crystal or Tibetan bowl to cleanse the client and your healing room. A 528hrz tuning fork works wonders at clearing out emotional residue before they get up off the table. I carry one when I travel to clear hotel rooms and Airbnbs.
- There are many crystals, flower essences and essential oils that will do the trick too. Clear quartz crystals work well, and I use pine or citrus essential oils to cleanse left over energy from a healing session. I love my selenite wand and swear by that, you can run it through someone’s energy field and leave it on your healing table when you are done with your session.
- Salt lamps are also very effective and keeping your healing office clear. Try putting a bowl of salt under your table, but be sure to throw it out and replace it every week or two. I also love running water, like a fountain or a fish tank to create a serene ambiance and also clear residual energy.
Taking Care of Yourself
Please be mindful about secondary trauma- this is when we as healers as traumatized by other people’s trauma. It happens to everyone in the helping professions like medical staff, teachers and first responders. If you hear something from your clients that knocks you off center and deeply impacts you, it’s important to handle that when the session is over.
That kind of trauma response tends to build up over time and can lead to burn out, exhaustion, stress and depression. You might think you can handle one of those sessions, but over time that stress builds up inside of you exponentially if you are not taking care of yourself. Get help from another healer, or therapist to help you process what you are encountering in your sessions.
We all know that having a regular self-care practice is vital for us healers, and it’s even more important if you are working with lots of clients who are in crisis. And even more so if you find yourself in crisis too.
Refer to Other Professionals As Needed
Supporting our clients who are in crisis also needs to involve collaborating with other professionals, especially when a crisis extends beyond our realm of expertise as a healer. If you are helping someone through a serious mental or physical health crisis or addiction recovery, it’s best to make sure you are a part of team of helpers, unless that is already your specialty as a healer. We can’t be experts at everything, so it’s a good idea to collect the contact information of other professionals so that you can refer your clients out to a pro when they need something beyond the scope of your expertise.
I have great contacts for physicians, functional medicine practitioners, psychiatrists, addiction recovery programs, mental health professionals and lawyers as well as victim services, advocates and hotlines for addiction help, self-harm and domestic and sexual violence. And I have brochures for all kinds of help lines and crisis centers in my office so people could take them anonymously. And they do.
This is what my client Deborah did. She found a loss support group run by a local hospital that gave her the help she needed in addition to her therapist and the energy healing sessions with me. I was honored to be a part of her team, and also grateful that she had many people on her team.
Remember, it’s not just about the healing we offer; it’s about the heart, the presence we bring to every interaction. Let us continue to share the light of Reiki with warmth and purpose, and watch as it touches lives in ways we might never fully know.
Article by Lisa Campion
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Lisa Campion
Lisa Campion is the author of the #1 best-selling books The Art of Psychic Reiki and Energy Healing for Empaths and the books Awakening Your Psychic Ability and the Psychic Awakening Journal.
She is a Psychic Counselor and Reiki Master Teacher with over 25 years of experience. Lisa has been teaching Reiki for over 20 years and has trained thousands of people in Reiki and has done over 15k individual sessions. She is also the host of the radio show and podcast, The Miracle of Healing. She specializes in training emerging psychics, empaths and healers so that they can fully step into their gifts since the world needs all the healers that it can get!
You can find out more at lisacampion.com
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