Have you ever wondered about combining techniques? What could happen if you could treat the patient in more than one single way? Would that be good, bad or just won’t make any difference? In this article, I’m going to talk about combining Reiki with other therapies, in my case I have experience combining it with a therapy considered by some people as strange and fancy, hypnosis.
I have been practicing hypnosis since many years ago, actually, I started working with it before I even met Reiki. By working with hypnosis I discovered more about the power of the mind, and how thoughts can affect our lives, and things that surround us.
How does hypnosis work? It would take me more than this article to explain that, but I can tell you that from my point of view, it is very similar to meditation for the person that goes into trance. I could even call it a “guided meditation” to help the “patient* “ make the changes he/she wants in his/her life. This is not done with energy but by using suggestions (in Reiki we usually call them affirmations) during the session, since during this trance/meditation the “patient’s” mind is in a more receptive state for new ideas.
Patient* – in hypnosis it’s better to call them ‘clients’ for moral and even legal reasons, since in many places hypnosis is not considered as a medical aid, support nor something similar.
It’s actually amazing to see how people can actually heal themselves from many things by using just their mind. Ideas and thoughts have a really powerful influence on people´s lives. Some techniques I have used make the client visualize him/herself filling up with white energy that starts spreading through his/her body from head to toe, and after such sessions, you can see a change on the client’s face too, since he/she feels much better.
With this kind of techniques, the patient’s body gets actually filled with energy like with Reiki, but it’s mainly done by the patient him/herself even he/she has not been attuned to Reiki or spiritual things.
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After I met Reiki, I started to find several similarities between them both so I decided to try using them combined. I told one of my Reiki patients my idea and we started working it out, the results were faster than I expected and also much better, since during sessions I was actually watching if the patient was or not in deep meditation (in trance), I even gave this person an MP3 file I recorded for this so she could listen to a hypnosis session to continue with the therapy at home, just by listening to the file 30 minutes before going to sleep every night (like asking her to meditate before going to sleep).
By combining therapies, you can use “tricks” to check on the patient’s progress and help them, maybe this person didn’t meditate that much at home, but by using the MP3 file she was “meditating” a pre-recorded session for her. This really helped her achieve good results to recover good health. I even charged the MP3 file with Reiki energy, to make it work better.
In this case, it was quite simple to combine techniques and therapies since the patient agreed to it, and it was me who was doing both of them, also I know how to work with both. But when you are working with a patient and you can only do one kind of therapy, sometimes they are already attending to some other therapy for the same problem. In this case it’s important for you to know if you are the main or the secondary therapist, because the patient is usually going to do what the main therapist tells him/her only, if you are the secondary therapist and you say something that could contradict the main therapist, the patient will usually stop going to sessions with you.
For example:
- If the patient is already going to the doctor once a week, you (as the secondary therapist) may start working with him/her with simple techniques and also send energy to his/her medicines.
- If the patient is going to have a medical surgery, you (as the secondary therapist) may work with energy before the surgery and maybe after to help him/her heal faster from it.
When you are the secondary therapist you cannot (and should not) expect the patient to do everything you ask him/her to do.
As a secondary therapist, you must not interfere too much with the main therapist, you must never suggest the patient to stop doing/going to therapy or treatment the person who is the main therapist, even if you think the main therapist might be wrong. All you will get is to make the patient stop coming for therapy with you.
If the main therapist is actually doing something wrong, the patient will notice it eventually and maybe start asking you for advice instead, but again, be humble and don’t try to force things.
Sometimes, the main therapist may become secondary or vice-versa! It depends on the patient. The patient decides according to how is he/she feeling, or how he/she is been treated during sessions, needs, and so on.
If you are the main therapist (in Reiki it does happen) and the patient thinks he/she could go to get extra help from someone else it’s ok, usually, the patient is going to ask you (as the main therapist) for advice. If this happens its ok, the patient maybe needs more than what you can do for him/her.
Short story: A friend of mine asked me for a long-distance check-up therapy for someone she knew, so she gave me only the name of the patient to work with him. I checked him and I thought I was working with an elder person because I could feel a lot of issues with this person’s body, also chakra problems. I told her that this person needed help immediately, a lot of energy and maybe needed to combine it with Gerson’s therapy or something since this person was very sick; even I have worked with her several times she did not believe me completely, besides he had an appointment with the doctor. They took him to the doctor that week, and they discovered that my “diagnosis” was correct. So, I started working with that patient, he turned out to be my friend’s nephew, a 19 years old boy who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Everything was going great, we were working with Reiki every day, I even recommended him to start listening to calm music since it was good for him (and I know how to work with music), and also suggested small changes in his diet (with the Gerson’s therapy manual). So, he was starting to feel and look better after a few sessions, he even became vegetarian to gain perfect health, but since the doctor confirmed that he was very sick, the patient’s mother took him to all kind of therapies, energy treatments, medicines and such, and eventually they stopped coming for sessions with me.
So, even I made a good “diagnosis” on time, maybe I was the first person who worked with him and started having some progress with him, eventually, I became the secondary therapist and then I was left aside since they stopped attending to me for Reiki therapy. Again the patient decides.
I think this is ok as long as the patient is progressing and recovering his/her health. Maybe the boy needed more help than I could provide. Also, maybe from their point of view, fewer therapies mean fewer costs for them too.
As you can see in the story, being the main or secondary therapist depends on people beliefs too. Nowadays even energy therapies like Reiki are getting more and more acceptance, lots of people still have more confidence on the medics, and this is not bad or good. But it doesn’t mean Reiki is not powerful for healing nor it means we should be against medics. Try combining therapies, traditional and non-traditional, to get the best results.
The therapy or treatment for each patient just depends on what kind of therapy the patient wants: Fast? Expensive? Hard? Painful? It’s all part of our and the patient’s learning process, choices, and needs in the end, and we all can learn from that too.
Article by Alejandro Sánchez Martínez
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Alejandro Sánchez Martínez is an Engineer, Hypnotherapist, Reiki master and freelance writer. As a Reiki master he teaches and practices Reiki on daily basis because he loves helping others, especially when he can teach them how to help themselves. Alejandro likes talking to others about spiritual things. Because of his Reiki practice he has been able to have visions of other realms, and angelic entities who usually help him and guide him during his practice. As a hypnotherapist he discovered he loves helping others live their lives the way they want to live them, and by using Reiki he has discovered he can help them achieve that on a much deeper way.
You can find more of his works on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Iris.ASM and on Twitter twitter.com/asm124.
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