Reiki is a form of holistic healing practice akin to acupressure, utilizing subtle, spiritual energies to enhance and guide the body’s natural healing abilities. To perform reiki, the practitioner (called the sender here) touches various places on the receiving party, and allows their own spiritual energy to flow into those places. This is a non-invasive method of healing that is not intended to replace, but enhance medicine. Reiki should never be used for broken bones or serious disease. See your doctor. However, anecdotal evidence has shown it to reduce chronic pain, fatigue, and other issues. Placebo effect, your mileage may vary, blah-blah-blah.

So, what does this book do? It provides positions to use for reiki both on yourself and others. It has sections on what positions to use and for what purposes (hint: touch where the problem is). It gets a bit on how to rebalance chakra points, which are like server centers for your body’s energy. To be honest, it isn’t bad as a reference guide until you have the information memorized and are ready to move on to more advanced techniques. It does not help you in truly understanding what you are doing, which I would expect is vital to setting your intention for a particular session. Individual pages seem scant on content, choosing instead to fill a page with flowery background art and diagrams that feel incredibly basic, not to mention copy-pasted over and over. Just getting started with reiki? Keep this book for reference in the moment while reading something more in-depth for understanding.