How My Aunt Got Scared Off by a Success Story

I have an aunt who has terminal melanoma, and probably only has a few more months to live. To make matters worse, my uncle is also declining rapidly with dementia, which makes him a burden instead of a help for my dying aunt.

Also, since she lives in another state and it's difficult to get to her from where I live, we haven't seen the family much in the 15 or so years since they moved. However, I had to get my 84 year-old mother to see her only remaining sibling, probably for the last time, and I was also looking forward to assisting her a bit with a Reiki treatment.

Since I'm studying to be a Reiki Master now, and have had a significant increase in the energy coming through me, I really wanted to give my aunt a treatment, especially since she's starting to be in a lot of pain (she also has severe rheumatoid arthritis, and had to discontinue that medication since it suppresses the immmune system. At times she can't tell which is giving her the pain, the arthritis or the cancer).

I had been sending Reiki to her long distance, with the instruction that if she didn't want it that it go to someone else who did.

Since this family is not at all versed on any kind of energy healing or alternative medicine, I had to ease my way in slowly. On the third morning of the visit, I broached the subject by telling her that I knew a Japanese laying on of hands technique that was good for pain management. She seemed interested, and open to it, so I planned to do some Reiki on her after dinner

So, I brought it up again during dinner. This time I used the word "Reiki" while the whole family was there. My cousin, who has his own problems with a leg injury while trying to care for his two parents, immediately brightened up.

He proceeded to explain that while he had been working assembling lasers in an old job in Texas, he had gotten a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome. The doctors could do nothing. However, he had a friend who was a Reiki Master. She simply asked him to hold his hands up in front of him, palms facing her. She put her hands up to his, a couple of inches away, and kept them there for a few minutes.

My cousin proceeded to explain that his entire arm suddenly went numb, and he was having a hard time absorbing what was happening to him. His friend told him that he was the most receptive person she had ever given Reiki to. My cousin's carpal tunnel syndrome was healed immediately, and the pain never returned after that.

You would think that with such a great success story my aunt would have been very receptive to a treatment. However, my cousin added one more element to the story that scared her off.

His Reiki Master friend was sick for 3 days after treating my cousin. It sounded like she had absorbed my cousin's pain on his behalf and was processing it.

I explained that that's more of a shamanic thing to do, and that Reiki as a healing modality is the only one that doesn't drain your own energy to do the healing, since the energy is passing through you instead of coming from you, and that she wasn't doing Reiki by absorbing that energy.

I thought I had explained myself sufficiently, so I proceeded to get up and move my chair over to my aunt, who could have really used receiving the Reiki in her upper back and neck, since that's where the melanoma has invaded the bone.

But when I approached her she cringed and said, "stay away from me."

I thought she hadn't overcome her closed-mindedness about this, but two friends who heard the story provided what seems to be a more accurate observation. She probably thought I would absorb her cancer, given my cousin's story.

How sad. I felt as if I had to suspend sending the Reiki too, since she rejected it.

We as Reiki practitioners sometimes may become so emotionally involved in our work that we want to remove the pain from other people. This is human and natural. However, as you can see, it can not only be detrimental to our own health, but we don't know how people who hear these stories will process them. This is not what we want to promote.

I have been very careful to be aware of only channeling the Reiki energy while I give Reiki to people. The person's spirit is then in charge of using it. I have had personal experiences trying to help people in other ways and have become drained by it. So, from experience I know to keep my boundaries in tact when trying to help anyone in any way, including giving them a Reiki treatment.

I'm not passing judgment on anyone who has any desire to lift the pain from someone else, and does so, even unconsciously. I totally respect anyone who would go that far in a shamanistic tradition as well.

However, once you start absorbing the other person's pain, you've started to do something other than Reiki. Our clients may not be best served by us communicating what happens to us as a result.