BY DANA L. YOUNG — Can practicing reiki help you if your goal is to become a mother? I had already been practicing reiki when I became pregnant in 2006. I’m in my late 30’s and had anticipated a long wait while trying to conceive. Imagine my surprise when I found out I was expecting after only two months!

I instinctively knew that reiki had helped me — and as a reiki practitioner, I have seen it help clients of mine conceive after trying fertility treatments without success.

Reiki clears blockages in our human energy field that cause imbalances in the way our body operates.

What is reiki? It’s a form of healing energy using light touch along the energy centers (chakras) in the body that helps induce deep relaxation, put your internal ‘feng shui’ in order, and promote a peak state of well-being.

Reiki is a form of bodywork that is especially beneficial for expectant and new mothers because it helps prepare women for the physical, emotional and spiritual changes necessary for a “centered” conception, pregnancy, labor and post-partum recovery experience.

Our chakras are concentrated energy centers in our bodies, and are considered the energetic hubs or nexi for the roles played by our major and minor organs. If your physical functioning is compromised due to injury, inflammation, or disease, your physical capacity is diminished. Similarly, if your energy centers are blocked, your body will manifest the blockage as a physical or emotional symptom like addiction.

Our reproductive systems, in particular, are very susceptible to the effects of stress, anxiety or changes in our hormone and endocrine levels.

There are a number of women who functionally can support a pregnancy, but still have difficulty conceiving. Reiki is supportive and helps prepare the body for conception on all levels. It can be safely used in conjunction with charting, IVF, IUI, and other methods.

For relieving the physical discomforts of pregnancy like morning sickness, reiki is especially useful. The hormones associated with pregnancy – human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and estrogen — contributes to gastric distress. Reiki’s inductive powers can help reduce the sensation of nausea, and provide soothing relief from ligament pain, as well as the back and hip pain typically experienced as pregnancy progresses.

I was one fortunate enough to feel my baby kicking already in the early states of my pregnancy — a rare thing to experience at week 15 or 16. However, because of that I also experienced regular — and often intense — Braxton-Hicks contractions.

One night in particular, I recall having a lot of contractions and both the baby and I were very agitated. It finally occurred to me to channel Reiki to myself. I placed one hand on my upper abdomen, where the solar plexus chakra is located, and the other over my womb in order to connect with my baby. Reiki’s soothing energy encourages the parasympathetic “rest and digest” response in the abdominal cavity where the solar plexus is located, calming the nerves and relaxing the body. Soon enough, the Braxton-Hicks stopped, the baby settled down and I was able to fall into a relaxing sleep.

Pregnancy is exciting and stressful for expectant mothers, but our culture generally does not often do a good job of supporting women during this time. Many women are juggling demands associated with careers, expectations from their families, changes in their relationships with their partners — and of course, in their bodies.

These factors can exacerbate fatigue, discomfort and mood swings. Reiki also helps expectant mothers to reduce stress and remain more grounded emotionally. A Reiki treatment is, first and foremost, time to honor yourself and your body during a time when you may no longer feel like it belongs to you. Reiki sessions can be so deeply relaxing that clients can often drift off into asleep — and as any pregnant woman knows, sleep is a valuable commodity!

Reiki is also especially helpful for post-partum recovery. Women’s bodies undergo tremendous change to support the new life growing inside them; it takes a while for the body’s organs and processes to return to a normal pre-pregnancy state. Even if you had a relatively easy labor and birth experience and aren’t feeling discomfort, there is still a lot of healing going on inside your body after your baby is born.

I had an emergency C-section, but was fortunate to receive reiki treatments from both my teacher and close friend while I was recovering. They helped me get strong and centered so that I could fully embrace motherhood and my beautiful little girl.

One of the things I valued so much about being a reiki practitioner during my pregnancy was the depth of connection I felt with my baby during that time. Consequently, I think that early connection also helped me become more attuned to her needs.

My daughter received reiki in utero often enough that, even now, there have been times where she seems to naturally draw the energy when she’s in my arms without me even having to actively channel it.

Maybe on some level, I intuit that she needs it and reiki just flows to her. I don’t think you have to be a reiki practitioner to experience that heightened awareness. My clients who receive reiki on a regular basis have developed deeper intuition and understanding about the relationship between their bodies and their energy fields, which help connect them more deeply to others and to Spirit.

Reiki honors the women we are: our bodies, our emotions and the spirit within that gives us strength and purpose. A good article that describing how reiki has been used in a clinical setting during pregnancy and to facilitate healing during post-partum is “Reiki and the Birth Experience.”

Dana is a Master practitioner in the Usui System of Natural Healing in Atlanta, Georgia. She received energy healing during a trip to India that cured a chronic inflammatory condition that had afflicted her for years. She is committed to helping others on their wellness journey, as she has been helped. Visit Dana at DragonflyReiki.

BY MARLENE SATTER — Anyone who’s ever sat in a doctor’s office and steamed, waiting sometimes for hours to be seen — only to be given the bum’s rush once inside the doctor’s office — ought to consider Reiki as a self-help technique for your mind-body toolkit.

Also, if you have ever had children or animals, and have ever felt helpless when they were ill or hurt, think of Reiki as something you can add to your home’s First Aid kit, while you wait for medical help (or simply lessen the side-effects of allopathic treatments). Sometimes you might find that Reiki is all that was needed!

In 2002, I discovered the power of Reiki first-hand (pun unavoidable

It started with an ad in our local paper in Monmouth County that offered a one-day workshop on Reiki for animals. I had no idea what that meant, but I had a very dear elderly little dog with a heart murmur.

While I had an excellent alternative-medicine vet who did everything from chiropractic to homeopathic treatment, I wanted to do something more for my little companion, who had given me so much in love and devotion throughout her life.

So I signed up. It turned out that this innocent little course would take me into areas of self-contemplation and healing that I’d never dreamed of. That very first day of training I knew that I wanted to become a Reiki Master – although I’d never even heard of such a thing ’til the class began.

What is Reiki? (pronounced ray-key) It’s an ancient healing art that re-aligns an individual’s lifeforce, or ki — the Japanese equivalent of Chinese chi — as in, Tai Chi or ch’i kung (known in five-star American spas as qigong ) Rei is the word for spirit in Japanese.

So Reiki, using therapeutic touch (or not), focuses energy for healing purposes. What energy? Well, if the physical plant of our consciousness is the electromagnetic circuitry of our synapses, call it the energy that animates these minds and bodies we inhabit. Call it a Higher Power, or the “force” . . . Call it whatever you want. The point is, it works!

The “Reiki state” moves that energy through the practitioner (not from the practitioner — an important distinction) and into the person seeking healing. That’s you. Or me. Or anyone.

The dirty little secret is that we, the recipients, do the actual healing. The person seeking healing is the one who unlocks the flood of dammed-up energy to mend what’s wrong.

Yet you don’t have to do all of that work when you’re on the Reiki table. Most people experience the “Reiki state” as an induction that ranges between borderline sleep to a deep trance in which they may see colors or visions, be aware of other presences, or gain insights into their lives and problems.

The other beauty of Reiki is that there’s no manipulation. Practitioners do lay their hands on the body in various places, but straight Reiki has no talk, does not involve massage or any other kind of turning of mind-body screws.

In fact, the practitioner doesn’t have to touch you at all if you’re not comfortable with it. The recipient is fully clothed and can totally relax.

When I start a session, I might cue the patient with suggestions for healing a specific issue — a body part, like a pulled muscle or a lingering cough, or a more mental or spiritual problem like an ongoing dispute with a family member or doubts over one’s path in life. But then I make a shift, and go to a place of acting as a channel for the energy to flow where it’s needed.

I’ve done Reiki on a cancer patient who’d felt residual burning from radiation treatment, and the Reiki brought soothing coolness rather than heat. If you go to a Reiki practitioner, it’s important to drink lots of water in the 24-48 hours after a treatment, as it will help clear out all the toxins that Reiki will trigger your body to release. You may not notice any change immediately. But the next day, or the day after, you can suddenly be aware that something profound has shifted in your energy anatomy and well-being.

Once you’ve experienced Reiki for yourself, you may want to study it long enough to become attuned to administer Reiki to yourself and others. This will allow you to maintain your own healing, as well as to give your mate, your children, or your pets some comfort and healing during illness or while recovering from injury. It can be an extraordinary healing tool, and can lead you to learn about additional alternatives to the “accepted” way of doing things that may fit much better with your needs and life.

Personally, I’ve used Reiki on myself to: pass kidney stones and prevent a recurrence; get rid of migraines; heal a broken toe; relieve the pain of a tension-racked neck; and even make colds go away faster or head them off altogether.

It’s opened up a lot of other doors: I’ve found myself pursuing new career paths, studying more advanced alternative treatment methods (Imagine if Tony Soprano had the benefit of harp music at his bedside while in his Season Six coma in the hospital), and achieving goals that had languished for years (among them, the publication of two books.)

As for my beloved little dog? Reiki helped her through several geriatric problems, and she went peacefully to the Rainbow Bridge at home, at the remarkable age of 17.

Marlene Satter is a certified Reiki Master. She also writes about personal finance, the environment and animals.