My bad Reiki experience: be careful, Reiki is dangerous

This comes from a woman who had a bad Reiki experience. I do not practice Reiki. I can understand the reasons why Reiki is dangerous. So be careful, read this first, before you decide to do Reiki...if I were you, I wouldn't do it.

I" am a woman, I am 25 and this is my bad Reiki experience. In the year 2006, I met another girl of about my age and we became friends.

One afternoon we spoke about spiritual experiences, our personal beliefs and so on. She told me that her husband was also a Reiki specialist or "Reiki master" and he had given her Reiki, too.



She asked me if I wanted to try Reiki, because it would have improved my sensitivity as well as all my faculties. At first, I was not interested in Reiki as it is a Japanese technque regarding "free energy", which they call "ki" (impersonal, universal energy).



However, since I had told her that I was feeling dissatisfied with my relationships and job, I decided to accept Reiki and she asked her husband to give me a 1st level initiation to Reiki.



Her husband, the "Reiki master", would organize meetings where he talked about Reiki and initiated others to first and second Reiki levels.



We all met in a hotel hall they usually rent for conferences, I remember there were about 15 other people who were interested in Reiki and so we all sat to listen to this Reiki specialist who told us about his experience with Reiki. To him, Reiki was a technique allowing people to control personal energy, to use, channel and give universal (spacial or cosmic energy) to raise awareness and even obtain unexplainable healings.



This last thing made me feel perplexed as I was raised in a family of medical doctors. I "believed in science", so to speak. I also believed in God and Christ, but another thing that Reiki specialist said to us was that Reiki could not "work miracles", but that sometimes it could obtain small physical healings. He told us that he was able to use Reiki to facilitate healing an arm bone fracture or to treat common stomach aches or things like that.



This man, this Reiki specialist, was a white, tall guy who didn't like our Western medicine, eating habits and consumerism. My friend had been married to him for about two years and she wanted to start a family, I mean, to have a baby but he was "feeling insecure", had some economical problems and was relying on Reiki to find strength and courage, although Reiki is not a religion, nor a deity.



People in my Reiki group were friendly and I liked staying with them. When I saw the Reiki symbols I became fascinated with them because they had a meaning and the Reiki master explained to us what they meant. He said they also had effects when drawn on people.

I don’t believe “in magic”. All symbols have an effect on our human mind, but Reiki symbols are performative when drawn and called by their name, they are like short prayers or invocations. I was looking forward to learning them. I was feeling hopeful.



We all sat down in silence when the Reiki specialist began to give each of us a so called Reiki initiation. While he was doing this on me, I closed my eyes and relaxed. I started to visualize things. First it was only colours and psychedelic lights, then I visualized Reiki symbols, then a deep purple hole and one big eye. I didn’t like these two things I visualized while keeping my eyes closed. Especially the big eye. It had a dark brown iris and blood vessels and this “vision” frightened me as I could not understand what it meant, I felt uncomfortable with the image of that enormous eye.



I opened my eyes again at the end of the initiation and the Reiki specialist came closer to me, so I was able to notice that he was no longer looking self secure. He was looking very pale. All of a sudden, I had a strange feeling, a spiritual feeling.



There is something wrong with this.

I felt someone was there and I didn’t like it. I visualized a small spiritual being, it was dark gray in color and he was watching us.



A demon. I thought.



I felt nervous but I lost that image very quickly. And yet, I had glimpsed it for a few second. A small and dark spiritual creature was also there, waiting.



I remember I told the Reiki specialist that I was not feeling good with the whole thing, that I had negative spiritual perception during the initiation and that I was afraid some other entities might have tried to interfere.



He said demons hated the idea that humans could reach a further level of personal awareness and so they hated Reiki and wanted to ruin it all.



I noticed that he was giving Reiki much importance and so I wasn’t really thinking things like “Reiki is dangerous” or “there is something wrong with Reiki itself, not just with demonic entities trying to get closer to us for some reason”.



When we went home that evening after the ritual of initiation to 1^st level of Reiki I was still hopeful. Nothing bad happened, it was just a spiritual entity watching us, but then it went away.



I woke up the day after “feeling electrified”. I could feel that Reiki energy was flowing through me from my head to my feet, coming out from my palms. Yes, I could actually feel it and this is how it had to be, I guessed, but I didn’t like it. I felt sorry and I thought I might have made a mistake accepting Reiki in my life. It didn’t belong to me, it wasn’t for me.



Reiki specialists sometimes say that Reiki “is for everyone”. That is not true.



(Now I think that Reiki is dangerous and that it is not even adaptable to our Western culture and to the Christian doctrine).



A few days after the Reiki initiation I was feeling good again, almost normal, although I still had that sensation of energy coming out of my hands and feet. We all met again with Reiki specialist, who was also my friend’s husband. My friend was sorry to hear I had felt sorry and disappointed. She said I was not forced to “use Reiki” or Reiki symbols if I didn’t want to. She said I should not really care, that we are free. No, we aren’t free. If one is free, it means they know what they are doing and how and why. I wasn’t feeling free, I was feeling like I was given something without really knowing what it was about.

-          Ok, no problem – she said – Reiki is a gift. Just a gift. My husband asks 200 Euros to give first level, but it is different for you. No problem. You’ll give him what you want, say 100 Euros, ok? Because we have to pay for the hotel hall we had rented -.

I gave her the money and we sat down. “Just because we were kind of friends”, or even “sisters”, as she once said. The other people paid it full price.



“If I were your sister” my friend once said “I would be more…severe with you, because you should work more on your spirituality, eating habits and wellbeing. You don’t like discipline very much”.



Well, maybe I was eating chocolate and drinking Coca Cola while watching TV at home, but I have always been a honest person and I wanted good things and good friends in my life. I had seen demons, instead.

-          I wanted Reiki because I had heard that it can help people find their personal balance – A woman in the Reiki group said.

-          I experienced third eye opening – another woman said.

-          I wanted Reiki because I want something to give to others and I have a nephew who is ill with leukemia – another person said.

-          I have always felt my personal energy coming out of me and I wanted Reiki in order to learn how to use it and control it -. A man said. Later on, he complained that his hands had become cold and he said he didn’t like Reiki.

Days later, I came to know that other people who had taken part in the Reiki initiation rituals were dissatisfied with the experience and some of them had spiritual disturbances, like obsessive spiritual thoughts and distorted spiritual perceptions and ideas.

-          If you feel that negative spiritual entities are attacking you during Reiki, please interrupt using Reiki or giving Reiki to another person immediately – the Reiki master said – Because it is possible that they can use Reiki channels and get in -.

When I heard him saying this, I felt very bad. One may not even believe there are such things like spiritual beings or demons, but I had seen one and I had spiritual images even before doing Reiki, so it is possible that they have access to our dimensions. I felt sad again, it was like having made a mistake or not having been able to understand Reality in a deeper way, in order to avoid making mistakes…



Of course I think that there may be things like spiritual creatures and demons. Demons are angels, that is, they are personal spiritual beings and Jesus Christ himself was tempted by the devil, by the Prince of the Demons and the Prince of this world. He then chased demons, setting people free.



Reiki is dangerous.



I then felt that small, demonic presence again and again during the next weeks, following the Reiki initiation rituals. I wasn’t “possessed”, but it was a bad feeling. I sometimes felt observed.



“He must go away” I thought, feeling disappointed and slightly frightened.



I was feeling strangely oppressed, I would wake up in the morning feeling oppressed. I had unexplainable perceptions, like being observed at times.



Everything was apparently normal but I knew it wasn’t.

I met the Reiki specialist again in the group where they were doing Reiki. More than half of the people who were there were Christians. We also spend some time talking about Jesus and the Angels. I had once dreamt of mine. Of an Angel dressed in light. I started to feel like I wanted to pray and I prayed to that Angel and the Queen of the Angels.



Some Christians think they can do Reiki as a technique, because it is not a religion. So they think that Reiki can be adapted to Christian doctrine and teachings. Rei-ki means free energy and it is a Japanese word. They call “ki” the universal or cosmic energy, not to be identified with the one personal Spirit or God. Channeling universal energy doing Reiki is therefore just a technique, but its symbols can be considered prayers, they are performative and there can be invocations to spiritual entities. The Reiki specialist told us of the “Deva”. Spiritual beings. He thought they were Angels.



If you are not looking for a religious system or a system of spiritual beliefs, don’t do Reiki. I became angry when he pronounced the word “Deva” without any further knowledge in angelology or in demonology.



We have no respect for spiritual creatures. We are always looking for something for ourselves and this lead us to selfishness and lack of respect for both the physical and the spiritual Creation.



Listening to that man made me feel like we were all lacking a sense of responsibility.



Also, there were no healings in my Reiki group that could be associated to Reiki itself. Scientists are skeptical about the existence of “ki”, energy, and they are skeptical about Reiki. There is no demonstration that people doing or receiving Reiki enjoyed spiritual, mental or physical healings or improvement.

If we just knew what Reiki is for real, maybe we wouldn’t do it or organize conferences in order to initiate other people to it and sell it. If Reiki is also a cultural product from Japan, we can study it but we are people from the West. We cannot import Reiki from Japan, or yoga from India, and use them as mere techniques.



So one afternoon, in my room, I prayed to God and Jesus using traditional Christian prayers (Our Father you art in Heaven…) and I understood Reiki was not something that could good for me. Then the word “diabolical disturbance” came to my mind so I pray Jesus to help me and free me.



I had one Catholic friend who told me he was going to Medjugorje, a spiritual centre in Bosnia Herzegovina, and I he prayed for me as I had prayed the Queen of the Angels, one of the name of the Virgin Mary in the Christian Catholic tradition.



I was feeling spiritually “unwell” all the time and that Reiki energy flowing through me made feel like I had small invisible needles on my head. I came to know that there are many other people who experienced negative perceptions or had spiritual disturbances after Reiki.



I stopped doing Reiki and thinking of its symbols. It is dangerous, and is not really “that adaptable” to Christian teachings. Christians believe in God and God is one personal spiritual being not just “cosmic energy” which may not exist or, if it does exist, we can call it “ki” or “prana” or other names but it is part of creation and it is no God.



I also went to talk to a priest who is also an exorcist and he told me he had helped a few other people who came to see him complaining of problems with Reiki. One of these cases, he said, required exorcism as one person who had done Reiki for several years had symptoms of demonic occupation".



Please don’t do Reiki, it can be dangerous and open doors to forces and entities that we cannot control.