Embracing Reiki for End-of-Life Care: A Holistic Approach to Spiritual Healing
By Dennis Bluthardt, Namaste Studios
End-of-life care, or the care we give people who are in the process of dying, is vitally important but often overlooked in the world of healthcare.
This kind of care covers not just the physical and mental aspects of the patient but also their emotional welfare.
The fear and sadness of dying must not be allowed to be ignored. It’s also easy to focus on the vast needs of the person who’s dying but then overlook the needs of their friends and family during that time as well.
Like other palliative or comfort care forms, Reiki provides non-curative treatment and focuses only on comfort.
Essentially, Reiki performs as a comfort protocol. Reiki healing, a kind of energy healing, provides unconditional relaxation, promotes stress relief, and achieves a calm state. At the very least, Reiki can relax a person enough that any emotional discomfort they may be experiencing is not as noticeable. This modality of healing often addresses the physical level of a person’s being by first eliminating any stress that may be present in their body. As a result, a person’s physical discomfort or pain might be reduced. Suppose you’re lying in a bed, not moving, and feeling comfortable due to the experience of gentle touch and peacefully feeling more alert and present.
In that case, you’re experiencing a higher quality of life as you’ve momentarily set aside any manifestations of emotional distress.
The benefits of this experience can range from mild to significant, depending on one’s chosen intentions for the Reiki experience. Reiki can also easily be conceptualized as “alone care” with a more prescriptive intention, in the same way we use “at-home” cooking to nudge us toward “self-care” (i.e., not eating junk food or prudent “health care”).
Understanding Reiki and Its Principles
Reiki, a form of energy healing that began in Japan at the start of the 20th century, was developed by Mikao Usui. Reiki comprises two Japanese words: ‘Rei,’ meaning universal, and ‘Ki,’ or life energy. Universal life energy flows through every living thing. This is what Reiki is based on. If that energy is blocked, low, or depleted, it can cause physical, emotional, and spiritual imbalances. Practitioners use a gentle laying on of hands to channel someone else’s energy through them to promote healing and relaxation.
Reiki works primarily by serving as a channel for the life force to be received into a person’s body to restore balance and harmony. The individual receiving reiki treatment almost always gets a deep relaxation response; most people get so relaxed that they fall asleep. Just as a state of stress can wreak havoc on health and wellbeing, so can a state of calm help to alleviate stress and anxiety. This can help to activate the body’s healing mechanisms to leverage the innate wisdom right in the body. This is why it can be an excellent addition to help manage overall well-being.
You might feel a warm or tingly sensation or some other sign of energy moving in the body.
Reiki is a highly spiritually oriented-process as well. Many people open themselves up to greater self-exploration and connection to the universe. From an end-of-life perspective, Reiki can be very beneficial in hospitals, palliative care, and hospice facilities to comfort and offer relief to patients and their loved ones in their rooms. Most now provide the service. This service helps relieve a bit of the physical pain involved and the emotional burden and upset associated with it, live more comfortably, and transition more peacefully and dignifiedly. Others find it to be a very serene setting and that it is soothing if dozing.
The Importance of End-of-Life Care
“End-of-life care” is an umbrella term for services that help individuals and their families during the final stages of life. These services are primarily divided into two categories.
Palliative care: This kind of care isn’t necessarily provided at the end of life. It’s a way of relieving symptoms and stress linked to life-threatening diseases, no matter how advanced or at what stage they occur. Palliative care aims to improve the quality of life for the patient and their family, not to treat the underlying condition.
Hospice care: This type of care is given expressly at the end of life when curative treatments are no longer effective or appropriate. The focus is not on attempting to control disease symptoms but on reassuring the patient and allowing them to exist in a comfortable, supportive environment familiar to them as they approach death.
Emotional
The emotional impact of the dying process is just as cruel as the physical pain. Fear of pain, a torturous waiting game, the unavoidable unknown, and memories transformed into a haunting reality bring a flood of fear and sadness as well as heartbreak for the families, friends, partners, and children who will lose someone they love in the days to come.
Physical
The experience of end of life is a distressing event to live through and, in some cases, care for, and its very nature forebodes some of the worst human experiences, physical pain, and fatigue, as well as lack of autonomy.
Spiritual
In the search for meaning and purpose at the end of one’s life, it is in embracing death that we find it. I want to know what conversations one must have with God to hastily tie together the loose threads of our lives, to decipher why I’m perhaps appreciative and why not me.
Benefits of Reiki in End-of-Life Care
Reiki is a form of energy healing that calms the patients and settles the families. It is a recognized way of alleviating stress and anxiety that often accompany families attending to medical challenges.
Many patients undergoing treatment typically experience discomfort or pain. Reiki sessions help patients reach a place of calm, which in turn lays the foundation for physical relaxation and the release of symptoms related to anxiety and discomfort. As these subtle energy exchanges care for emotional, mental, psychological, and physical health and well-being, Reiki becomes an ideal adjunct therapy and complement on many fronts.
The aim for a patient is to find a happy medium of wellbeing that expresses this ideal balance in totality, not simply concerning symptoms. Symptoms are the proverbial canary in the coal mine, a sideshow that diverts attention, leaving the anxious in a mild state of foreboding, an endless cycle of reactivity.
Implementing Reiki in Hospice and Palliative Settings
To get certified in healthcare settings, start with a one- or two-day introductory Reiki course to learn the basics of energy healing, the history of Reiki healing, and hand positions (most people begin here). Introductory courses such as this often touch on ethical concerns and patient communication since hospice can be a tricky environment to navigate.
The course is usually divided into training, practice, and certification segments. I could give you an overview, but we’d be here all day. Pick a course that feels right for you, and go!
The potential results are among the most incredible things about Reiki being in a hospice setting (for the patients). The physical results wouldn’t blow you away if you saw an entire case study on Reiki and hospice care. You’re not going to see terminally ill patients jump out of bed wholly healed or divinely cured. However, the results can be substantial from a spiritual or emotional level.
Reiki often has a tremendous effect on a room. If you were to watch a nurse walk in to assist a patient in their routine, the interaction would appear typical. However, when someone attuned to Reiki energy takes this approach, the reaction often depends on how the practitioner interacts with the patient.
How to Access Reiki Services
When looking to certify practitioners, use the same rules as listed above. Most families will find this list too much. Start with your local hospice because they have already compiled a list of who you need, including a nurse, social worker, spiritual care provider, and certified Reiki or Healing Touch therapist. Directories can also be found through professional associations (e.g., the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization). With any online directory, verify the individuals’ credentials and bounce the person’s name off your list against a board of certified practitioners. They should also be certified in their field of practice (no “Joe Reiki” here). If in doubt, ask a friend or consult your local hospital, which everywhere in the world represents a “safe starting point for quality healthcare.” Think of a hospital as a point of ingress or origin similar to the post office.
Be sure to do your research ahead of time. Take the time to ask your primary care physician about potential recommendations for specialists in this area. However, the above requirements are helpful because your physician will also look at these success indicators. We are all trained in the same system, follow the same rules, and visit the same chokepoints of controls (e.g., board exams and certification programs).
The days ahead will likely get hectic for us all as patients. So, research and draw up your short list of potential advisors in this growing practice field. Others will visit the hospital or a critical care nursing facility with you. It is essential to draw up a “Pathfinder shortlist” of all the potential teams who should be listed on the contact card.
A low-pressure beauty of this problem is that most of us will never need the numbers on the list.
But it is still a good idea to think about the situation and, at some point, come up with a list. It is one of the oldest axioms of risk management, and it is still worth doing for those of you “easing into the back nine” of the course of life who want to plan proactively or for those of you with elderly family members to care for, for the last few years. If your needs are chronic conditions management (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease), then most of the time, you should still maximize your “stay-at-home” time because these older “sick in body or mind” abode homeowners are “settled.” Yet, you can see that without much warning, once any communicable disease has invaded the home, the person who lives inside instantly becomes a hardened “stay at home” warrior. So, again, be ready. As you would for any storm, assemble your emergency kit with all the necessary health management numbers. If you are lucky, you or your loved one believe in the direction on that day since it is easy to have the condition to qualify in the first place.
Reiki, a form of energy healing, may benefit those receiving end-of-life care. This gentle, supportive therapy assists patients and their families. The physical challenges at the end of life are clear, and death represents the ultimate loss. Reiki can reduce anxiety and promote peace to aid patients experiencing these challenges.
The Reiki practitioner channels life energy from the universe. Illness disrupts the balance and flow of this energy.
When the Reiki therapist works with a patient, the therapist seeks to restore the balance and flow of this universal life energy.
Undoubtedly, there are “emotional challenges” toward the end of life. The inevitable approach of death presents the overall “emotional” case or “situation.” As the Reiki therapist touches the patient, the patient becomes relaxed. Then, the patient concentrates on the non-invasive treatment, and the therapist touches the body’s energy fields. No one seeks to alter the body or place objects in the painful sites of the body. Afterward, the patient forms a deep connection with loved ones in a mindful state.
The therapy helps the patient and family “disconnect” from the cares disturbing the outer world. Towards the end of life, the sun still shines. Emotionally, there is nothing to “see” in the place.
Critically ill patients (for the most part) receive 24/7 care from specialists trained in this field. These practitioners may prescribe an alternate treatment that complements the type of patient and resident therapies.
This intervention, available to caregivers, may also address a patient’s emotional and spiritual needs. Specifically, Reiki may alleviate pain and hasten “the calming effect” of complementary treatments. It can help anyone elsewhere “deal” with troubling issues of grief.
To learn more, visit Reiki at Namaste Studios to book a Reiki session. Additionally, you can find more of our Reiki Blogs here.
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