In this, the first blog entry on the Chariot’s Gate website, I will share a powerful experience I had recently had with a reiki practitioner who responded in unexpected ways during the treatment.
I have had reiki treatments before, but they have never felt like this. Generally, I lay on the table, receive the practitioner’s energy and feel more relaxed, calm and grounded. This time, I felt unsettled, stirred up and even confused. It was not a relaxing experience. It was almost what I would call a healing crisis.
Reiki and the Unsettled Mind
My mind was not exactly at ease going in to the appointment, owing to some rather difficult matters I’ve been dealing with lately, and I had just spent an almost completely sleepless night, which is rare for me. This may have had an impact on the course of the session, but I’ve had reiki treatments before and I’ve always been able to let go of the tension in my body and my mind. But for some reason, not this time.
What happened was that I lay face down on the massage bed and the practitioner placed his hands on my shoulders, my mind started to churn. It wasn’t the normal kind of churning of the sort that had kept me awake in bed the night before. It was more of a deep, unsettling confusion. If I had to pick one tarot card from the Rider-Wait deck to describe how I felt, it would be the Seven of Cups, the imagery on which suggests unrest and unsettled energy.
This is known in Reiki as a “clearing” or “detox” response. Sometimes energy work can bring up latent emotions, sensations, or even physical discomfort before settling into a new equilibrium.
Except that I didn’t settle into a new equilibrium. That wasn’t for lack of trying. I breathed deeply to relax myself, the way I would to prepare for a tarot reading session, four seconds in, hold for two, then slowly out for seven. But it didn’t help settle me into the sort of meditative state it usually puts me in. I found my efforts being resisted by the feeling of confusion, being pushed away as if by the strong but invisible magnetic repulsion of two south poles. This continued and even became more powerful for most of the session.
Resonance and Beats
I felt another unexpected sensation during the session. When the practitioner’s hands were on my head, I felt a pulse inside my skull. It was almost like a heartbeat and at first I thought I was feeing his pulse. This is a reasonable assumption since the pulse is present in the hands. But I didn’t feel the beats on the sides of my head. I felt them right in what seemed like the center of my brain.
What made the beats more strange was how slow they were. They seemed to slow to be a heartbeat, but far too fast to be what some osteopaths call craniosacral rhythm. Was my perception of time altered such that these very slow beats (0.1-0.2 Hz) seemed a second apart?
Was my consciousness syncing with Delta waves (0.5-4Hz)? Or was it a case of heightened interoception (awareness of the inner body) and I was merely feeling my own heart beat as a pulse inside my head?
I may never get an answer to what this sensation was, but it felt powerful, and truly novel.
Out of Body Experience
During this reiki session, I also might have had an out of body experience. I have had out-of-body experiences before. Most of them occurred when I was much younger. I experienced myself flying over the neighborhood. I thought they might have been dreams, but they seemed so realistic, so detailed, that these experiences felt like more than dreams. I have come to learn that what I was experiencing in those ‘flying’ sessions was a very basic form of astral travel.
In this session, I felt myself slip out of my own body, which was then face-up on the table under a blanket, and float down from my head to my feet. I remember seeing my feet partially under the blanket at the food of the massage table, then snapping back into my body. What this means I cannot imagine, except that my soul may be telling me that I am ready once again to engage in some form of astral travel.
An Unsettled Reiki Practitioner
After the session, the reiki therapist told me that during the session, when his hands were on my head, he felt very strong convulsions in his neck, head and face. His muscles were contracting involuntarily. In addition, his jaw shook and chattered and his teeth alternately clenched and released.
I was surprised to hear this, but what is even more surprising was that the practitioner told me of a vision he experiences when he touched my leg. He said it was as if he was watching a news-style TV broadcast in which a man and a woman were having a conversation in English. He didn’t remember what it was about, but even though his English is very poor (I was speaking to him in Japanese), he understood it perfectly when it was happening. As soon as he let go of my leg, the vision went away.
The Meaning of Energetic Shifts
In Reiki (and in many energy-healing traditions), phenomena like this are often interpreted as signs of large energetic shifts: when someone channels or receives a stronger-than-usual flow, their nervous system can respond with tremors, emotional release, or altered perceptions. I will now do my best to decode all these events and body movements symbolically, because in energy work the channel’s body often expresses what’s being transmitted or released.
Head & Neck Twitching / Tilting
The neck is the passage between head (thought) and heart (feeling). When it jerks, tilts, or trembles, it can represent realignment between mind and heart, as if energy is trying to straighten the channel so information flows more clearly. Symbolically, I may be opening or upgrading the “bridge” between higher insight and human expression. The practitioner’s own body may have been adjusting to the higher voltage of what I was emitting, like an electrical wire vibrating when a stronger current passes through.
Jaw Vibrating / Clenching
The Vision about ‘Communication’
This one is crucial, and deeply symbolic. Legs represent movement, grounding, and direction, literally where a person is going. His touch on my leg coinciding with the vision suggests that my next stage of movement or purpose involves communication, broadcast, and translation of inner truths outward. In other words, this blog, my tarot card practice, and possibly other media.
But there is another very important angle. The fact that the two persons in the practitioner’s vision were a male and a female suggests that the matter of dialogue between masculine and feminine energies is vitally important to me right now. And this resonates deeply.
Overall Symbolic Message
Put together, it reads like an initiation. I’m stepping into a path of movement and communication, aligning my inner ‘power’ with outward expression, and those who work with me may literally feel this awakening shaking through their bodies. This also explains why I felt a “healing crisis” instead of pure calm. It wasn’t just a soothing session. Rather, it was about catalysis, a moment of energetic initiation where the practitioner became part of the shift.
All of this may sound rather boastful. Here I am talking about my ‘power’ increasing, and giving myself what some might describe as a mission from God. Tarot card readings I have done have warned others about the dangers of developing a ‘Jesus complex,’ of harboring messianic or shamanic beliefs about themselves and believing themselves to have larger than life powers.
But, as I said to the reiki practitioner, who I sense is very powerful himself, I am not the engine. I do not generate the power. I am merely a conduit, a single wire vibrating under heavy energetic load. And my ‘powers’ are anything but those of a prophet. If I’m anything at all, it’s a communicator of truths.
Or maybe not even that. Definitely not Jesus, not even Alan Watts. Maybe I’m just a guy with a talent for helping other people discover important truths about themselves and the world around them.
If that’s all I am, I can live with it.