What is Holistic Health and Wellness?
Holistic health is an approach to life that considers the physical, spiritual and mental aspect of your well-being for achieving and maintaining optimal health. The holistic health perspective is captured in both integrative and functional nutrition practices.
Holistic health practitioners support your health and wellness journey by offering guidance and/or administering integrative healing practices that promote inner balance and the body's innate ability to heal. They don’t just address your symptoms. They try to get to the root cause of your health imbalance.
People who follow the holistic health and wellness lifestyle play an active role in their own health by making conscious health decisions and staying in tune with their body on a daily basis. As herbalist Rosemary Gladstar once said, " Good health is in truth, the practice of living healthfully every day."
What is Reiki?
Reiki is a tool that may be utilized in the holistic health approach to maintaining optimal health and wellness. It is a Japanese modality that balances your energy field and promotes relaxation and stress reduction which in turn supports the body's innate ability to heal. It is based on the idea that an unseen life force energy called "qi" flows through us and around us and keeps our physical body alive. If one's "qi" is out of balance, then he or she may be more susceptible to the negative side effects of chronic stress and less resilient to disease. If a person’s “qi” is in balance, he or she may be better equipped to maintain optimal health.
Since Reiki helps induce deep relaxation, it can help clients quiet their minds the way meditation does and increase self awareness. I use this tool in my nutrition practice to help my clients re-connect with themselves so that they can identify mental blocks in their diet and lifestyle goals andl as a tool to help alleviate stress.
Where do energy imbalances come from?
We encounter different types of stress triggers that can cause imbalances in our physical, mental and emotional body on a daily basis.
Mental and emotional stress can disturb our inner balance and can be strongly influenced by our lifestyle, past experiences, negative work and/or home environment, unhealthy relationships, cultivating negative thoughts in our minds, self-limiting beliefs and perspectives, unconscious thoughts, constantly seeking for power outside of ourselves, resistance to facing ourselves or our lives, and social pressures among many others.
Physical stress (or stress that affects our body's chemistry in this case) is stress that disrupts our body's natural homeostasis as a result of factors such as lifestyle choices, unhealthy diet and environmental toxicity.
All aspects of our body as a whole are interconnected and different forms of stress can affect our energetic balance on many levels. For example, chronic stress that arises from an emotional or mental state can affect our body's inner chemistry and eventually cause physical illness. On the other hand, poor-quality nutrition can affect our physical body by compromising our gut health or the optimal function of organs such as our brain, therefore influencing our mood or emotional health.
Why should I try Reiki?
Reiki works by re-balancing the body’s energy flow in an attempt to bring inner harmony. It helps remove acute or chronic energy blockages that have accumulated in your energy field and can manifest as physical pain, disease, negative thinking patterns and/or inability to move forward in life among other things. By helping induce relaxation, relieve stress and release blockages, Reiki triggers your body’s innate ability to heal itself. By clearing energetic blocks, the qi energy can flow harmoniously, helping you find more inner peace and connection with your higher self.
What happens during a Reiki Session?
Reiki is a safe and non-invasive procedure. During a session, the practitioner will administer Reiki while you lay on a massage table in a relaxed state. You may feel the light touch of the laying of the practitioner’s hands on your body, a light cooling sensation or a heating sensation during the session. The practitioner may play some light meditation music in the background or light an aromatherapy candle to help you relax. Depending on client, we may also incorporate sound healing modalities to enhance your experience. While every person’s experience is unique and personal, most people go into a deep, relaxed state or may even fall asleep during the session. Most people feel rejuvenated and relaxed after a Reiki treatment.
How long is a Reiki Session?
Your first visit includes a 30 minute consultation and a 60 minute Reiki session for a total of 90 minutes.
Follow up sessions are 60 minutes each and include a 45-50 minutes Reiki session and a 10-15 follow up consultation, depending on the needs of the client.
What is Sound Healing?
Music, and moving to music, are outlets of human expression that have existed cross-culturally since antiquity. The art of sound healing has also existed across cultures, with various forms used for both religious and spiritual ceremonies (i.e. Tibetan monks use Himalayan/Tibetan singing bowls for spiritual ceremonies) for many centuries.
Modern-day sound healing uses various instruments (including but not limited to Crystal singing bowls, Tibetan singing bowls, gongs and drums) that create vibrational frequencies that initiate a relaxing, meditative state in the sound bath participants.
How Sound Healing Work?
Similarly to the way breath is used to induce the parasympathetic nervous system during meditation, sound healing uses vibrational frequencies to help activate the parasympathetic nervous system and slow down your breathing and heart rate as you go into a relaxed state. The various frequencies emitted by the singing bowls can also influence brain wave patterns, triggering theta or even delta waves which also induce a restful and relaxed state.
Since everything in the universe is in motion and has a vibrational frequency, it is hypothesized that the frequency of the instruments is interacting with both the Biofield (energy field) and physical body, creating effects all the way down to the cellular level. Different singing bowls are tuned to different musical notes or frequencies which are associated with different chakras (energy centers), therefore helping balance your energy field.
Sound healing therefore offers a mind, body, spirit experience and can be a great stress reducing and relaxing tool both on its own and as part of a Reiki session.
I offer Sound Healing as part of my Reiki sessions and during Sound Bath and Reiki Meditations.