Dealing with Reiki Skeptics

Christian Stone | Standing Stones Healing

I have had several people tell me that God is the only one that can heal and I am committing sin by practicing Reiki. Of course, I don’t believe this and I explain that God uses me and many others to heal people, but I still get hate. Any suggestions on how to deal with this?

Always there will be haters and skeptics on our Reiki journey, and how I personally approach this kind of situation is to actually agree with them on some level. In this particular instance, I would agree that yes, I'm not doing the healing, the healing is not coming from me, and even yes, God is doing the healing, it just happens to be in this way.

Healing is a process, and there are an infinite number of ways to help ourselves and others heal. We might give someone a hug or listen to their troubles or send them flowers. All of these actions can help others and ourselves to heal, and yet no one would say that the hugger or listener or flower sender is committing an immoral transgression. It would be absurd to respond to this kind of action with, "Only God can heal."

I believe that we all have the capacity to help one another heal. And so while I personally don't call myself a "healer," I do believe we are all healers in that we all have the ability to help one another with the healing process. (We also all have the capacity to wound one another, too.)

Your point that God uses many people to help the healing process is a really good one because one could say that God uses doctors to heal. Doctors prescribe medications perform surgeries, and work to keep people alive. These healing actions could be construed as "God-like," but certainly the Reiki haters aren't hating on doctors...or at least probably not. 

Since many God-focused people believe in prayer, I sometimes bring up prayer in these kinds of conversations. Those who pray believe that prayer works, and if so, is prayer doing the healing or is prayer the vehicle for healing? And is it wrong to give medicine or a hug or offer other healing gestures? It ultimately depends on their definition of "healing," which is probably different from mine, and if that's the case, then the argument might actually be about what healing is and not about Reiki at all. 

You may also want to check out these episodes of the Build Your Reiki Business podcast on Dealing with Haters and  Talking About Reiki for more encouragement and please feel free to get the free Reiki Kit, too!