Every week someone messages me a version of the same thing. They want to try energy healing. They have read about Reiki and sound baths and crystal grids and shamanic drumming, and now they feel more lost than when they started.
So I built the five-question inventory below, the way a friend would sketch it for you on the back of a receipt. Answer it, read the key, then keep scrolling for the questions I get asked most.
Start here: the five question inventory
Five questions
Which energy healing modality fits you?
Answer A or B to each question. No answer will match you exactly, so pick the one that comes closest. Then read the key underneath.
- I prefer (A) a system with clear steps, symbols and levels I can learn in order, or (B) an approach I feel my way into with no fixed structure.
- I prefer (A) energy work I can do on myself at home on an ordinary Tuesday, or (B) a session someone else holds while I lie there and receive.
- I prefer (A) working with my own hands and my own energy, or (B) working with something outside me, like singing bowls, drums, crystals or plants.
- I prefer (A) quiet and still, or (B) sound, movement and ceremony.
- I prefer (A) something I could one day offer other people, or (B) something that stays private and just for me.
Start with Reiki Level 1. It gives you a structure you can learn in a weekend, a self-treatment you can do in bed, and a path that keeps going if you want it to. You can book an attunement when you are ready.
Look at sound healing, shamanic journeying and breathwork, and book a session rather than a course. Guided meditations are the cheapest way to find out whether receiving suits you before you pay anyone.
Crystal Reiki is your middle path. You get the structure of Reiki plus the tangible tools, which is exactly what a split answer is asking for.
Your questions, answered
Is one type of energy healing actually better than the others?
Short answer, no. Anyone who tells you their method is the only real one is selling you something. Every modality is a different door into the same room, which is your nervous system settling down far enough to let your body do what it already knows how to do.
The one that works is the one you keep doing. I would rather you did five scrappy minutes of self-Reiki in bed every night than book one beautiful sound bath a year and never think about it again. Consistency beats the fancy option every single time.
What is the actual difference between Reiki and chakra healing?
Reiki is the method. The chakras are the map.
Reiki is a hands-on technique for moving energy through the body. The chakras are the seven main energy centres that technique tends to work on. So chakra healing is not a rival to Reiki, it is often what a Reiki session is already doing while nobody says it out loud. If you want the map on its own, start with the chakra meaning chart and work down from the crown, or take the free chakra guide and workbook. Plenty of people learn the chakras first and choose their modality afterwards, which is a sensible order to do it in.
Do I need to be intuitive or gifted to learn energy healing?
No, and I say that as someone who has trained more than 15,000 students. The people who arrive convinced they are unusually sensitive are rarely the ones who go furthest.
Reiki gets passed to you through an attunement, so the connection is not something you have to manufacture with talent. What you bring is the practice. Ten minutes a day for a month will teach you more about your own energy than any amount of reading about other people’s.
Can energy healing replace my doctor or my therapist?
No, and please do not ask it to. Energy healing is complementary, which is a plain way of saying it sits alongside your medical care and not instead of it. Keep your doctor. Keep your therapist. Keep taking what you have been prescribed.
What energy work does well is the part medicine often leaves alone, which is helping you rest, settle and feel less alone in a hard stretch. If a practitioner ever tells you to stop a treatment your doctor prescribed, that is not a practitioner. That is a red flag with a candle lit next to it.
I felt nothing during my session. Did it not work?
Feeling nothing is so common that I wish someone had warned me before my own first session. Some people get heat. Some get tingling or little muscle twitches. Some see colour behind their eyes. A good number simply fall asleep, which is its own kind of answer.
Sensation is not the scoreboard. Look at the two or three days afterwards instead. Did you sleep differently? Did the thing you had been chewing on quietly loosen its grip? That is the part worth tracking. If you want to know what other people report, I wrote it all down in what does Reiki feel like.
Can I practise energy healing if I am religious?
This one lands in my inbox most weeks, usually from Christian readers. Reiki is a technique rather than a belief system, and it asks you to worship nothing and renounce nothing. Plenty of practitioners hold a faith and practise energy work inside it.
Some churches take a different view, and you deserve to hear that plainly rather than have me talk around it. I laid out both sides in is Reiki against Christianity so you can read the arguments and decide for yourself. If it matters to you, talk it through with your own spiritual leader as well.
Is it okay to mix modalities?
Yes, once one of them is properly in your hands. The trap is starting Reiki, crystals, breathwork and sound in the same month and ending up fluent in none of them.
Learn one until you can do it without checking your notes, which for Reiki Level 1 is usually a few weeks of daily self-treatment. Then add the next thing. Most experienced practitioners I know use two or three together, and every single one of them learned the first on its own.
How do I spot a practitioner worth booking?
Ask three questions before you hand over money. Who trained you and to what level. What actually happens in a session. And what will you not promise me.
The third one tells you the most. A good practitioner will say plainly that they cannot cure your illness and will not diagnose you. Anyone guaranteeing to fix a named medical condition is telling you to leave. Price is worth checking too, because it varies more than people expect, and I broke down the going rates in how much does Reiki cost.
Where to start this week
If the inventory pointed you at Reiki, the free Level 1 course is the cheapest way to find out whether it suits you, and you finish with a certificate. If it pointed you somewhere else, start by receiving rather than learning. Book one session, give it a fortnight, then decide.
And if you are still torn between two, pick the one you can start this week. The modality you actually begin beats the perfect one you keep researching.
love, light and blessings, Sunny
Sunny is a Usui and Crystal Reiki Master who has trained more than 15,000 students. She writes about energy healing, chakras and spiritual business at Blissful Careers. Send your questions through the contact page and she may answer one in a future column.