What I Tell the Men Who Are Curious About Reiki

Most of the people who come through my door in Canggu are women between forty and sixty. My photos are of women. My words, most of the time, are written to a woman on the other side of a career change or a loss. So when a man writes to ask about Reiki, he usually starts with a version of the same sentence: is this actually for me.

The only question that matters

It is a fair question. Everything about how this practice presents itself points at women. That is not an accident and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But the room itself has never asked anyone their gender before they lie down on the table. The only thing I ask is whether someone is curious enough to try it and honest enough to tell me afterwards what they felt, including if the answer is nothing.

Some of the men who write to me are sent by a wife or a girlfriend who has already had a session and wants him to feel what she felt. Some found me on their own, usually at three in the morning with a search bar and a mind that will not stop. A few come because a physio or a doctor has run out of ideas for a body that will not settle, and someone mentioned my name.

What they usually carry in

The men who come to see me are rarely relaxed and rarely say so themselves. They describe it differently: a jaw that aches by the end of the day, shoulders that have not dropped in months, a chest that feels tight even when nothing is technically wrong with it. Sleep that comes late or breaks at four and does not come back. Some are grieving a parent or a marriage and have nowhere they are expected to say so out loud.

Almost none of them arrive using the word stressed. They arrive using the word tired, or fine, or just wanting to try something. I have stopped correcting the word. The body says what the word will not.

What I actually notice change

I will not tell you Reiki treats any of this. It does not diagnose a condition and it is not a substitute for medical care, and I say that once and mean it. What I notice, session after session, is narrower and more useful than a promise: the shoulders come down about ten minutes in, almost every time, whether the client is a man who has never had a quiet hour in his adult life or a woman who has done this a hundred times. The breath changes before anything else does.

Afterwards, men tend to report the same short list women do. They sleep better that night or the next. Something that has been gripped for a long time, a stomach, a jaw, a lower back, sits a little further away. A few say almost nothing and just look lighter leaving than they did arriving, which is its own kind of report.

What is different, more often than not, is the surprise on their face. A lot of men have never been given an hour where nothing is required of them and no one is watching how they perform it. That part alone tends to land hard, before we even get to the rest of the session.

If you are the one asking

If you are a man reading this because someone suggested it, or because your own search bar led you here at an hour you would rather not admit to, the answer to your first question is yes. This is for you as much as it is for the woman in the photograph. Energy healing in Canggu is not a women's practice with an exception made for you. It is a practice for anyone whose nervous system has been running hot for too long, which describes a great many men I have never met.

Come with whatever scepticism you have. Most people do, and it is a reasonable place to start. I would rather you arrive doubtful and leave with accurate expectations than arrive convinced of something I never claimed. Read when people tend to come if you want to know whether this is the right moment, and then book a session if it is.