Welcome to In Touch Reiki. This main site has some basic information about Reiki and how it can help you, as well as contact information so you can schedule a session.

I also have a blog site, which will be an ongoing project of mine. I have been doing a lot of research for the last couple years, and am now ready to start writing about what I've been discovering. My goal is to create an environment of sharing, where all of you can help contribute and ask questions.

Thank you for visiting – I hope you find what you’re looking for.

                                 Evan Wainberg, In Touch Reiki

What is Reiki?

To those of you that are new to the concept behind energy healing, I will give a brief introduction.

There are many styles of energetic healing. They include Healing Touch, Therapeutic Touch, Chi Gong (or Qiqong), Quantum Touch, and quite a few styles of Reiki.

To explain Reiki as logically as possible (if that is possible at all), I think we need to establish a few premises first.  The first is that our bodies and the universe around us are energy.  Physics has shown that if you break it down to small enough pieces, energy is constantly turning into matter and matter into energy.  They are not stable as one or the other and are, it seems, interchangeable. 

The second premise is that everything in the universe (read: every one of the smallest units of matter/energy in the universe, whatever they turn out to be) is connected in a very real way to everything else.  This comes mostly from Einstein’s (he gets credit because almost no one knows the other two people’s names) EPR experiment (Einstein, Polosky and Rosen), and Bell’s theorem.  Search for Bell’s theorem if you don’t believe this thing about the universe being interconnected. 

The third premise is that the natural state of our body is one of health.  This should be obvious since our body responds to any illness or injury by fighting the virus or infection and/or healing a specific area.

The fourth is that our bodies are in a constant state of vibration, where ‘higher’ states like excitement, inspiration, and of course love are, for lack of a better word, better, than low-vibration states such as sadness, anger, fear, etc. 

The fifth is simply that higher vibrations facilitate health and healing, and negative ones encourage illness.

So to recap:

Our bodies and the universe are all ‘made up of’ energy

All of this energy is connected to all other ‘pieces’ of energy

Our body’s natural state is one of health

The energy that makes up our body is constantly vibrating, and that positive states create higher vibrations and negative states create lower vibrations

Higher vibrations encourage health, lower vibrations result in illness.

Can you see where I’m going here?  Reiki practitioners often explain what they are doing as acting like a transmitter.  Remember (1 + 2)=a direct and very real connection to all the energy of the universe.  Reiki is simply one way of learning how to make that connection.  The great thing about Reiki (and I have NO idea how or why this is true) is that it only ‘pulls in’ good energy.  In some other energy therapies the practitioner has to be careful about moving negative energy, either to the person they’re treating or into themselves.  With Reiki, for whatever reason, this is simply impossible.  So a Reiki practitioner opens up to connect to the good, clean, healthy energy in the entire universe, and sends it to themselves or another person, animal, plant, etc. 

Richard Gordon, founder of Quantum Touch (another system of energy healing that has had some amazing results), explains the next part of the process as our body’s being similar to tuning forks.  Remember that a higher vibration = healing.  As the Reiki practitioner fills themselves with this pure healing energy, the person being treated naturally rises to that level or frequency.  The person, surrounded by healing energy, can begin healing much more easily than they would otherwise. 

The actual process of a healing session is simple.  The client lies down and the practitioner moves around, sensing areas where the energy is improperly balanced and places their hands where bringing in this energy works to restore the natural flow.  To the person giving Reiki, it does not really matter what the existing conditions are.  Of course it’s nice to have a place to start, but when I am treating someone I’m not trying to “fix their illness” or “heal their injury”.  I am simply trying to balance energy, and the rest takes care of itself. 

I do not for a second mean for this explanation to be complete.  I have been doing a lot of reading about Quantum Physics and related subjects lately, and they are helping me to understand Reiki from that angle.  There are many others.  I have experienced things that do not fall within the scope of this explanation, but at the risk of talking about things  I don’t understand, I’ll leave those for another time.  I believe that developing an understandable explanation of how Reiki works is crucial for its being more widely accepted, and that is one of my goals with my blog. If my explanation seems to have some gaping holes in it, and you’re left wondering about things like souls, guides, angels, spirits, or other beings of light, please go to my teacher Rick Rivard's page here.

How Reiki Can Help Different Conditions

For those of you that jumped straight here to see if Reiki can help you, I hope you’ll take the time to go through the rest of this site to better understand the process.  It is virtually impossible to create a comprehensive list, and I have no interest in doing so.  Rather I will offer some generalizations about how Reiki treatments can help.

Stress – As stress increases it begins to affect the body physically.  At first it is tension, usually in the shoulders and neck, but can manifest itself later as full blown conditions such as ulcers (although there is some disagreement as to whether ulcers are actually caused by stress or not), heart problems, digestive issues, and many other conditions. 

Reiki offers immediate help by helping the client to relax.  It is physically impossible to feel stress if your body is relaxed.  This is why things like sleep and meditation are so effective in countering the negative effects of stress.  Unfortunately for most of us, meditation is extremely difficult.  When one is under pressure, taking time off to “do nothing” seems so counterproductive that achieving a true relaxed state is very difficult.  Relaxation becomes easier and easier through Reiki treatments, and so the immediate condition of being “stressed out” is alleviated.  Further treatments can help to encourage energy flow into the places that stress accumulates. 

Fatigue – Fatigue, for whatever reason, is often a sign of a block in one’s energy flow.  Resting rarely seems to help because simply being inactive doesn’t promote an increase in energy flow.  By removing these blockages, Reiki helps to restore the body’s natural energy flow, making us more “energetic”.

Pain – Chronic pain is usually a symptom of some greater problem, either an illness, injury, etc.  Attacking the pain with drugs only provides relief, but does nothing for the cause.  As I mentioned somewhere above, Reiki goes for the source, and even if the cause isn’t known, as we feel the energy of our client, we can often feel the area that is causing the other problems.  With a strong session or a series of treatments, the energy around that underlying cause can be balanced, with the result being an alleviation in pain. 

Injury – One of my main premises in explaining Reiki is that the body’s natural state is one of health.  Our bodies fight disease and heal wounds.  Reiki accelerates healing of all kinds, and has been shown to reduce periods of recovery after operations, speed up the coagulation/scabbing process, and reduce scars, even many years after they were received. 

An interesting note: Although I’m sure there are some healers that would claim this isn’t the case for them, I read once that one shouldn’t offer Reiki to a broken bone until it has been set.  This is because Reiki is so good at healing, that the bone will start fusing wherever it is!  Some healers have noted bones shifting and realigning during sessions, and for them this probably wouldn’t be an issue, but still something interesting to note.

Desire for a direct spiritual experience – Although to many a Reiki treatment is just “really really relaxing”, I believe that for some it can be the start of a journey into their own spiritual evolution.  For those skeptical about all of this, no amount of explanation will convince them, but sometimes the experience of a session awakens them to a world of “something more”.  If there is a quiet voice that seems to be hinting, or a gut feeling that suggests that something is missing in your life, I truly believe that the experience of this kind of healing can be a powerful trigger. 

There is an amazing website that documents a huge number of conditions and how Reiki helped.  If you have a specific concern, please check the site here and don’t hesitate to write or call me for more information.

Read enough?  Want to see what all the talk is about?  Email me HERE or call me at 416.220.2774 to make an appointment now.

Not yet?  No Problem.  Maybe this is for you:

For the Skeptic:

Since I started studying Reiki I've come across an incredibly varied set of reactions. These range from "Oh, I know about that, it's amazing!" to "I've heard of that, but don't really know what it is" to "Is that some sort of energy thing?" to "really", "huh", "<insert slightly confused look>", "<insert very confused and slightly worried look>" to my personal favorite "Is that a clothing store?" (NOTE: NOT to be confused with Ricky's, which is apparently a clothing store).
I can be a pretty stubborn person, and there is a small part of me that wants to CONVINCE people that Reiki truly does what it says it does. Unfortunately, I simply don't think that's possible with words alone. I have done a lot of research, and although most medical studies use Healing Touch or Therapeutic Touch (two other energetic healing modalities), which are being used by more and more nurses in hospitals and palliative care centres, there are quite a few that dealt specifically with Reiki. These studies were conducted as true medical experiments, with placebos, double-blinds, and as accurate measurements as were possible.
The conclusions varied, but in every single paper, the conclusion was that Reiki helped every single person, from a slight improvement to complete. This healing was not temporary - in one test, after receiving a few sessions of Reiki, all forms of treatment were stopped, and after a year the patients were STILL improving. There was NEVER even the slightest side effect, other than greater relaxation, more peace of mind, optimism, etc.
Not convinced yet? That's ok! Ten years ago Yoga, acupuncture, reflexology, and others were considered to be the realm of New-Agers. Now, these are so common, the balance has shifted and those that scoff are considered to be on the fringe.
I think that Reiki is EVEN-MORE of what these are, so it will take longer for it to be as widely accepted. But don't worry. When the day comes that you're in pain, or have a headache, or something, and one of your friends says "Hey, let me try something to help you" and slowly puts their hands on your head, you won't have to explain that you don't believe this stuff, or that nothing happened. You'll be able to look at your friend and say "Thanks", and go about your day.
I will be adding more about the scientific aspects of Reiki later, please check back!

If you still have questions about anything I’ve said, please email me or call and ask. 

Hospice Work

I have been fortunate to have been coaching a women’s dragon boat team for the last couple years.  Dragon boat is a huge passion of mine, and being able to coach it is a very rewarding experience.  In between this team’s first and second season, I found out that one of our paddlers had been diagnosed with cancer and was going to be going for chemotherapy in the coming week.  I hadn’t started In Touch Reiki yet, but I was practicing, and as soon as I heard this I thought it would be great to go to visit her and offer whatever help I could.  I didn’t think there was a rush, and figured it would help her a lot to recover from the chemo.  I was shocked to hear about a week and a half later that she had died. 

Genevieve was a wonderful sweet lady who I didn’t get to know well enough.  That I’d intended to help her and failed hit me pretty hard, so I decided to do something about it.  I searched for a local hospice that might be interested in offering Reiki to their residents.  I found the White Light Hospice and committed to becoming a part of their mind-body program for both residents and others in the community that can benefit from this program. 

I did my palliative care training back in November, and, because of renovations to the house, including a name change to PERRAM HOUSE, I am still waiting to begin.  So far the organization has been truly amazing, full of people that have such love and compassion that I am sometimes overwhelmed – AND IT HASN’T EVEN OPENED YET!  I will update this section after we open to share some of my experiences and things I learn. 

If you are interested in becoming a part of this amazing place, you can find out more HERE.

Now that you've made it through the introduction,

I hope you'll head to my blog to learn more

about me and the research I'm doing.

Find out about the connections I've made between

Quantum physics, business, NLP, martial arts, sports, and more!

Links and Reading list

Along with links to interesting websites, I am also going to continue adding books that I have read. These will include not just Reiki books but also any book I mention in relation to my ongoing research. (To see what I'm currently researching see my blog)I will continue to add links as I find them, and will continuously organize the reading list so that it can be used in conjunction with my blog.

Whenever I mention a book or website in my blog I will put a link to it here.

Links

Rick Rivard's Threshold Reiki Page - Rick was my second Reiki teacher. His website is packed with truly amazing information that I highly recommend you look at.

The Canadian Reiki Association - The main regulating body of Reiki in Canada

Medical Research on Reiki Therapy - This fascinating site has a huge list of medical conditions that were treated with Reiki. Information includes number and frequency of sessions, whether or not other methods were used along with Reiki, and the result.

Quantum Touch - Find out more about this amazingly easy to learn method of healing

Reading List

Non-Reiki books on healing

If you're interested in something more specific, you can search for it here and be directly linked to Amazon.