Amira El-Naqeeb waxes lyrical about cosmic energy The room was dimly lit; and while Zen music gradually replaced the sound of the streets, I could feel myself relaxing, little by little, as Catherine's hands rested expertly on the crown of my head. It was a few minutes before I felt my head swaying from side to side. By then Catherine, the Reiki practitioner to whom I had thus surrendered myself, was cupping my face, crouched down to cradle my head in her palms; and while her fingers all but reached into my eyes, I strove to put my mind on hold, at rest, concentrating solely on the sensations of my body. Half an hour on, my session was over. I was barely conscious when, softly touching my hand, the German woman told me to take my time opening my eyes and getting up. "You were floating," I heard her say, but I could barely connect the words to the smiling face before me. My inquiring eyes must have been communication enough, because as I sat before her, now -- the couch seemed suddenly far away -- she answered my questions unasked: "your head was full of ideas, your eyes needed a lot of energy -- that's why I kept my hands on them for so long." According to Chi Kung Master Walid Ghoneim, member of the UK-based Independent Professional Therapist Institute (IPTI) as well as the International Reiki Organisation (IRO), what I experienced then was a Japanese energy-healing practice: "universal life energy"; in a word, heavenly energy which the healer channels into the person being healed, which benefits the three pillars of existence: mind, body and spirit. A session starts with the head, moving onto the face, ears, neck, throat, and down to the rest of the body. In the process, negative energy is cleared away, to be replaced by a healthy flow. Clearing your energy centres in this way facilitates self-healing and relieves anxiety. There are two kinds of sessions, Ghoneim, the Reiki Master, goes on to explain: full-body and half-body healing. Whether in contact or (sometimes) at a distance, in each case the hands target those chakras, or meridians, controlling their respective surroundings. Yet the heart chakra, for example, governs not only the organ but emotional experience as well. Chakra is Sanskrit for "wheel", Ghoneim clarifies. "A chakra is like a transformer that, picking up energy from the cosmos, channels it through a specific gland to the whole body." In the human body there are, from the bottom to the top the base chakra, associated with the colour red and governing survival instincts, fight or flight; the sacral chakra, associated with orange and controlling sexual identity; the solar plexus chakra, associated with yellow, site of the ego; the heart chakra, green, site of emotions, including the capacity for unconditional love; the throat chakra, turquoise, responsible for communication; the third-eye chakra, royal blue, guardian of intuition; and the top or crown chakra, violet, gateway of the spirit. Not anybody can do a healer's work, of course. Training is needed to achieve "attainment", enabling the Reiki master to clear your chakras to allow the energy through. "It's a frequency in the universe," says Ghoneim. "You must have what it takes to tune in." Manal Baraka, human development specialist and Reiki practitioner, agrees. "It's a long stride on the way to a stress-free life, because it makes you aware of your psyche and what's going on in your body." It took Baraka only one session to feel a distinct sense of peacefulness. Catherine, too, insists that Reiki was a major factor in maintaining her balance. "In this world of TV, computers and noise, we tend to lose our balance. Reiki definitely helped me stay calm." Catherine did meditation and yoga, too, both of which helped with relaxation. What she likes about Reiki in particular is that it enables her to heal herself and others. Suddenly, while she is talking, I register the colour scheme of Ghoneim's office: off-white to light blue due north; off-white to lilac due south. A veritable feng shui creature, I'm thinking, even though it is minimally furnished, with carpets the colours of the seven chakras covering the floor and a Chinese sphere hanging from the ceiling. There is an undeniably calming effect about the room. Ghoneim built up to the session with a Gassho meditation. "I like this type of meditation in particular, because it works on both the physical and psychological levels to promote peace and harmony." The interesting thing about this is that, by freeing the mind of thoughts, you are actually becoming aware of what is tense in the body; 50 per cent of the solution to any given tension is awareness. Meditation, Ghoneim explained, puts the person in "an Alfa state", a brain frequency halfway between sleep and wakefulness. "In this state one is totally relaxed. From the medical point of view, it allows you to shift automatically from deep to shallow breathing, which induces calm." But how does one detect imbalance in one's mind, body and spirit? What are the symptoms? Indeed, Ghoneim points out, as complimentary methods make their way into mainstream medicine, any symptom that does not have an external cause can be accounted for by imbalance. It was at this point that Ghoneim measured my energy through my fingers using Kirlian photography, ie an aura camera. I was given a chart showing physical and psychological auras, with green and pink boxes standing for safe and problematic areas, respectively. Chinese medicine realised the connection between body and soul 6,000 years ago, Ghoneim said. "They knew that each and every organ in the body deals with chemical and emotional toxins, and that the latter can be more dangerous. The lungs, for example, store grief, self pity and sadness; that is why people sigh. The stomach, spleen and the colon store worry; that is why compulsive worriers will have ulcers and weak immunity..." A complicated thing indeed, the human being, I thought. But perhaps the way to deal with it is not as complicated as we grew up believing.
