Column

By: Khadija Faruqui  I’m lying on a table in a dimly lit room. A woman I have just met has her hands clasped around my head. Save for the soft whirring of the fan above, the room is silent. I wait with bated breath, after all, if this worked, my life would never be the same. The woman is Mrs Riffat Irfan, and she has been a reiki practitioner for the last 22 years. Reiki is a Japanese energy healing technique which seeks to promote a healthy flow of energy in the body. Enthusiasts believe that whenever the body experiences trauma – mental or physical – the energy in the body stagnates. That’s where reiki comes in: the practitioner acts as a channel for ‘universal energy’ or ki and transmits it to the recipient’s body with their hands, thus allowing the en...