“Are you able to do Reiki to make my butt greater?” is one in all the various requests Sarah, AKA TikTok’s @hothighpriestess, gets day by day. After making a second “spam” account to post a brief clip of herself doing Reiki from her kitchen, Sarah woke to a viral video and tons of of 1000’s of followers. She’s now one in all the app’s hottest accounts within the tarot and digital Reiki space with over 1.3 million followers. 

Mystique Awakening, one other high profile creator within the spiritual TikTok space, actually did make a video titled ‘Reiki for a fat 🍑.’ Sitting in a blue-lit room, Mystique waves her perfectly manicured hands in front of the camera to a catchy beat. “I felt it expand for real,” one person commented. “I can feel it tingling rn, thanks,” one other wrote. “I feel more confident now, I don’t know why,” a 3rd added.  

Reiki, a type of energy healing that emerged in early twentieth century Japan, exploded in popularity through the pandemic as people expanded their horizons in a bid to search out calm. One among the biggest places to accommodate this spiritual introduction was TikTok, where the term has been hashtagged over 745 million times thus far. There, you’ll find countless videos of young people staring down the camera promising to “pluck” negative energy, decrease anxiety and eliminate stress.

@priestessprincess

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♬ original sound – sophie 🙂

Others concentrate on manifesting money or love. “Want them to think you’re hot as fuck?” one video with 600,000 views asks. “Okay, let me send you some empowering energy.” One other, Reiki “to be so irresistible they’ll be begging for you” has over 1.7 million views. “I got into Reiki online because I didn’t know any practitioners in the actual world,” says Sarah, who noticed parallels between proven concepts utilized in the self-help space and spiritual ones while studying psychology. “I felt it heal me, and I would like to do the identical for others now, too.” 

In Japanese, rei roughly translates as ‘universal’ and ki means ‘life energy’. The practice relies on the concept universal, or spiritual, energy flows through each of us – and when this energy is imbalanced, it impacts our mental, physical and spiritual health. There isn’t any hard scientific evidence to prove this theory, but multiple studies have shown “reasonably strong support for Reiki being simpler than placebo” and it’s now beneficial by the NHS to alleviate insomnia, stress, anxiety, physical aches, and as a technique to deal with traumas resembling recurrent miscarriage. A 2020 article by The Atlantic posits, “Reiki can’t possibly work. So why does it?”

During a reiki session, the client lies on a therapy bed because the practitioner hovers their hands or calmly touches areas of the body, transferring energy from their palms to re-align and re-balance energy flows. Some clients will go to sleep while others will feel intense waves of emotions. Afterwards, people steadily document lightness, calmness and reduced stress. “Words cannot describe what is actually felt during a Reiki session and each single experience is exclusive,” says Reiki master – the best status one can attain of their Reiki practice – Jasmin Harsono. “An important part about any session is the practitioner and client setting an intention and for the client to trust and receive the healing they need in the current moment.”

The short, loud and visually stimulating videos on TikTok today are a far cry from this calming environment, however the comments – and tens of millions of returning viewers – appear to suggest an identical energy transfer is going on through the screen. “When my content began getting a lot of attention, I noticed my audience was feeling greater than just relaxed or joyful,” Mystique tells Dazed. “Their headaches were going away, their lungs were taking in deeper breaths and in some cases, they were feeling waves of emotional release.” 

Mystique, who began sharing her energy on TikTok in a bid to chill out people during lockdowns, merges distance Reiki with ASMR, tapping her nails and matching her hand movements to the beat of songs. Her hottest video – “Reiki ASMR For Heartbreak” backed by Doja Cat’s “Streets“ – has over 17.4 million views. “My favourite story is the one who messaged to say they’d been fighting alopecia their whole life and had begun watching my videos for stress relief,” she says. “After a number of months, they began to see latest hair growth of their eyelashes and eyebrows. Reiki was the one thing that had modified of their day by day routine. Nothing had worked at relaxing them as much as distance healing had.”

I first experienced Reiki younger than most. My mum began her training once I was eight and have become a Reiki Master over 20 years ago. Groups of ladies would often congregate in our lounge surrounding a massage table with candles and ambient music playing. I remember being sceptical when she’d do Reiki on me once I was sick, but I also remember it working. Yet even for the open-minded, the concept of somebody with the ability to heal one other person on the opposite side of the world who happened to encounter a video on the For You page seems far-fetched. But since Reiki’s inception, practitioners would heal people remotely, using names, locations and sometimes photos to tap into their energy.

“Distance Reiki makes up most of my business,” says Jade Mordente, a Reiki practitioner based in Scotland, who began hosting group healing sessions on Zoom through the early days of the pandemic. Demand was soon so high, she decided to pursue her spiritual practice full-time. “Achieving the identical results is totally possible through Zoom,” she says. “Reiki’s universal energy flows the identical whether in-person or at a distance, so time and space aren’t an element. The person just must be open to receiving the energy.” 

In the event that they’re not, the Reiki simply won’t work in the identical way. This implies those that watch a clip online with no prior knowledge of the practice are highly unlikely to feel much. “I do Instagram Lives sometimes and folks who wish to receive the Reiki will probably be very clear in that. But when someone’s watching my video who perhaps doesn’t imagine in Reiki, they’re not getting the identical experience,” Mordente says. “In the event you’re watching TikTok and pondering ‘What is that this?’ you’re probably not going to feel the healing.” 

Every Reiki expert I spoke to had differing opinions on whether TikTok Reiki could possibly be considered a real healing experience, though all of them felt positive in regards to the rise in visibility of the practice. “Reiki’s founder, Mikao Usui, wanted it to be spread far and wide. The more people it may well help the higher,” Mordente says. Nonetheless, “the danger is that TikTok also can find yourself degrading the discipline, passing it off as a fad or a joke, which may have a knock-on effect on those that work within the career,” Reiki master Reeya Avani adds. Mystique is wary of this, too: “I’m very proud to be a part of this grand awareness or ‘awakening’. But I do have concerns about online spirituality and the rise of imposters, frauds and scammers,” she says. “There’s a difference between being attuned to Reiki energy and never, and you’ll be able to feel it. Most viewers who’re sensitive to subtle energies have higher discernment about who they receive energy healing from, however the scary part is that not everyone can tell who’s real and who is not.”

Mordente thinks, ultimately, these videos are only “touching the surface”. It’s “slightly two minute ‘have an excellent day, here’s a lift of energy, a little bit of confidence and empowerment to get you in your way’. It’s nowhere near as deep as a one-on-one session with anyone. But it may well’t hurt, either.” Curious, I WhatsApped my mum a number of of Mystique’s TikToks. “I can tell she’s a healer,” she replied. “But I don’t know should you’ll get an even bigger butt from this.”