When Reiki Meets Suffering

What happens when we meet suffering with Reiki?

Not only our own suffering, but the suffering of another person, or the suffering we encounter in life?

Perhaps Reiki does not begin by asking: How can I make this go away?

Perhaps it begins with another question: Can I be present with what is here?

When I started to practice Reiki, I was drawn to its simplicity: the hands, the sense of peace, the feeling of energy moving, the sense of rest, and the sense of care. There was something deeply reassuring about having a practice that invited me to stop, breathe, and rest.

At first, I experienced Reiki primarily as something I did, a practice with my hands, something I could offer to myself or another person. Over time, I began to sense that Reiki was asking something deeper of me. It wasn't only about what I did during a Reiki session. It was also about how I met my life, and especially how I met suffering.

My relationship with healing began long before I encountered Reiki. I grew up in southwest France, where traditional healing was part of the cultural landscape. I was familiar from an early age with the idea that healing could take many forms, and that there were things we could do to support another person when they were suffering.

But life gradually also taught me something more complex. Sometimes healing does not mean that something disappears. Sometimes we cannot change what has happened, remove what hurts, or control what comes next. And sometimes the deepest transformation is not in the circumstances themselves, but in how we are with what is present.

This has profoundly shaped the way I understand Reiki. Reiki does not have to be understood as a way of fixing ourselves or another person. It can be a way of learning to meet what is present, with greater awareness, steadiness, and care.

The Reiki Precepts offer a simple framework for this. They are often presented as principles for living a happy and healthy life. However, I have come to experience them as something more intimate: an ongoing practice of returning.

The Reiki Precepts help us to return to the present moment, to the reality that is here. Not the reality we imagine. Not the reality we wish were here. Not the reality we fear might come. The reality that is here: just for today, just for this moment, just for this breath.

The Precepts invite us to notice what happens within us when life becomes difficult: when we are angry, worried, uncertain, disappointed, afraid, or caught in judgment of ourselves or someone else.

Rather than asking us to become people who never experience these states, they invite us to notice and return: return from reactivity, return from the stories of what might happen, return from the demand that life be different from what it is. And, again and again, they invite us to return to a way of being that is more grounded and compassionate.

For me, the fifth Precept offers a particularly important doorway: be kind.

At first, this can sound almost too simple, too superficial, too light. But what if kindness is not simply about being nice to other people? What if it changes the way we meet suffering?

When we are suffering, we can so easily add another layer of suffering through judgment: I shouldn't feel this way. I should be stronger. Why can't I handle this? Something must be wrong with me.

The original pain is already difficult, but then we may add resistance, criticism, fear, or shame.

So perhaps another question becomes possible: Can I meet this suffering with openness and sincerity, without adding more suffering to it?

Can I meet this suffering without trying to make it different, without pretending that it is okay, without turning away from what hurts?

Can I simply meet the reality that is here with openness, honesty, kindness and care?

This is where kindness becomes a practice. Not a sentimental idea or an instruction to be nice, but a way of being with ourselves, with others, and with whatever life is asking us to meet.

Being kind does not mean that we approve of everything. It does not mean ignoring anger, grief, injustice, boundaries, or pain. It does not mean becoming passive.

Kindness can be very clear. It can say no. It can recognize what is harmful. It can acknowledge that something hurts. It can allow difficult emotions to be present without allowing them to define our entire experience.

Kindness is not about making suffering disappear. It is about the quality of our relationship with suffering.

And this is where the Reiki Precepts become much more than words. They become a practice of meeting.

When we place our hands on the body, we are not necessarily trying to make something happen. We can listen. We can feel. We can allow. We can rest.

Perhaps this is one of the quiet teachings of Reiki: presence does not mean passivity. Presence asks something of us. It calls for engagement, diligence, and dedication—the willingness to keep showing up, to keep listening, and to meet what is here with care.

The hands can become an invitation to stop trying to control the experience and instead become intimate with what is actually here. Something may move. Something may soften. Something may become clearer. Or perhaps nothing obvious happens at all.

The practice remains: being here, and being here takes practice.

At first, we may ask: What should I do?

Which technique?

Which hand position?

Which symbol?

What should I be feeling?

What result should I be creating?

But with practice, another question may gradually emerge: How am I being?

Am I present?

Am I listening?

Am I trying to fix?

Am I resisting what is here?

Am I caught in expectation?

Can I soften without becoming passive?

Can I continue to listen without needing an immediate answer?

This is where Reiki begins to move from technique toward presence, and from presence toward a more conscious way of responding.

We may not always know what Reiki is doing, or whether anything is happening at all. Our responsibility is not necessarily to produce an outcome, but to cultivate the conditions for presence: to show up, to listen, and to remain engaged.

I think of healing presence as the capacity to remain connected with what is here, even when what is here is difficult.

It is not a permanent state of calm. It does not mean we are never reactive, worried, distracted, or afraid. Rather, it means we learn to notice what is happening within us and return with gentleness.

And in that returning, something becomes possible: we can choose how we respond. Instead of reacting automatically, we create a little more space between what happens and what we do next. We can breathe when we want to react. We can listen when we want to fix. We can soften when we want to control. We can acknowledge what hurts without immediately turning away from it. This is the active quality of presence.

The Reiki Precepts support this process:

- Return to the present moment, to the reality that is here.

- Do not anger invites us to notice reactivity rather than becoming completely identified with it.

- Do not worry invites us to recognize the mind's tendency to move into uncertainty and imagined outcomes.

- Be grateful turns our attention toward what is present and available.

- Be kind changes the quality of our relationship with ourselves, others, and whatever we are meeting.

Together, the Precepts become a training in presence. Not in perfection but in presence. And from presence, there is response.

Perhaps healing does not always mean becoming free from difficulty. Perhaps it can also mean becoming more able to meet difficulty without abandoning ourselves, to stay present when something hurts, to offer kindness when judgment arises, and to respond to what is here with greater awareness rather than simply being carried by habitual reactions.

This does not take away the reality of suffering, but it may change our relationship with it. And perhaps that is one of the places where Reiki meets suffering most deeply: not by promising that suffering will disappear, but by teaching us another way of being with it, and another way of responding to it.

Perhaps, beneath all the techniques and practices, this is one of Reiki's deepest invitations: not simply to do healing, but to learn how to be with life and to respond from that presence. To meet ourselves when we are suffering. To meet another person when they are hurting. To meet uncertainty without immediately filling it with stories. To meet pain without adding judgment. To meet what we cannot change without giving up our capacity to care. And to discover that presence is not simply something we experience. It is something we practice. Something we embody. Something we bring into relationship.

Perhaps this is one of the ways Reiki meets suffering, not by asking us to become untouched by life, but by helping us become more present to it, more alive.

Just for today.

Just for this breath.

Just for this moment.

A Reflection offered by Veronique Frede, Reiki Teacher at Moonstone Sanctuary, Chicago.