Los Angeles Reiki Practitioner Hayley M. Laframboise Speaks Out about Healing

If you're curious about Reiki practitioners in Los Angeles, as I was, then meet Los Angeles Reiki practitioner Hayley M. Laframboise. As a Patch local writer, I met Hayley online and decided to ask her some questions about how Reiki works.

To my surprise and delight, Hayley was a fountain of knowledge about Reiki healing - and wasn't afraid to get personal, revealing her own struggles in life and how Reiki played a role in her own healing.

Hayley also gave me some compelling vignettes about clients in her Los Angeles Reiki studio.

Many people lump Reiki in with other alternative healing practices, such as: hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, quantum touch, cranio-sacral therapy, massage therapy, kinesiology and even life coaching or chiropractic. Yet, Reiki is its own discipline, with a long and rich history that spans thousands of years.

So, it was wonderful to get this perspective from a Los Angeles Reiki practitioner for our local audience. Here are my questions about Reiki and Hayley's answers. Prepare to be enlightened by a real, local, Los Angeles Reiki professional!

What is Reiki?

Reiki is an ancient Japanese healing modality that uses Universal Energy to heal emotional, physical, spiritual and energetic imbalances. This Universal Energy is transmitted through an attuned practitioner’s hands to the recipient through the hands-on healing method.

The word Reiki comes from the Japanese word “Rei” which means “Universal Life” and “Ki” which means “Energy”.

Reiki is predicated on the premise that every living being emits an energy field, a belief that in the last few years has become supported by multiple scientific studies on resonance and frequency.

Hayley is a local, Los Angeles Reiki practitioner, but you can read more about Reiki at the national Reiki.org FAQ page.

What has Reiki done for you, personally?

Reiki was the path of healing that resonated with me the most at a time when I was searching for clarity, comfort, understanding and peace. My mother had committed suicide and I was struggling to cope emotionally and my life was falling apart.

Receiving regular Reiki sessions near my home in Los Angeles gave me the energetic support that I needed to work through my grief. But there’s more to it than that.

When something devastating happens in our life it also tends to shine a light on all the other areas of our day to day living that may not be working so well, either.

So for me, this was the start of a new path of healing that encompassed all areas of my life, leading to a spirituality that had been missing that has since given me the strength to make changes in my life and allowed me to grow and thrive.

You can read more about Los Angeles Reiki practitioner Hayley M. Laframboise her Meet Hayley page.

Why does your average client come to you? What are they wanting to heal?

When I first meet a new client at my Los Angeles Reiki studio, I always ask them to fill out a brief form detailing why they have come to me, what are they hoping to achieve with Reiki sessions. Apart from the physical ailments they may have, they always say stress relief, with a self-deprecating laugh.

Once we dig a little deeper into how that stress has manifested itself in the body, the mind-body connection, it usually becomes clearer what the client needs to do to alleviate their symptoms in conjunction with Reiki.

We all have the power to heal ourselves on some level and to some degree. By working with our bodies, understanding where we are creating energy blocks in our life, we can begin to move past where we are stuck.

Whenever we’re stressed out (and in a big city like Los Angeles, this is all too common), or around people that take more than they give, or toxic family and co-workers, these kinds of negativity will deplete our life energy (Ki). This, in turn, makes us more susceptible to falling ill. The correlation of chronic stress and the onset of illness is well-established in the scientific community.

It’s difficult to make positive decisions when you're running on a deficit of energy. Reiki enables us to have the energy to be proactive instead of reactive in our life. Reiki treatment supports our immune system so we are better able to fight off illness and infection, and to be more in control of our stress levels and emotions.

If there were on thing I could tell people in Los Angeles who are thinking about getting Reiki treatment, it would be this: Do it for the stress reduction benefits alone. Your immune system needs the support!

Can you give an example of a Los Angeles Reiki client success? What happened?

Reiki doesn’t heal just physical ailments. It’s also great for emotional and mental health issues, like anxiety, depression and bereavement. I’ll give you two recent examples from my local, Los Angeles Reiki practice. One is for an emotional issue and the other is for a physical issue.

1) This speaks to the indirect power of Reiki, of how the energy can heal more than just the recipient, very often reaching out to families and also communities.

*Susan’s husband, *Ron, was in his 70's and had been diagnosed with cancer. I heard about this and offered to provide my Reiki services on a volunteer basis. Ron wasn’t interested at all. But seeing how stressed and upset Susan was, I asked if she would like to try it instead. We then commenced to see each other once a week for about a year.
She was in a pretty bad way at first, unable to hold the energy for any length of time. But as she continued to see me, she became stronger, and was better able to control her emotions and feelings of sadness, anger, fear, confusion and everything else that his illness brought up — not just for her but also for him - as it enabled her to be there for him when he experienced his own feelings of guilt, anger, fear etc...
Once they’d worked through the emotional side of the impact of cancer, they were able to turn their attention to how best to deal with it. So, although I didn’t work directly with Ron, I was still able to provide some support for him by keeping his wife on an even keel.

2) This is much more mundane: Sinus Issues

*Judith had had sinus issues on and off for years, and it seemed to be a yearly occurrence after the New Year. The first time I met her for this issue I asked a lot of questions to try and understand what her body was trying to tell her, the Where, When and Why of it. Knowing that the blockage was related to the 6th Chakra, but also to unexpressed tears, which is the 4th Chakra, I worked on balancing both of these areas to bring the Chakras back into alignment.
After the session, Judith sat up from the table and was very quiet for a few minutes, saying that she felt incredibly relaxed and the pressure in her sinus’ had abated. I followed up a few days later and she reported that her sinus still felt fine.

What do you say to skeptics of Reiki in Los Angeles? Do you have to believe in Reiki for it to work?

To be honest, I don’t really come across any die-hard skeptics. The people that I generally meet in my everyday life have generally heard of Reiki. They just have no idea what it is. So, I explain to them what energy healing is and how it works on the subtle levels of our auric field to heal and align our chakras.

For those in L.A. who think Reiki results are placebo, I’ll mention the Law of Conservation of Mass that says energy cannot be created or destroyed, that it’s always there in some form or other, resonating at different speeds, whether it comprises a human being or a chair. If human, the Reiki energy works with the human energy, and you don’t need to believe or even be conscious for it to work.

As a new client at your Los Angeles Reiki studio, what should I expect? What effort is required on my part?

Everyone’s experience of Reiki is different. During a session, some experience a warm sensation around where the practitioner’s hands are placed, along with tingling and twitching. Others see images or colors, and some find they recall long-forgotten memories or just have random, floating thoughts. Some will go into a meditative state, or even fall asleep, which is perfectly fine.

Generally, everyone leaves a healing session at the least feeling deeply relaxed, refreshed, calmer, more centered and grounded.

I believe there is an element of effort required on the client’s part, in that to effectively heal, they have to be invested in getting better. I would suggest preparing mentally and emotionally by thinking of what they’d like to achieve from their session. Possible desired goals could be anything from feeling calm enough to get a good night's sleep, letting go of an emotional issue, alleviating pain, and so on. Be clear about what you want to gain from a Reiki session.

I would also suggest that people may feel more comfortable by being freshly showered, wearing loose fitting clothes and a pair of clean socks.

Anything else you’d like to mention to people in Los Angeles who are curious about Reiki?

I think we are drawn to certain healing modalities; that we resonate better with some more than others. This may explain why some people will walk away from a session and it will have no impact on them. Yet others, will utterly fall in love with it and can’t get enough.

Los Angeles-based Dragonfly Reiki Healing Practice website: http://dragonflyreikila.com/