Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 30/01) - The opportunity to perform reiki is nearly as appealing as receiving it, says Martha Vance.

She is a healer from Life Works, and runs a local stress reduction and healing service business in Yellowknife.

Martha Vance shows the process of reiki on co-worker, therapeutic touch specialist, Nathalie Colas. - Dawn Ostrem/NNSL photo

As her clients lay flat on a table and she moves her hands inches above their bodies, it is then, she says, that both auras join together and the feeling is electric, invigorating and pleasant.

Then she performs reiki by channelling the universal energy outside a person's body into their limbs. She disperses that energy to seven key areas in the body called chakras.

Like reflexology, every centre has a connection to the physical self.

"But it is not just the physical level," Vance explains. "That is why reiki is such a good option, it is also on a spiritual and mental level."

Vance, a psychologist from Mexico City, said reiki should be considered a complement to more scientific healing approaches.

She moves her hands and gently places them on the patient in the area of the seven chakras and disperses the energy through the body while aromatherapy oils are burned and sounds of birds and waves echo from a stereo.

"We can scan what chakra is closed and try to work to open the chakra," Vance says. She does that by feeling something similar to vibrations or breaks in an aura in the area of a former surgery, for example.

That was the case for one client who had cartilage removed during knee surgery.

"You have some tension in this part of your back but that is normal," Vance said with her hand between the client's upper shoulder blades.

"And you sometimes have pain in your knees."

Reiki is thought to be thousands of years old and a Tibetan Buddhist practice.