What Happens When Brainspotting Meets Reiki: Two Modalities, One Healing Field

In the healing professions, I feel we all have moments with our clients that we may not have expected. One of those unexpected moments happened for me during a session as a client was on the Reiki table. 

My client came to me for Reiki as she was experiencing fertility issues. I often see clients in my Reiki & Medical Intuitive practice who have medical anomalies, or conditions that medical professionals don’t have a diagnosis for. 

My client had been carrying the weight of this journey for a long time. As we were well into the session, something shifted. Her breathing changed. Her body tensed, & within moments I was witnessing that it seemed she was moving into a panic attack on the Reiki table.

In that moment, something instinctive happened. I placed one finger above her face & asked her which quadrant of her visual field she felt calm. She said she felt most calm in the middle. We located the resource Brainspot and I held it with one hand while my other hand continued the Reiki. 

My mind was spinning as I realized that this session moved from “just Reiki,” to Reiki and Brainspotting. She calmed almost instantly & we continued our healing work.

We always hope for the best with our clients and I was surprised to hear from her a year later. She reached out with a picture & to tell me she had just had a baby girl.

I share this story in every Brainspotting & Reiki workshop I facilitate, because it shows something I’ve come to understand more deeply with every year I practice both modalities:

These two approaches are not separate tools that happen to coexist in the same practice. They are accessing the same healing territory from two different directions. And when you understand how, the integration becomes both possible and almost inevitable.

What Reiki Actually Is (For Those New to It)

If you are a Brainspotting practitioner who has little or no background in Reiki, here is a brief foundation.

Reiki is a Japanese healing modality developed by Mikao Usui in the early twentieth century. The word itself translates roughly as universal life energy. At its core, Reiki works with the premise that energy flows through the body along specific pathways, and that disruptions to that flow, caused by stress, trauma or emotional weight, contribute to physical, emotional & psychological imbalance.

A Reiki practitioner, once attuned, helps the flow of this energy through intentional presence & gentle hand placements. The goal is not to direct healing in a specific way but to support the body’s own natural capacity to restore equilibrium.

If that sounds familiar, it should. The principle of trusting the system to heal when given the right conditions, is one we know well in Brainspotting.

The Science That Connects Them

As I researched these two modalities, it was fascinating to discover the neurological framework alongside the experiential one.

Both Brainspotting & Reiki have been associated with shifts into slower brainwave states, specifically alpha & theta waves. These are the states associated with deep relaxation, subcortical access, creativity & the kind of processing that happens below the level of conscious thought.

In Brainspotting, we understand that accessing the subcortical brain is moving out of the hyperactive beta state of everyday waking consciousness. The focused yet diffuse awareness of a Brainspotting session, & holding presence while staying in dual attunement, facilitates this shift.

Reiki produces a similar neurological environment. Research has documented measurable decreases in cortisol, reductions in heart rate & blood pressure, & shifts in brainwave activity consistent with deep parasympathetic activation. The body’s stress response quiets. The nervous system moves toward a state of safety.

What this means practically is that Reiki can create the neurological conditions that make Brainspotting processing more accessible. While Brainspotting can direct & deepen what Reiki’s energetic clearing opens.

These modalities complement each other. 

As I was sharing in the first part of this post, the client session was the moment Reiki seemed to call on Brainspotting unexpectedly.

But I’ve also experienced the reverse.

I have been holding space for clients in Brainspotting sessions when I become aware that my Reiki hands have activated without any intention on my part. Without shifting out of the Brainspotting container, Reiki was simply a natural response to what was happening in the field between us.

And more than once, a client has said some version of: “it feels like the healing is being accelerated,” or “something is moving that was stuck.”

These moments have shifted something for me clinically. They have pointed toward something I have since pursued in research & in practice:

Reiki & Brainspotting are both working with the body’s energetic & neurological field. They are both bottom-up approaches. They both bypass the analyzing mind. They both rely on attunement, presence & trust in the process rather than technique-driven direction.

In Brainspotting, we process from the brain into body through the brainstem & spine. In Reiki, energy flows through the entire body’s energetic system. When you combine them, the healing becomes all-encompassing in a way that neither modality achieves alone.

What This Looks Like Clinically

When integrating Reiki and Brainspotting, this is not about adding a technique. It is not about doing both at the same time in a procedural way.

It is about understanding how these two approaches inform each other. It is about developing the attunement to know when & how each one is being called for in a session.

For some clients, the energetic clearing that Reiki provides creates a nervous system environment where Brainspotting can go deeper than it might otherwise. The system is more open. The activation is more accessible. The processing moves more fluidly.

For other clients, Brainspotting processes a specific subcortical pattern while Reiki supports the integrative work afterward, helping the body settle & restore following the release.

And for some, as in the client session I described, the integration happens organically in real time, without planning, because both modalities are already present in the practitioner’s field.

This is why I believe the most important foundation for this integration is the practitioner’s own embodied experience of both modalities. Your nervous system can know Reiki from the inside the same way it knows Brainspotting from the inside. Then the integration becomes intuitive rather than procedural.

If you’re wondering why this matters for the Brainspotting Community, many Brainspotting practitioners already have some relationship with energy work, whether they name it that way or not. The attuned presence we bring to session, how our own nervous system participates in the client’s processing, & the moments of shared neurobiology that Brainspotting’s relational model describes are all energetic.

What Reiki offers is a framework & a practice for working with that energetic dimension more intentionally. It gives the practitioner a way to understand & work with the field between themselves & the client in a way that complements everything the Neuroexperiential Model already points toward.

To further facilitate, it is helpful for to be someone who is open to the reality that healing operates on more than one level simultaneously. As Brainspotting practitioners, most of us already are.

Whatever your next step, I hope this has opened a door. When these two modalities meet, it is powerful to witness the transformation.

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