The knowledge of a healing modality called, Reiki (Ray-Key), is brought to you through Reiki & You: Awakening the Healer Within. A comprehensive book written in the testimony of the author’s own experience, this book teaches the Oriental healing method, discovered by Dr. Mikao Usui in the late ninteenth century. This method has widely gained popularity throughout the world in the twentieth century and its growth continues to expand as we go forward into the twenty-first.

Reiki simply means “Universal Life Force-Energy,” and is the Oriental-inspired practice of healing through balancing the energy of the body’s chakras, which house the body’s glands, or endocrine system. The main theme of Reiki & You is personal empowerment through self-healing and the healing of others. This book covers the ancient history of the use of hands for healing, including Reiki and its spread around the world. Comprehensible explanations of the practice with easy-to-follow illustrations are given. Lyles includes a unique biblical approach to Reiki, showing that her Christian faith embraces a healing method which originated more than 5,000 years ago.

A unique facet of this book is its Judaic-Christian perspective, setting it apart from other books about Reiki that have preceded it. Lyles traces the history of laying-on of hands, and shares the “how-to” information about this healing modality in twelve easy-reading chapters. Within its pages the story of the author’s own natural healing from cancer emerges. Today, she claims Reiki plays a role in maintaining her remission since 1992.

Six years of research and writing shine through the pages of the book. Readers are led to recognize the importance of Reiki in everyday life. Further research reveals that Reiki is now considered by many medical experts to be an important component of (w)holistic healing. It is currently used in over one hundred hospitals in the United States. In addition to Sloan Kettering in New York, Portsmouth Regional Hospital of New Hampshire is another notable hospital. This hospital honors the many calls from patients and doctors for Reiki by having a paid staff member coordinate a number of Reiki Practitioner Volunteers. Many medical professionals in the northeastern United States have come to realize the value of Reiki’s gentle, non-invasive ways. By balancing the endocrine system, and stabilizing the vital organs, Reiki helps us feel and heal better. It is the subtle energy system that is the essence of life.

In this book, readers are encouraged to find their place in the potential healing of the world through practicing Reiki on themselves and others. This can happen when the Reiki energy brings enlightenment through an inner call and evokes deep peace within oneself. Reiki may be used for self, family, friends, pets and plants—everything that has energy is enhanced when it is administered.

In addition to introducing Reiki to the Christian audience, this book sounds a call to healthier living by encouraging a balanced lifestyle. Reiki aids in the reintegration of the essence of our being, body-mind-spirit. The faithful practice of Reiki for just 15 minutes a day can gradually disperse self-delusions hidden in our memory bank, causing low self-esteem. This can cloud our understanding of who we really are in the loving eyes of a benevolent God.

Therefore, through Reiki we can begin to actualize the call to “know thyself” which releases us from past bondage and raises our self-esteem. Then it becomes easier to love ourselves, exactly as we are, and go on to understand and love others in the same unconditional way. While we may all agree what the world needs now is love, the author believes that the key to accessing love is the gift of understanding. Not far behind the discovery and utilization of that gift comes the culmination of the universal search for love, which all peoples seek.