Laser vs. Reiki: What My Hands and My Clients Taught Me About Healing
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I’m 60, a fitness trainer and yoga teacher in Nashville, and lately I keep circling one question: what is actually happening when someone says “I feel better”?
A few months ago a client came to me with old shoulder pain and a lot of tension. She had tried physical therapy, foam rolling, the usual gym fixes. Then a friend mentioned low-level laser therapy. Separately, I offered a Reiki session because I practice it, and because I’m tired of yoga becoming just branded poses, supplements, and “wellness” language with no spine.
I don’t think laser therapy and Reiki are doing the same job. Laser is a physical modality. I don’t have a citation in front of me, but the term I keep seeing is photobiomodulation: light interacting with tissue, inflammation, and recovery. That feels concrete. Reiki is not trying to be a laser. It’s a hands-on, attention-based practice. I believe it works through presence, intention, and the body’s own readiness to settle.
Here’s where I get philosophical. Healing is more than tissue. It is memory. The shoulder carries years of bracing, stress, poor posture, old fear. In Jung terms, I’d say the body can hold archetypal material — the Hanged Man, the Moon, the Star — as somatic patterns. Not in a mystical “proof” way, but in the sense that symbol and sensation are not unrelated. The Hanged Man teaches suspension before release. The Moon shows hidden emotional weather. The Star points toward repair after damage.
(There's a deeper dive on this in our wiki: Crystal Healing: History, Why It's Popular, and What Research Says | Mystic Wiki.)
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I agree with the basic split: laser therapy is a physical modality, and Reiki is not trying to be a laser. Photobiomodulation is a real area of study, and I get why it feels more “concrete” when someone can point to light interacting with tissue, inflammation, and recovery. I’m not a laser physicist, and I don’t have a citation in front of me right now, but I’d trust the laser side to be doing something measurable at the cellular/tissue level in a way Reiki isn’t claiming to.
Where I’d push back is the move from “the body holds memory” to “the shoulder carries the Hanged Man, the Moon, the Star as somatic patterns.” In my experience as a paramedic, the shoulder absolutely carries bracing, poor mechanics, old injury, stress, adrenaline residue, and years of protecting itself. That part is real and I don’t need tarot to prove it. But I think it’s slippery to say the archetypes are in the tissue the way laser light is in the tissue. The cards can be a naming tool. When I pull the Moon after a rough day, I’m not diagnosing hidden emotional weather in someone’s trapezius. I’m giving myself a prompt to notice what I’m avoiding, what felt unsafe, what I didn’t process. Reiki may work partly through presence, attention, and the body’s readiness to downshift — and that’s not nothing. I just wouldn’t call it the same instrument as laser. Healing, for me, is tissue plus memory plus attention, and tarot is mostly the language I use for the memory part.
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