Alternative Therapies on Koh Phangan

Welcome to Koh Phangan, a place where you can be immersed in a world of options when it comes to exploring healing practices. Especially on the west side of the island. If you have ever visited Anutta cafe you will have seen the wall covered in posters for different therapies, treatments and practices. Some, you may have heard of before, others never. You might recognise names - such as reiki- but not know a lot about what they mean. We speak to two practitioners on the island, Klaus and Ashera, to find out a little bit more about three kinds of healing therapies on Koh Phangan: reiki, Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT and sound healing. 

Klaus who runs Arati healing centre in Sri Thanu and Ashera, a sound therapist and global speaker currently visiting the island, have kindly offered to share their knowledge with us for this article. 

Klaus is a reiki practitioner. He also does combined treatments of reiki with Emotional Freedom Technique. He tells us about what these healing therapies are.

What is reiki?

Reiki is nothing else than divine love.

I usually say that it is something people already do. Everybody can do it. It’s very simple.

Reiki is a very simple way to heal yourself and other people. To give an example: a child gets hurt, a mother puts her hand on the child or kisses them and it stops the pain.

Reiki is soul energy, divine energy, love. Or some people say God.

For those practicing reiki themselves, you can not only feel the energy when you give a treatment but 24 hours a day.  You can feel the energy flow through your body, and feel that it is something which protects you.

How did you find out about it and when did you start practicing?

I travelled around the world and I met everywhere people I could feel had something - everyday they were happy and every day in balance. When I talked to them, I asked what's your secret, they say to me they do reiki. It was completely new to me. I didn’t do meditation, yoga, I didn’t believe in God but I could feel something. I thought to myself 'I wanted to learn reiki'.

I find this balance six years later after I study. Sometimes in life things take a while.

What are the benefits?

Reiki will relax and de-stress. It can make you calm.

It’s so relaxing, when your body is so relaxed without tension, it can start healing. Through reiki you activate the self-healing power. The mind healing happen when we change our life. From reiki you can bring something up from the past and help yourself to heal.

You become aware, things can come up from your self-conscious and you can let go of some patterns you have had your whole life. No one is free from everything.

Our subconscious life is like a spider web around us. It affects us always in our life through our emotions and our feelings. Through reiki you can help people to release this. In life, you can be happy then two hours later you can cry. What is the reason? Through reiki you can release this.

One time, I worked with someone who had pain in the abdominals. They had had this for a long long time. When we did a treatment, I couldn’t feel anything - that anything physical was there. But, when we did the treatment, I had the feeling that something had happened in this person's childhood. We did the reiki and EFT combination. Through reiki we brought it up. Then, through EFT we let it go. After, the pain in the abdominal was completely gone.

What is Emotional Freedom Technique?

Emotional Freedom Technique is an emotional freedom technique. It's a very easy way to release some really old emotions people have inside. People feeling not good enough. People having problems, for example, with talking in front of many people. Or, just wanting to be more confident in life, believing in themselves more, being more confident in themselves.

When I do EFT, I do it always with reiki together. We are like a stone. Reiki can make us soft and EFT is the practical side to release emotions.

Often in this busy world, we don’t talk to each other. I find that when people find someone they can talk to, they do.

Who is it good for and what can they expect from an EFT treatment?

People who have things a long time or feel they are somehow stuck. They don’t know where to go anymore in life.

People when a relationship split and they suffer for two or three years from this and cannot come out from it.

It could be someone who is grieving and they don’t feel anything anymore. A lot of people in this situation, they feel guilty, they can struggle letting go.

(please note that Klaus practices EFT in combination with reiki and so speaks of EFT from this perspective).

Ashera is a sound healing practitioner and global speaker. She tells us more about sound healing. 

What is sound healing?

Everything within us and outside us is vibrating at a certain frequency and it is either in a state of health or not.

Sound healing is the use of a wide variety of different tools and techniques, to return the client back to a place of harmony and balance.

Who is it good for?

Sound healing is already widely used in the medical world today e.g. lithotripsy for kidney stones, ultrasound brain surgery for Parkinsons, NET for heroin addiction and in the sound healing world e.g. tuning forks for re-balancing meridians, grounding, uplifting your mood and healing wounds, voice work for conscious emotional release, and the use of Tibetan bowls can relieve stress and calm digestion.

Tuning forks are either made of aluminium or steel and can be used either through the energy field or directly onto the body.

Since most physical challenges start as an imbalance in the energy field, this is a very good place to start. Tuning forks can also clear trauma and emotional blockages from the past which if left unresolved, can lead to dis-ease/illness. Placing them on bones is the most effective as sound travels almost 12 time faster than through air. They can also be used for healing sexuality. In order to maximise the healing potential of any session, it's always best if the client is breathing deeply and placing their awareness wherever they are feeling any energy shifts in their body, so they can work with them, in order to harmonise and clear as effectively as possible. This also empowers clients to be part of their own healing process.

Conscious Emotional Release is such a helpful modality at a time when so many people are feeling deep emotions coming up from the past due to the planetary transformation intensifying especially in the past year. This can be done with different frequencies that help to clear fear, guilt, shame, anger and bring the body back to its natural state of flow, balance, joy and even natural ecstasy!

The body has an amazing ability to heal itself and through the power of the voice, this can help us access stuck energy in our body, with no need to get into the story of what happened, but simply to breathe, move, feel, express, and dive into what wants to be released in this moment and then move out the other side feeling far lighter, freer, more energised, grounded and empowered. We have lived in a society of being told to be quiet, or not express ourselves,we're told not to be too loud, to not say what we really feel, and anger isn't so acceptable. Sound healing can be a great way of freeing ourselves from the past and stepping into a far clearer, freer and lighter way of being.

Ashera teaches globally so if you feel inspired to bring the transformational power of sound to your community, please contact her via the website. www.asherahart.net.

Thanks so much to Ashera and Klaus for contributing their knowledge to this article.