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Local wellness center taps into Reiki services

BY JORDAN HOUSTON

Foothills Focus Staff Writer

The North Phoenix-based Burns Integrative Wellness Center is expanding its reiki services to those looking for alternative forms of healing. The naturopathic medical office, located at 34406 N. 27th Drive, Unit 114, specializes in medical, aesthetic and therapeutic services using herbal, holistic and homeopathic remedies. It recently announced the addition of its newest staff member 18-year-old certified reiki practitioner Marshall Gedge. Gedge, a level II practitioner, said he is looking forward to raising awareness about the alternative practice — which focuses on healing the energy and spiritual side of a person and has been used in Japan for over 100 years — while helping new patients throughout their healing journey. “I didn’t really know how to feel, I just knew I was excited,” Gedge said of his new opportunity. “And I’m still excited for it.”

Reiki is an ancient therapeutic art designed to “increase the body’s restorative potential and is a complementary treatment approach to health,” according to The Life Enrichment Center. It works to decrease stress and anxiety through energy healing while promoting wellbeing and calmness. The Burns Integrative Wellness Center emphasizes that each person has a flow of internal energy dictating their overall health. If low, the body becomes susceptible to “disease and illness,” it continues. Reiki seeks to strengthen that “life force” to promote “good health and happiness.”

The term itself stems from the two Japanese words Rei, meaning “Higher Power,” and Ki, meaning “life force energy,” The Burns Integrative Wellness Center adds.

A typical reiki session with Gedge lasts roughly 15 to 30 minutes, the 18-yearold explained.

“I’ll start by asking what they want reiki to do for them, whether it’s to help with anxiety, depression, pain or whatever they want to have reiki do,” Gedge said. “I figure out what they want done, and after that I’ll start at the head to get energy to flow and go from there and then find problem areas — that’s where I’ll start doing the work and try to help them.”

Patients can opt to lie down on a table or recline in a chair during their session, Gedge continued. The practitioner will then place his hands on or over the patient’s body and hover over a few locations, such as the head, feet, or stomach, with the goal of directing energy to see REIKI page 21

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