Reiki: Healing Injury in Unexpected Ways
Photo by Kat Woronowicz
By Melissa Eisler
Active.com
Trisha Huszka was 18 when she suffered her first knee injury at a rugby game. She loved the sport, but college rugby demanded a rigorous practice schedule—her team would practice four days a week for a minimum of two hours and then play one to three games on the weekends. Her team ran an average of 10 miles each practice. Plus she was constantly on her feet waitressing at night; so it seemed like her knee would never fully heal.
“I always taped up my knee during games,” Huszka said. “I couldn’t really run without knee support. I would get deep tissue massages regularly, which helped a lot, but there was always swelling and pain in my knee.”
The next morning when I woke up, I remember feeling really relaxed and my whole body just felt better. Then I realized my knee wasn’t swollen or in pain.
One day when Huszka was 22, she went to see her massage therapist for her regular deep tissue massage. But this session was unlike any other.
“At one point during the massage, I remember thinking, ‘Did she fall asleep? She must be tired. Why is she hanging out in that one spot for so long?’ She cupped her hands around my knee; I didn’t know what she was doing.” Huszka recalled. “To be honest, I just relaxed enough to zonk out and didn’t think about it again. The next thing I knew the massage was over.”
Huszka didn’t have much expectation for the massage. She’d been seeing the same massage therapist for years, and the sessions always helped, but never resulted in dramatic changes.
“The next morning when I woke up, I remember feeling really relaxed and my whole body just felt better. Then I realized my knee wasn’t swollen or in pain,” Huszka said. “When I asked my massage therapist what she had done, she said it was reiki—a type of energy work she was learning. I couldn’t believe the improvement. I even stopped wearing my support in games. It was the best my knee had felt since I had started playing rugby.”
Trisha went back to playing rugby six days a week. No longer needing to focus on treatment, Trisha worked on strengthening her knee so she could rack up drop goals and conversions for her Western Connecticut University team.
About a year later, Huszka’s love for nature and hiking resulted in a diagnosis with Lyme disease. She visited an infectious disease specialist who began her treatment with a month and a half of double dosage oral antibiotics. When that didn’t work, he put her on IV antibiotic therapy--one hour every day for another six weeks.
“I couldn’t lift or do anything with my left arm for that month and a half. It was very painful,” Huszka said. “I would wake up to do my medication and then go back to bed.”
