"If You Yawn During Reiki, You're Releasing Negative Energy"

I recently came across a post in which someone confidently claimed that if you yawn during a Reiki session, you're releasing negative energy. As with many things in Reiki, I think the answer is a little more complicated than that.

The interesting thing is that I do yawn during sessions. I also find myself taking deep sighing breaths. Sometimes I burp, and occasionally I even hiccup. After more than twenty years of practicing Reiki, I've noticed these things happen often enough that I pay attention when they occur. They frequently seem to coincide with a shift in the session. A client may suddenly relax, become emotional, or describe feeling lighter afterward.

So do I think some kind of release is taking place? Yes, I do.

What I don't know is exactly what is being released.

That's where I think many Reiki practitioners skip over an important step. We have an experience and then immediately create an explanation for it. A yawn becomes "negative energy leaving the body." A burp becomes "stagnant energy clearing." A hiccup becomes "an energetic block breaking up." The experience itself may be real, but the explanation is often an assumption.

The reality is that we don't have a way to verify what's actually happening. Is it physical tension releasing? An emotional shift? A change in the nervous system? Something energetic? A combination of several things? I don't know, and I'm not convinced anyone else knows either.

What I do know is that these responses show up often enough in my own practice that I don't dismiss them. If I yawn several times during a session, I take notice. If a client suddenly takes a deep breath after holding tension for most of the session, I notice that too. Those moments often feel significant. They often seem connected to some kind of shift occurring within the person.

Where I part ways with some Reiki teachers is when they present their interpretation as fact. There is a big difference between saying, "I've noticed yawning often accompanies a release during a session," and saying, "Yawning means negative energy is being released." One statement is an observation. The other is a conclusion.

The longer I practice Reiki, the less interested I become in making absolute statements about things I can't verify. I've found that curiosity serves me better than certainty. Instead of immediately deciding what something means, I would rather remain open to the possibility that there is still more to learn.

So if you yawn during Reiki, does it mean something is being released? It might. In my experience, it often feels that way. But I'm comfortable stopping there. I don't need to know exactly what is being released in order to recognize that something meaningful may be happening.

Sometimes the most honest answer is also the simplest one: I've noticed a pattern, I pay attention to it, and I'm still curious about what it means.

For me, that's a much more interesting place to stand than pretending certainty where none exists.