My initial "initiation" (that's the jargon used) was unexpected. I was in Seattle, walking down the street, and I passed one of those shops that sells crystals, incense, and Tarot decks. On a whim I went in, and there was a sign about Reiki classes downstairs. I went downstairs and there was a kind of class going on, and the folks in the class were having some sort of exam or test. The teacher of the class looked like if Santa Claus ditched the red reindeer-hide coat and dressed as a pirate. He grabbed me and sat me down in a chair and some woman started waving her arm at me from about a meter away.

I feel a certain ineffable something "filling me up" with a kind of immaterial pressure or presence. I could feel it within the volume of my body and (somehow) extending into the space around me. It's difficult to explain in words what it feels like, people describe both warmth and coolness, presence and emptiness, tingling and relaxation, sometimes in combinations. The best I can do is that it felt like a high-tension electric field if you could somehow feel the field directly. Anyway, she started at the base of my spine and went up the center line to the top of my head at which point I felt a flower- or fountain-shaped field extend out from the crown of my head into the space around my body. Simultaneous with this I experienced a deep psychological change, comparable in intensity to a modest dose of "magic mushrooms" or LSD, that was deeply pleasant and healing. At that time in my life I was suffering from severe depression and now it lifted and I felt wonderful for the rest of the evening. The effect wore off but the depression was never as severe again after that.

So that was my first experience with this thing called Reiki. Nobody had told me anything. I had no beliefs about it going in. And it sure wasn't the "placebo effect" (whatever that is.) I had no idea what to expect, or even to expect anything at all.

After that I found a group that practiced and taught Reiki without charging the traditional fees and worked with them. I also, as I said, went looking for anyone who had "done science" to it, with the results I mentioned above.

There's a lot of variation (in my experience) between different Reiki sessions even with the same people. Most are pretty mellow, and other than a deep and abiding sense of peace and health there's not much you can point to and say, "there, that's the effect".