After Christina Aguilera put her amazing weight loss down to reiki, we decided to find out what it’s all about.

Bahrain Positive Energy Center, run by Master Fawzeya, is perhaps not what you might expect to find in the heart of the industrial area beside Khalifa bin Salman Port and the Salman Industrial City. In fact it’s in the Bahrain Business Incubator Centre but that’s where the industrial element ends, inside you’ll find spirituality aplenty.

So what is reiki? Master Waleed Hashim, a former lawyer who changed both his life and his profession following reiki treatment, explained: ‘Reiki is an ancient Japanese healing system. Its origins are actually Chinese but the Japanese monks developed it.

‘It works by connecting the energy of rei – which is source energy from God or the universe – with ki, bioenergy that you can see, hear, feel, touch, when they connect you have reiki.

‘In fact those energies are connecting all the time, what reiki does is works towards strengthening those connections.’

Apparently everything on the planet has energy which sends out vibrations and Waleed explained how we can experience these. ‘You know sometimes you will look at a photograph of a much-loved child or pet and it will make you feel uplifted, you’ll have a good energy connection, but equally sometimes you can meet a person and, without even knowing them, you just get a bad feeling about them, you might say you get a bad ‘vibe’ from them.

‘People who have high vibrations and high energy are those who are seen as a lot of fun to be around and very positive while those who have low levels of vibrations can be said to be hard work or difficult.

‘Reiki uses the chakra energy pressure points to improve energy and vibrations giving very positive feelings and the energy points are also connected to the immune system so reiki can be used in fighting disease.’

Which all makes perfect sense, but surely just putting pressure on the chakra points can’t result in the estimated 30kg weight loss Christina has apparently achieved?

Well according to Waleed, it could indeed.

He explained: ‘Negative thoughts and feelings lower the body’s energy levels and vibrations. Fat cells store emotions and protect from them so the first thing you do when you heal someone with reiki is to discover what they’re storing – when we don’t take the time to process our emotions, that’s when we get sick or have other problems.

‘In the case of Christina, I don’t know what she was going through but I do remember her getting bad reviews for albums a couple of years ago. And if there’s a lot of outside pressure it can make the body crave salt and sugar when those pressures and the emotions they raise aren’t being dealt with – almost all weight gain can initially be traced back to a stressful time or event.

‘For her, reiki could have activated her immune system and cleared her mind, helped her deal with fears and anxieties – once you do that, it stops the negative energies coming through.’

He added that there is no specific course for weight loss but recommends anything that ‘brings joy’ whether that’s reiki, yoga, fun exercises or dancing combined with meditation to quiet the mind maybe through taking a long walk, listening to soothing music or even something as simple as watching cartoons.

Bahrain Positive Energy Center runs three-day courses in both Arabic and English, tho ugh English are scheduled on demand.

For further information see www,bahrainpositiveenergycenter.com.