Seeing with “Reiki Eyes”: How Animal Reiki Opens Us to Clarity, Insight and Transformation
- Kathleen Prasad
- 13 hours ago
- 10 min read
What does it mean to see with “Reiki eyes”?
Through years of Animal Reiki practice, I’ve come to think of this as a way of seeing from the heart. This happens more easily when we regularly practice our Animal Reiki meditations and become quieter, more present and more receptive.
This practice helps us start to notice things we once missed—not only in the animals around us, but also within ourselves, our relationships and the larger web of life.
Sometimes this new seeing comes as insight: a sudden realization or unexpected “aha” that changes our understanding of something.
At other times, what we experience is clarity: a greater sense of spaciousness within ourselves, where fear, confusion or attachment no longer cloud the truth of the situation.
Insight and clarity are different, but they support one another as we transform ourselves again and again along the path of healing.
I love the spiral as a metaphor for this cycle of insight, clarity and transformation in our spiritual journey with animals. In Level 2 Reiki, the first symbol we learn includes the form of a spiral moving inward. This reminds us that spiritual growth is rarely a straight line. But with each layer of healing, we go deeper within ourselves, towards our inner essence and being.
The teachings of Eagle as a spirit animal are another beautiful way to explore this cyclical process. Eagles possess extraordinary vision. Their eyes can magnify details at great distances, their field of view is much wider than ours, and their long-distance vision is several times sharper than human sight.
They inspire us to learn to see things with more clarity and insight than we ever have before. In so doing, we create space for healing transformation that ripples out from us into the world.
How Do I Know Reiki Is Working?
One of the questions I hear most often from Animal Reiki students is, “How do I know Reiki is working?” We naturally want to recognize signs of healing, but over time our Animal Reiki practice may begin to change what we understand healing to mean.
Healing may not always look like a symptom disappearing, a behavior changing or an outcome unfolding as we hoped. As we learn to see with Reiki eyes, we may begin to recognize wholeness where we once saw only struggle, possibility where we once saw limitation, or an animal’s strength and agency where fear had narrowed our view.
Perhaps one of the ways we know Reiki is “working” is that we ourselves are learning to see differently.
Going Inward to Create Space for Insight
Learning to see differently begins by looking inward. Before beginning to hold space for an animal through Reiki we might first ask:
What am I bringing into this moment? How does it affect my thoughts, emotions and the lens through which I'm looking at the animal?
Fear, expectations, worry, stories we've either been told or are telling ourselves can all profoundly affect the way we see an animal or situation, and therefore the energy we are showing up with.
This becomes especially important when an animal we love is struggling. Our judgements and fears can radiate from us as negative energy, causing the animal discomfort or prompting them to leave our presence.
Our Animal Reiki practice gives us another choice in those difficult moments. Our Animal Reiki meditations help soften the busyness of our minds and invite us to notice our thoughts, emotions and reactions. To notice is the first step in creating enough inner space for something calmer and more peaceful to emerge.
We might notice things like:
I’m trying very hard to control this session or the outcome of this situation.
I'm pitying this animal because of what has happened to them.
I’m so worried about what might happen tomorrow that I’m no longer present with them in this moment.
Sometimes that recognition itself is the insight, because once we experience it, something begins to shift.
Perhaps we let go and remember to breathe. Perhaps we soften our emotions. Perhaps we become curious and open ourselves again to possibility. And so the spiral begins its inward turn.
Suddenly I Saw a Sparrow
Years ago, I visited an aviary at a museum. There were people everywhere, and the birds were incredibly active—chirping, flying, diving and fluttering from place to place.
I decided to stand quietly to one side and simply “be Reiki” with the birds, creating a space of stillness and compassion amidst all the movement and noise.
After several minutes, my eyes suddenly focused on the center of a bush where I noticed a small sparrow standing completely still. He caught my attention precisely because everything else around him was moving.
I walked across the aviary and looked more closely. His leg was caught in some clear wire, and he was trapped and unable to move. I immediately alerted the staff, who freed him. Soon he was flying and moving busily again like the other birds.
I’ve thought about this experience many times since. I wasn’t searching the aviary for an animal who needed help. I had simply become still, and within that stillness, something suddenly came into clear view. That is one way insight can arrive.
Of course, this doesn’t mean every Animal Reiki session will produce a dramatic realization. Often our practice is simply quiet and peaceful. But over time, practicing this way may help us become more receptive to those moments when animals are asking us to notice something.
The Horse Who Knew I Would Listen
I learned another beautiful lesson about this years ago at a ranch where I often offered Animal Reiki sessions in the pasture. The horses had become very familiar with me as the “Reiki person.” They knew that when I stood quietly in the middle of the herd, they could come and go as they pleased.
One day, as I arrived at the ranch, I walked past the pasture where I often practiced. A horse I had never interacted with directly came trotting unevenly toward the fence. Usually, he stayed on the far side of the pasture during Reiki sessions, observing from a distance. But this time he came directly to me.
As he approached the fence, he lifted one hoof very purposefully into the air and looked at me. I looked more closely and saw that his shoe was hanging at a strange angle, held on by only one nail. I was able to get immediate help so his shoe could be safely removed before he injured himself.
I noticed what he showed me that day because Animal Reiki had taught me to pay attention to the ways animals show up in my life—even when I'm not in the middle of a formal Reiki session.
And I've always believed that he had learned something about me, too, by observing me in all those previous Animal Reiki sessions in his pasture: I was a human who would listen.
Animals are communicating with us all the time and in so many ways, but often we are just too busy, too distracted or too emotional to notice. However, through our Animal Reiki practice, we can learn how to become better listeners so that we can begin to notice the things they are telling us and the lessons they are teaching us.
But it's important to stay curious and humble throughout this process. When an insight arises when working with an animal, instead of immediately deciding, I need to act on this, we can first ask:
What am I noticing?
Does this need my advocacy or can I simply return to the breath?
Sometimes what we notice may call us toward practical action, as it did with the sparrow and the horse. Other times, the invitation may simply be to remain present, keep listening and companion with an animal through their journey. Our practice helps these insights move into greater clarity.
The Story Told Me to Be Sad, but the Dog Told Me to Be Joyful
Insight can also arrive when something causes us to see beyond a story we have been told. This is especially important to remember when working with shelter and rescued animals, whose histories may include abandonment, neglect, abuse, loss or other trauma.
When painful histories are repeated over and over, people may begin to see only the abused dog, the neglected horse or the traumatized rescue rather than the whole being standing before them now.
Years ago, I was asked to offer Reiki to a pit bull at a shelter. He and his sibling had been found starving in a gutter on the streets of Oakland—literally skin and bones.
Sadly, his sibling did not survive. By the time I met him, however, this dog had recovered and had already put on quite a bit of weight.
At the beginning of the video of our session, a staff member tells me, “He weighed half of his weight when we got him.” It is a heartbreaking history. But then you see the dog himself: he is SO sweet and joyful.
After some joyful wiggling and checking out both me and the space, he settles into the most amazing Reiki nap, completely calm and content. You can see at the end of the session how his joyful personality comes bubbling right back out again. He was joy embodied!
This session has always reminded me why we don’t want to approach an animal carrying only the energy of, Oh no, you poor thing—something terrible happened to you! Sometimes animals show us the truth directly: their past may be part of their story, but it is not who they are.
This is a deeper meaning within one of our favorite LAL® teachings, All is Well. This affirmation invites us to look beyond the surface and see the animal’s whole being with Reiki eyes—their dignity, personality, agency, resilience, joy and bright spiritual essence.
Once we have truly seen an animal in this more expansive way, it becomes very difficult to return completely to our previous, narrow perception. That shift in perception is the beginning of our own transformation.
When Clear Insight Transforms Our Lives
Sometimes an insight is simply a moment of recognition—an unexpected glimpse that helps us see an animal, ourselves or a situation differently. But when we allow that insight to settle into us, it can begin to create greater clarity about what really matters.
Perhaps we suddenly recognize that our worry is making it difficult to stay present with an animal we love. We may realize that we have been focusing so much on an animal’s painful history that we have forgotten to see who they are right now.
Or we may notice that an animal is making a choice we didn’t expect, inviting us to listen rather than move forward with our own plans. These may seem like small realizations, but they can change the way we approach the next moment—and sometimes many moments that follow.
Over time, these insights begin to shape the way we live. We may become more aware of whether our choices truly honor an animal’s dignity and agency. We may find ourselves asking whether we are responding from fear or from the deeper values of compassion, humility, respect and love.
Our growing clarity may influence the way we care for a companion animal, serve animals in shelters or sanctuaries, advocate for wildlife, or make everyday choices about the animals whose lives are affected by the food, clothing, products and entertainment we consume.
Transformation doesn’t always arrive as one dramatic spiritual awakening. Often it happens through many small choices that slowly bring our outward lives into greater alignment with what we know in our hearts.
We listen a little more carefully. We allow more choice. We become less quick to assume what an animal needs. We recognize when our own fear or exhaustion is clouding our attention. Little by little, compassion becomes more than something we feel; it becomes something we actively live.
Clarity With Discernment
Seeing with Reiki eyes also asks us to practice humility. Sometimes during Animal Reiki we may experience a sudden intuition, feel drawn toward a possibility or simply have a strong sense that there is something more to notice.
These experiences can be meaningful, but an insight does not automatically mean we know exactly what an animal is thinking, feeling or needing. Instead, it can invite us to become more attentive and curious.
This is where clarity and discernment work together. We can honor an intuitive experience and then let it go lightly, like clouds floating by. We don't always need to act on or even share the insights we might experience.
Perhaps true clarity is not always having an answer. It is being grounded enough to recognize what we know, what we do not know, and what this particular moment is asking of us.
The Spiral Continues
This brings us back to the spiral. Through our Animal Reiki practice, we return again and again to ourselves and to this present moment with the animals. Each return gives us another opportunity to notice what may be clouding our perception and to become receptive to something we haven’t seen before.
Our practice creates the conditions for greater clarity. Within that spaciousness, insight may arise. Insight changes our understanding, and that new understanding may transform the choices we make or the ways we relate to animals. As we begin to live more fully from what we have learned, another layer of clarity develops—and that may make us receptive to an even deeper insight the next time around.
So the spiral continues.
I love that this month’s spirit guide, Eagle, offers us such a beautiful image for this process. Eagle can focus on the smallest detail while also taking in the wider landscape.
Our Animal Reiki practice asks us to develop this same kind of awareness: looking carefully at ourselves, looking closely at the animal before us, and widening our perspective enough to see beyond fear, assumptions and old stories.
Seeing with Reiki eyes isn't about gaining some special ability to know everything about another being. It is about becoming more present, receptive and humble so that we can recognize and be transformed by what animals—and life itself—are teaching us.
If you'd like to see this way of being with animals in action, I invite you to watch This Is What Animal Reiki Looks Like, a beautiful compilation of Animal Reiki sessions with many different animals.
As you watch, notice the individuality of each animal, the different ways they choose to engage and the peaceful space that allows each one simply to be who they are.
Perhaps this is one of the greatest gifts animals offer us through Reiki. As we learn to see them with greater clarity, presence, humility and compassion, they teach us how to see—and live—with Reiki eyes.
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