Is A Reiki Haircut Better Than Therapy?

The orange-smog sun is beginning to set as I walk into the ocean fully clothed, clutching a tiny envelope containing my hair. The surf is nipping at my bare ankles and flooding my shoes with sand and seawater. I’ve been instructed to release the clippings into a body of water, returning my split ends to the elements as the final step of my energy-healing Reiki haircut. I begin to shout, asking my past self for forgiveness for putting fear before my creative, spiritual, and emotional truth.

“I am listening for truth,” I tell the universe. I picture the woman on the oracle card I drew earlier that day, completely nude with a conch shell pressed against her ear, and then I drop the last bit of my hair into the sea. “I am no longer hiding.”

Releasing my hair into the ocean is the closing ritual for my haircut with Jo Marie Riedl, a Los Angeles–based hairstylist and Reiki master who started incorporating the Japanese form of energy healing into her work after realizing that many clients were in search of something “more than just a haircut.”

“There were people going to a parent’s funeral, or going through a breakup or a cancer treatment,” Riedl says. And while she could snip dead ends and “be there to talk and hold space,” she wanted to help people feel energetically transformed after an appointment. Riedl now performs the Reiki sessions in a private space in the salon, along with an oracle-card reading, which she uses to “inform” the haircut she does after.

It’s not as out-there as it sounds. Millennials have enthusiastically latched onto spirituality practices outside of organized religion, and aspects of astrology, tarot, and energy work have all seeped into wellness routines and beauty treatments (think crystal-infused face masks and healing bath bombs). Reiki haircuts are now available at salons like Manhattan’s Room Salon ($170), L.A.’s Freija Collective ($250), and Portland’s Vacation Club ($117). The service has proven popular, says Takeo Suzuki, hairstylist and founder of Room Salon and ESHK, who started offering it because “after the pandemic, people missed human touch.” Suzuki integrates the Reiki treatment into a scalp and shoulder massage during the haircut.

Reiki’s benefits may not be backed by peer-reviewed studies, but its devotees are legion. The practice is based on the ancient concept of qi, a universal “life force” that flows through the seven chakras, or bodily energy points, related to our emotional, mental, and physical health. Illness, psychic stress, or past trauma can all disrupt an individual’s energetic field, weighing them down with pain and feelings of purposelessness, anxiety, or lack of motivation. Reiki practitioners act as energetic conduits, using a series of light touches on the head, neck, and back to release negativity and to make room for healing. It’s not a big leap to combine the technique with a haircut, which we regularly infuse with metaphoric and literal powers for a fresh start.

I started seeing Riedl five years ago for root maintenance on my platinum-blonde hair. I had just moved to California after a difficult few years in which I had lost my job and many important friendships. For the majority of my career, I had been high-functioning but self-destructive. I worked all day and then regularly partied all night — until I got fired and fled to the West Coast, where I went to rehab and moved in with my parents.

Riedl immediately noticed how attached I was to my platinum hair. I knew how damaged it was, but it represented the last remnants of my New York City life. She told me about her Reiki certification course, but I wasn’t interested at that point. Eventually I stopped going to her salon. I’d run out of money and time — backsliding into addiction takes up a lot of both.

It’s not a big leap to combine the technique with a haircut, which we regularly infuse with metaphoric and literal powers for a fresh start.

I finally returned to her chair after a year. I was doing better and had recently found the courage to write about my experience with addiction. I’d been uplifted by messages of support from friends and strangers, many of whom said it helped them with their own situation. Even before I updated Riedl on my recovery, I told her I wanted to bleach my hair again. But I also wanted a relaxing Reiki session before going back to my “old self.”

Riedl took me to a small, dimly lit room, where I lay down on a massage table and shimmied under a fluffy blanket. She turned on a soothing playlist and selected a stone and a crystal — obsidian for protection, desert rose selenite to open my mind — before placing a rose quartz eye mask on my face. As the music grew louder, Riedl guided me into a deep meditative state. The next thing I remember, she was washing my hair.

Afterward, I felt calm, pure, and weightless. I luxuriated in the afterglow of our session and described for Riedl what I’d seen: I had been plunged into space, becoming a body of blue light floating among millions of stars, and I had heard the word “intuition” echoing through my brain. I know it sounds woo-woo, but maybe woo-woo was exactly what I needed after the year I’d had.

“So what did your intuition tell you?” she asked. “Do you still want to go blonde?” I shook my head no, realizing that I didn’t want to return to my old self at all.

Riedl steered me back to her chair. I watched the old hair fall away. She scooped up a few of the clippings and placed them in the envelope for me, along with instructions to find water. I knew the Pacific Ocean was just a 30-minute drive. I could not be more ready for whatever was next.