What is a Reiki share?

At their most basic, Reiki shares are Reiki get-togethers where you meet other Reiki people and swap Reiki treatments. If there are a fair number of people attending, everyone takes a turn on the treatment table and can end up being treated by multiple practitioners: you might have one person sitting at the head of the table, someone by your ankles and people on either side of the table too.

Why Reiki shares?

Receiving a Reiki treatments from lots of people at the same time is an *amazing* experience! If you have never experienced that, I really, really, really recommend that you find a Reiki share, jump on the table and see how it feels. You will be blown away!

It is also useful to spend some time in the company of people who do not think that you are crazy for doing this ridiculous energy thing, and you have the opportunity to share your experiences and ask questions. For those who do not have many friends or family on hand to treat, Reiki shares can help to build your confidence and reassure you that all your ‘Reiki apparatus’ is working properly: you are more likely to receive useful feedback from a Reiki-attuned person being treated by you than you are a member of the general public.

Do I need to be a Reiki Master to run a Reiki share?

No. Not at all. Anyone can set up and run a Reiki share. All you need are a small group of people willing to get together on a regular basis to swap Reiki treatments. You don’t need anyone’s permission to set up your Reiki share: just start and see what happens!

See below of suggestions about other activities that you can carry out at Reiki shares, where you will see that – other than giving and receiving attunements or empowerments – everything else can be facilitated by non-Masters.

How popular are Reiki shares?

In my experience, although most Reiki people probably like the idea of Reiki shares, and would be disappointed to hear that one had discontinued, the vast majority of Reiki people will not have attended a Reiki share and probably never will. That’s just the way it is: people have busy lives, and it’s always a very small minority of people that get actively involved in such things.

Having said that, all you really need is a small core of people who are prepared to make the time, perhaps just for one evening of afternoon a month, to get together with others to share Reiki, and you will have a successful share.

Where to hold a Reiki share

Many people hold Reiki shares in their own home. If participants are willing, you could take turns in different people’s homes. If you are a Reiki Master Teacher, perhaps you could use the venue where you run your Reiki courses, or someone could hire a local hall, like a village hall. The venue does need to be warm enough to be comfortable on cold days, though.

Where to get the treatment tables from

If you’re a Reiki Master Teacher you probably have a few treatment tables of your own that you can use. If you are a Reiki practitioner you may well have your own table, and participants can bring their tables with them too. As you can see from the image above, one table can accommodate 6-7 people taking turns at being treated.

What else do I need?

Blankets. Some people find that they can get a bit chilly while being treated, and being tucked up in a blanket can make the experience even more special.

A music player (e.g. a CD player or an iPod with a Bluetooth or other external speaker)

A clock or a wristwatch, or mobile phone that will display the time without turning black after a few minutes, or perhaps display a countdown timer (that does not have an alarm when it gets to zero!)

A way of having dimmed lights: Reiki shares aren’t so pleasurable if you’re lying underneath a big fluorescent light, so maybe bring a couple of lamps with you and turn the main lights off.

Refreshments. At the very least, people need to have some water available, but it would be nice for people to have a chance to sit down with a hot drink when they arrive, and while you are waiting for everyone to arrive.

Working out the timing

This is fairly straightforward, so if you have three people attending and you have allocated 90 minutes for the on-the-treatment-table sharing session, each person gets 25 minutes, with a break of five minutes for people to recover and have a drink of water.

If you have eight people using two treatment tables, with 90 minutes allocated to the treatments, there will be four people on each table. Assume four breaks of 5 minutes each, so our 90 minutes have reduced to 70. 70 minutes shared amongst four people is about 18 minutes for each treatment.

Keeping track of time during the session

Whenever someone is being treated, one person will always sit at the head of the treatment table, working on the head and shoulders. That person is responsible for keeping track of the time, usually by resting a wristwatch on the table so they can just glance at it occasionally.

A gentle way of letting everyone know that the session is over is, rather than saying, loudly, “right, time to stop now!”, is to do this: breathe in deeply and then exhale loudly, while taking your hands off the recipient, rubbing your hands together as you move back away from the table. This combination of moving and making the ‘hand-rubbing’ sound, and breathing out loudly, is usually enough to alert the other participants that the session is over, and you have achieved that in a gentle and unobtrusive way.

 

More to come in Part II

That’s enough for now, I think, but in “How to Run a Reiki Share (Part II)” I talk about: where to stand around the treatment table with different numbers of participants, what hand positions to use, how to finish the treatments, using intuitively-guided hand positions at shares, giving and receiving attunements and empowerments, and what other things people get up to at Reiki shares!

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