Reiki courses with Sue Norman in Woking, Surrey
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Hello, my name’s Sue and I'm the person who runs the Reiki Evolution courses on Taggart’s behalf in Surrey. I’ve been doing this since November 2005, prior to which I’d been running my own Reiki courses for a couple of years. Personally, I have trained at all three Reiki levels in both Western Reiki and Japanese Reiki.
I host Reiki Evolution First and Second Degree courses every month and Master/Teacher courses about three times a year. I also teach the new live Deepening Course. Courses take place in my cosy premises close to the village green in Old Woking. People often comment on how peaceful my tucked-away rooms feel and I can only think that this is because of all the Reiki that takes place there.
Learning with Reiki Evolution
What I like most about the Reiki Evolution courses is that they are completely compatible with the best of other ‘Westernised Reiki’ courses but also give you the added benefit of the opportunity to experience the fullness of Reiki as a self-development path rooted in the intentions of Reiki’s founder. When people think of Reiki, they often don’t realise, for example, that it originally included the daily practice of mindfulness and the following of the Reiki precepts; Reiki Evolution courses actively encourage the exploration of these two fundamental components of the original system, and I know personally, as well as from the feedback I’ve had from my students, what a difference these make to our ability to cope with the stressful situations that life throws at all of us sometimes.
The combination of pre-course ‘homework’ and ‘live’ course gives you the best of both worlds: you can take as long as you need to absorb the more information- or learning-based elements of Reiki (such as reading about its fascinating history or getting to grips with the Reiki symbols) at home before you come on your course. When you do so, you have the chance to practise on different people and to swap feedback, something which most people find very useful, and the small group size guarantees you individual attention.
You also have access to a lot of post-course support. I love hearing from past students and make myself available indefinitely by telephone or e-mail. You can also contact Taggart if you need to, and you will receive an invitation to join the Reiki Evolution online discussion group(s) for further backup. In addition, I host a free Reiki share (a sort of post-course support group) for my students once a month.
Reiki shares
I started organising monthly Reiki shares as soon as I began teaching in autumn 2003 (around the time I came across Reiki Evolution). Part of my motivation came from my disappointment at not being able to find a regular, established local share when I first learnt Reiki myself. One I found met only about once a year and the organisers of another I attended a couple of times required the payment of an annual fee, supposedly for regular newsletters (which never actually materialised), in addition to a per-share contribution.
As a teacher, I was determined to offer my own students easy access to a regular post-course support group. So, the shares I host are entirely free of charge. We meet once a month, sometimes on weekday evenings and sometimes on weekend afternoons – varying it in this way suits the regulars, many of whom have been coming along for a few years now; one or two even go back as far as the first Reiki course I ever took, in 2003.
The shares provide a sense of continuity, contact with like-minded local people and a ‘safe space’ in which to practise and develop what you’ve learnt. I think it’s also beneficial to balance our giving of Reiki with our passive receiving of it. And being treated by up to 6 people at once is an amazing experience!
My teaching style
I’m organised, calm and patient, and I care about creating a friendly, enjoyable environment in which everyone feels at ease, isn’t put on the spot (I hate this myself!) but is ‘seen’ and ‘heard’ - and preferably has some laughs along the way. Within the carefully thought-out structure that the courses follow, we will take as much time as necessary to make sure that you feel happy with the practical application of whatever we happen to be working on.
I’m pretty down-to-earth about Reiki. Yes, we will probably end up talking about chakras at some point but Reiki works at subtle and gross levels so I also always talk about Reiki in the context of the physical body (which we can all relate to) and refer to some of the scientific work that is now being done on it. My past students have included medical doctors, physiotherapists, clinical psychologists and nurses.
My background
I first learned Reiki in 1999. With a professional background as a medical translator, teaching yoga part-time and with a growing interest in complementary medicine, I had found myself on a modular holistic therapy course. The tutor happened also to be a Reiki teacher, several of her Reiki students had joined the course, references to Reiki kept cropping up … and Yours Truly became more and more intrigued! My curiosity eventually got the better of me and I decided to learn Reiki myself later that year. I turned up for First Degree with very little idea of what Reiki actually was and consequently with not much by way of expectations but that first Reiki attunement turned out to be one of those ‘Wow!’ experiences that you remember for the rest of your life: within a matter of minutes, I had gone from having ‘normal’ hands to hands with heat pouring out of them! So, although I didn’t know what had happened in the attunement, something most definitely had. This was my first experience of Reiki as something tangible – something I could actually feel, not something I had to take merely on trust or faith. Needless to say, I fell in love with it there and then, and the sense of awe I felt that day has never left me.
I went on to do Second Degree that same year and my Reiki Master’s in 2001, all with the same teacher in what Taggart refers to as ‘Western’ Reiki (albeit via an Indian lineage in my case). I started teaching in autumn 2003 after being invited to do so out of the blue by my local adult education centre (it’s a long story…).
It was at this point that I discovered that new information about how Reiki had originally been practised and taught had come to light since I had first trained in it. This was a turning point in my Reiki life as I had for some time had a nagging feeling that Reiki as we knew it then was almost too easy: all you needed to do was to go on a weekend course or three and to follow a standard set of hand positions when treating yourself or someone else. In a way, the beauty of Reiki is that it really is that simple for anyone to learn and use. But, given Reiki’s Japanese origins, it made so much more sense to me to discover that it had originally been primarily a spiritual path, a self-development path, underpinned by the practice of mindfulness and by precepts. This also really appealed to me!
I knew there and then that I wanted to learn this approach to Reiki. Taggart was one of the few people passing on the information at the time and I decided to trust my growing instinct that he would be the right person for me to retrain with. So I redid all three Reiki levels between 2003 and 2004, doing First and Second Degree as home-study ‘conversion’ courses for existing Reiki Masters and the Master/Teacher Degree as a ‘live’ course with Taggart personally.
By now, I was teaching my own small-group monthly Reiki courses from my premises in Woking, giving my students my own Reiki manuals as well as the Reiki Evolution audio CDs. It was my pleasure, and a privilege, in the summer of 2005, to accept Taggart’s invitation to join his team of teachers.
In addition to practising and teaching Reiki, I am a long-time yoga practitioner and yoga teacher, and a massage practitioner now specialising in the ancient wisdom of Maya massage.
What I get from Reiki
I fell in love with Reiki at that first attunement back in 1999 and still consider it one of the greatest gifts in my life. What I got from it initially was a profound sense of spiritual reassurance, the comfort of an ever-present source of support from which to draw. It’s so calming and soothing and just seems to know when it’s needed. I love it when my Reiki switches on automatically when I’m simply sitting at my PC or in front of the TV! In 2006, I had a car accident and found the mindfulness teachings of Reiki invaluable alongside my self-treatments in coping with the intrusive flashbacks. I was also on the receiving end of a great deal of distant Reiki for the first time ever at this time, and, while acknowledging that this is difficult to explain in anything approaching rational terms, I can only say that it was very much a tangible experience: I had a very real sensation of being blanketed with warmth and almost ‘unwound’.
Reiki only ever works for good, and has the potential to do wonderful things for you and those around you, so I hope you feel inspired to make it part of your life or to deepen your experience of it if you are not new to it.
Warmly,
Sue Norman
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