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Attunements, empowerments & contact lenses!

October 10, 2011attunements, contraindications, reiju empowerments, reiki energyattunements, reiju, reiju empowerments, reiki, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

In this article I would like to talk a bit about attunements and empowerments used in Reiki, explaining the similarities and differences between these rituals. I was prompted to write this article after reading a message posted to an Internet discussion group a while ago, on the subject of Reiju empowerments. The message contained such a lot of misinformation and distortions that one could have concluded that it was posted mischievously, or maliciously, for ‘political’ reasons. Just the other day I smiled broadly because I came across an item on a web page which was trying to argue that the empowerments used by Mikao Usui were ineffective in connecting people to Reiki! Very strange. In any case, hopefully I can clear up some confusion or misunderstandings that people might have about attunements and empowerments, and this article should be of interest to people at all Reiki levels.

As for the contact lenses, you can find out about them towards the end of this article!

Introduction

No matter what sort of Reiki course you choose to follow, wherever you are in the world, you are likely to go through a ritual or a series of rituals which can be seen as a way of ‘connecting’ you to Reiki, a way of hooking you up to something that you were previously not connected to. That is a common way that such rituals are viewed: a way of ‘attuning’ you to something that you were not attuned to before, a way of plugging you into a new source of energy that was not available to you before.

But perhaps it is more useful to say that an empowerment, or an attunement, is a ‘ritual permission’, a permission to recognise something that is within, something that has always been there. The effect of the connection ritual is to allow you to channel energy for your own benefit, and for other people’s benefit, in a way that was not possible for you before you went through the ritual with your Reiki teacher.

Most people in the world of Reiki have been ‘connected’ using an “attunement” ritual, a version of the ritual that Mrs Takata was using, and while increasing numbers are now being connected using an “empowerment”, for the foreseeable future those attuned will always outnumber those empowered: most Reiki teachers attune, only a minority empower.

What are “attunements”

Until approximately 1999, everyone within the world of Reiki will have been ‘attuned’ using some sort of variation of the connection ritual that Hawayo Takata taught to the Masters that she initiated in the 1970s. Since the ‘70s Reiki has spread throughout the world and the attunement rituals used have evolved and changed as they have been passed from one teacher to another down the line. Some attunements are now quite complicated affairs, with many, many stages, while others are fairly simple, though there are some common themes that seem to run through most methods, for example the placing of the Reiki symbols into different parts of the student’s body (head and hands for example), tapping, blowing, affirming, visualising.

So there is not one standard attunement ritual used in the world of Reiki: there are endless variations, some quite contradictory to each other; if one method works in terms of the ‘theory’ behind it then a very different method does not make ‘sense’ and simply cannot work, and yet all methods do seem to work perfectly well. Some people insist that there have to be four attunements for Reiki First Degree, which is a big historical misunderstanding that I will not go into now, while others use three, or two, or even one attunement on their courses. All these approaches work.

It should be stated that Mikao Usui did not give people attunements, he did not attune anyone to any symbols, and he did not teach attunements. Attunements were not part of the system that Usui taught: he used empowerments instead. Usui taught empowerments to his Master students, and this was not done early on in their Master training – passing on the Reiki ability to others was only taught towards the end of the Master student’s formal training with Usui Sensei.

Now, the Imperial Officers who trained with Usui had not trained with him for long enough to have reached the level where they would have been taught to empower others, so where did the attunements used on most Reiki courses come from? Interestingly, it seems that after Usui’s untimely death the Imperial Officers put together a ritual that replicated the feelings or the experiences that they had when being empowered by Usui. Dr Hayashi passed on such a ritual to Mrs Takata, and then variations of this ritual spread throughout the world.

So attunements started their life as a constructed ritual put together by the Imperial Officers, and this ritual has now evolved, changed, altered over time as it has been passed from teacher to teacher in the West. These various attunement methods have been used to attune most of the Reiki people in the world.

So attunements work, of course. They ‘connect’ the student to Reiki. But that is not the end of the story: if we are going to get the most out of our Reiki then we are going to have to commit ourselves to working with the energy regularly, on ourselves, on other people, to develop our ability as a channel, to develop our sensitivity to the energy and to develop our intuition. An attunement gives us a baseline connection to the energy, but we can develop ourselves further, and benefit further, through our own efforts.

And in fact we can benefit from receiving further attunements, too. This is something that Reiki Master William Rand has been advocating for many years now, I believe. He does not say this because attunements are in some way ineffective, or temporary, or weak: he recommends that people get together to re-attune each other because he has found that there are definite benefits associated with having your ‘connection’ to the energy reinforced or renewed.

So one attunement is enough (or two, or three, or four, or however many attunements you had on your Reiki course, or however many attunements you believe are necessary), but there are definite benefits associated with being reattuned, and if we are serious about our Reiki then we need to also commit ourselves to working with the energy regularly. You don’t just go on a course and that’s the end of it: you need to work at your Reiki.

What are empowerments

When people talk about empowerments, they are referring to “Reiju empowerments”. You can write the word “Reiju” in two different ways using Japanese kanji, one way meaning “accepting the spirituality” and the other meaning “giving the spirituality”; spirituality in this case means ‘connection’ to the Reiki energy. In fact the word Reiju has been interpreted in several ways, for example “giving of the five blessings” and “the union of mind and ki”. The line in the Reiki precepts where it says “the secret method of inviting happiness through many blessings” might actually mean “the secret method of inviting happiness through receiving many Reiju empowerments”.

The empowerments that Mikao Usui used with his students can be referred to as “Reiju” and these were equivalent to a Tendai Buddhist blessing, a blessing that a Tendai teacher would bestow on a student with the intention that the student should receive what they need. Usui Sensei gave the blessing using intent only, but within Tendai Buddhism there is also a physical ritual that can be carried out which conveys the Reiju blessing; details of this ritual were passed to the West from Usui’s surviving students in the late 1990s and it is this ritual that we use on our “Reiki Evolution” First and Second Degree courses.

The effects of empowerments do not wear out. Empowerments ‘connect’ you to the energy; they allow you to recognise something that is already there. Just like attunements. The consensus that I have seen amongst those teachers who are using Reiju in practice, all over the world, is that not only are empowerments effective but they also confer special benefits. In my experience, students who receive Reiju seem ‘better connected’, better able to work intuitively, more sensitive to the energy in the early stages, when compared with people who have been attuned. Not everyone will agree with this, but many people who have moved from giving attunements to giving empowerments are saying the same sort of thing.

One empowerment is enough but it is nice do a few on a Reiki course, and we choose to carry out three empowerments on our First and Second Degree courses. But there are definite benefits associated with receiving Reiju repeatedly, and Usui Sensei’s students received Reiju from him again and again throughout their training at all levels. William Rand’s recommendation that Masters re-attune each other, because of the benefits associated, serves to echo this original practice. We echo Usui’s approach ourselves, by making distant empowerments available for all our students to tune into at any time on a Monday, every week, and Reiju empowerments are also given to students attending our teachers’ Reiki shares.

Receiving Reiju regularly helps to ‘reinforce’ your connection to the source. It enhances self-healing, it helps the student to develop spiritually, it enhances intuition and increases sensitivity to the flow of energy. Being reattuned will also help to achieve this, though as far as I can see it is not so common within the world of Reiki for re-attunements to be offered.

Now for the nonsense

One or two people are trying to argue that Usui Sensei’s method for connecting people to Reiki is ineffective. They are saying that Reiju is a weak and provides you with only a partial and lowly connection to the energy, that you are actually “dis-empowered”, unable to benefit from Reiki properly and unable to treat other people effectively.

These people – who will not have experienced Reiju for themselves, of course, or used Reiju in practice – are also arguing that Reiju-connected students are obliged to desperately carry out energy exercises every day to try and maintain some sort of a decent energy-channelling ability, and that they are dependent on their teacher for a regular ‘top’ up, without which their Reiki ability will dwindle and disappear. This is such a distortion of reality! By way of contrast, they also say that attunements give a far better permanent connection to the source, and the implication is that the student then does not need to carry out any energy work to develop themselves because they are perfectly connected right from the start, and no further commitment or responsibility for personal development is required.

Interestingly, in the same article, I was amused to hear that:

There is a lot of nonsense spoken about Reiki, and two more examples that were just sent to me the other day nearly had me choke on my cup of Tick Tock tea: there is a local college somewhere in the UK (I won’t name it) that tells it’s Reiki students that they should not treat people who wear contact lenses because the energy will distort the lenses, and in that same part of the country there is also a teacher who is telling their students that every time they use one of the Reiki symbols they are shortening their life by several minutes.

We have a word in England for such advice, and for the nonsense that is being written by one or two people about Reiju empowerments: “claptrap”. Claptrap should be avoided at all costs; claptrap will seriously diminish your enjoyment and experience of this wonderful system that we have been given. So the next time you hear that you shouldn’t treat people with pacemakers, or contact lenses, or green trousers for that matter, or the next time you hear that Usui’s method of connecting people to the energy doesn’t work properly, take such comments with a pinch of salt, ignore them, and move on!

The 10 Rules of Reiki

October 3, 2011intuition, meditation, mindfulness, precepts, self healingdo not anger, do not worry, gokai, hatsurei ho, reiki, reiki meditations, reiki precepts, reiki principles, reiki treatments, self treatments, simplicity, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

In this article I thought I would set down ten things that you can do – ten principles to take account of – to benefit your practice of Reiki. This is not something that has come from Japan, or from early practitioners of Reiki: it is just something that I have put together myself. I hope that this article will be of interest to people at all Reiki levels.

(1) Reiki is all about you

Although Reiki is sometimes presented in the West as a sort of complementary therapy, a hands-on treatment technique, or a form of Japanese spiritual healing, that is not what Reiki is all about. If your practice of Reiki consists mainly of treating other people then you are missing the point because Reiki is all about you! Reiki is a personal practice for your self-healing and your spiritual and self-development. You are the priority here.

In Usui’s time the treatment of others was not focused upon or emphasised, in fact treatments were a bit of a distraction from the main thrust of his teachings, which Usui Sensei referred to as a “system to achieve personal perfection”. Right from the start, the system was about personal development, not working on others.

So to gain the greatest benefits for yourself through Reiki, you need to establish a decent routine of working on yourself in whatever way that you were taught. If you were taught Western-style then do your hands-on self-treatment regularly, if you know about Japanese-style Reiki then practise your Hatsurei ho; if you know about Usui Sensei’s original system then add his self-treatment meditation to your regular Hatsurei.

I know that some people seem to have the view that working on yourself is in some way ‘selfish’, but if you cannot look after yourself properly then how can you help other people? By working on yourself regularly you make yourself a better channel and more effective at what you do in terms of treatments, so there are plus points all round for those who make themselves their Reiki priority.

(2) Base your practice on the precepts

Usui Sensei established a simple spiritual system that was rooted in his precepts, his ‘rules to live by’. Rather than being an interesting set of instructions to read on a course and put to one side, Usui’s precepts are at the very heart of his system, and it was said that as much spiritual development could come through following the precepts as would come through doing any of the energy work. If we are consider ourselves as ‘practising Reiki’ then we will follow the precepts.

So we need to think deeply about the precepts and how they affect our lives. We need to consider each precept in turn and reflect on how that precept might impinge upon and guide our thoughts and behaviour and relationships and priorities. And we need to do this regularly, using the precepts as an ongoing source of guidance, the effects of which will make a real difference to us, and the people around us, over time.

The precepts are something that you we drip-feed into our lives, something that we refer to regularly and reflect on regularly, for our own benefit and for the benefit of the people with whom we come into contact.

(3) Practise mindfulness

Although not referred to on most Reiki courses, the practise of mindfulness was as important part of Usui Sensei’s system as were the precepts, and in fact mindfulness is hidden in the precepts! Mindfulness is a form of meditation that one can perform at any time, when carrying out ordinary, mundane activities like walking somewhere or washing dishes or sipping tea, and involves becoming consciously and fully aware of your thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmentally, existing in the moment.

When you are living ‘in the moment’, fully engaged in what you are doing, fully aware of the present moment, then you are existing in a state where there is no anger and there is no worry. By not dwelling on the past or speculating about the future, by embracing fully the present moment, you are living the precepts, and mindfulness brings with it humility, honesty, compassion and forgiveness.

So mindfulness is a way of experiencing Mikao Usui’s spiritual principles.

(4) Work on yourself daily

Reiki isn’t something that you can pick up once in a while, play around with for a bit, and then drop again… not if you are looking to receive the many benefits that are available from the system, anyway. If you are looking for consistent benefits then you need a consistent practice. The precepts say “just for today”, and that is a good starting point: just do something with Reiki today. You can manage that. It doesn’t have to be hours and hour’s worth. Just do something for 10 minutes: you have ten minutes. Do something for 20 minutes. And if you don’t have ten minutes, get up 10 minutes earlier: problem solved.

Don’t worry about what you will do tomorrow: just focus on today.

When tomorrow comes, do the same. Just do something with Reiki, even for ten minutes. Don’t worry about tomorrow: just do something today.

(5) Commitment is the key

There are spectacular benefits to be enjoyed through practising Reiki, and all you need to do is to work with the energy consistently, focus on the precepts and practise mindfulness. The benefits build up cumulatively, you see, and sporadic and occasional practice isn’t enough if you want the very best out of your Reiki. You will get out of the system what you are prepared to put into it, so Reiki deserves a little of your time each day. You need to plug away at a few simple things, a few simple exercises or routines, and make them a regular part of your day, as regular a part of your routine as brushing your teeth or your hair.

And once you have established a regular habit of working on yourself with Reiki then you will find that it is difficult to stop: you will find that you really miss your hatsurei session or your self-treatment if you miss a day. That is the sort of position you are looking to get yourself into and by committing yourself to working with Reiki each day, even if it is a little inconvenient, you will reach that point.

(6) Don’t try too hard

While we do need to commit ourselves and establish a decent routine of working on ourselves in order to obtain the many benefits that are available to us through Reiki, we should at the same time make sure that we do not try too hard, work for too long, or take our practice too seriously. Reiki is best enjoyed in a gentle, laid-back and light-hearted fashion rather than in a fists-clenched, furrowed-brow, tense, ‘ready for a lot of hard work’ sort of way. We do not force Reiki and we do not force a fierce practice on ourselves.

Reiki is rather like a flowing stream of water, and we are a rough rock sitting in that stream. The rock will become smooth, of course, but this will be achieved gently, through having the water flow consistently, and this will be done in its own time.

We might read about some of the experiences that other Reiki people might have when working on themselves, or receiving attunements/empowerments, or treating others (seeing colours, feeling particular things) and we may not notice all these things ourselves; we may notice very little. We may then think that if only we tried a bit harder then we would notice these things and then we would then be ‘doing it properly’.

But trying hard and trying to force things is the best way there is to put a great big block on your progress. You will progress fastest when you give up trying and just be. Stand aside (metaphorically), do the exercises, treat people, and don’t think or worry about what you do or do not experience. Be a bystander, be neutral and empty, have no expectations. That is the best approach, the approach that will lead you to progress at the right speed for you.

(7) You don’t need to be perfect

Along with the need to be relaxed and laid-back and light-hearted about your practice, you should also make sure that you are not beating yourself up for not being perfect! You do not have to be perfect in order to obtain benefits for yourself through Reiki, or to treat other people successfully. No-one else is perfect, so you don’t have to be either.

So perhaps your mind wanders when you do a treatment or work on yourself. So what? This happens to everybody else. Don’t worry about it (there is something in the precepts about worrying). It you make a big thing about it and try through ‘force of will’ to have an empty mind, you have just made things worse: now you have two lots of thoughts… the first thoughts and then all the new thoughts about getting rid of the first lot of thoughts! Don’t worry. Pay the thoughts no attention. Let them go. Bring your attention gently back to what you were doing. Feel the energy flowing through you; imagine yourself merging with the person on the treatment table. Over time your mind will settle, and you’ll spend more of your time in a nice empty meditative state, but thoughts may well intrude again, and some days will probably be better than others. That’s ok. You’re human. It will sort itself out with time.

(8) Don’t keep trying to puzzle out ‘why’

To get the best out of your Reiki I recommend that you don’t spend too much time trying to puzzle out why you are – or are not – experiencing a particular thing. Don’t keep trying to work out what a particular colour that you or the recipient saw during a treatment means, or ponder the significance of a colour that you saw when self-treating. Don’t keep wondering what a particular sensation in your hand means or why you felt a lot of energy flowing into a particular area of someone’s body, or why you didn’t feel any energy flowing into a particular place. It doesn’t matter.

Your head can really mess up your experience of Reiki if you keep on frantically thinking about, analysing and questioning things. Don’t think! Just be. Empty your mind, merge with the energy, if you are treating someone then merge with the recipient, and let it happen. Follow the flow of energy when you are treating, yes, and allow your hands to stay for longer in areas where more energy is coming through, but don’t start frantically trying to puzzle out what is going on: Reiki works on lots of levels and you won’t know what’s happening so you may as well give up thinking about it and let go: enjoy the process, enjoy your treatments and give up the mental effort! It makes it so much easier that way!

(9) Trust your intuition

Along with not questioning everything that you feel or don’t feel, you should also not keep on doubting the things that you are feeling and noticing. If you feel something, you feel it: you are not making it up. You cannot make yourself feel something.

So if you notice that energy is flowing into you more strongly in a particular area when you are self-treating, accept that and go with it, self-treating for longer there than in other positions. The same applies when treating someone else: if you feel that there is a ‘hot spot’ or ‘fizzy area’ then accept the sensations and treat for longer there. You are not making it up.

Neither are you making it up if you feel strangely drawn to a particular area of the body. You are intuitive and you can work intuitively straight away. All you need to do is to stop second-guessing and doubting yourself, be still, and simply accept what comes to you. It doesn’t need to make sense. Don’t try and puzzle it out: just accept it and treat in the way that feels appropriate.

(10) Ignore silly rules and restrictions

While we are making sure that we are not cluttering our practice with endless thoughts, questions and doubts, we should also thrown out as unnecessary the various rules, regulations and restrictions that we may have been taught. Reiki does not need to be controlled, blunted and restricted by man-made rules that have no basis. Reiki is safe and Reiki is simple, and simple approaches are usually the most effective.

So we do not have to slavishly follow a prescribed set of hand positions when treating ourselves or other people and we do not need to say a set form of words for our Reiki to work. We do not need to follow ritualised sets of hand and body movements in a particular sequence to be able to treat someone and we do not need to refrain from treating people with various medical conditions. Reiki is safe and Reiki is adaptable. It allows many different ways of working that are all valid. There is no ‘one’ way that Reiki has to be used, and we should ignore admonitions that we should ‘always’, or ‘never’, do a particular thing.

So, to get the most out of your Reiki, I recommend that you make a commitment to yourself to work on yourself each day as your top priority, but not beating yourself up if you miss the occasional day. Use Hatsurei ho and self-treat, focus on the precepts and drip-feed mindfulness into more and more of your daily activities. Don’t try too hard though: be light-hearted and forgiving towards yourself because you don’t have to be perfect. Try not to clutter your mind with lots of thoughts and doubts and questions: just be neutral, have no expectations, be empty and content. And make sure you keep it simple.

What if I get it wrong?

September 26, 2011attunements, reiki sensations, reiki treatmentsattunements, hand positions, reiki, reiki treatments, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

When we go on a Reiki course, whether at First Degree, Second Degree or Master Teacher level, we are given instructions telling us how to carry out various tasks, and if we are conscientious then we will try our best to follow those instructions to make sure that we are ‘doing it properly’. So whether we are treating ourselves, giving someone else a Reiki treatment, or performing an attunement on a student, we hope to achieve the desired results by doing it right, by following the instructions to the letter, and if it appears to us that the desired results have not been achieved then we tend to surmise that we have not followed the instructions properly, that we have forgotten something vital and done it wrong, and we may believe that the lack of an expected result is our fault.

If only we could have done things properly then things would have been different.

But there are two problems with this. Firstly, in reality, not following all the instructions will have very little effect on the efficacy of our treatment or attunement and, secondly, a lack of an expected response or result does not mean that we have done it wrong, or that something has not worked properly.

Treatments that ‘go wrong’

Let’s think about Reiki treatments for a while. We have been given a set procedure to follow by our teacher and perhaps we have a certain ritual to carry out before we commence the hands-on treatment. Perhaps we have been given a standard set of hand positions to follow or a set of things that we are ‘supposed’ to do at the end of a treatment, to bring things to a close. We carry out the treatment and then the recipient says that they didn’t feel very much, or they didn’t feel anything at all, or they felt unsettled and not relaxed, and we think back and realise that we missed one of the ‘introductory’ stages, or we got the words wrong, or we forgot to say something, or we used the ‘wrong’ sequence of hand positions, or we missed out a hand position or two, or neglected to carry out one of the closing stages of the treatment.

Because the treatment ‘didn’t work’ (apparently) we then assume that this is because we got the treatment wrong, we did the wrong thing, we forgot a vital stage, and it’s all our fault.

But we should remind ourselves that not everyone in the world of Reiki is taught to carry out treatments in exactly the same way. Other people may have stages to go through and phrases to say that are very different from how you were taught; they may not have even heard of half the things that you were taught to do, and yet their treatments work perfectly well. Should we assume that they are not doing things properly because they are not doing it the same way as you? Or should we assume that your treatment is inadequate because you are missing out vital stages that other people were taught to go through? Of course not: there are many different ways of approaching giving Reiki treatments, different traditions, different styles, different flavours, some simple, some complex, and they all achieve the desired results.

So we should realise that the ‘vital’ stages that we were taught to go through are perhaps not quite so vital as we first thought. Reiki accommodates many different ways of working and no phrase or hand movement or ritual is absolutely necessary. Reiki is above all that fiddly detail. It doesn’t matter.

What matters when you treat someone is that you focus your attention on the person you are working on, that you feel yourself merging with the energy and the person in front of you, that you allow yourself to disappear into the energy, neutral, empty, no expectations, and just let it happen. Anything else beyond that is just frippery, icing on a cake that was fine when it was plain. We don’t need to gild the lily, we don’t need to adorn unnecessarily something that was already beautiful, or to make superfluous additions to what is already complete.

So follow the instructions that you were given, by all means, but don’t fret if you don’t follow the sequence exactly, and please allow yourself the freedom to tailor your routine according to what feels right for you; find your own style and comfortable way of working rather than slavishly following a set of instructions passed on to you by another person. Go with what feels right for you on that occasion; be guided by intuition.

And why should we assume that the treatment did not work, that the session did not give the recipient what they needed, just because they felt very little, or felt nothing happening, or felt unrelaxed during the treatment? While many people have a wonderful time while being treated, seeing coloured lights, feeling tingling sensations or intense heat from the practitioner’s hands, experiencing deep relaxation and peace, melting into the treatment table, not everyone experiences that. Not everyone is the same. Not all recipients have a great time when they receive Reiki. Some people feel nothing, some feel very little, and some are quite unsettled by the whole experience. But no matter what they noticed happening, they received what they needed, and they experienced whatever sensations they needed to experience.

It’s nice to have positive feedback at the end of a treatment session, and people saying how relaxed they were and how hot our hands were etc. helps to boost our confidence, but such things are not compulsory and not everyone will say these things. We didn’t mess up their treatment because it would be very difficult to mess up a Reiki treatment: Reiki is foolproof!

Attunements that go wrong

The same comments apply to the carrying out of attunements. There are very many different attunement styles being used in the world, some quite simple, some quite complicated, and there will be stages and ritual movements or phrases/affirmations being used by some teachers that are not being used all by other teachers. One teacher may be going through – to them – a vital stage that others do not replicate, while others will be doing ‘necessary’ practices that we do not follow. And yet all these attunement styles work.

So while we should always try and do our best, and follow the attunement instructions that we were given, we should not worry terribly if we realise that we have missed out a particular stage or forgot to say a particular phrase, or failed to draw a symbol perfectly. What is important when attuning someone is your underlying intent; the details of the ritual are there to create a ritual ‘space’ in which the attunement can occur, but there are no really vital stages that have to be carried out no matter what, so we should not worry.

And we should remember that the reaction of a student to an attunement will vary greatly. If a student feels very little or nothing we should not assume that the attunement has not ‘taken’; this would not be possible. Equally, we should not assume that a student who experienced ‘bells and whistles’ has been far more effectively attuned. Such sensations and experiences are nice for the recipient but do not really indicate anything significant. Attunements work, even with some mistakes, and sometimes the recipient has an amazing experience; sometimes not. It doesn’t matter what they feel or don’t feel.

Finally

So we should feel confident that Reiki is giving the recipient what they need, whether they are receiving a treatment or an attunement, we should try our best and be conscientious but we should not worry too much if we don’t follow all the instructions. We should allow ourselves to find our own style, own comfortable way of working, which may be a little different from other people’s but which is just as valid, and we should not assume that a lack of ‘bells and whistles’ on the part of the recipient means that something hasn’t happened. There is no one ‘correct’ way to do things, there is no correct response to treatments or attunements, and Reiki accommodates many different styles and approaches. So we can relax!

How to send Distant Healing (Part 3)

July 20, 2011distant healingdistant healing, reiki, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

Reiki distant healing with a bit more ritual attached to it

Distant healing is a very important part of Reiki practice, of course, and is something that is not unique to Reiki. Distant healing (DH for short) is carried out in different Reiki lineages in different ways and there is no one ‘right’ way to perform this process.

How to do distance healing with Reiki

The important thing when carrying out DH is your underlying intent, and the details of the ritual that you use are unimportant. What I would like to share with you today is a more complex version of DH.

Some people like more of an ‘event’ when they send distant healing, with the details of the ritual helping people to maintain their focus. The details aren’t really so important, but if you like your rituals more ‘High Church’ than ‘Low Church’ then perhaps you’ll like this version.

Remember that the bare bones of distant healing are to know where you are sending the energy – to set a definite intent – and to allow the energy to flow, and anything beyond that is personal preference.

Cup your hands together

Below is a method based on one used by my first Reiki teacher, Diane Whittle.

Basically you visualise the recipient and shrink them down so that they fit between your hands. Visualise the distant healing symbol over your hand to make a connection and let the energy flow; you can add CKR or SHK if you wish, as feels necessary.

I like to clear a space on my desk, light a candle and maybe some incense and just sit quietly for a while watching the candle flame and the plume of smoke from the incense stick. It helps me to relax and quieten my mind. It sets the scene for the ritual to follow.

This is what I do next:

1. Settle yourself down and blank your mind for a few moments.
2. Say to yourself that this is to be a distant healing for the highest healing good of [say recipient’s name].
3. Visualise the person (if you know them) and imagine them as they might be in their usual surroundings, home etc. in order to make a connection with them.
4. Imagine the person being shrunk down so that they fit in the palm of your non-dominant hand.
5. Draw HonShaZeShoNen over the palm of your non-dominant hand, visualising the symbol in violet and saying its name three times.
6. Close your other hand over the top so that the person is ‘cupped’ between your hands.
7. Say to yourself’ distant healing… connect’ and imagine a tube of energy flowing from your cupped hands to the person you are treating, surrounding and engulfing their entire body with vibrant healing energy.
8. Visualise ChoKuRei or SeiHeKi as required, saying the symbol name three times, and imagine energy derived from that symbol flowing to the person.
9. Alternatively, just let the energy flow as it wants.
10. Perhaps imagine yourself carrying out a brief treatment on the person
11. Perhaps be creative: flood their body with brilliant white light, flushing away any negativity or disease; imagine some psychic surgery, reaching in and removing diseased parts.
12. You do not have to actively visualise; you can just let the Reiki flow.
13. Continue this for about 10-15 minutes
14. Finish by saying to yourself ‘I seal this treatment with light and love and universal wisdom’. Intend that the healing effect is sealed in and that the benefits will be long-lasting.
15. Say to yourself ‘distant healing… disconnect’, visualising the energy tube disconnecting and disappearing.
16. Ritually disconnect as you would normally, rubbing or shaking your hands, blowing through them etc.

In this example we dedicated the distant healing to the recipient’s highest good, which means that we were neutral in the process, not directing the energy to achieve a particular result.

We approach distant healing in the same way that we approach treating another person: we have no expectations, we stand aside and we allow the energy to do whatever is appropriate for that person. The energy is drawn through us according to the recipient’s need without any interference from us; we have no thought or desire about the outcome

Over to you

If this method is new to you, why not try it and see how you get on, and let us know how you got on by posting a message below.

Need some help with your distant healing?

If you’d like to learn how to do distance healing with Reiki, or if you need some help with your distant healing, why not download my collection of Reiki distant healing meditations on MP3. They are suitable for all Reiki levels.

The meditations encompass the most simple approach ever… and more ritualised ones. Cup your hands, use some sort of a prop like a pillow or teddy bear, use a Distant Healing box or book and send to your future or past. All these meditations are right there for you to use straight away.

Just close your eyes and I’ll talk you through everything you need to do. Experiment with the MP3s and find out what works best for you.

Price: £13.49. Click to order via PayPal:

Author: Taggart King
Picture Credit: Irina Patrascu Gheorghita

Sending distant healing – do I need permission?

July 6, 2011contraindications, distant healingdistant healing, reiki, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

Unethical to send distant healing?

Some people are of the opinion that it is totally unethical to send distant Reiki to a person if they have not given their permission first.

They see it as a gross intrusion, interference, a violation of that person’s personal space, a violation of their energy field. I do not agree with this point of view and I see no problem in sending Reiki to whoever you want.

Here are my reasons…

Reiki is a beautiful healing energy that will not cause anyone any harm, and any Reiki sent is dedicated to the ‘highest good’ of the recipient, so that it is line with their karma or destiny. This means that you are not manipulating them or imposing your preferred result on the situation: if the person really does not want to be healed, or it is not appropriate for them to benefit, then the Reiki will not work.

Permission to pray?

You do not obtain someone’s permission if you are going to pray for them, and I see sending distant healing rather like a concentrated form of prayer, where you are asking for Divine intervention in someone’s life, in whatever way is appropriate for them.

Nobody rings up their friends to obtain their permission to pray for them. When there is a natural disaster somewhere in the world and people are praying for victims, they don’t withold the prayer until they have obtained the written permission of all the faceless intended recipients.

If someone was lying in the road, unconscious after a road accident, would you refrain from sending Reiki to them just because they couldn’t sit up and give you consent in writing? No, of course not: you’d send Reiki to their highest good and hope that it made a positive difference to them.

Scare stories about people being made to wake up when under an anaesthetic when receiving distant Reiki are just that – scare stories – like so many of the restrictions placed on people’s Reiki practices because of myth and unfounded rumour. And if you are really worried that this might happen, then simply intend that the energy be received by the person at whatever moment is appropriate for them in the next 24 hours.

We are neutral in the process

We should remind ourselves that when we send distant Reiki we are neutral in the process, we have no expectations and we do not push for a particular outcome.

We stand aside and what the energy does, if anything, is out of our hands. We offer the energy to the recipient, we do not force it on them, we do not make the energy do anything for the recipient; it is just there for them to use as they wish, or not.

So permission is irrelevant.

Need some help with your distant healing?

If you’d like some help with your distant healing, why not download my collection of Reiki distant healing meditations on MP3. They are suitable for all Reiki levels.

Just close your eyes and I’ll talk you through everything you need to do. Experiment with the MP3s and find out what works best for you.

Price: £13.49. Click to order via PayPal:

Author: Taggart King
Picture Credit: Denise Cross Photography

Become a super power Reiki Master in just 48 hours? What a joke!

June 25, 2011attunements, reiki masteryattunements, reiki, reiki journey, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

Roll up, roll up

Roll up, roll up, and get your Reiki Mastership here. No effort involved. Just visit this page, look at this, download this and pay your money. All done online.

You are now a super-power Reiki Master with amazing abilities, more than a mere mortal. You have your Reiki Master cape, your Reiki Master all-seeing eye, super-power intuition and phenomenal super power energy.

Really?

Is that what we think Reiki Mastery is all about? Is it a title that you earn by flipping a switch, paying by PayPal, going on a course for a couple of days and there you have it – you’re a MASTER.

Nothing more to do. Continue reading Become a super power Reiki Master in just 48 hours? What a joke! →

HSZSN but not as you’ve seen it before!

June 22, 2011distant healing, reiki symboldistant healing, reiki, reiki kanji, reiki symbol, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

HSZSN is the acronym used to refer to the ‘distant healing symbol’, familiar in its various guises to anyone who has attended a Second Degree Reiki course.

It’s the trickiest of the symbols to get to grips with and usually has 20+ strokes or hand movements to draw it out.

HSZSN actually consists of five separate Japanese kanji which have all been overlapped and merged to produce one ‘composite’ kanji, which we see on courses.

In this blog I have posted an image of what these five separate kanji look like. The calligraphy was kindly brushed for me by the fantastically talented Japanese Calligraphy Shihan Eri Takase, who does all our Japanese writing for us, on our Reiki certificate templates, Reiki precepts prints, Reiki CDs and Reiki manuals.

Chinese whispers

When people attended Reiki courses in the past, many students and Masters weren’t provided with hard copies of the Reiki symbols and so had to reproduce them from memory. That perhaps wasn’t so bad for the simpler symbols like CKR and SHK, but for HSZSN this led to a process of “Chinese whispers”, where the drawings altered slightly each time they were taught.

So now, quite understandably, there are various versions of the symbols in existence, some closer to and some really quite different from the original Japanese source.

Eri’s calligraphy takes us back to the originals, though. It’s great to see the original individual characters that the symbol was based on.

Merging the separate symbols

If you look at the image, you can see that the bottom part of the first kanji looks rather like the top part of the second kanji, so you could move the upper kanji downwards so that the ‘cross’ overlaps, producing one composite figure.

Similarly the bottom section of the second kanji looks rather like the top section of the third kanji, so they could be merged and overlapped. And so on down the line.

And that’s how the composite HSZSN was formed!

Over to you

Have a look at the distant healing symbol that you were given.

See if you can work out what has changed, and what has stayed the same, compared to the original characters.

Post a message below to let me know what you discovered.

What do you think of the ‘expanded’ HSZSN?

Want to find out more about Distant Healing?

You can read more about HSZSN and distant healing methods in the 110-page Reiki Evolution Second Degree manual.

This isn’t just available to Reiki Evolution students: anyone can work with our manuals.

You can order a professionally-printed copy, or you can download your manual right now.

Here are the links that you need:

Reiki Second Degree manual

Reiki Second Degree eBook

Author: Taggart King

Do attunements actually work?

June 11, 2011attunements, reiju empowerments, reiki energyattunements, reiju, reiju empowerments, reiki, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

A bit of a cheeky question!

I thought this title might attract some attention!

There are some silly people in the world of Reiki who are squitting about Reiju empowerments and suggesting that they don’t do anything, so I thought I would turn the tables slightly by posing the question, “what do attunements do, anyway?”

The received wisdom that comes through the general Western approach to Reiki is that attunements “attune” you, in that they connect you to an energy source that you weren’t connected to before, opening you up to something that wasn’t part of your world before the rituals took place.

But is that really what it’s all about?

I don’t believe so.

Connected to something new and different?

I’m going to put to one side for the moment that fact that Usui Sensei didn’t use or teach attunements – he never attuned anyone to anything – and let’s think about this idea that an attunement connects you to something different, something new, a new energy source.

How can that be?

How can there be something so fundamental that we aren’t already part of?

If we think about the Buddhist origins of Reiki, one of the principles of Buddhism is that reality is illusion: the idea of us being separate individuals, distinct from other people, is illusion; the true reality is that of oneness… we are not separate. Mikao Usui was a Buddhist. Mainly, he taught people who were Buddhists or followers of Shinto.

Would he have established an energetic system, when his whole worldview was based on the idea of oneness, that was based on the idea of connecting you to something different, separate and distinct from you, when this went against everything he believed in?

I don’t think so.

So, for me, attunements don’t hook you up to a new energy source that you didn’t have access to before. What they do is to ‘flag up’ to you something that has always been there as a part of you, ready to use. Attunements are a way of helping you to notice something that has always been there but which has been out of your awareness and thus not easily accessible to you.

I hope a couple of metaphors will help here…

“The high-pitched sound”

Imagine that you walk into your friend’s lounge and they say to you, “can you hear that high-pitched noise?”. You listen and you can’t hear anything. They say, “no, listen, it’s there”.

You try again and, by altering the way that you are focusing your attention, perhaps by tilting your head, by being aware of sounds that aren’t of the usual frequencies, you become able to hear the sound that was there all the time, but to begin with you were unable to hear it.

Your friend ‘made the introductions’ between your awareness and something that you did not have access to before.

A NLP metaphor

One of the principles of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is that in order for us to be able to function, our subconscious minds are obliged to take the millions of bits of information that come in through our senses every second, and ditch most of them by using ‘filters’ that distort, delete and generalise what is coming through to us.

Without this we’d never move; we don’t have the processing power to deal with all the inputs that come to us.

One of the ways that we filter thing is based on what we have been focusing our attention on. Many people will have noticed that if they are thinking of buying a particular brand of car, they suddenly start to notice that car everywhere they go. Examples of that car have always been around with that sort of frequency but they were previously unimportant to us and so ‘deleted’ from our conscious awareness.

A new ‘filter’ has been set up that says, “notice this type of car” and our unconscious mind brings into our awareness something that has always been there but which is now within our awareness.

Attunements do this too, setting up a new ‘filter’ that brings to our attention something that has always been there, an integral part of you, but hidden behind a veil.

Click your fingers to attract someone’s attention

So rather like someone who shouts to you, “Hey”, clicks their fingers a few times, saying, “look at this, here, look, notice this, feel this”, attunements help to bring into our awareness something that has always been there.

And once you are able to notice those high-pitched sounds, for example, you can always ‘tune into’ them. As with Reiki, once you’ve been given the knack of focusing on and becoming aware of what is there, you can always do it.

Do attunements actually work?

Well the answer is both yes and no.

They don’t connect you to something new and different and separate from you, because there is no such thing, though they do allow you access to ‘the energy’ which has always been there with you.

And that’s all you need.

Did you like this blog?

If so, you are going to love this book…

“Spot on! I’ve been teaching reiki for many years and I must say I wish this book had landed back then!

I’ve put together courses and really would have loved a book like this to refer back to, it’s concise, clear, laid out really well and is informative and a mini support system to boot.

If you’re entering the Reiki world with an aim to become Master/Teacher then having this book in your armoury will benefit you.”
S J Price

Teaching Reiki

A Comprehensive Guide to Running Great Courses

This is the book I really wish had been available when I started running Reiki courses in 1997. And it would have helped me greatly in my journey as a Reiki teacher thereafter.

You’ll find a wealth of advice about how to set up and run your Reiki courses: read articles about planning and structuring your courses; find out how to explain things to students in a way that honours their learning preferences and personality types; discover how to create top quality course materials and how to support your students long-term.

We look at the differences between ‘Western’ and Original Japanese Reiki and I explain how I created “Reiki Evolution” courses, which pass on the essence of Reiki’s original form. Read this book and you’ll know how to teach “Reiki Evolution” style: what to say, what to teach, and even how to teach Reiki in a ten-week ‘Evening Class’ format.

This book will be of interest to anyone who is about to start teaching Reiki, or to established Reiki teachers who are interested in enhancing the quality of their courses.

Read the contents list before you order, if you like, by clicking on this link: Table of contents

Book: 370 pages.

Price: £15.99 + p&p

Or Download a PDF version now for only £12.49

Author: Taggart King

Can you do distant healing at Reiki First Degree?

June 8, 2011distant healingdistant healing, reiki, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

An unnecessary piece of dogma

It is taught commonly on Reiki courses that you aren’t able to do distant healing at First Degree and that you can only send distant healing once you’ve been ‘attuned’ to the distant healing symbol.

I don’t agree with that and think it’s unnecessarily dogmatic and limiting… and makes no sense!

Firstly, distant healing isn’t something that is unique to Reiki: many spiritual healers practise this. So we have a group of people who haven’t been attuned to Reiki at all, they haven’t been ‘attuned’ to anything in a Reiki sense, and they can send distant healing.

So are we saying that people who haven’t been attuned to Reiki are able to send distant healing, but once you’re attuned to First Degree then this ability somehow stops, only to start again when you’ve been on a Second Degree course?

That makes no sense!

And let’s think about the Buddhist origins of Reiki: one of the principles of Buddhism is that reality is illusion, the idea of us being separate individuals, distinct from other people, is illusion, and that the true reality is that of oneness.

Mikao Usui was a Buddhist.

Mainly, he taught people who were Buddhists or followers of Shinto.

Would he have established an energetic system, when his whole worldview was based on the idea of oneness, that suddenly went against this grain and introduced the idea that people at First Degree were in some way exempt from this basic Buddhist principle of oneness?

I don’t think so.

Distant Healing at First Degree

So we teach the basics of distant healing on our First Degree course, and why wouldn’t we, since it’s an essential part of the energy system that we use. We teach a simple approach, but it doesn’t need to be complicated.

We don’t teach the ‘distant healing symbol’ (referred to as ‘HSZSN’) on First Degree and we don’t need to because you don’t need to use that symbol, or be ‘attuned’ to it, in order to send distant healing effectively.

When we do teach the distant healing symbol on Second Degree, certainly it does provide a useful focus, though to be honest I prefer to use the corresponding kotodama instead since I believe that this mantra helps to make connections on a whole new level, whether working on someone in person or at a distance.

Experiment

If you’re currently at First Degree, why not experiment with distant healing and see what’s possible.

To get you started if you’re not sure what to do, click to read about a simple distant healing method that anyone can use; it’s symbol free and it works well.

At Reiki Evolution we’re happy for our students to experiment and find their own way with the energy: we don’t want out students to turn into clones of us!

Over to you

Are you at First Degree level and happily sending distant healing? Post a message below to let us know how you do it.

What approach works well for you?

If you’re already at Second Degree or Master level, what method do you think would work best for people at First Degree? What would you recommend?

Post a simple method below, for us all to see.

Want to find out more about Distant Healing?

A whole collection of distant healing methods are contained in the 110-page Reiki Evolution Second Degree manual. This isn’t just available to Reiki Evolution students: anyone can work with our manuals.

You can order a professionally-printed copy, or you can download your manual right now.

Here are the links that you need:

Reiki Second Degree manual

Reiki Second Degree eBook

Picture credit: Beverly & Pack

You can feel yourself getting sleepy…

June 5, 2011meditation, mp3sdo not anger, do not worry, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, reiki, reiki meditations, reiki precepts, reiki principles, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

…or how the use of hypnotic techniques and trance states with Reiki can do quite amazing things for people.

Through experimentation – and I would like to thank the hundred or so Reiki people who volunteered to be my guinea pigs when I trialled my first three “Reiki Hypno meditations” – I discovered that using a combination of a Reiki-style meditation with gentle suggestion patterns had a tremendous effect on people in just a few weeks of listening to a 10 minute audio track most days.

As well as being a Reiki teacher I am also a qualified Cognitive Hypnotherapist and NLP Master Practitioner. I trained at Regent’s College in London with the internationally respected Quest Institute and a lot of the course involved perfecting the art of making hypnotic suggestions, a series of elegant and subtle suggestion patterns that can help guide people’s subconscious minds so that a person lets go of whatever is holding them back in their life, and enhances their potential.

To begin with I focused on what I think are quite common challenges for people starting out with Reiki:

Calming your mind so that you can be in more of a mindful state
Developing your intuitive side
Enhancing your sensitivity to the energy

This is what some of my students said after listening to the Reiki Hypno meditations for a few weeks…

“The constant activity in my mind feels to have calmed down. I still have random thoughts, but I now have the ability to let them pass, without grabbing hold of them and picking the bones clean.”
Anne MacKenzie
“Certainly, without any question, the MP3 has been a huge benefit to me. I have often wanted to learn meditation but never found the medium or created the opportunity. Your track has changed things to such an extent I would like to learn more and develop my meditation skills.”
Jim Furze
“I just seem to be able to get on with life without so much worry. I don’t think i realised how very different i have been feeling and how much calmer not just i am but my family and my life is until i sat down to write this.”
Jo Cole
“I have often felt no sensitivity to the energy but found that this changed quickly once i started listening to the MP3. I have become much more aware of heat and energy in my hands when using the MP3 and giving treatments. I have been very pleased with the results.”
Pauline
“In all I’m delighted with the results. The trial has helped me more than I believed imaginable. My confidence has grown immensely and I’m raring to take my second degree and start working as a practitioner.”
Wanda
“My Reiki sessions have definitely altered for the better. I do tend to be more flexible in my approach… I am being ‘drawn’ to lay my hands on areas that I might not have been before…..and it is certainly a whole lot easier and less structured than before. I have ‘let go’ of all my former expectations of how the Reiki session ought to proceed…and the results are quite eye opening at times. It is as if I have been ‘attuned’ to Reiki in a new way ….all over again. I can’t quite explain it really!”
Carol Leslie

And this quite astounded me, actually. I was sure that the meditations would work, but I didn’t realise how well they would work and how quickly! I think what’s going on here is that when you meditate using Reiki you enter quite a deep trance state, where your subconscious mind is quite receptive to positive suggestion. Within Reiki, some people already use Nentatsu ho, where you rest your hands on your head and send an affirmation that is intended to be accepted by your subconscious, so what I am doing could be seen a a turbo-charged version of this, using the best of Ericksonian suggestion patterns with the supporting and boosting effect of Reiki energy work.

Since I was so enthused by the feedback I was getting, I decided to put together three tracks that dealt with the Reiki precepts, creating suggestion patterns that focused on:

Releasing anger and worry/being ‘in the moment’
Embodying humility and honesty
Experiencing compassion and forgiveness.

Here are a couple of the responses that I received from people working with these Reiki meditations…

“I have all of Taggart’s hypno meditations and use them on a regular basis. I started with Compassion — a beautiful piece, relatively short, which means it can be fitted in any time. I have also found it a great starting point for work on the other precepts. I often listen to Compassion before I give Reiki or Indian Head Massage to someone. Humility and honesty are fantastic reminders for basic and decent behaviours, with humility constantly urging me to step back a bit, listen more actively, be more thoughtful … But the meditation I use most is Be free from Anger/Worry, and it has paid enormous dividends. In recent weeks, I can’t remember the last time I really felt angry or wanted to express anger. And it’s not that it’s suppressed — it simply doesn’t seem to be there at all. This meditation is a genuinely useful reminder of the futility of worry in many circumstances.”
SS, Cambridgeshire
” I am very pleased with the Reiki precept downloads. I have used them both personally and in group. I think what attracts me the most is their sincere simplicity. It allows one to relax and let the words wash over you. As my own Reiki path develops I am re-energized by new approaches.”
M J Perdue, West Virginia

It’s really fulfilling for me to be able to make a difference to people in this way. And so I moved on to a third collection of MP3s, this time dealing with:

Building self-confidence, confidence in your Reiki abilities
Establishing a good regular routine of working on yourself
Finding your own distinctive way with the energy, finding your own approach

Nentatsu Ho #1:

The Fundamentals

Experiencing mindfulness

Developing your intuition

Building energy sensitivity

Price: £19.99

To order by PayPal, use this button

Nentatsu Ho #2:

The Reiki Precepts

Releasing worry and anger

Humility and honesty

Compassion and forgiveness

Price: £19.99

To order by PayPal, use this button

Nentatsu Ho #3:

Spreading your wings

Building your Reiki confidence

Make your Reiki routine more consistent

Finding your own way with the energy

Price: £19.99

To order by PayPal, use this button

Reiki Evolution teacher get-together

June 2, 2011kotodama, reiju empowerments, reiki energy, reiki gatheringreiki, reiki meditations, reiki share, taggarttaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

On June 1st we held our first get-together of Reiki Evolution Reiki Master Teachers, in central London. About half of the team were able to meet and it was a real pleasure to spend time with a group of such lovely, talented, positive, creative RMTs. I feel really honoured to have these people as part of my team. The room fairly crackled with energy as we did a Reiki circle, chanted the kotodama and gave each other empowerments, and it was great to chat, share ideas and experiences, to get to know each other and to plan how we are going to move Reiki Evolution forward together.

We talked about blogging and creating podcasts, shared ideas for courses and explained the ways that we made our own courses distinctive. We laughed, we chatted, and we really came together as a group, which was excellent. We all learned from each other and it was great to be amongst people who were so open and accepting.

The most amazing experienced was when we chanted the kotodama together (Reiki mantras that pre-date the use of symbols within Reiki and which were taught by Usui Sensei to most of his students). I didn’t realise how many strong voices there would be, and there were such harmonies! It was gorgeous to take part in and listen to, and we would have carried on forever I think, though eventually people would have fallen off their chairs from the hyperventilation! Sitting, basking in the energies we had elicited, I certainly just wanted to stay there undisturbed with a silly grin on my face. What an experience! So powerful.

We finished the day giving empowerments to each other and it was a very special time, supporting and empowering each other as a team. The room was sizzling with energy! Everyone decided that they wanted to meet again, and not in a year’s time, so looks like we shall be getting together later in the year.