Category Archives: reiki energy

Treating both sides: is this necessary?

reiki energy, reiki treatments, ,

reiki treatment both sides turn over backs

An unnecessary Reiki rule?

In many Reiki lineages, students are taught that they need to treat both sides of a client, asking them to turn over half-way through a treatment so that student can gain access to the client’s back. But is this really necessary?

Might the treatment be just as effective if we left them where they were?

I think that most Reiki people would accept that when we treat someone, the energy is drawn according to the recipient’s need to the right places for them on that occasion, to do whatever they need to have done on that occasion, so we aren’t ‘pushing’ the energy to where we want it to (or think it ought to) go.

We are a necessary bystander in the process: we need to be there for the healing to happen, but we have metaphorically stepped aside, created a ‘healing space’ for the client, and they do the healing that they need to do, in the way that they need to do it, experiencing whatever is appropriate for them to experience as this happens.

Could we just hold their hand for 60 minutes?

So, in theory, we could just hold someone’s hand for an hour and the energy would be drawn by them to the areas of need, and we’d need to do nothing further than that.

But given that when we work intuitively we can be drawn strongly to areas of need – ‘hotspots’ – and given that we can experience the flow of energy subsiding in those areas after a time, and given that when we work intuitively we can be guided to hold a series of hand positions, sometimes symmetrical, sometimes not, in a particular sequence, this suggests to me that there is value in allowing the energy to guide you (which is what I believe is happening when you work intuitively), and there is a value in placing your hands in different positions as you treat.

There is something special, I believe, in working in partnership with the energy and allowing it to guide you in terms of where you rest your hands, and for how long you hold each position.

So going through a series of hand positions, whether a set of ‘standard’ positions or intuitively-guided hand positions, helps to ‘fire’ the energy from lots of different directions, and it’s drawn into the areas that have the greatest need.

We don’t just treat the square inches underneath our palms

The energy doesn’t just go into a small area of the body underneath our hands when we treat: it moves through the body and you could imagine the energy travelling to chakras, through meridians, into the aura, into all the different aspects of the energy system, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, whether or not we ‘sent’ the energy there, because it’s being pulled by the recipient’s need.

Many of us will have experienced the situation where you’re treating one part of the body and the client comments that they can feel the heat, or coldness, or tingling or whatever in a different part of their body.

And because the energy will move from where we ‘put it’ to where it is needed, this suggests that we do not need to place our hands on every square inch of the body in order for a treatment to be successful, and I do not believe that it is necessary to specifically ‘treat’ the back in order for the energy to flow to the back of the body from wherever we place our hands.

Turning over routinely is so disruptive

On a practical note, disrupting the flow of a treatment so that the client has to wake up half way through, drag themselves half into the seated position and turn themselves over and get comfortable again, really does break the ‘spell’ that they are under and, since the relaxation that people experience when receiving Reiki is greatly beneficial, I wouldn’t want to wake them up and lessen the depth of their relaxation in this way routinely.

That’s not to say that I never treat people’s backs, of course.

No rules should be followed slavishly.

But I only do this when someone has a specific back problem and what I do is to start by treating the back for a while, and then turn them over into the ‘face-up’ treatment position, and carry on with majority of their treatment that way.

In fact, in my First Degree manual I provide a series of hand positions that you can use when treating backs. But I don’t recommend that you do that routinely because it’s not necessary.

Over to you

If you routinely turn people over half way through a treatment, why not try not doing this and see what happens?

And post a message below to let me know what happened and what feedback you received from your client.

Here’s lots of advice about giving treatments

reiki books first degree manualIf you’d like some guidance about giving Reiki treatments, I have a whole load of advice and suggestions for you in the Reiki Evolution First Degree course 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 First Degree manual

Reiki First Degree eBook

 

 

 



Author: 

	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			Back to basics: Reiki Second Degree
		

		
		

			attunements, distant healing, intuition, reiju empowerments, reiki energy, reiki symbol, reiki treatments, self healing, , , , , , , , 					

	


		

		
People learn Reiki for many reasons and come from an amazing variety of backgrounds, all attending for their own personal reasons. Reiki courses in the UK present a whole variety of approaches, some “traditional” Western-style, some more Japanese in content, some wildly different and almost unrecognisable, some free and intuitive, others dogmatic and based on rules about what you should always do and not do. Reiki is taught in so many ways, and students will tend to imagine that the way that they were taught is the way that Reiki is taught and practised by most other Reiki people.


What I have tried to do in this article is to present a simple guide to what in my view is the essence of Second Degree: what it’s all about and what we should be doing and thinking about to get the most out of our experience of Reiki at this level. My words are addressed to anyone at Second Degree level, or anyone who would like to review the essence of Second Degree.


The first thing I want to say is that there should usually be an interval of a couple of months or so between First and Second Degree if you want to get the most out of your Reiki experience, and that it is unwise to take both Degrees back-to-back over a weekend. We would not take an advanced driving test the day after passing our basic driving test, so why would we believe that moving on to a more ‘advanced’ level with Reiki would be an effective way to learn when we have had no opportunity to get the hang of the basics of First Degree? Can we get the most out of Second Degree when we have had no opportunity to get used to working with and sensing and experiencing energy, when we have had no opportunity to enhance our effectiveness as a channel and our sensitivity to Reiki through regular practice, when we have had no opportunity to become familiar with a standard treatment routine and have had no opportunity to feel comfortable and confident in treating other people? Reiki is not a race, and we need to be familiar with the basics before moving on.


Second Degree is all about:


1. reinforcing or enhancing your connection to the energy 2. learning some symbols which you can use routinely when working on yourself or treating others 3. enhancing your self-healing 4. learning how to effect a strong distant connection (distant healing)


And ideally it is also about opening yourself up to your intuitive side so that you throw away the basic Reiki ‘rule book’ and go freestyle, gearing any treatments towards the individual needs of the recipient.


There are many approaches to doing these things, and I wanted below to touch on each one and to dispel some myths that may have been passed on.


Enhancing your Connection to the energy


On your Second Degree course you will have received some attunements or some empowerments. Attunements are not standard rituals within the world of Reiki and take many forms, some simpler and some more complex. They have evolved and changed greatly during their journey from teacher to teacher in the West. There is no “right way” to carry out an attunement and the individual details of a ritual do not matter a great deal. They all work. Equally, there is no “correct” number of attunements that have to be carried out at Second Degree level. Whether you receive one, two, or three attunements on your course, that is fine.


On your course you may have received some “empowerments” rather than attunements, though these are less common. The word “empowerment”, or “Reiju empowerment”, refers to a connection ritual that has come to us from some Japanese sources, and is closer in essence to the empowerment that Mikao Usui conveyed to his students. If you are receiving empowerments rather than attunements then you really need to have received three of them at least.


What we experience when receiving an attunement or an empowerment will vary a lot. Some people have fireworks and bells and whistles and that’s nice for them; other people notice a lot less, or very little, or even nothing, and that’s fine too. What we feel when we have an attunement is not a guide to how well it has worked for us. Attunements work, and sometimes we will have a strong experience, but it’s not compulsory! Whether we have noticed a lot, or very little, the attunement will have given us what we need.


Since in Mikao Usui’s system you would have received empowerments from him again and again, it would be nice if you could echo this practice by receiving further empowerments (or attunements) and perhaps these might be available at your teacher’s Reiki shares or get-togethers, if they hold them. But it is possible to receive distant Reiju empowerments and various teachers make them freely available as a regular ‘broadcast’. This is not essential, and your connection to Reiki once given does not fizzle out, but it would be a beneficial practice if you could receive regular empowerments from someone.


Being “attuned” to a symbol


For many years within the world of Reiki, people believed that the symbols would not work for you, that they were essentially useless, until you had been “attuned” to the symbol: then it would work for you. Unfortunately the only connection rituals available in the West were ‘attunements’ which involved attuning you to a symbol, so no-one knew how to carry out a ‘symbol-free’ attunement to see if you really needed to be attuned to a symbol for it to work for you.


But in 1999, from Japan, emerged Reiju empowerments, a representation of the empowerments that Usui conferred, and these empowerments do not use symbols. Finally we were able to see if you really needed to be attuned to a symbol for it to work for you. Lo and behold we discovered that the symbols work fine for people who are connected to the energy using Reiju; they work fine for people who are connected to Reiki but who have not been ‘attuned’ to the symbols. It seems that once you are connected to Reiki – and now we know how to achieve this without symbols entering into the process – the symbols will work for you, and in fact any symbol seems to push the energy in a particular direction without you having to be specifically ‘attuned’ to it (whatever that means). The Reiki symbols are simply graphical representations of different aspects of the energy, a way of representing and emphasising what is already there.


“Sacred Symbols”


In some lineages students are not allowed to keep copies of the symbols and have to reproduce them from memory, based on what they learned on their Second Degree course. There is the suggestion that the symbols are sacred and not only sacred but secret, and should not be shown to people who are not involved in Reiki, or people who are at First Degree level. Where this idea came from in the Western Reiki system is not clear, since certainly Dr Hayashi had his students copy out his notes by way of preparing their own manuals, including copying down the symbols.


For me, the Reiki symbols are simply graphical representations of different aspects of the energy, useful tools to assist us in experiencing or becoming consciously aware of different aspects of what we already have, and what is special or sacred is our connection to the source, not the squiggles we might put on a piece of paper.


Because of the ‘Chinese whispers’ that have resulted from students not being allowed to take home hard copies of the Reiki symbols, there are many different versions of the symbols in existence, but they are mainly variations on a theme and they all seem to work in practice. Do remember, though, that the original CKR had an anticlockwise spiral, and to use a version of CKR with a clockwise spiral is to use a symbol that is not part of the Usui/Hayashi/Takata system.


Using Symbols in practice


Some students are taught there is one ‘correct’ way that symbols have to be used. Reiki is not so finicky. The important thing when using a Reiki symbol is to focus your attention on the symbol in some way, so whether you are drawing the symbol with your fingers hovering over the back of your hand as you treat someone, whether you are drawing out the symbol using eye movements, or nose movements, or in your mind’s eye, all approaches will work. You do not need to visualise the symbols in a particular colour and if you can see the symbol in your mind’s eye in its entirety – this takes practice – you can ‘flash’ the whole symbol rather than drawing it out stroke by stroke.


Just because we have been taught some symbols does not mean that we are now obliged to use them all the time when we treat or when we work on ourselves. They can be used to emphasise different aspects of the energy, but this is optional. Use of symbols does seem to boost the flow of energy, so we can use them when it feels appropriate. This is the key: to bring a symbol into a particular part of a treatment when we have a strong feeling that we ought to, to work intuitively rather than following a set method.


I have written in other articles below about the issue of simplicity within Reiki practice, and the complicated way that people have ended up using the Reiki symbols, for example mixing symbols together or using complicated symbol sandwiches. Remember that the simple approach is usually the most effective, and that there is no hard and fast way that you ‘have’ to work with the symbols you have been shown.


By the way, if you have been taught that you have to draw the three Second Degree symbols over your palm each day or else they will stop working for you, you can safely ignore these instructions. The symbols will work for you no matter what you do or don’t do with your palms!


Why the symbols are there


At Second Degree, the prime focus of Reiki is still your self-healing, and the first two symbols are there to help you get to grips with two important energies that will further or deepen your self-healing. Putting the ‘distant healing’ symbol to one side, the other two symbols represent the energies of earth ki and heavenly ki, and we need to fully assimilate these two energies to enhance our self-healing and self-development. If we are going to use these energies when we treat other people, it makes sense to be thoroughly familiar with these energies, to have spent time ‘becoming’ these energies. We can do this by carrying out regular symbol meditations.


Making ‘distant’ connections


The third Reiki symbol that you are introduced to on a Second Degree course is commonly called the ‘distant healing symbol’. We should remember that distant healing is perfectly possible at First Degree level and that we do not need to use a symbol in order to send Reiki to another person: intent is enough. But using this symbol can help us to learn to better ‘click’ into a nice strong merged state.


There is no set form of ritual that ‘has’ to be used in distant healing, there is not set form of words that has to be recited, no established sequence which needs to be reproduced in order for distant healing to be effective, so we can find our own comfortable approach, different from other people’s but equally valid. The details of the ritual that we use are not important. All we need to do is to focus our attention on the recipient and maybe use the symbol in some way, merge with the energy, merge with the recipient, and allow the energy to flow.


Intuitive working


Ideally, Second Degree should be the stage where you start to leave the basic ‘rulebook’ behind and go ‘freestyle’, gearing your treatment towards the recipient’s individual energy needs, so that each treatment will be different, as the recipient’s energy needs change from one treatment session to another. Some students will already be modifying the basic treatment routine by the time that they arrive on their Second Degree course.


Set hand positions and a prescribed scheme to follow are useful things to have at First Degree, and allow the student to feel confident in treating others, but sequences of hand positions can be left behind when we open to intuition. Intuitive treatments seem to do something special for the recipient: when you direct the energy into just the right combination of positions for that person on that occasion you allow the energy to penetrate deeply and this seems to lead to a more profound experience for the recipient. Treatments using intuitively guided hand positions may involve much fewer hand positions being held, and each combination being held for much longer, than in a ‘standard’ treatment.


We recommend that the Japanese “Reiji ho” approach is used to help Second Degree students to open to their intuitive side, since the approach is so simple and seems to work for most people even within a few minutes of practice. The resulting strong belief that the student is “intuitive” is a hugely empowering state and opens many doors.


Finally


Reiki has the potential to make an amazing, positive difference to you and the people around you. Remember that Reiki is simplicity itself, and by taking some steps to work on yourself regularly, and share Reiki with the people close to you, you are embarking on a very special journey. How far you travel on that journey is governed by how many steps you take. Carry on with your Hatsurei and self-treatments, get to grips with the energies of CKR and SHK through regular meditation, find your own comfortable approach to carrying out distant healing, and open yourself to intuitive working. And have fun!

	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			When I treat, do I need to keep at least one hand touching the body at all times?
		

		
		

			reiki energy, reiki treatments, , 					

	


		

		
hands-on-reiki-treatment


Keep touching or you’ll lose the ‘connection’?


In some lineages, students are taught that they always need to keep at least one hand resting on the body at all times because, if they do not, they will ‘lose their connection’ with the client, and then have to go through a ritual again in order to regain that lost connection.


But is this really necessary?


Do we have to have to touch the body every second, like a sort of Reiki tag-team, for fear of disconnecting, and is the Reiki ‘connection’ so fragile?


What’s the difference between hands-on and hands-off?


I believe that there is no difference between a Reiki treatment carried out when hands are resting on the body, and treatments where hands hover over the body.


Reiki is generally carried out as a ‘hands-on’ therapy and I think that this is a good idea: there is something very special and healing about human touch, with or without the addition of Reiki, and that closeness or connection that comes through making physical contact with another person is an important part of the Reiki experience.


Of course there are times – and hand positions – where it is better for the sake of propriety and respect to keep your hands off the body, particularly when working intuitively, when hands can end up wanting to go goodness-knows-where, and it’s not always wise to always put your hands down where they want to come to rest!


Basically Reiki is a hands-on practice


Viewing Reiki as a hands-on practice, though, does not mean that we have to keep our hands on the body at all times. We can mix-and-match, resting on the body sometimes and hovering over the body at other times during the course of a treatment, and we can do both at the same time: resting one hand on the body while allowing the other hand to hover.


If we are always keeping a hand on the body for fear of losing our ‘connection’, I wonder what we think that connection is all about.


Distant healing is a standard part of Reiki practice, where you can send the energy to the other side of the planet if we like, just by focusing our attention on the recipient. If we can do that then why would we believe that, at the same time, we can’t send Reiki to a person on a treatment couch in front of us – just inches away from us – unless we’ve made physical contact with them?


It makes no sense at all. 1,000 miles away and sending Reiki’s no problem… six inches away and we lose our connection if we’re not touching the body.


How can that be?


How are we connected?


So what is our Reiki ‘connection’ to the recipient?


I believe our ‘connection’ to them is based on our state of mind: by focusing our attention on the recipient we connect to them.


If we think about the Buddhist origins of Reiki and the concept of oneness, there is no ‘us’ and there is no ‘them’ anyway: this is illusion! We are already ‘connected’ to them because in reality we were never separated from them.


We are them.


So, in practice, by being with a client in the same room for the purposes of giving and receiving Reiki, we merge with them, we begin to become one with them. It is our intention that underlies our connection and the energy flows to where our attention is directed, whether our hands are on the body or not.


Over to you


Were you taught that you need to have at least one hand on your client at all times for fear of losing your connection? If so, what has happened in practice? Have you experimented with both-hands-on, one-hand-on and no-hands on?


What feedback have you received from clients where you didn’t follow the rules that you were given?


And what do you think about your ‘connection’ to your client? Do you think it depends on physical contact with them?


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


Here’s lots of advice about giving treatments


reiki books first degree manualIf you’d like some guidance about giving Reiki treatments, I have a whole load of advice and suggestions for you in the Reiki Evolution First Degree course 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 First Degree manual


Reiki First Degree eBook


 


 


 




Author: 

	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			Back to basics: Reiki First Degree
		

		
		

			attunements, commitment, reiki energy, reiki treatments, self healing, , , , , , , , 					

	


		

		
People end up on First Degree courses for many reasons and come from an amazing variety of backgrounds, all attending for their own personal reasons. Reiki courses in the UK present a whole variety of approaches, some “traditional” Western-style, some more Japanese in content, some wildly different and almost unrecognisable, some free and intuitive, others dogmatic and based on rules about what you should always do and not do. Reiki is taught in so many ways, and students will tend to imagine that the way that they were taught is the way that Reiki is taught and practised by most other Reiki people.


What I have tried to do in this article is to present a simple guide to the essence of First Degree: what it’s all about and what we should be doing and thinking about to get the most out of our experience of Reiki at this level. My words are addressed to anyone at First Degree level, or anyone who would like to review the essence of First Degree.


First Degree is all about connecting to the energy, learning to develop your sensitivity to the flow of energy, working on yourself to develop your ability as a channel and to enhance self-healing, and working on other people. There are many approaches to doing these things, and I wanted below to touch on each area and to dispel some myths that may have been passed on.


Connecting to the energy


On your Reiki course you will have received some attunements or some empowerments. Attunements are not standard rituals within the world of Reiki and take many forms, some simpler and some more complex. They have evolved and changed greatly during their journey from teacher to teacher in the West. There is no “right way” to carry out an attunement and the individual details of a ritual do not matter a great deal. They all work. Equally, there is no “correct” number of attunements that have to be carried out at First Degree level. The number four is quoted often as being the “correct” number but this has no basis in Reiki’s original form, and whether you receive one, two, three or four rituals on your course, that is fine.


On your course you may have received some “empowerments” rather than attunements, though these are less common. The word “empowerment”, or “Reiju empowerment”, refers to a connection ritual that has come to us from some Japanese sources, and is closer in essence to the empowerment that Mikao Usui conveyed to his students. Again, there is no correct number of empowerments that has to be carried out. One is enough but it is nice to do more.


What we experience when receiving an attunement or an empowerment will vary a lot. Some people have fireworks and bells and whistles and that’s nice for them; other people notice a lot less, very little, or even nothing, and that’s fine too. What we feel when we have an attunement is not a guide to how well it has worked for us. Attunements work, and sometimes we will have a strong experience, but it’s not compulsory! Whether we have noticed a lot, or very little, the attunement will have given us what we need.


Since in Mikao Usui’s system you would have received empowerments from him again and again, it would be nice if you could echo this practice by receiving further empowerments (or attunements) and perhaps these might be available at your teacher’s Reiki shares or get-togethers, if they hold them. But it is possible to receive distant Reiju empowerments and various teachers make them freely available as a regular ‘broadcast’. This is not essential, and your connection to Reiki once given does not fizzle out, but it would be a beneficial practice if you could receive regular empowerments from someone.


Developing your Sensitivity to the energy


People’s experience of energy when they first start working with Reiki can vary. Some people notice more than others, particularly in the early stages, and if we perhaps notice less going on in our hands when compared with another student on the course we can become disillusioned to an extent: that little voice in your head says “I know Reiki works for everyone… but it’s not going to work for me. I knew it wasn’t going to work for me”. Well if this describes your situation then I can say to you that Reiki will work for you, and is working for you, and the vast majority of Reiki people can feel the flow of energy through them in some way, though your particular ‘style’ of sensing the energy may not involve the more usual heat, fizzing, tingling, pulsing etc. that many people experience. There are a few Reiki Master/Teachers out there who feel absolutely nothing in their hands, but this is not common, and Reiki is still working for them.


Sensitivity to the flow of energy develops over time, with practice. Some people are lucky enough to be able to feel quite a lot in their hands and in their bodies to begin with, but others have to be patient, trust that Reiki is working for them, and perhaps focus more on the feedback that they receive from the people that they treat, rather than what they feel – or don’t feel – in their hands.


It would be worthwhile if all First Degree students spent some time regularly practising feeling energy: between your hands, around your cat or dog or your pot plant or a tree, around someone else’s head and shoulders, over someone’s supine body, noticing any differences in the sensation in your hands as you move your hands from one place to another. Don’t expect to experience a particular thing or a particular intensity of feeling. Be neutral and simply notice what experience you have and how that experience might change from one area to another.


On some First Degree courses this process will be taught as “scanning”, where you hover your hands over the recipient’s body, drift your hands from one place to another, and notice any areas which are drawing more energy. This can provide some useful information in terms of suggesting additional or alternative hand-positions to use when you treat, and can suggest areas where you are going to spend longer when you treat.


Working on yourself


It is vital that after going on a First Degree course you establish a regular routine of working on yourself in order to develop your fledgling ability as a channel and to obtain the benefits that Reiki can provide in terms of balancing your life and self-healing. Most people decide to learn Reiki because they are looking for some personal benefits as well as looking to help other people, and the way to get the most out of the Reiki system is to work on yourself regularly.


On your First Degree course you will have been taught a self-treatment method, perhaps a Japanese-style meditation but more likely the Western “hands-on” self-treatment method. You will most likely have been given a set of hand-positions to use, but please remember that these positions are not set in stone and, particularly if some of the hand positions are quite uncomfortable to use in practice, you will develop your own style. It is fine to change the hand positions based on what feels right from one self-treatment to another, and you should do what feels appropriate. There is no “correct” set of positions that you have to use, and each hand-position does not have to be held for a particular period of time. Treat for however long you have time for, and however long feels right for each hand-position you decide to use.


Many people are taught that they have to do a “21 day self-treat”, and some people have the impression that they then do not need to self-treat any more. The “21 day” period has no real basis, and I can say that you ought to be thinking in terms of working on yourself long-term. To gain the greatest benefits from this wonderful system you need to persevere and make working with energy a permanent feature of your life with Reiki, a basic background practice, the effects of which will build up cumulatively as you continue to work with the energy.


You may have been taught a series of energy exercises and meditations called “Hatsurei ho” which comes from Japanese Reiki, and I can commend this practice to you. It is a wonderful way of grounding, balancing, and enhancing you ability as a channel, and should be a regular part of your Reiki routine.


Treating other people


First Degree is also about starting to work on other people, a process which also benefits the giver, so plus points all round really! A few students may have been taught not to treat others at First Degree, or for a particular prescribed period, but this is an unnecessary restriction and Reiki can be shared with other people straight away.


There are many different approaches to treating others, and we should not get bogged down with too many rules and regulations about how we ‘must’ proceed. Reiki can be approached in quite a regimented way in some lineages, and students may worry that if they are not remembering all the stages that they ‘have’ to carry out then they will not be carrying out the treatment properly. This is an unnecessary worry because treating other people is simple.


So here is a simple approach that you can use: close your eyes, maybe put your hands in the prayer position, and take a few long deep breaths to calm you and still your mind. You should have in mind that the energy you will channel should be for the highest good of the recipient, but there is no particular form of words that you need to use when commencing your treatment. Now we are going to focus your attention on connecting to the energy. Imagine that energy is flooding down to you from above, flooding through your crown, through the centre of your body, down to your Dantien (an energy centre two fingerbreadths below your tummy button and 1/3rd of the way into your body). Imagine the energy building up and intensifying there. You are filling with energy. Now direct your attention towards the recipient and imagine that you are merging with them, becoming one with them. Feel compassion and enjoy the moment.


You may now begin your treatment, and maybe it would be nice to rest your hands on their shoulders for a while, to connect to them and to get the energy flowing. What hand positions you use will vary depending on what you were taught – there are many variations – and they are all variations on a theme, a way of firing the energy from lots of different directions to give it the best chance of getting to where it needs to go. Hand-positions for treating others are not set in stone and do not have to be followed slavishly. They are just there as a set of guidelines to follow to build your confidence when treating others, and with time and practice you will start to leave behind these basic instructions and gear any treatment towards the needs of the recipient on that occasion, perhaps based on what you picked up when you were ‘scanning’ and perhaps based on intuitive impressions, where you feel drawn to a particular area of the body. Don’t try and work out ‘why’ you have felt drawn to a particular area of the body: just accept your impression and go with it.


Reiki is basically a hands-on treatment method, though for reasons of comfort and propriety you will choose to hover your hands over the recipient in some areas rather than resting on the body. I do not plaster my hands over the recipient’s face or throat, for example, because I think that this is uncomfortable and unsettling for the person you are working on.


You do not have to hover your hands for every hand position, as some people are taught, and equally you do not have to keep at least one hand in physical contact with the recipient’s body at all times, for fear of ‘losing’ your connection: your connection to the recipient is a state of mind, and where your hands are is irrelevant!


As you treat, you should aim to feel yourself merging with the energy, becoming one with the energy, to imagine yourself disappearing into the energy, and this can give you a quite blissful experience. Your mind may wander, particularly in the early stages of your Reiki practice, but you do not need to worry about this. If you notice thoughts intruding, pay them no attention; let them drift on like clouds. If you make a big effort to try and get rid of your thoughts then you will have in your head the original thoughts and then all the new thoughts about getting rid of the first lot of thoughts… you have made things worse! Just bring your attention gently back to the recipient, to the energy, feel yourself disappearing into the energy, merging with the recipient, and let the energy flow; your treatment can become a wonderful meditation.


It is not acceptable to chat to other people while giving a Reiki treatment. If you want to be an effective channel for the energy then you need to direct your attention to the work at hand and make sure you are not unduly distracted. For this reason, conversation between yourself and the recipient should be restricted. Reiki works best of you are still and focused, merging with the energy, in a gentle meditative state. Developing this state takes practice and you can’t do it properly if you are chatting.


You do not need to stay for a particular set amount of time for each hand position. Though it would be probably be best to stay for a few minutes in each position, if in a particular hand position you feel a lot of energy coming through your hands then you can stay in that position for longer – sometimes a lot longer – until the sensation subsides and you can then move onto the next area. Your hands can guide you. Work from the head and shoulders, down the length of the body, and it is nice to finish with the ankles. Many people are taught to smooth down the energy field at the end of a session, and that is a nice thing to do, but remember that you do not have to follow any rituals slavishly, particularly in terms of any sort of ‘closing’ ritual; you do not need to touch the ground, you do not need to say a particular set of words, you do not need to visualise anything in particular, and you do not need to make any ‘set’ movements of your hands or body.


The Reiki Precepts


On your First Degree course you will have been introduced to the Reiki Precepts, or Reiki Principles, Mikao Usui’s “rules to live by’”. Just in case you have been given a slightly distorted version of the precepts, here is a more accurate translation:


The secret of inviting happiness through many blessings

The spiritual medicine for all illness

For today only: Do not anger; Do not worry

Be humble

Be honest in your work

Be compassionate to yourself and others


Do gassho every morning and evening

Keep in your mind and recite


The founder, Usui Mikao


NOTE

The phrase “Be honest in your work” really means “be honest in your dealings with other people”.


Any reference to ‘honouring your elders, parents and teachers’ is a later addition to the list, and is not what Mikao Usui taught.


The precepts were the hub of the whole system, and it is said that as much spiritual development can come through following the precepts in your daily life as would come from any energy work, so they are important. If we can try to focus on living in the moment, not forever dwelling on the past or worrying about the future (fear is a distraction), if we can remind ourselves of the many blessings we have in our lives, if we can forgive ourselves for not being perfect and if we can see things from another’s point of view, if we can be compassionate towards ourselves as well as others, then we have gone a long way towards achieving a liberating sense of serenity and contentment. This is not something to be achieved overnight, of course: it is a work-in-progress.


Finally


Reiki has the potential to make an amazing, positive difference to you and the people around you. Remember that Reiki is simplicity itself, and by taking some steps to work on yourself regularly, and share Reiki with the people close to you, you are embarking on a very special journey.


How far you travel on that journey is governed by how many steps you take.

	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			Get out of the way!
		

		
		

			mindfulness, reiki energy, reiki treatments					

	


		

		
In this short article I want to talk about the best way to approach working on other people, whether giving treatments or carrying out distant healing. I want to talk about our state of mind and our intent when channelling the energy.


The first thing I want to say is that we are just a channel for the energy, not the source of the energy. This seems an obvious thing to say, but we need to remember that we are not healers. We do not heal. We do not have that power. What we do when we treat someone is simply to create a ‘healing space’ that the recipient can use to move more into a state of balance. The recipient is responsible for their own healing, for what they experience or don’t experience; they are responsible for how they react to the treatment. They are healing themselves. We are just necessary bystanders in the process: we do not direct the energy and we do not determine the outcome.


So I am not so happy with the title “Reiki Healer” because it suggests that the Reiki practitioner has the power to heal; they do not. I don’t think that the title “Reiki Necessary Bystander” is going to catch on, so I prefer to use the title “Reiki Practitioner”. It describes what we do: we practise Reiki and it does not imply that we have the power to heal others.


This article is called “Get out of the way” because I believe that this is the best thing we can do when treating someone or when sending distant healing. We are not the source of the healing; we are not the source of the energy, so we do not need to be there, directing and controlling. We can stand aside and if we do so then the energy can flow strongly and clearly, without interference from us.


When we treat someone we are not ‘cheerleading’ for a particular end result: we do not give Reiki to get rid of someone’s head ache, or back ache, or to resolve their Gall Bladder problem, though of course these things may result from channelling Reiki. End results are out of our hands and to focus strongly on a particular purpose for the treatment is not helpful. Reiki will not be controlled by us in terms of end results and attempts to control the energy in this way just puts up barriers that prevent the energy from doing what it needs to do. Rather like the well-meaning amateur who gets in the way and prevents the professional from doing their job properly, our attempts to focus the energy to produce a particular end result will hinder the process for the recipient.


So our intent when treating someone or sending distant healing is that the energy should do whatever is appropriate for the recipient. We are neutral, we are detached, and we do not focus on outcomes. Ideally we should drift into a gentle meditative state when treating or sending distant healing, and this can be best achieved by our ‘disappearing’ into the energy, feeling ourselves merging with or becoming one with the energy. We merge with the energy and we merge with the recipient; we are empty. We do by not doing.


Though some people are taught that it is ok to talk and chat to people, or bystanders, when giving a Reiki treatment, to do such a thing is neither professional nor does it lead to effective treatments. If we are distracted then the energy flows less strongly, so if we want to do the best for our clients then we need to keep quiet, and encourage the client to keep quiet too. You can try an experiment for yourself if you like, to prove to yourself that distraction lessens the strength of your Reiki. You could try this at a Reiki share, for example. Start by resting your hands on someone’s shoulders and allow the energy to flow for a while. Then deliberately start up a conversation with someone sitting near you: take your attention away from the recipient and fully engage in the conversation. Do this for a few minutes. Then bring your attention back to the recipient, be still and quiet, and allow the energy to flow. How has the recipient’s experience of the energy varied?


Now, we do not need to be in a perfect meditative state in order to be an effective channel for Reiki, but it certainly helps to cultivate a still and empty mind. We are all human and it is perfectly normal for unwanted thoughts to appear in our head. But we should pay them no attention. If we pay the unwanted thoughts attention and try to get rid of them we then have two lots of thoughts: the thoughts we did not want and all the new thoughts about the need to get rid of the first lot of thoughts. We have made things worse!


The best approach to unwanted thoughts, then, is to allow them to drift by like clouds: pay them no attention, do not engage with them. They will leave. Some more may come, but pay them no attention either. In time you should find that your busy mind starts to quieten and some of your treatments will become beautiful meditations, with your mind emptying with the energy, and staying empty. Some treatments will not be like this, of course, but we do not need to be perfect. We can cultivate a more meditative state over time, moving in the right direction, and without worrying too much about individual occasions when our untamed brain kept on talking to us. This is a work-in-progress!


So Reiki is simple: you empty your head, you merge with the energy, do you not direct, you do not control, you do not try; you empty yourself and merge with the recipient, standing aside to allow the energy do what it needs to do, without interference from us.

	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			Reiki Sensations
		

		
		

			attunements, reiki energy, reiki sensations, reiki treatments, , , , 					

	


		

		
In this article I would like to talk about the sort of things that students might feel – or not feel – when receiving attunements or empowerments, when working with energy and when treating or being treated, and the significance of these sensations. The article is particular addressed to people who have just taken a First Degree course or who are only just starting on their journey with Reiki, though it should be of interest to people at all Reiki levels.


Attunements or empowerments


(Please note that, to avoid unnecessary repetition, I am going to use the word ‘empowerment’ to refer both to Reiju empowerments and Western-style Reiki attunements.)


When we arrive on a Reiki First Degree course, we probably have very little idea of what we might experience when going through an empowerment. If you read books about Reiki, everyone seems to be going through an exceptional, once-in-a-lifetime experience, but for most people it really isn’t like that.


There is no way of predicting what an individual will experience when receiving an empowerment, whether in person or at a distance. You may have an amazing experience, or you may feel very little or nothing. It is not uncommon for people to see some colours or feel some heat or tingling or pulsing or pressure in various areas of their bodies. For some people an empowerment is a unique experience, profound, emotional, an experience that is almost unbelievable. For others very little happens.


Sometimes you might find that there will be four people, say, on a course. Three people are talking about the surprising, or interesting, or special experiences that they just had, and one poor soul is sitting there thinking to themselves “I knew this wouldn’t work for me… I know Reiki is supposed to work for everyone, but it hasn’t worked for me”. We assume that if we notice a lot happening then the empowerment has ‘taken’, that it has worked really well, and we assume that if we felt very little – or if we felt nothing – then the connection ritual has not worked, that we haven’t been attuned, or we haven’t been attuned properly.


But what a student experiences when they receive an empowerment is no guide as to the effectiveness of that empowerment. In fact what a student experiences really is irrelevant, because empowerments always work. Of course it is nice and reassuring to have the “bells and whistles and fireworks” – it helps you to believe that something definite has happened – but someone who has noticed all these things has not been more effectively empowered when compared with a student who felt very little or nothing.


Experiences are interesting, but not important. They don’t mean anything in terms of whether, or how well, an empowerment has worked, because empowerments always work, no matter what the student feels or doesn’t feel.


Experiencing energy


People are all different, and people differ in terms of how sensitive they are to the flow of energy in the early stages of their work with Reiki. Sometimes people arrive on a Reiki course massively sensitive to the energy, and perhaps better able to sense subtle differences than is their teacher, and that’s nice for them, while other people may notice something very subtle, or perhaps nothing at all. Most people will feel something.


So when playing with energy, most people will feel something in between their hands when they try to make an energy ball. Most people will feel something when they try to feel someone else’s energy field, or if they practise ‘scanning’ (assuming that there is something there to detect – there won’t always be). But not everyone will feel these things to begin with, and the people who do not feel anything should not be disheartened: because sensitivity to such things can develop with practice and repetition. Most people will find that, no matter how sensitive they find themselves when they first learn Reiki, when they start to work with the energy regularly – for example by carrying out Hatsurei ho every day, and by self-treating – their sensitivity to the energy will increase. But this is a work-in-progress and we may need to be patient. And we may find that our sensitivity to the energy never reaches our goal, or is never as great as other Reiki people that we come across. Maybe we are setting an unreasonable target for ourselves.


And we should remember that sensitivity to the flow of energy is not the be-all and end-all of Reiki. We can work on ourselves and derive the many benefits that come through Reiki, no matter what we feel or don’t feel when we carry out hatsurei ho or self-treat. We can treat other people effectively no matter what we might feel or not feel in our hands. I have come across several successful and effective Reiki Master / Teachers who do not feel anything going on in their hands, and never have done. The reason why they continued their Reiki training, rather than giving up in the face of no physical sensations to encourage them, was because they practised on lots of people and they could see, by the positive responses they received from the recipients, that something was definitely going on, that they were doing good things, that Reiki was certainly doing something for the people they treated even though they couldn’t feel the energy.


You may ask how you can treat someone when you can’t feel anything, or if you can’t scan very well at the moment. Well, most people in the world of Reiki are taught a standard set of hand positions to use when they treat, and these standard positions can be followed, giving general coverage over the body; the energy is drawn to areas of need, so that works perfectly well. Not everyone scans. Not everyone is taught how to scan. It isn’t a vital step in a treatment, but it can be a useful one to perform if you can do it.


But if you can work intuitively then of course you can place your hands in the right places for each person you work on, and stay in each position for the most appropriate amount of time, not based on the sensations you are feeling in your hands but based on your intuitive impressions. Everyone can work intuitively with some practice, and you may well be taught how to carry out “Reiji ho” (a Japanese method for opening to your intuition during a treatment) on a Second Degree course. So an intuitive approach to treatments actually eliminates any advantage in being able to sense strongly in your hands.


Sensations experienced by people you treat


Now, you will not be surprised to know that the experiences of people being treated also varies a great deal. For some people, on some occasions, treatments are very strong. They might feel intense heat from the practitioner’s hands, see coloured lights, drift in and out of consciousness. And on other occasions that same person might feel the treatment to be mild and gentle. The energy is drawn by the recipient in amounts that are appropriate for them on that occasion, so the perceived ‘strength’ of any treatment is determined by the recipient’s need. The practitioner is just a necessary bystander in the treatment process.


While some people seem to quite often notice a lot happening when they are treated, there are also people who feel very little or nothing when they receive a Reiki treatment, no matter who they receive the treatment from. If you have just started out on your Reiki journey and you just happen to treat one of these people, or a few of these people, as your first ‘clients’ then you may end up disheartened, thinking that their lack of a strong sensation means that you are ineffective as a practitioner. We want the recipient to feel a lot because that reassures us that we are doing things ‘correctly’, that we are effective as a channel for the energy. But things aren’t always so simple: while quite often there may be general correlation between what the practitioner feels and what the recipient feels (a very hot area for the practitioner is felt as a very tingly area, say, for the recipient) this correlation will not always be there and, sometimes, you might find a practitioner feeling a raging furnace in their hands, amazed at the strength of what is going on, while the recipient did not notice anything at all, and perhaps didn’t notice anything at all during the entire treatment!


Summary


So really this whole article boils down to one simple phrase: “just for today, do not worry”. While it is perfectly natural to want to have some physical sensations to help us believe that we are really doing something when we use Reiki on ourselves and on other people, and while most people who learn Reiki will receive sufficient feedback to reassure them, this will not always happen. With practice and experience we start to let go of the need to be reassured by what we and others feel, and we come to realise that no matter what we feel or don’t feel, Reiki is working for us. But it can be difficult to accept this in the early stages, particularly if we are a little sceptical.


If you aren’t feeling too much at the moment my advice to you is to follow the instructions you were given: carry out your Hatsurei ho every day, self-treat regularly, and get your hands on as many people as you can. Do short blasts on someone’s knee or shoulder, treat people in a straight-backed chair for 20-30 minutes, do full treatments; go with the time you have you have available. The important thing is to get the hands-on practice and you will find, if you treat a good cross-section of people, that you will receive from them the positive feedback that you need, and with sufficient practice you may find that you start to notice more with time.


So be patient, don’t worry, and have fun with your Reiki.

	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			Attunements, empowerments & contact lenses!
		

		
		

			attunements, contraindications, reiju empowerments, reiki energy, , , , 					

	


		

		
Wait! Reiki can mess these up, apparently!
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:


    
You should not treat people with pacemakers. This is nonsense, of course. Please see my article “Restrictions on Reiki” for a longer discussion of this Reiki fable.
    
First Degree does not really give you anything, and you cannot treat yourself and other people effectively at this level. This of course flies in the face of the cumulative experience of hundreds of thousands of people who have taken First Degree and whose lives have changed for the better through Reiki, and who have helped friends and family members at First Degree.
    
You should take Reiki First and Second Degree in one weekend to be able to use Reiki effectively. Again nonsense, and the global consensus is that you should wait between Reiki levels to give yourself a chance to work on yourself and gain confidence, putting what you have learned into practice before moving on. Exhorting people to take Reiki1 and Reiki2 in one go, because they will not be able to do Reiki properly otherwise, is largely a marketing ploy in my view.


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!

	

	
	


							

							


	

		
				

			What happened when I gave a Reiki treatment…..
		

		
		

			reiki energy, reiki treatments, , , 					

	


		

		
reiki lessons in hertfordshire


Jon came in some time ago for a Reiki treatment.  He had a very severe “chest infection” and was wheezing.   He was VERY poorly and I was concerned that he may have pneumonia. He settled down on my couch (I had to prop him up because his chest was so bad) and I put some soothing music on and said my Reiki prayer before starting his Reiki treatment.


I put my hands on his shoulders and connected with the energies….. After a few minutes I took myself out of the equation and merged with the energies.    Soon I became aware of something very strange happening.  I felt that my hands were sinking into Jon’s ribcage…  I opened my eyes momentarily and saw my hands still resting on his shoulders…. I closed them again and trusted in the process.   I was also aware that my hands seemed to be “pulling” out negative energies.


When the treatment drew to a close, and Jon came to, his first words were:


“Wow!  That was weird…… I felt your hands sinking into my chest and clearing out my lungs”.  I told him that I had felt a similar experience………And we both noticed that he was not wheezing anymore.


Jon telephoned me a few days later to thank me for the treatment and said that he did not need to see his doctor as he was planning to, as he felt completely better.


The intensity of Reiki never ceases to amaze me…..   Have you had an experience with Reiki that you would like to share?  I would love to hear them!




hertfordshire reiki coursesHannah Shine is one of Taggart’s Reiki Evolution team of teachers, based in Essex/Hertfordshire.   She is also a multi therapist, practising from her home at Hatfield Heath.   Her Reiki courses are run from her beautiful summer house in her relaxing garden. Her therapies include homoeopathy, reflexology, Bowen technique, head massage, body massage, kinesiology, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and many others.  She is currently doing a Cognitive Hypnotherapy course at the Quest Institute.


 


 

	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			How creative is your Reiki?
		

		
		

			reiki energy, reiki symbol, 					

	


		

		
reiki sensations feelings in hands


Reiki is a magical energy that has limitless uses…… how creative are you with using this in your everyday life?


I use it every day!!   Some examples:


I reiki my food and water – in fact everything that I consume.


I energise my treatment room and couch each day, and sometimes reiki the whole room using the symbols on each wall, ceiling and all the corners of the room.


I reiki my car when it is parked – I reiki my home – especially when I am away.


I use reiki on all my plants, and I specially reiki the seeds that I sow….


I send reiki on ahead to a “reiki bank” for any particular stressful event and while I am there, I draw on that.   This is a very useful tool.


I have found it useful to draw the Cho Ku Rei symbol in the soles of my shoes and I have found great relief when I have a backache as I step into my shoes.


Reiki your bath water and feel the relaxing energies flow over you………


Try using Reiki on flowers you have cut for your room and prepare to be amazed at how long they last…………….


Reiki your pets and watch them calm down and relax


As Taggart mentions in his manual, you can experiment by Reiki-ing your wine and tasting the difference!


Have you heard of the work done by a Japanese scientist Dr  Masaru Emoto?  He has photographed water from various sources in crystal form and has proven that water molecules change depending on what it has been exposed to.   Just expressing appreciation “thank you” when given a glass of water, immediately changes the “snowflake” crystal to something quite magical.  Have a look at this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAvzsjcBtx8


See also:  http://www.wellnessgoods.com/messages.asp


So just think what amazing things can happen when you reiki your food  and environment each day and show appreciation for everything – the simplest Thank You changes the molecular structure of water and food!


Would love to hear how you use your Reiki creatively!!


 


Reiki blessings


Hannah Shine


 


 hertfordshire reiki coursesHannah Shine is one of the Reiki Evolution team of teachers, based in Essex/Hertfordshire.   She is also a multi therapist, practising from her home in Hatfield Heath.   Her Reiki courses are run from her beautiful summer house in her relaxing garden. Her therapies include homoeopathy, reflexology, Bowen therapy, head massage, body massage, kinesiology, EFT and many others.


 


 


 


 

	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			Experiencing Reiki:  Is this really happening – or is it me?
		

		
		

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I love to share the enthusiasm generated by students when they talk about working with Reiki, either on or after a course.  What I’ve noticed in particular is the amazement of many who can’t quite believe the powerful sensations they are feeling. 


Students who attend Reiki First Degree courses are always excited and surprised by the sensations they feel in their hands when scanning and treating others in the group.  This excitement is palpable, evoking comments such as, ‘I could feel tingling in my hands’ or ‘I was aware of intense heat’.  Then, as though unable to believe this, a little frown appears, followed by a softly spoken, ‘Am I imagining this?’


 After empowerments, some students describe the wonderful experience of receiving Reiki as light, colour or other sensations, very often again adding, ‘I wondered if it was me, imagining it!’  This is understandable as we are not used to feeling such sensations in every day life, for example, whilst taking the dog for a walk or doing the weekly shopping (unless we tune into Reiki at the same time of course!). 


Reiki 2 students are very often taken aback by the power of the energies they are introduced to at this level.  Yet, quite a number have expressed the thought that it might be their imagination at work when, during or after the course, the energy feels very much more intense. They may also question whether the greater sense of calm that they are noticing is because of Reiki, or all in the mind! 


You may feel one or many physical sensations or experience a different emotional state whilst practising, receiving empowerments or carrying out Reiki meditations.  These will be so powerful that, as you continue to practise regularly, you will be convinced more and more that you are not imagining things. 


So, please don’t worry if you have doubts.  I do remember questioning the source of the sensations I was experiencing at the beginning of my Reiki journey. Rest assured, that any uncertainties you may have will rapidly disappear as you become more familiar with the wonderful Reiki energy by practising self-healing, receiving empowerments and treating others. Any concerns about these being in your head will disappear and be replaced by an absolute belief and trust in Reiki. 


Sadly, Western culture tends to demand scientific proof of everything, not preparing us for experiences that may not quite fit in with our model of the world. Remember that energy is all around us and that we are working with something that has always been there, it’s just that we’ve simply changed our focus.  So, it’s quite okay for you to question in the early stages, ‘Is it me?’ but before long you will be basking in the knowledge that you are out of the equation and, in getting yourself out of the way, you are allowing Reiki to flood through you and beyond. 


Enjoy your journey!


Warm wishes


Marilyn Harvey

	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			Do attunements actually work?
		

		
		

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do reiki attunements work


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.


 


 


 


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