Category Archives: reiki sensations

Do You Have to Believe in Reiki for it to Work?

 

An issue that has come up a few times is whether you need to believe in Reiki for it work for you: whether you need to have ‘faith’ before you’ll experienc positive changes through either learning Reiki or having a series of Reiki treatments.

In this blog I’d just like to explore this issue a little.

Reiki is not faith healing

The word faith is often used to describe a person’s belief in a particular religion, where an adherent has faith in a deity or deities. So the first thing to say is that Reiki is not allied to any religion at all and so does not require a practitioner to take on board any sort of religious beliefs or accept the existence, or pledge allegiance to, any deity or deities. Reiki is religion-free and so should be acceptable to people of all, or no, religious persuasions.

Having said that, there are people out there who believe that even innocuous things like foot massage are the work of the devil, and obviously for such people something like Reiki will definitely be verboten, but it is true to say that for most followers of a religion, Reiki should be ok. I have chatted with a Roman Catholic priest and a Muslim who practise Reiki, for example.

The sceptical partner

So having established that Reiki doe snot require any sort of *religious* faith… what about having faith, or a strong belief, that Reiki as a practice is effective? Do you need to hold that belief before Reiki will do anything good for you?

No.

And a good example of this is the endless stream of sceptical, hostile or amused partners of new Reiki practitioners, who I hear about regularly from students who follow my Reiki home study courses. These are people who are indifferent to Reiki, or who think it is one big joke or a load of nonsense, but who are prepared to be volunteers for their ‘deluded’ partners to practise on, just to humour them. I find that such people are often the best people for a new Reiki person to practise on because they will often be amazed by the effects that they are experiencing, and some of them will even be honest enough to admit that they were wrong and that there is actually something to this Reiki thing!

Not all sceptical Reiki volunteers will admit this, of course, but you can tell in other ways: they may comment that their painful shoulder has stopped hurting, though they would definitely not attribute this effect to the Reiki treatment they had the day before, or they might stop limping from the sports injury that was affecting them, or they might to start sleeping more soundly, even though nothing else has changed in their life.

And the most telling response amongs those sceptics is for them to ask if they can have some more Reiki treatments! This happens a lot.

So in these cases, the recipient has no belief in Reiki as a therapeutic method. They are expecting to feel nothing and to have nothing beneficial happen to them. And yet it does. Reiki’s positive effects in their lives did not depend on their belief in Reiki.

The sceptical client

The same sort of thing could be said about sceptical Reiki clients too. There is a difference, though: for someone to be sceptical and still attend for a Reiki treatment they must be sufficiently open-minded to acknowledge that there might be *some* possibility of Reiki doing something helpful for them, otherwise they would not turn up for and pay for a session!

But still, open-minded scepticism does not qualify as a strong belief in Reiki. And when such people receive benefits from their treatment, and book further sessions with you, while they will have a growing belief in the power and effectiveness of Reiki, that won’t have been present initially. Initially they will not have had a positive belief in Reiki, and it was at that time that they received the benefits that led to such a belief developing. They benefited despite their lack of belief.

Blocking the energy

So, is it possible to actually ‘block’ the energy? Could you be a person who didn’t believe that Reiki worked, that didn’t like Reiki, didn’t want anything to do with Reiki, and then they received a Reiki treatment. What would happen? I suppose the first thing to wonder about would be, “why would such a person even submit to a Reiki treatment?” but perhaps they might come to you under duress, having been pressed by a partner or family member to try it, even thought they didn’t want to, and they attend just to keep their partner from going on about it any more.

Or maybe they turn up for a session to actually ‘prove’ that Reiki is nonsense and does not work, rather like when a smoker – who is happy to smoke and does not want to quit – visits a hypnotherapist to prove that hypnotherapy won’t work for them, so they can show their family that they have tried everything but, sadly, nothing works (so they can carry on smoking, which is just what they wanted!).

I think that such a person, antagonistic and not wanting to receive Reiki or its benefits, could certainly ‘block’ the energy: hardly anything would happen in the session and they wouldn’t notice anything beneficial happening afterwards. The recipient always has to accept the energy in some way, on some level, even if this happens subconsciously.

If they really don’t want it, they won’t get it.

 

Did you like this blog?

If so, you are going to love this book…

 

Liberate Your Reiki!

“Whether you are at Level 1, 2 or Reiki Master Teacher Level (regardless of the Reiki flavour you are trained in), this book is very much for you! Within hours of starting to read this book, it has rejuvenated and enriched my own practices with a wealth of information and useful examples too.

The more you read the more you’ll have those wonderful ‘aha’ moments. I know I am already benefiting personally from the knowledge I’ve gained, but so will all my family, friends and clients too. Thank you Taggart for creating this incredible, uniting, enlightening book.”

Heidi Gaffney-Evans

Liberate Your Reiki!

86 Articles About Reiki: One Inspiring Vision

In this Reiki book you will find 80+ articles about Reiki, written by Reiki Master Teacher Taggart King. You will discover how to set your Reiki free, free from the constraints, dogma, rules and regulations of Western-style Reiki courses. Get back to Reiki’s original Japanese method and embrace simplicity, flexibility, creativity and intuition.

This book is suitable for people at all Reiki levels: beginners, those who are developing their Reiki, and Reiki Masters/Master Teachers. You will find advice about self-treatment meditations, energy exercises to build your ability as a channel, you will discover how to work with your intuition and embrace the power of intent.

Explore different distant healing methods and discover the beauty of Reiki’s original Japanese form. Learn how to use creativity and visualisation to enhance your self-treatments and treatment of others, and ditch all the silly rules and regulations that stifle the practice of Western Reiki in many lineages.

Finally, read Taggart King’s “10 Rules of Reiki”, the essential principles for a powerful and fulfilling Reiki practice.

This professionally-printed Reiki manual has 370 A5 pages, a glossy soft cover and we will send it to anywhere in the world!

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

 

Photo credit: J D Fisher ARPS

 

Why Don’t I Feel So Much When I Self-Treat?

reiki for stress relief

 

Something that a few Reiki people have mentioned to me is that they never seem to feel too much happening when they are self-treating, certainly not compared to the stronger sensations that they might experience when treating other people. They might feel something happening in their hands when they use a hands-on self-treatment method, but it’s all a bit gentle and unremarkable. So what is going on here? Are Reiki self-treatments weak and ineffective, a thin and weedy version of the powerhouse of treating someone else, or is there something else happening here?

Here’s my take on this…

You self-treat a lot

So, you go on a Reiki course and what do you do? You self-treat. Maybe you “do your 21 days” (though if you take my advice about self-treating, you’ll just self-treat endlessly forever!) so you’re working with the energy a lot. You’ve been attuned or empowered and you may experience your “Reiki cold” or some sort of a healing crisis as a result of that, and when you treat other people, you’ll also receive a benefit from the energy that you’re channelling, or the ‘healing space’ that you are creating, as you merge with the energy and the recipient and find that empty, mindful space.

If you tune into my weekly distant Reiju empowerment you’ll also experience a repeated putting-you-back-to-factory-settings, taking you back to that simpler, still state, which you were in before life messed you up!

So you’re receiving the benefits of the energy a lot, in different ways, so when you self-treat regularly, a lot of the work has already been done, and is being done as you go along, with little adjustments here and there, little tweaks, small releases of things. That doesn’t sound like it’s going to give you a big bells-and-whistles experience, does it?

That’s not to say that Reiki can’t reach deep down, working on deep-seated stuff, which may at some stage come to the surface and give you a surprising clear-out further down the line, but from day to day, how much intense energy work really needs to be done? It doesn’t, so your self-treatments feel suitably mild. That’s all they need to be. We should remember that Reiki will give you what you need on that occasion, and since the last time you self-treated, which may have been only a day or so ago, you may not need very much!

Recirculating and balancing

And when you self-treat, of course you are already ‘connected’ to Reiki. The energy is flowing through you, and this is very apparent for most people who you treat other people: you can feel the energy flowing from you into the other person. But when you treat yourself, the energy comes into you, is in you, and then is directed… into you.

It’s already there!

So self-treatments, unless you have a big, great need for energy to rush in and clear things, is just recirculating itself to a large extent, just re-balancing, changing the emphasis: moving from one part of you to another part of you. Rather like pressing the ‘recirculate the air’ button in your car, you’re largely taking what’s there and redistributing it, rather than receiving shedloads of energy from elsewhere. And what do your hands feel… well they will probably tell you *something* as the energy redistributes itself and tweaks things, but it probably won’t feel earth-shattering!

The great divide

Let’s compare this with the situation where someone comes to you for a Reiki treatment. Perhaps they have never been to see a Reiki practitioner before. There will probably be quite a lot that needs resolving. The energy is going to rush in and start working on that. You will feel this happening as a big flow of energy in your hands, if you’re reasonably sensitive to the flow of energy.

You may well see them again a week later or a fortnight later. They haven’t been receiving Reiki treatments every day, with the energy tweaking and adjusting things: they received Reiki once and it did what it could on that occasion. Now you see them again and there will still be a fair amount that needs adjusting. Again you’ll feel this happening as the energy flows quite strongly.

And instead of your familiar energy being mostly recirculated within you, as happens when you self-treat, when you treat someone else your personal ‘universe of energy’ comes into contact with the recipient’s quite separate galaxy of energy and, as you create that healing space, as you merge with the energy and the recipient, neutral and empty, it’s rather like two galaxies coming into contact and alignment: you’re going to notice that happening!

And what would happen if you keep on treating this person: will their tenth Reiki session be as powerful as their first? It’s unlikely, isn;’t it? Later sessions are more likely to be gentle, just mild adjustments or tweaking, because all the heavy work was achieved earlier on.

And what if you had treated them every day… do you really think you’d notice quite powerful Reiki sensations after treating them for 30 consecutive days? Of course not. And that’s just what is happening when you self-treat: the heavy work is achieve earlier in your journey with Reiki, and later on it’s more a case of gentle tweaking.

And that’s why self-treatments can often feel quite mild when compared to what you might experience when treating others.

 

Did you like this blog?

If so, you are going to love this book…

 

Liberate Your Reiki!

“Whether you are at Level 1, 2 or Reiki Master Teacher Level (regardless of the Reiki flavour you are trained in), this book is very much for you! Within hours of starting to read this book, it has rejuvenated and enriched my own practices with a wealth of information and useful examples too.

The more you read the more you’ll have those wonderful ‘aha’ moments. I know I am already benefiting personally from the knowledge I’ve gained, but so will all my family, friends and clients too. Thank you Taggart for creating this incredible, uniting, enlightening book.”

Heidi Gaffney-Evans

Liberate Your Reiki!

86 Articles About Reiki: One Inspiring Vision

In this Reiki book you will find 80+ articles about Reiki, written by Reiki Master Teacher Taggart King. You will discover how to set your Reiki free, free from the constraints, dogma, rules and regulations of Western-style Reiki courses. Get back to Reiki’s original Japanese method and embrace simplicity, flexibility, creativity and intuition.

This book is suitable for people at all Reiki levels: beginners, those who are developing their Reiki, and Reiki Masters/Master Teachers. You will find advice about self-treatment meditations, energy exercises to build your ability as a channel, you will discover how to work with your intuition and embrace the power of intent.

Explore different distant healing methods and discover the beauty of Reiki’s original Japanese form. Learn how to use creativity and visualisation to enhance your self-treatments and treatment of others, and ditch all the silly rules and regulations that stifle the practice of Western Reiki in many lineages.

Finally, read Taggart King’s “10 Rules of Reiki”, the essential principles for a powerful and fulfilling Reiki practice.

This professionally-printed Reiki manual has 370 A5 pages, a glossy soft cover and we will send it to anywhere in the world!

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

What Does It All Mean?

 

When we treat someone, and when we receive a Reiki treatment, for that matter, we are going to notice different things. There will be physical sensations, maybe images or colours, there may be emotions or states of mind that arise while we treat or receive a treatment.

And it’s natural to wonder what all these sensations mean. Why do I have that sensation? Why am I seeing that colour? What does this change in sensation mean? Should I be worried about that feeling I’m getting?

If only there was some guidebook that I could go to, look down a list, and find out what it all means.

Well, Reiki doesn’t really work that way, but I hope below to say some things that will be helpful and reassuring to you.

Clients asking questions

It is quite commonplace for Reiki clients to ask you at the end of a session, “what did you pick up?”. We are used to going to see a therapist or some sort of a specialist and to be told what’s wrong with us, to have a ‘label’ given to us that describes in some way the things that we are experiencing. You go to see your doctor and they tell you that everything’s fine – nothing to worry about – or they tell you that you have a problem called “x” and that it will go away on its own, or that you have problem “y” and here’s what we can do to treat that.

So it’s not surprising that clients expect in some way a similar sort of response: you have treated me, you’ve worked on my energy system, so what’s wrong with me?

But we are not doctors. We do not have medical training. We have no ability nor right to diagnose anything nor to recommend any sort of medical treatment or warn against any sort of medical treatment. We just work with energy: we merge with the client, we become neutral and empty, we ‘get out of the way’ and the energy flows. And as the energy flows, the client may have a particular sensation and we may have a particular sensation.

Those sensations are not diagnostic tools and should not be used as such.

All we can comment on, really, is that we noticed “a lot of energy” going into a particular part of the body. That may make perfect sense to our client, or it may be a bit of a mystery, and the client should not start to think that because there is a lot of energy going to a particular place, that there is some sort of medical probelm there.

More about that later.

Sometimes it can be fairly clear: they have a frozen shoulder or arthritic knee and we notice that there’s lots of energy going into the shoulder, or the client notices that their knee starts to ache during the treatment (and should improve subsequently). On other occasions it can be a mystery.

[See also: Talking to clients about strong reactions for further advice]

Reiki works at different levels

There is a reason why the flow of energy with a particular client can seem to be a bit of a mystery, and that is because Reiki works on different levels. Reiki may be dealing with a physical condition, or it may be supporting healing and repair, or a normal physical process (like digestion, say!), or it may be dealing with a state of mind or an emotion.

It may be dealing with something that is ‘on the brew’ and has not yet manifested as a physical problem or a future unhelpful emotion or state of mind… or it may be dealing with a ‘historical’ thing: a problem – on some level – that is in the past but where there is still a trace or an echo of that problem that needs to be resolved or smoothed over.

You don’t know.

And while you may be sensitive enough to the flow of energy to have a sense of whether the energy is resonating at a ‘phyical’ frequency or one that relates more to thoughts and emotions, you do not know specifically what is being dealth with, and you don’t need to know.

Chakras and Elements

Another way of looking at things is to consider the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) where thoughts and emotions are regarded as being held in different body organs. So the Liver is not just a physical organ but the home of anger (the emotion), and planning & decision-making (the mental state).

Energy going into the liver area does not mean that the client has cirrhosis necessarily, it could be because they are a particularly angry person, or maybe they are sitting on their anger, unable to express it, or perhaps the energy is dealing with echoes of the past, or something that has yet to – and may never – manifest itself, in relation to those mental and emotional states.

The chakra system is another way that we can view the human energy system, with each chakra having correspondences on different levels, so energy going into the area of the root chakra doesn’t have to mean that they recently landed on their coccyx!; it may relate to other aspects of human experience.

[See also: Reiki chakra meditation for you to follow]

Seeing colours

Seeing colours is something that will often happen when you give a Reiki treatment, or are on the receiving end of the energy. We can accept them as a lovely, interesting side-effect of the flow of energy, and the most common colours that people see would be white, lilac, violet, though random rainbow light-shows are possible, as well as just one or two colours predominating during a session.

What are we to make of this?

Well, if you insist on trying to puzzle out what is happening, you could think about the colour associations of the chakra system, where each colour relates to a particular colour, and you could assume that seeing a particular colour means that the energy might be focusing itself on that related chakra, and the colour you are seeing is an echo of that… but the Five Element system in TCM also includes associated colours.

What are we to think?

We don’t need to know

The bottom line is this: if you could work out that the energy flowing through your hands into a particular part of someone’s body *meant* a particular thing, whether that was a physical condition, or an emotion etc, how exactly would that change what you do?

It wouldn’t, would it?

You are not allowed to diagnose anything, or prescribe anything or offer medical advice, and Reiki isn’t a diagnostic practice anyway; you would still follow the flow of energy, spend as long in a particular hand positions as the energy wanted to spend, you would still work intuitively and allow the energy to guide your hands to the right places to treat for that person on that occasion.

Knowledge about “what does this mean?” would make no difference at all to what you did because Reiki does not function in terms of (1) diagnosing something, and then (2) doing something specific and different based on that diagnosis.

We stand aside and allow the energy to flow, no matter what that energy might be dealing with, and that keeps things nice and simple.

[For more about keeping things simple, visit Declutter your Treatment Rituals]

 

Did you like this blog?

If so, you are going to love this book…

 

Liberate Your Reiki!

“Whether you are at Level 1, 2 or Reiki Master Teacher Level (regardless of the Reiki flavour you are trained in), this book is very much for you! Within hours of starting to read this book, it has rejuvenated and enriched my own practices with a wealth of information and useful examples too.

The more you read the more you’ll have those wonderful ‘aha’ moments. I know I am already benefiting personally from the knowledge I’ve gained, but so will all my family, friends and clients too. Thank you Taggart for creating this incredible, uniting, enlightening book.”

Heidi Gaffney-Evans

Liberate Your Reiki!

86 Articles About Reiki: One Inspiring Vision

In this Reiki book you will find 80+ articles about Reiki, written by Reiki Master Teacher Taggart King. You will discover how to set your Reiki free, free from the constraints, dogma, rules and regulations of Western-style Reiki courses. Get back to Reiki’s original Japanese method and embrace simplicity, flexibility, creativity and intuition.

This book is suitable for people at all Reiki levels: beginners, those who are developing their Reiki, and Reiki Masters/Master Teachers. You will find advice about self-treatment meditations, energy exercises to build your ability as a channel, you will discover how to work with your intuition and embrace the power of intent.

Explore different distant healing methods and discover the beauty of Reiki’s original Japanese form. Learn how to use creativity and visualisation to enhance your self-treatments and treatment of others, and ditch all the silly rules and regulations that stifle the practice of Western Reiki in many lineages.

Finally, read Taggart King’s “10 Rules of Reiki”, the essential principles for a powerful and fulfilling Reiki practice.

This professionally-printed Reiki manual has 370 A5 pages, a glossy soft cover and we will send it to anywhere in the world!

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

 

 

 

 

Photo credit: anton petukhov

 

 

Experiencing Disturbing Things

 

I think that most Reiki people will know about the main sensations or experiences that you can have when treating someone. If we were going to describe the ‘standard’ sensations then we’d be talking about heat in your hands, or fizzing, tingling and buzzing, maybe pulsing or throbbing, heaviness, a ‘magnetic’ sensation… or perhaps coolness, or a feeling of ‘insects’ crawling over your skin, or perhaps pinpricks.

And in terms of colours, we’d be experiencing bright lights, usually white, lilac and violet, or rainbow light-shows, or a particular colour predominating for a while or for the whole treatment.

But those are not the only experiences we can have, and what I wanted to talk about today are perhaps the more ‘extreme’ or unusual or surprising experinecs that you might come across. These don’t happen very often, and perhaps won’t all happen to everyone, but they are frequent enough to be noteworthy.

Feeling queasy

It’s not unusual for a Reiki person to feel queasy sometimes when treating a person. This usually happens in two different situations, and the explanation for both situations is the same.

You can feel queasy when you’re new to Reiki and you’re treating someone for the first time, or the first few times; maybe it’s happening on the day of your First Degree course. What is happening here is that the recipient is drawing a lot of energy through you, you aren’t used to things like this happening yet – after all, you’ve only just been initiated – and it’s all rather ‘taking your breath away’. You’re not used to all this energy rushing through you and it’s making you feel queasy.

Don’t worry: this is not going to be your routine experience of working with Reiki! It is a one-off, or certainly one of a small number of one-offs! With a bit of practice, once you are more used to channelling the energy, doing your Hatsurei ho and self-treating, you will become accustomed to strong energy movement within you and it will all be old-hat, unremarkable and something that you can deal with effortlessly.

The other situation where you might experience some queasiness later on in your Reiki journey is when you are treating someone’s heart and solar plexus, say, and the person is experiencing quite an emotional shift, or is having an emotional ‘release’, or certainly the energy is facilitating some powerful and positive changes on the emotional level. As this happens, and you are the conduit through which all this is happening, your body can experience some queasiness, again because of the strength of the energy that is coming through.

If such a thing occurs, just move your hands away from that position to a different part of their body for a while and return to the heart/solar plexus (or wherever your hands were when you felt queasy) and you may find that the sensation has now gone. Or you might have to work on that area in small doses: moving there, moving away and so on, until the flow of energy dissipates, as it usually does.

[See also: Talking to clients about strong reactions for further insights]

Expiring through heat

You may find, very occasionally, that when you treat someone you feel like you are going to expire from heat exhaustion! You feel boiling hot and you may even start to sweat, visibly, maybe even really profusely. This is not such a common occurrence as queasiness but it has the same cause: a situation where the recipient is drawing huge, really *huge* amounts of energy and you’re not quite equipped to accommodate this comfortably just yet.

And just like the example of queasiness, as you contnue to work with the energy regularly you will develop your ability to accommodate such big flows of energy comfortably. The occasional person may still quite take your breath away, though, and you may wish to move your hands to a less intense area for a while, just to let things settle down, before perhaps returning to that intense spot.

A sense of Ickyness

Less common, still, would be the situation where you start to treat someone and you begin to experience perhaps an overwhelming sense of disgust and revulsion, that their energy just seems so revolting, unpleasant, icky.

We don’t analyse or try to rationalise our experiences: we just accept what occurs as a necessary part of channelling the energy, but I need to remind you that Reiki is *protective*. Reiki is a protective energy. Reiki practitioners do not ‘pick up’ things from the people they’re working on and the energy seems to create a ‘healing space’ that the recipient uses to bring things more into a state of balance, as far as that is possible for them at that time.

Remember that there are many complementary therapists, often hands-on therapists, who learn Reiki specifically because of its protective effects. So it may be rather unpleasant to be treating someone whose energy just seems awful, but you are allowing Reiki do do something beneficial for that person, and you are safe. Of course it is then up to you whether you see that client for another treatment or not; you may decide that they would be better served by choosing a different therapy or therapist.

[See also: Reiki is not all fluffy bunnies for further insights]

“Picking things up”

While it is true that Reiki is a protective force, some practitioners do seem to find that during a treatment they seem to experience some of the physical symptoms or emotional or mental states of the person that they are working on, and it is natural to be concerned that you are ‘picking up’ the client’s problems.

But that is not what is happening here. The practitioner’s body is just ‘resonating’ with the energy of the client, temporarily: the practitioner is echoing in an intuitive way, not adopting, the clients problems. So this is really an example of a sort of ‘body intuition’, not where you have your hands drift with the energy to the right places to treat, as is the usual way that intuition comes through for Reiki people, but in terms of a deep knowing about the experience of the recipient.

And this is temporary. It’s a temporary echo. It will dissipate as you do a little “I’m disconnecting” ritual and later take your attention away from the client.

 

So, there you have four more unusual experiences when treating someone. You may not experience any of these things or you may experience all of them at some stage. Just be reassured that everything is fine and you can take them in your stride.

 

Did you like this blog?

If so, you are going to love this book…

 

Liberate Your Reiki!

“Whether you are at Level 1, 2 or Reiki Master Teacher Level (regardless of the Reiki flavour you are trained in), this book is very much for you! Within hours of starting to read this book, it has rejuvenated and enriched my own practices with a wealth of information and useful examples too.

The more you read the more you’ll have those wonderful ‘aha’ moments. I know I am already benefiting personally from the knowledge I’ve gained, but so will all my family, friends and clients too. Thank you Taggart for creating this incredible, uniting, enlightening book.”

Heidi Gaffney-Evans

Liberate Your Reiki!

86 Articles About Reiki: One Inspiring Vision

In this Reiki book you will find 80+ articles about Reiki, written by Reiki Master Teacher Taggart King. You will discover how to set your Reiki free, free from the constraints, dogma, rules and regulations of Western-style Reiki courses. Get back to Reiki’s original Japanese method and embrace simplicity, flexibility, creativity and intuition.

This book is suitable for people at all Reiki levels: beginners, those who are developing their Reiki, and Reiki Masters/Master Teachers. You will find advice about self-treatment meditations, energy exercises to build your ability as a channel, you will discover how to work with your intuition and embrace the power of intent.

Explore different distant healing methods and discover the beauty of Reiki’s original Japanese form. Learn how to use creativity and visualisation to enhance your self-treatments and treatment of others, and ditch all the silly rules and regulations that stifle the practice of Western Reiki in many lineages.

Finally, read Taggart King’s “10 Rules of Reiki”, the essential principles for a powerful and fulfilling Reiki practice.

This professionally-printed Reiki manual has 370 A5 pages, a glossy soft cover and we will send it to anywhere in the world!

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

 

Photo credit: Camera Eye Photography

 

 

I Can’t Feel Anything Happening

 

It’s just not working for me

When you go on a Reiki course and start to practise Reiki, you have a lot of expectations. There are all these sensations that you’ve heard about, that other people, or some other people, experience, and you’re not sure whether you’re feeling them, or notiicing them, or noticing them enough or often enough or strongly enough.

You can doubt yourself and think that although, yes, I know that “Reiki works for everyone”… maybe it actually isn’t working for me.

What should I be feeling?

Is what I’m feeling the right thing?

Am I doing something wrong, and if I was doing it properly I’d feel more?

All these thoughts can whirl round our heads in the early stages. So what I’d like to talk about in this blog are the sort of sensations that people might experience when using Reiki and how people can end up disregarding the Reiki sensations that they actually are feeling, and I’d also like to touch on situations where people can’t really feel much, or anything, happening as the energy flows, what you can do about that and whether you can become more sensitive over time.

Glossing over your Reiki sensations

We’ve all read about the sort of things that people tend to notice when they use Reiki, whether they are self-treating or working on other people. The way people experience the energy is either in terms of some sort of a physical sensation or some sort of image. So we might experience any of the following physical things:

  • Heat
  • Buzzing
  • Throbbing
  • Fizzing
  • Tingling
  • Prickling
  • Pulsing
  • A magnetic sensation
  • Pressure
  • Heaviness/density
  • A temperature change

In terms of images, we might notice a particular colour – often white, lilac or violet – or some sort of a random, rainbow lightshow, or flashing lights, or a couple, or three, colours, or we might become aware of  a particular image that appears in our mind’s eye.

And because there’sa natural tendency to worry about stuff and think we’re not doing it right, we tend to focus not so much on the sensations that we are experiencing, but the sensations that we are *not* experiencing. So let’s think of three imaginary, anxious, Reiki people. Let’s call them “David”, “Frances” and “Helena”.

David is seeing coloured lights as he meditates or self-treats or treats other people and he is worried because he can’t really feel any heat in his hands.

Frances is feeling heat and tingling in her hands as the energy flows but she’s worried because she can’t see any colours at all.

Helena is feeling a variety of things but she is worried because she doesn’t know which sensations are the ‘right’ ones that she should be experiencing and she’s worried whether she’s just imagining it, or making things up, that she is fooling herself.

Am I just making it up?

No.

You’re not.

There are Reiki people out there who don’t see colours as the energy flows. They really wish that they could. If we were just fooling ourselves then all the people who were desperate to see some colors would just see “made up” colours. There are Reiki people out there who don’t have too many physical sensations as the energy flows: if these people could just ‘make it up’, they would feel more, so they wouldn’t need to worry. But they can’t.

So you can trust what you’re feeling, or seeing, or noticing. You’re not making it up.

[See also: Do you have to believe in Reiki for it to work? for further insights]

Some people are less sensitive

When people start to use Reiki, it’s the luck of the draw in terms of how sensitive to the flow of energy you will be. It will follow a “Bell curve”, with most people in the middle, experiencing something as the energy flows and with some people experiencing a bit more or a bit less that others.

A few people will sit at the far extremes, either starting off ridiculously sensitive to the energy or conversely not very sensitive at all; some students might start by feeling nothing at all as the energy flows. This will obviously be dismaying for that person.

But for most people, these things aren’t set in stone because there are things that you can do do develop your sensitivity to the energy.

Doing things to build sensitivity

For most people, most of the time, they will not need to do anything in particular for their sensitivity to the energy to increase. You start to work with energy, you have some, perhaps slight, sensations but you are aware of *something*, your attention dwells on the something, and you become more used, or more practised, at directing your attention in such a way that you notice more of that sensation.

What you focus your attention on grows in your experience.

So, for example, if I said to you, “How does your right ear feel?”, you would spend a few moments and become aware of all these sensations that you could potentially have been noticing before, but you weren’t because your mind was filtering them out because they weren’t important to you.

Now with your new-found Reiki connection, you have new sensations available to you and with practice and repetition you can get better at noticing them, and noticing them more strongly. Treat yourself, treat other people, perform your daily energy exercises (for example, Hatsurei ho), tune in to our free weekly distant empowerments: you’re bathing yourself in energy in different ways and giving yourself lots of opportunities to not only experience the energy but get used to and more ‘tuned in’ to those experiences.

If you would like to do something more to develop your sensitivity, then I have two suggestions: (1) Order a copy of the “Your Reiki Workout” Book or eBook, whch was a whole chapter devoted to building your sensitivity to the energy, or (2) Use my special “Nentatsu ho” meditation, to help you become more aware of the energies.

Why continue if you can’t feel energy?

It’s not often admitted in Reiki circles, I don’t think, but there are some people – even Reiki Masters – who, after trying all of the above things, still can’t feel anything happening as the energy flows. And that makes you wonder, doesn’t it, why they continued with their training when clearly “nothing was happening”.

Well, what made the difference in these cases was these Reiki people actually going through the motions and working on themselves and, importantly, treating other people despite their lack of sensation because, when you treat a number of people, you will receive feedback: positive feedback about the sensations they were experiencing (“your hands were burning hot!”) and feedback about how things improved for them in some way.

And a practitioner who self-treats and practises Hatsurei ho, even though they can’t feel anything happening, will still receive the same personal benefits that any other Reiki practitioner will receive.

[See also: Why don’t I feel so much when I self-treat? for further insights]

So you can relax, knowing that if you’re experiencing the flow of energy in some way then it doesn’t matter quite how you’re experiencing it, it doesn’t matter how other people are experiencing it, and with time and repetition you’re likely to find that your sensitivity to the flow of energy will build. There are definite things that you can practise to enhance your sensitivity and, if all else fails, Reiki will still work just as well for you and the people you treat, no matter whether you’re having astounding rainbow light-shows, or noticing nothing at all!

 

Did you like this blog?

If so, you are going to love this book…

 

Liberate Your Reiki!

“Whether you are at Level 1, 2 or Reiki Master Teacher Level (regardless of the Reiki flavour you are trained in), this book is very much for you! Within hours of starting to read this book, it has rejuvenated and enriched my own practices with a wealth of information and useful examples too.

The more you read the more you’ll have those wonderful ‘aha’ moments. I know I am already benefiting personally from the knowledge I’ve gained, but so will all my family, friends and clients too. Thank you Taggart for creating this incredible, uniting, enlightening book.”

Heidi Gaffney-Evans

Liberate Your Reiki!

86 Articles About Reiki: One Inspiring Vision

In this Reiki book you will find 80+ articles about Reiki, written by Reiki Master Teacher Taggart King. You will discover how to set your Reiki free, free from the constraints, dogma, rules and regulations of Western-style Reiki courses. Get back to Reiki’s original Japanese method and embrace simplicity, flexibility, creativity and intuition.

This book is suitable for people at all Reiki levels: beginners, those who are developing their Reiki, and Reiki Masters/Master Teachers. You will find advice about self-treatment meditations, energy exercises to build your ability as a channel, you will discover how to work with your intuition and embrace the power of intent.

Explore different distant healing methods and discover the beauty of Reiki’s original Japanese form. Learn how to use creativity and visualisation to enhance your self-treatments and treatment of others, and ditch all the silly rules and regulations that stifle the practice of Western Reiki in many lineages.

Finally, read Taggart King’s “10 Rules of Reiki”, the essential principles for a powerful and fulfilling Reiki practice.

This professionally-printed Reiki manual has 370 A5 pages, a glossy soft cover and we will send it to anywhere in the world!

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

 

 

Picture Credit: Agnn Foon

 

 

Which Bits Of Me Need Treating?

reiki self treatment meditations

 

Most people in the world of Reiki tend to self-treat in a ‘standard’ fashion, either resting their hands on themselves in a set sequence of positions or, if they are following Mikao Usui’s original practices, carrying out a Reiki self-treatment meditation where they focus their attention on a number of specific locations, and allow the energy to flow.

But someone asked me the other day, “how do I know which bits of me I need to treat” so I thought I would put together a reply that may be helpful in some way, because there are few different ways that you can answer that question. Let’s go…

Trusting the energy

The first approach we can take is to trust that the energy is going to go where it needs to, so you don’t actually need to worry about what parts of you need treating, because the energy will go there anyway. When you do a hands-on self-treatment, you are firing the energy from lots of different locations to give it the best chance of getting to where it needs to go, and if you are self-treating in the original meditative fashion, then areas upon which you are focusing your attention on some level actually represent your entire body, and thus you are treating everything that needs to be treated.

So if you have a back ache or a sore knee or some bubbling frustration or mental angst, the energy will go to where it needs to go and do what it needs to do to resolve things, and you may actually be aware of that happening, thorough a feeling of heat or comfort or heaviness in the affected area, or through some aches and pains coming to the surface, or through a rush of emotion that gives you a tear or two as you work on yourself.

That’s all good.

Treating obvious areas

Another approach would be to treat any obvious areas of discomfort. You have twisted your knee and so you rest your hands above and below the knee and allow the energy to flow there. There is something very comforting about the having that feeling of Reiki “deep heat” emanating from your hands, and you certainly know that the energy is getting to an area that is going to need some attention.

If you feel that you need some emotional self-love, and to release some stress and tension, and you don’t facncy using my Releasing exercise, then by all means rest your hands on your heart and solar plexus and allow that lovely, comforting warmth to focus itself there.

There are limitations to this approach, of course, because you won’t be able to physically rest your hands on every part of your body, or certainly you will find that doing so is uncomfortable to hold for any period of time, and thus distracts you from that lovely, mindful, neutral and empty state that you can enter into when self-treating.

So what can you do instead? Well, we know that the energy follows your focus and focuses itself where your attention is directed, so if you want to treat your lower back, you can simply focus your attention there and allow the energy to travel there and become more intense in that place, like an invisible, energetic hot-water bottle. Or just rest your hand(s) in a comfortable-to-hold position reasonably near to the affected area that you would like to treat and imagine, visualise, feel, have in mind, know that the energy is flowing from where your hands are, to that area.

[For an alternative approach to self-treatments, see: Reiki chakra meditation for you to follow]

Self Scanning

Here’s a different approach: when you treat someone, often you will perform ‘scanning’, where you drift your hands from place to place, focusing your attention on the sensations in your fingers and palms and later spending more time treating the areas that seemed to be pulling the most energy: the ‘hotspots’ (which might instead  be fizzy or buzzy, heavy, pulsing, cold etc).

You can do that with yourself to an extent, allowing your hand or hands to drift over your body and paying attention to the places that seem to be drawing more energy. Those are the areas that you will want to spend your time either hands-on self-treating, or focusing your attention on as you meditatively self-treat.

Now, you don’t have elastic arms like Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four, so you won’t be able to scan yourself completely, but here’s a cool trick: (1) Hold your hand still, hovering away from your body, (2) Focus your attention on the sensations in your fingers and palm, (3) Imagine, have in mind, know that an imaginary scanning-hand is moving slowly across different parts of your body, and notice how the sensations in your hand changes.

You can ‘scan’ with your intention, without physically moving your hand anywhere! That’s a bit like remote scanning, which is describe here: Scanning at a distance.

I think that’s so cool.

[See also: Why don’t I feel so much when I self-treat? for further insights]

Using energy awareness

When you self-treat, you will often be aware of the flow of energy, or certainly know where the energy seems to be focusing itself, because you’ll feel heat somewhere, or tingling or fizzing, or pulsing, or heaviness, of whatever particular sensation or sensations tell you that Reiki is doing its wonders on a particular part of your body.

Well, you could follow that focusing of energy, which you became aware of, by resting your hands on or near that place, or allowing your attention to rest in that area. In doing so, you are allowing the energy to guide you, you are following it’s priorities, its sequence, and backing that up by focusing the energy there with hands or attention.

Working intuitively

In the same way that you scan other people, and can scan yourself, you work intuitively with other people, and you can also work intuitively with yourself. I recommend the ‘Reiji ho’ method as a really good, solid, reliable approach to intuitive working, and you can read all about intuition in a series of blogs that I wrote, starting here.

So you can hover your hands near your body, empty your mind, merge with the energy and allow your hands to drift, which they will do to an extent. You are limited again, of course, by not being a member of The Fantastic Four, so the areas of your body over which your hands can drift and come to rest will always be limited.

That’s where you can bring in your handy visual constructs again and, just like when we scanned ourselves without moving our hands, we can also have imaginary hands drifting over our bodies, coming to rest in our mind’s eye over places of need.

What do we do with that intuitive information? Well, we can either rest our real hands on or near that place, or allow our attention to rest there for a while. In either case, the energy will be directed to that location, and when the energy seems to want to move on to somewhere else, we can bring out imaginary hands to see what the next part of the sequence will be.

Take your pick

So you can see that there are a whole range of approaches that you can take to deal with the question of “how do I know which bits of me I need to treat”. Whether you treat hands-on or meditatively (my favourite), whether you just allow the energy to do whatever it wants to do or treat obvious areas, whether you scan yourself or follow the energy’s own priorities in some way, the important thing is to make working on yourself a regular part of your routine.

Go with the flow and discover for yourself the most comfortable approach for you, or mix and match as seems appropriate.

The important thing is to self-treat. Do it today, if only for five minutes, and build that Reiki momentum!

 

Did you like this blog?

If so, you are going to love this book…

 

Liberate Your Reiki!

“Whether you are at Level 1, 2 or Reiki Master Teacher Level (regardless of the Reiki flavour you are trained in), this book is very much for you! Within hours of starting to read this book, it has rejuvenated and enriched my own practices with a wealth of information and useful examples too.

The more you read the more you’ll have those wonderful ‘aha’ moments. I know I am already benefiting personally from the knowledge I’ve gained, but so will all my family, friends and clients too. Thank you Taggart for creating this incredible, uniting, enlightening book.”

Heidi Gaffney-Evans

Liberate Your Reiki!

86 Articles About Reiki: One Inspiring Vision

In this Reiki book you will find 80+ articles about Reiki, written by Reiki Master Teacher Taggart King. You will discover how to set your Reiki free, free from the constraints, dogma, rules and regulations of Western-style Reiki courses. Get back to Reiki’s original Japanese method and embrace simplicity, flexibility, creativity and intuition.

This book is suitable for people at all Reiki levels: beginners, those who are developing their Reiki, and Reiki Masters/Master Teachers. You will find advice about self-treatment meditations, energy exercises to build your ability as a channel, you will discover how to work with your intuition and embrace the power of intent.

Explore different distant healing methods and discover the beauty of Reiki’s original Japanese form. Learn how to use creativity and visualisation to enhance your self-treatments and treatment of others, and ditch all the silly rules and regulations that stifle the practice of Western Reiki in many lineages.

Finally, read Taggart King’s “10 Rules of Reiki”, the essential principles for a powerful and fulfilling Reiki practice.

This professionally-printed Reiki manual has 370 A5 pages, a glossy soft cover and we will send it to anywhere in the world!

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

Reiki is not all fluffy bunnies

reiki is a powerful system

When Reiki shifts up a gear

We know what Reiki tends to do for people, don’t we? People end up chilled, calm, serene, content, better able to cope, more positive.

Reiki brings balance, perspective, and if you add in a regular focus on the Reiki precepts, and the practise of mindfulness, then you have a really powerful system for positive change.

But it’s not all happy bunnies and smiles: Reiki can produce powerful effects and elicit powerful shifts in a person.

When someone comes for a Reiki treatment, they will usually have a wonderful experience. They will feel more relaxed than they have for a very long time, they will drift, or float, or sink, they will bliss out on those boiling hot hands, they might have rainbow light shows, or tingles, a lovely experience.

But it’s not like that for everyone.

Sometimes a person can just feel generally ‘unsettled’ during a treatment. They don’t relax, they don’t necessarily experience anything powerful, but they’re not calm and relaxed and peaceful, as most people are. So what is going on here?

Well, they are having a definite experience, the energy is doing something for them, and what it is doing is coming through as that sense of being unsettled.

The energy will provide the recipient with a variety of sensations or feelings, and they are just what that person needs to experience to best shift what they need to shift to move on, a side-effect, in a way, of the energetic work that is going on within them.

Often it’s a lovely experience, but not always.

Emotional shifts

Sometimes Reiki can produce powerful emotional effects in a short space of time, as people release what they need to release to move on with their lives.

It’s as if all this deeply-embedded stuff is bubbling to the surface to be released.

So I have had people literally wailing on the treatment table, and it’s not uncommon to see a silent tear or two pass from someone’s eye as they’re treated.

And although it’s not nice to see someone in distress, it seems that these emotions, although powerful at times, are experienced in a positive way by the client, where there is a sense of relief that they are just letting go, moving on from what they are experiencing on the treatment table.

So don’t worry if someone becomes emotional when you treat them. This is common. It shows that things are moving, shifting, and that’s what you and your client want.

By the end of the session, everything will have calmed down and your client will feel much better. The treatment will have come like a breath fo fresh air, like a cleansing breath that has flushed out accumulated gunk.

And while your client may sometimes feel a bit shell-shocked by what they experienced, they will have left stuff behind and moved on in some positive fashion.

Physical shifts

While the ’emotional release’ is probably more common than its physical counterpart, sometimes a client will experience more physical sensations, for example pain. It’s not uncommon for someone with arthritis, for example, to experience a short-term intensification of those joint pains, while they are receiving their treatment, though the pains then subside and often improve subsequently.

I have treated people with metal plates inserted into their bones, where the area has ached during a treatment, for example.

Aftershocks

A Reiki treatment is rather like dropping a pebble into a pond: while there is the initial splash, during the treatment – an intensification of things – the energy will also produce ripples that carry on, with peaks and troughs. So it’s not uncommon for a client to experience some emotional ups and downs in the days after a treatment, with physical effects like better sleep, or disturbed sleep, aches and pains, feeling full of energy, or feeling tired and wanting to change gear and slow down for a while.

These things are all side-effects of the energy working to bring things into balance for that person, giving them the opportunity to re-balance, to reinterpret, to reconsider, to achieve a new state of wellness.

Over to you

What powerful effects have you or witnessed when giving a Reiki treatment? What did your client experience and how did that help them to improve things subsequently?

What have you experienced for yourself when receiving a Reiki treatment that would consider to be a powerful experience, and how has that helped you?

Did you like this blog?

If so, you are going to love this book…

 

Liberate Your Reiki!

“Whether you are at Level 1, 2 or Reiki Master Teacher Level (regardless of the Reiki flavour you are trained in), this book is very much for you! Within hours of starting to read this book, it has rejuvenated and enriched my own practices with a wealth of information and useful examples too.

The more you read the more you’ll have those wonderful ‘aha’ moments. I know I am already benefiting personally from the knowledge I’ve gained, but so will all my family, friends and clients too. Thank you Taggart for creating this incredible, uniting, enlightening book.”

Heidi Gaffney-Evans

Liberate Your Reiki!

86 Articles About Reiki: One Inspiring Vision

In this Reiki book you will find 80+ articles about Reiki, written by Reiki Master Teacher Taggart King. You will discover how to set your Reiki free, free from the constraints, dogma, rules and regulations of Western-style Reiki courses. Get back to Reiki’s original Japanese method and embrace simplicity, flexibility, creativity and intuition.

This book is suitable for people at all Reiki levels: beginners, those who are developing their Reiki, and Reiki Masters/Master Teachers. You will find advice about self-treatment meditations, energy exercises to build your ability as a channel, you will discover how to work with your intuition and embrace the power of intent.

Explore different distant healing methods and discover the beauty of Reiki’s original Japanese form. Learn how to use creativity and visualisation to enhance your self-treatments and treatment of others, and ditch all the silly rules and regulations that stifle the practice of Western Reiki in many lineages.

Finally, read Taggart King’s “10 Rules of Reiki”, the essential principles for a powerful and fulfilling Reiki practice.

This professionally-printed Reiki manual has 370 A5 pages, a glossy soft cover and we will send it to anywhere in the world!

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:
Photo credit: Orin Zebest

Develop your Reiki Intuition (Part IV)

reiji ho reiki intuitive technique learn

So, in previous posts I have talked about simple energy exercises that you can carry out every day to clear and cleanse and balance your energy system. I have run through exercises that you can carry out on your own and with a volunteer to start merging with the energy, to help to open you up to your intuition.

We then moved on to practise a Japanese intuitive technique called “Reiji ho” where you allowed your hands to drift with the energy to the right places to treat, different for each person that you work on, based on their individual energy needs.

Here are the links that you need if you’d like to recap:

In this post I am going to talk about using Reiji ho with a recipient who is resting on a treatment table in frotn of you, and how you can use Reiji ho in practice when you treat people, when you carry out full treatments.

How to start your Reiji ho

Do this exercise for about 15 minutes or so for each person you practise on. It doesn’t take very long.

Practise on as many people as you can.

The recipient lies on a treatment couch and you stand beside them.

Make yourself comfortable and bring your hands into the prayer position. Close your eyes. Take a few long deep breaths. Imagine energy flooding down to you from above, into your crown, and the energy flows down the centre of your body to your Dantien. Feel/imagine the energy building in your Dantien.

A continuous flood of energy keeps pouring through your crown into your Dantien, where it builds.

As the energy floods through you, feel yourself disappearing into the energy and merging with it, imagine yourself becoming one with the energy. Just be there with the energy, allowing it to flow. No expectations. Just merge with the energy for a minute or so.

Now, in your mind, focus your attention on the recipient. Feel yourself merging with them, becoming one with them.

Merge with them for a little while.

Say silently to yourself “please let me be guided”… “please let my hands be guided” … “ show me where to treat”.

kent reiki courses dartford
Student practices allowing energy to guide her hands

Hover your hands in neutral

Move your hands so that they are hovering over the recipient’s torso in a neutral, comfortable position

Your hands and arms are loose, there is no resistance; your hands will drift smoothly and easily.

Imagine the energy is flooding through you: into your crown, through your arms and out of your hands.

Feel yourself disappearing into the energy, merging with the energy, becoming one with the energy… and allow your hands to drift.

There is no resistance; your hands will drift and glide smoothly and easily.

Allow your hands to drift

As you do this you may notice a gentle or subtle pull on your hands. Allow them to drift until they come to rest. You may now have a feeling that your hands are in the ‘right’ place, and you may feel a lot of energy flowing through your hands.

Allow the energy to flow for a minute.

Now bring your hands back to your ‘start’ position (whatever position that was) and repeat the process. You are practising allowing your hands to drift with the energy; you are not practising treating someone at the moment.

Keep on moving your hands back into the start position, and allow them to drift to where they want to go.

Now move to another part of the body, so you are standing next to the hips, or the knees, and repeat the exercise, each time seeing where your hands want to drift, allowing them to come to rest if they want to, and repeating the process to see if they drift to the same area each time.

Some things to notice

  • Sometimes both hands will drift and come to a stop, and on other occasions only one hand will move.
  • Sometimes a hand will drift further away from the body, or move closer to the body. In the latter case do look to see where your hand is going!
  • Sometimes a hand will not come to rest, but will keep moving in an interesting ‘energy dance’. Just go with the flow and accept what happens as the right thing for the recipient on that occasion.

In practice, wherever your hands come to rest, you would rest your hands on the person to treat, obviously depending on the part of the body your hands are hovering over: some areas should be treated with the hands hovering above the body, not resting on the surface, for the sake of propriety.

When your hands come to rest you usually find that there is a lot of energy coming through. This makes sense because you have just put your hands in just the right combination of positions for that person on that occasion.

After a while you will notice that the flow of energy subsides, and you know that it is ok to move on to the next combination of hand positions. If you move your hands away too soon you will simply be guided back to those positions to treat some more!

In practice you will find that you end up with fewer hand positions than you used when following your ‘standard’ hand positions.

In practice I always treat someone’s shoulders for about 10 minutes when I start a treatment.

Then I move on to use Reiji ho on the head. Usually I end up with ‘non-symmetrical’ hand positions. Then after say 25 minutes I move on to the torso and let the energy guide me there, and I stay in each hand position until I feel that it is right to move on.

Over to you

Practise the method I have described on as many people as you can. What you are doing is practising and getting used to ‘giving up and not trying’, just merging with the energy and letting it happen.

That’s the key to success with Reiji ho.

Post a message below to let me know what you did, what happened, and how you felt about working in this way.

Did you like this blog?

If so, you are going to love this book…

 

Your Reiki Workout

“In this comprehensive, informative and fun book, Taggart provides a multitude of detailed, practical exercises and guidance on strengthening sensitivity and intuition. Additionally, and seldom found in other publications, Taggart explores more advanced techniques on how to work with Reiki, and intent, on a deeper level for the benefit of both you and clients. I highly recommend this book to those who have undergone Reiki training and wish to obtain practical answers to deeper questions that may not have been covered in their tuition courses, and to explore their experiences of Reiki at a higher level.”

A Gordon

Your Reiki Workout

Exercises and Meditations to Explore the Wonder of Reiki

This book started its life as a collection of ‘self-help guides’ that focused on: getting started with Reiki, becoming more sensitive to the energy, developing your intuitive side and exploring the use of intent.

What I have done is to take these guides and re-write and expand upon them, so that you have here a practical workbook that you can use over time to explore the potentials that Reiki has to offer.

I have also included all the work that I have done in developing “Reiki synthesis”: a way of using questions, language forms and a breathing technique to create bespoke symbols for yourself and others, and to deal with unhelpful emotions or beliefs. Reiki synthesis focuses specific energies on freeing you from what is holding you back in your life, releases negative emotions and beliefs and creates specific energies to move you forward in the most powerful and positive way.

This book will be of interest to anyone who is interested in exploring and experimenting with the energy and who wants to learn a unique and powerful system for self-transformation.

This professionally-printed Reiki book has 210 A5 pages, a glossy soft cover and we will send it to anywhere in the world!

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

Book: 210 pages.

Price: £15.99 + p&p




Or Download a PDF version now for only £12.49

 

 

Author:

A simple way with Reiki symbols

simple reiki symbol method

Why so complicated?

In the West we like to make things complicated, and the way that most of us now use symbols is a world away from the simple approach that Usui used.

So how can we work with symbols in a way that echoes more the way that Usui taught his students?

Well firstly, Usui taught symbols to a very small number of people, just in the last few years of his life. The vast majority of his students were taught in a very different way.

Most of his students were given meditations to use so that they could, over a long period of time, become more and more familiar with the three energies taught at second-degree level, for example. Once they were thoroughly familiar with the energies, once they had *become* the energies again and again, then they were given a shortcut – a trigger – to connect them to those energies.

The triggers that they used were mostly ancient Shinto mantras called kotodama or jumon, not symbols.

In the West we do it backwards by comparison: we are given a trigger (a symbol) to connect us to an energy that we are not familiar with, and with which we may never become familiar, depending on how we have been taught to use the symbols. Usui had his students become the three energies again and again and again, and when they were ingrained, when they were innate, only then would you be given a way of connecting to the energies that were already within you and thoroughly familiar to you.

The symbols’ energies were viewed quite differently

The first energy was not seen as some sort of ‘Power’ energy, in the way that the first symbol is seen as the ‘Power’ symbol in the West.

The first energy was simply earth energy, energy of the physical body, a physical healing energy. The second energy was seen as heavenly energy and the third energy was said to produce ‘oneness’. Usui’s students learned to get to grips with these energies through meditation, so how can we learn to experience earth energy and celestial energy?

Well, we can do this by using the symbols.

Try this Reiki symbol meditation

Sit comfortably in a chair with your eyes closed and your hands resting in your lap palms uppermost.

In your mind’s eye, visualise the first symbol up in the air above you, and say its name silently to yourself three times.

Now imagine that cascades of energy are flooding down onto you from that symbol, cascading into your head, your torso, your hands; endless cascades of energy or light keep on flooding into your body, flowing over you and flooding through you. Do this for several minutes.

  • How does that feel?
  • What impressions do you get of the energy?
  • Where was your attention focused?
  • What were your thoughts?

Now repeat this exercise using the second symbol, again visualising it up in the air above you, saying its name three times, and drawing down endless cascades of energy into your body.

How does this feel by comparison? What impressions do you get of the second energy? Where is your attention focused? What is going on in your head?

Try this with a Reiki friend

reiki symbol channel energy othersIf you have a Reiki friend to hand, you can do this exercise together: one person sits comfortably in a chair and the other stands behind. The person standing up is going to send energy from the first or second symbol in quite an intense way.

What they do is this: ‘charge’ your hands with the energy of the first symbol, say, by drawing the symbol over your palm, saying the name three times, and press your hands together to ‘transfer the effect across’ to he other hand.

Now in your mind’s eye draw out the first symbol up in the air above you and say the name three times.

Move your hands so that they are hovering alongside the recipient’s temples, and imagine that you are drawing down cascades of energy from the symbol above you, which flood into your crown, through your arms and out of your hands into the recipient. Keep on visualising.

  • How does the energy feel as it comes through your hands?
  • What impressions do you get in your body?
  • How does it feel for the recipient?
  • What adjectives can they use to describe the essence of the energy that they have received?

Now repeat this exercise using the second symbol.

How does this differ from the first energy?

Having carried out this exercise countless times and with many, many students, I can generalise about the sort of impression that most people tend to get from the two symbols, the two energies. Maybe you will notice some, though not all, of these experiences.

The first energy seems thick, dark, heavy, dense, solid, maybe oppressive or claustrophobic sometimes, hot, fierce, coarse, penetrating, with pressure and slow pulsation, your focus is on your physical body. The second energy seems soft, light, gentle, ethereal, like soft fluffy clouds or marshmallows, cool, blue, expansive, exhilarating, and uplifting.

What you have experienced is the essence of earth energy and the essence of heavenly energy, and these are two energies that you have available to you when treating others.

These energies are the essence of Usui’s system at second-degree level.

The first energy focuses on the physical body, and the second focuses on thoughts and emotions and our spiritual nature. They are so different, so distinctive.

Try using them on their own, just one energy, just one focus, without mixing symbols together. Keep things simple and uncluttered by focusing like a laser beam on one thing at a time, and see what happens.

And with time, and with familiarity with the two energies, try producing those energies directly, using intent, and see what happens.

Over to you

Carry out the meditations and exercises I’ve suggested above.

How did you get on?

Is it new to you to experience the energy of a symbol on its own, rather than mixing the symbol with others all the time?

How did the energies of CKR and SHK feel to you, or your Reiki friend?

Need help with your Symbol meditations?

reiki meditation audio cds musicIf you’d like some help with your Reiki symbol meditations, I have just what you need!

On my “Reiki Meditations” CD (or MP3 collection) I have these helpful meditations, which can be carried out by people at all Reiki Levels:

  • Hatsurei ho (daily energy exercises)
  • Self-treatment meditation
  • Symbol meditation
  • Distant Healing meditation

My “Reiki Meditations” CD is by far my most popular CD and is used by Reiki teachers all over the world.

Here are the links that you need:

Order the CD now for £15.49 + p&p


Download the MP3s now for £13.49

 

 

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Photo credit: zeevveez

How long should I spend in each hand position?

timing of reiki hand positions

Treat like clockwork?

In some Reiki lineages, students are taught to spend a set amount of time treating each hand position, no matter who they are working on, and some practitioners use audio CDs with little ‘bells’ that sound out every three minutes, say.

But isn’t this a bit mechanical, and everyone’s different, so why would we give essentially the same treatment to everyone that we work on?

Altering your treatments to suit the client

The energy needs of each person that we work on will be different, so it’s reasonable to expect each Reiki treatment that we give to be different, based on the individual energy needs of the client.

I don’t think we should treat everyone like a “Reiki robot”, changing hand position every time a bell pings, no matter what the client’s energy system needs on that occasion. In my last blog I spoke about moving beyond the standard hand positions that are taught in some lineages, and we can also move beyond the idea of treating for the same amount of time in each hand position.

Clients will have areas of the body that need Reiki more than others, so it makes sense to spend longer in these areas of need, and to spend less time in areas where there’s not such a great need for Reiki to flow.

How to know how long to take in one position

So how can we work out how long we should spend in each hand position? I would like to suggest two methods, one based on sensing the flow of energy, and one based on intuition.

Most Reiki people can feel the flow of energy through their hands, which often shows itself as heat, fizzing, tingling, buzzing, heaviness, a magnetic feeling or whatever, if you can feel the flow of energy through your hands then you will be able to tell whether the hand position you are using is drawing lots of energy.

Sometimes it’s completely clear, since your hands are absolutely ‘on fire’!

It would be a good idea to stay in that hand position for longer, and after a while you will start to notice that the flow of energy – and associates sensations – starts to reduce in intensity.

When things have calmed down, move onto your next hand position.

We can also allow our intuition to guide us in terms of how long we spend working on a particular part of the body. Everyone is intuitive, and our intuition can make itself known to us in different ways. We may feel ‘locked’ into a particular hand position, or have an ‘inner knowing’ that we should stay where we are for the time being.

One little trick that I have used in the past to tell whether I need to stay where I am or move on involves using a visualisation that connects to your inner knowing: when treating someone, and I’m wondering whether I should move on now, I have an imaginary hand appear in my mind’s eye, resting where my real hand is.

I imagine that this imaginary hand moves away from the body, as if on a piece of elastic, and if the imaginary hand wants to pull itself back to its original position, pulled by the elastic, then I should stay there for longer.

If the hand seems happy to drift away, in my mind’s eye, then I know it’s ok to move on to a new position… just a little visualisation that you can use to access intuitive knowledge.

Over to you

If these approaches are new to you, why not try them and see what happens, and let us know about your experiences by posting a message below.

Or maybe you started out doing treatments with standard timings, and now you don’t.

How did that happen, and what do you think about the quality of your treatments now that you’re working more freestyle?

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

 

 

 


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What Reiki hand positions should I use?

reiki hand positions

Are there hand positions that you should always use?

In some Reiki lineages, students are taught ‘the’ hand positions that they need to use, ‘the’ twelve hand positions, as if it were set in stone.

But do Reiki treatments really need to follow a set format, no matter what the energy needs of the client? Does every client have to be treated in exactly the same way?

I believe that having a set of hand positions to follow when you are starting out on your Reiki journey is very useful: you have some basic instructions to follow, you don’t need to worry, and you can concentrate on getting used to working with the energy, becoming comfortable with being with people in a treatment setting.

You are firing the energy from lots of different directions to make sure it has the best chance to get to where it needs to.

But this ‘one size fits all’ approach is a bit limiting. Not everyone is the same, so why would we apply the same hand positions to everybody we treat?

So how might we start to adjust or alter where we are resting our hands?

Varying your hand positions for each client

There are two ways to adjust the hand positions that you use: through scanning and through intuition.
Scanning is taught on most Reiki course and it is a way of finding out where the energy is flowing to on the client’s body in the greatest amounts. Energy flowing strongly gives people a variety of sensations, and common feelings might be heat in your hands, or warmth, fizzing, tingling, buzzing, throbbing, heaviness, a magnetic feeling etc.

You hover your hands a few inches away from the client, drift your hand from one place to another, or sweep from one area to another, and focus your attention on the sensations that you are getting on your hand/fingers.

When doing this, you may notice that there are areas of need that don’t tie in with the standard hand positions that you are taught, and you could add an extra hand position when you get that part of the body during your treatment, or alter the hand positions away from the standard ones, to accommodate this area of need.

Intuition is another approach that can be used to gear your treatment more towards the energy needs of the person that you are working on.

Intuition can express itself in a person in different ways: a general ‘impression’, a feeling of being ‘drawn’ to an area of the body, an ‘inner knowing’, or you may find that your hands are drifting apparently of their own accord to some area. This latter approach is something that we teach on our Reiki courses, in the form of “Reiji ho”, an intuitive approach that derives from Japanese Reiki.

So after starting off your treatment in whatever way you do that, you could then simply follow your impressions about where to rest your hands, and go with the flow.

Want to find out more about Intuitive working?

reiki book second degree manualsA big part of our Second Degree course involves helping people to work intuitively, so that the energy guides your hands to the right place to treat for each client.

In the Reiki Evolution 110-page Reiki Evolution Second Degree manual you can find step-by-step instructions to help you move beyond standard hand positions.

This manual 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

 


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Reiki Sensations

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.