My Manifesto for Reiki Tolerance

Stickyattunements, lineage, ,

reiki evolution rainbow tree

 

Honouring all the flavours of Reiki

The lovely thing about Reiki is that there are so many styles, so many different ways of working with the energy. Various people on the Internet have tried to compile lists of the different versions, and I think the total runs to a hundred or more.

Reiki seems to work as an effortless ‘carrier’, rather like a radio station and transmitter that you can play endless different songs through, but you need the underlying radio waves before the songs can be played.

Reiki is like those radio waves: a carrier that supports very many different ways of working.

What Reiki song do you sing?

Is it Karuna Reiki or Seichem, is it Reiki Tummo or Celtic Reiki or ‘Traditional Usui’ (in all its sub-flavours), is your song Jikiden or Raku Kei?

Or maybe it’s Rainbow Reiki or Lightarian Reiki, Violet Flame or Usui-do.

Some systems use a few different symbols, some use *loads* of symbols, some are structured, others are more ‘content free’; Reiki accommodates them all.

And it is true that some people will be attracted to a particular approach over another because everyone is different and one approach may feel more ‘right’ to one person than another.

I like to get back to the historical roots of things

To my eternal shame, I suppose, I am into folk music [there, I have said it: I like folk music!]. I play the five-string banjo.

But rather than playing Bluegrass music, which came into being in the 1950s, I prefer to play ‘clawhammer’ style banjo, which takes you back to the very beginnings of ‘Old Time’ music when the syncopated ‘slave style’ of playing blended with immigrants’ Irish and English tunes.

It feels right to me to play in a way that is authentic and ‘original’, so far as it is possible to recreate that style.

I also dabble with the ‘Anglo’ concertina and my preference is to get back to playing the ‘original’ English Anglo concertina style, so far as it is possible to glean what that was.

So it’s not surprising, then, that when I became involved in Reiki I was attracted to what was known about the form of Reiki that Usui Sensei was teaching in the 1920s in Japan, rather than the later styles that had developed and changed and mutated after the time of Mrs Takata.

Discovering Original Japanese Reiki

I was lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time, and received a lot of guidance from people who brought me a lot closer to understanding what the original system was all about, and my “Reiki Evolution” courses are based on that principle: to practise Reiki, so far as it is possible or practical, in a way that comes close to what we know that Usui was teaching to most of his students.

And for me that’s the bee’s knees, a wonderful way to practise that, *for me*, is much more fulfilling than the more standard ‘Western-style’ Reiki that I was first taught.

And we have taught many other Reiki people from a standard Western background who have found that the original system that we teach has many advantages.

There is no ‘one true way’

But not everyone is attracted to that way of practising Reiki because everyone is different, of course, and what I want to make clear is that I do not believe that what I teach is the ‘one true way’, the Reiki that everyone should learn, better than everyone else’s.

How arrogant and blinkered that would be, if I was to say such a thing.

I meet many lovely and open Reiki practitioners and teachers, who are happy and content to be practising Reiki in their unique way, and to accept that others can practise Reiki in their different way, and that’s it’s ok to differ. These are the Reiki people that I want to spend my time with: those who are open and content with the path that they are following, and who do not feel the need to look down their nose and impose their flavour and their rules on everyone else.

The curse of blinkered dogma

Sadly, there are some Reiki teachers out there who do actually believe that their way of teaching Reiki is the ‘correct’ way, that there is a ‘correct’ way to use the symbols, for example, and that if someone has been taught in a different way then they’re wrong.

This is sad.

This is divisive.

There are even people who believe that an attunement needs to be carried out in a certain prescribed fashion in order to be ‘correct’, yet the attunements that Mrs Takata taught have evolved and changed endlessly in different lineages; some are almost unrecogniseable.

And do you know what? They all work fine.

So I think we should be wary of Reiki Masters, no matter how prominent they appear to be, who tell you that what you are doing is wrong or that you shouldn’t do a particular thing: we are all on our journey with the energy, and our journey is our journey, leading us to practise in *our* way, not better, not worse, just different.

My belief

I believe that we should celebrate these differences, and be happy that there is infinite variety.

I believe that Reiki people should be free to find their own comfortable path with the energy, working in the way that suits them, rather than having to kow tow to the dogma and blinkered beliefs of another.

Over to you

So there you have it: my ‘manifesto’ for tolerance, acceptance, and mutual respect within Reiki.

I hope you agree with me.

 

And if you do, why not post a message below. 🙂

 

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AI Podcast talks about Reiki Evolution’s Second Degree Courses!

Uncategorized

I thought you might like this. I have been experimenting with “NotebookLM” a Google-based AI that is able to create a full podcast based on information that you send it.

I uploaded information about Reiki Evolution’s particular style of Reiki courses – Second Degree in this case – and here is the result: a positive, chatty, informative and insightful podcast that discusses the Reiki Evolution Second Degree course.

I hope you find this as informative and fun as I did 🙂

AI Podcast talks about Reiki Evolution’s First Degree Courses!

Uncategorized

I thought you might like this. I have been experimenting with “NotebookLM” a Google-based AI that is able to create a full podcast based on information that you send it.

I uploaded information about Reiki Evolution’s particular style of Reiki courses – First Degree in this case – and here is the result: a positive, chatty, informative and insightful podcast that discusses the Reiki Evolution First Degree course.

I hope you find this as informative and fun as I did 🙂

AI Podcast talks about Reiki (Second Degree)

Uncategorized

I thought you might like this. I have been experimenting with “NotebookLM” a Google-based AI that is able to create a full podcast based on information that you send it.

I uploaded my Second Degree manual and here is the result: a positive, chatty, informative podcast that talks about Reiki in general and Reiki Second Degree in particular.

I hope you find this as informative and fun as I did 🙂

AI Podcast talks about Reiki (First Degree)

Uncategorized

I thought you might like this. I have been experimenting with “NotebookLM” a Google-based AI that is able to create a full podcast based on information that you send it.

I uploaded my First Degree manual and here is the result: a positive, chatty, informative podcast that talks about Reiki in general and Reiki First Degree in particular.

I hope you find this as informative and fun as I did 🙂

Can I Do Hatsurei if I Can’t Visualise?

intention, meditation, reiki energy

reiki self treatment meditations

 

Hatsurei ho is one of the basic energy exercises found in Japanese-style Reiki, an extension or elaboration of the original two exercises that Usui Sensei has his students perform at First Degree: Kenyoku and Joshin Kokkyu ho. Part of what you do when you practise Hatsurei ho is to draw energy to your Tanden, which is an energy centre found two fingerbreadths below your tummy button and 1/3rd of the way into your body; it is the centre of your personal energetic universe, the place where your creativity and intuition lie.

Someone contacted me recently wanting to know whether they would be able to do Hatsurei properly because “they couldn’t visualise”, so I thought I would talk about the whole issue of visualising and controlling or directing energy.

The answer is “yes” by the way: you can do Hatsurei ho effectively even though you can’t visualise.

We are visual beings

Firstly, and this is a complete aside, I wanted to say that humans are visual beings. During evolution, there has been a veritable ‘arms race’ between our different senses, battling it out to achieve supremacy, and the visual sense has won that war hands down! We are successful as a species because of our binocular, colour vision and our ability to be a pattern-matching supercomputer.

In fact, 50% of our brain’s immense processing power is dealing with visual information, so even if you are a person who believes that thay aren’t a visual person, or that can’t visualise, in the background your mind is spending half of its capability dealing with visual images! And in fact there are things that you can do to develop that awareness of your visual sense, and become more comfortable with visualising and accessing images internally, but that isn’t really a Reiki topic.

Another point is that visual memory is a bit grainy, rather like the photos that the first mobile phones with cameras used to take, and some people who say that they “aren’t visual” or “can’t visualise” just have too high expectations of their internal visions: they are expecting Panavision or Technicolor, whereas in reality our internal visual ability is decidedly low grade. You may be as ‘visual’ as anyone else, but just don’t think so!

Unfortunate choice of words

When you read instructions about working with Reiki, often they will involve following an exhortation to ‘imagine’ or ‘visualise’ that the energy is doing a particular thing or moving to a particular place. The majority of people can visualise well enough for most practical purposes so it makes sense to use those sort of words, and working visually is quick and easily achievable for most people.

But we do not need to use our visual sense, or imagine anything in our minds, to be able to control or direct the energy. Reiki is a very flexible and adaptible energy and will accommodate many ways of working.

Energy follows intent

The reason for this is that Reiki follows your intent, however you might choose to express or frame that intent. Where you focus your attention is where the energy directs itself, and how you want the energy to move will guide the energy to move in the manner you intend, no matter how that intention is expressed. Certainly if you can “see” the energy moving in a particular way or to a particular place, that will work well, but there are alternatives.

For example, you can:

  • Have in mind…
  • Know…
  • Be aware of…
  • Feel…
  • Experience…

… the energy, say, moving down through your crown, down the centre of your body, down to your Tanden.

All these words refer to a way of knowing or experiencing that do not require any visual images and will work just as well.

Move energy without seeing

Let’s try a simple experiment. I want you to become aware of your right hand. Feel energy flowing down your arm into your right hand and notice the energy build there. Now take your attention to your left hand: feel the energy travelling down your left arm into your left hand, where the energy builds in intensity.

You just controlled the movement of energy without visualising anything.

Try this: be aware of the energy flowing down through your body, like a free-flowing river, through your torso and down your right leg, and the energy concentrates itself in your right foot. Experience the energy there for a little while. Now notice how the energy pulls back, so that a strong bubble of energy now sits within your right knee. Experience the energy there for a while.

Again, you directed the flow of energy without visualising anything. What you did was to experience energy in one place and notice it moving; your “noticing” it moving caused it to move because the energy follows your focus and your attention.

Hatsurei ho without seeing

Now let’s try an exercise more directly related to Hatsurei ho:  focus your attention on your forehead/third eye, and notice whatever sensation that arises there: maybe some pressure or fizzing or tingling; you’ll probably like this sensation! Now, slowly move that feeling to the very crown of your head; this may take a little while and you’ll need to concentrate. Notice the sensation moving as the energy traces a path to your crown. Let the energy fizz on your crown for a short while. I had you do this so you can see what fine control you can have over the movement and location of the energy.

Anyway: back to Hatsurei ho: now notice that the sensation starts to move vertically downwards, from your crown, down through the centre of your body. Don’t worry if you can’t feel it every single step of the way because you can reconnect with it as it descends. And be aware as the energy reaches and builds in your Tanden. This is a small part of the Joshin Kokkyu ho stage, where you draw energy from the universe, down through your crown to your Tanden, then having the energy spread through your body and then flood out to infinity. All these stages are accessible to you whether or not you can specifically “visualise” something.

Remember, you can:

  • Have in mind…
  • Know…
  • Be aware of…
  • Feel…
  • Experience…

… that the energy moves in a particular way or rests in a particular place.

The energy is accommodating

Reiki is a very accommodating energy. It is happy to flow as it wishes, drawn to areas of need, and it will also follow your focus, however your focus might be achieved. It will follow your intention, moving, behaving, framing itself, in whatever way you intend, however that intention is expressed.

So you don’t have to worry about “not being able to visualise” because Reiki doesn’t need you to.

 

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


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

reiki energy, reiki sensations, reiki treatments

 

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 sensations, self healing

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


Talking to Clients about “Strong Reactions”

reiki treatments

 

Reiki affects people in different ways, doesn’t it? Whether you are learning Reiki for the first time, or whether you’re receiving Reiki through a course of treatments, there will usually be things that you experience as a result of that Reiki. For some people it will just be a wonderful experience: they will feel calm, content and serene, chilled out, their mood will lift, they will feel free, cleansed, their skin will be clear, they will sleep well and they will be full of energy; they will be really enthusiastic about returning for another dose!

But it’s not always like that. Sometimes Reiki can bring things to the surface, things that need to be acknowledged and released, and this can lead to everything from aches and pains, to a “Reiki cold”, to emotional ups and downs, a frantically busy mind, temporary sleep disruption, a general dissatisfaction with everyone and everything, tiredness and lassitude. It’s temporary and necessary but it’s not fun.

So if we are treating someone, what should we say to people about all this?

Placebos and nocebos

The mind is a very powerful thing. If you have a strong belief about something, that can become your reality. If you believe that a dummy ‘sugar pill’ is going to wake you up, or put you to sleep, it most likely will.

In fact they did an experiment where they took a group of students and either gave them tranquilisers or amphetamines (‘speed’). But they told the students on transquilisers that they were on speed and they told the students on speed that they had been given tranquilisers.

What happened? The tranquilised students were bouncing off the walls, while the cranked-up-to-100mph students were lolling about the place, barely able to keep their eyes open. Their belief about the effects they were going to experience completely trumped the biochemical effects of the drugs that were taking.

So whether you believe a particular treatment is going to produce positive effects for you or produce negative effects, the subconscious mind will try and conjure that up for you. The positive effect is called a ‘placebo’ whereas the negative effect is called a ‘nocebo’.

If you think that a medicine is going to give you terrible side-effects, and you’ve read the accompanying leaflet which lists all the conceivable side-effects that the drug might cause, then you’re more likely to experience those side-effects than if you were blissfully unaware. If your culture tells you that a witch-doctor pointing a bone at you is going to kill you, if that happens then you’re not going to feel too well.

So what do we do with clients?

We don’t want to frighten them into having every possible ‘negative’ reaction to a Reiki treatment, but equally we don’t want to leave them blissfully unaware of the possibility because if they do have a strong reaction, we do want them to know that such a thing may be related to their Reiki treatment and that they shouldn’t worry, or think that the treatment went wrong or was done badly.

We need to be honest

For me the solution would be to be honest with the client and to explain what positve or more challenging effects the treatment might lead to.

But don’t just give them a warning about any negative consequences that they might want to be “on the look out for” because that is not a balanced description and you’re setting them up to be almost waiting for the bad things to happen.

Spend at least as much time, if not more, though, describing the positive experiences that most people tend to have: the “Reiki effect”… the things that most people seem to notice when they receive Reiki. Talk about being calm, content and serene, feeling more positive and better able to cope with stressful situations and people; talk about rest and sleep, energy and state of mind.

That way, you can leave them feeling positive about what is likely to happen, and perhaps you’re introducing a bit of a placebo effect yourself, which can only be a good thing. But you’re also letting them know that if they do notice some more challenging effects, this is perfectly normal and should in fact be viewed in a positive light: Reiki is shifting something, you’re releasing something, it’s passing through and you will end up in a better state as a result of that.

So, be honest with your clients but emphasise the positive, and they’ll leave expecting to experience some of the positive effects you’ve mentioned, but with enough knowledge to understand and feel ok about any more challenging temporary blips that may come to the surface in between sessions with 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


 

Photo credit: Varvara

 

How Can Reiki Symbols Unlock Such Power?

attunements, intention, reiki symbol

 

The other day a Reiki person mentioned to me that when people use symbols in Reiki, it just seems ridiculous that they can unlock all this power, and she was a bit embarrassed by it all. It seemed to her to be a bit like “Open Sesame!” or “abracadabra”: just foolish and ridiculous that flailing your fingers in the air could create all this cosmic power.

And it does seem strange, doesn’t it? A bit like wizards and incantations and ancient, mysterious, closely-guarded, power-imbued sigils that initiates can use to control and direct natural forces, in our case for good.

So, how can symbols unlock such power?

They can’t.

Attunements don’t attune

The word “attunement” is a very unfortunate one to use to describe the initiations that Reiki people go through in order to practise Reiki. The word “attune” suggests that you are being attuned to something and, since symbols are involved in most attunement rituals, it is also natural to assume that you are attuned to those symbols and that it is the process of being attuned to a symbol that allows you to do the Reiki thing.

And for a long time in the world of Reiki, where the only way that you could be initiated was by going through an attunement, and basically all attunement rituals involved the use of symbols, it made perfect sense to believe these things.

But here’s the thing: Mikao Usui didn’t attune anyone to anything. No rituals, no putting a symbol in your aura or your head or your palms, or any of that paraphernalia, and most of his students never even got to see a symbol. And while he would have his students practise initiating others using a ritual, no symbols entered into that process either.

[Go here for more Reiki symbol heresies]

 

Now, you could take the view of one of the UK’s Reiki associations, where their view of Reiki is so narrow that they believe, in effect, that none of Mikao Usui’s students were properly initiated by him and so wouldn’t qualify for membership of their organisation. I don’t think we need to entertain such silliness.

So, where did ‘attunements’ and the use of symbols within them come from?

Enter the Imperial Officers

By the time that Usui Sensei died, the Imperial Officers – Dr Hayashi and his associates – hadn’t trained with him for long enough to have achieved the sort of level of development where they could have initiated people using intent only.

They had already been taught a variant of Usui’s system that used symbols (because they had approached Usui wanting to be taught a hands-on healing system to use in the Japanese military, whereas Usui was teaching a spiritual/self-development system to the other students) and after Usui’s death they created an initiation ritual that gave them the same sort of energetic experience that they noticed when they were ’empowered’ by Usui.

That constructed ritual used the symbols that they had been taught by Usui, symbols that represented earth ki, heavenly ki and a state of oneness. So Reiki attunements started with, and were invented by, the Imperial Officers.

That ritual passed via Dr Hayashi (who may have altered it) to Mrs Takata, she passed it on to her students, and then the ritual has mutated and altered endlessly as it has been passed from one teacher to another in different lineages, with bits added, bits taken away and parts embellished or simplified. I have seen no mention of Mrs Takata talking about a person having to be ‘attuned’ to a symbol as part of the initiation, nor that one needed to have been attuned to a symbol for it to work for you.

But in any case, from Japan about 20 years ago came details of a ritual that Usui had his trainee Masters use to initiate people into the system. It’s called Reiju, it doesn’t use any symbols, and when that ritual has been used then the recipient can use the Reiki symbols – or any other symbol – to direct and focus the energy.

“Attuning” someone to a symbol is not a necessary step in initiating them into Reiki and does not have to be done to enable a Reiki person to use the Reiki symbols.

So, where does the power of the symbols come from?

It’s all about focus

I don’t know whether you have ever tried this exercise, but if you were to sit at the head of a treatment table and rest your hands on either side of a client’s head, obviously they would most likely feel something happening: usually a sense of heat from your hands, passing into their cheeks or temple. But if you imagine that you have additional pairs of hands cupping behind the person’s head and hovering over the front of their face/forehead, the recipient will usually experience a very different sensation, where the heat increases and envelops their whole head.

If instead you had imagined the extra hands holding onto that person’s ankle, say, then they are likely to experience heat or pressure or some sort of sensation in their foot or lower leg.

What’s going on here?

Well, you are focusing your attention in a particular way and the energy is following your focus and focusing itself where your attention is directed. Where thought goes, energy flows. A gentle but definite, undistracted and mindful focus = increased energy flow.

What’s that got to do with symbols? Well…

Symbols frame your focus

The Reiki symbols are a graphical representation of one aspect of the energy. They provide a visual stimulus that you focus on and which allow you to rest your attention on that aspect of the energy, for example earth ki or heavenly ki.

And just like when you rest your attention on someone’s ankle, and the energy flowed there strongly, when you focus on a symbol you are narrowing the focus of the energy, a bit like focusing a magnifying glass, and things get intense.

If you visit my resources page about Reiki symbols – Focus on the Reiki symbols – you can read more blogs about these issues and discover how any symbol can focus the energy strongly; you can even find out how to create your own, bespoke symbols, to use on yourself and your clients

And if you visit my “Energopsychograms” pages, you can practise experiencing energies derived from abstract drawings too.

You can focus in different ways

Once you are connected to the energy, and now we know how to do that without you having to be “attuned” to a symbol (whatever that means!), there are a whole range of different methods you can use to focus on various aspects of the energy.

Above we spoke about using symbols, bespoke/intuited symbols and other visual images. You can experience the energies of other Reiki systems that use different symbols, without you having to be ‘attuned’ to those symbols. So, for example, my Five Element Reiki system uses five symbols to represent the energies of earth, metal, water, wood and fire.

No-one needs to be attuned to these symbols to use them: you just need to be ‘connected’ to Reiki, and away you go.

In the original system that Usui Sensei taught, most of his students did not see or use symbols. Many were given kotodama – Shinto mantras – to experience different aspects of the energy. They were not “attuned” to these sounds: they just used them as an aid to focus.

The sounds represent different aspects of the energy, you use them, and you elicit a particular energy.

It’s the same with symbols. They represent an aspect of the energy. You focus your attention on them. You elicit that energy.

It’s that simple.

So I agree with the lady who thought it seemed quite nonsensical to imagine that waving your hands about in the air gave you a key to unleash powerful energetic forces. That is ridiculous. When we practise Reiki it’s not about “Open Sesame!” or “acracadabra”. It’s not about learning special, sacred, secret symbols that turn you into some New Age version of Dr Strange from Marvel Comics. We are initiated into a simple and powerful energy healing system that anyone can do, which is based on carrying out meditations and simple energy exercises, it has a long history in Japanese esoteric practices and the symbols are just a useful tool that we can use to aid focus.

Symbols do not bestow mighty cosmic power on us; to think otherwise is fantasy.

 

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: Miriam Espacio

 

 

What Does It All Mean?

reiki sensations, reiki treatments, simplicity

 

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

intuition, reiki sensations, reiki treatments

 

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

 

 

When Nobody Feels Anything

reiki treatments

reiji ho reiki intuitive technique learn

When you start learning Reiki, the first thing you do is to practise on a few people, probably a couple of family members or some friends. And while they can often give you interesting and useful feedback, feedback that helps to build your confidence that this Reiki “thing” really is doing something, because they can feel it and notice the effects, this doesn’t always happen: sometimes you can practise on some people who don’t seem to notice anything happening when you treat them, and this is of course quite disheartening.

You might feel a raging furnace going on on your hands as you treat them but they just shrug and say, “no, didn’t feel anything really, just a bit relaxed, or “a bit or warmth from your hands but that’s just what you’d expect from anyone”.

So what’s going on here? Why can’t they feel anything? Why isn’t Reiki working for them… or is it?

Rejecting any Reiki sensations

It is true to say that there are some grumpy partners of newly-fledged Reiki people who think Reiki is nonsense and do not want to admit that they are feeling anything, even if they are. I am sad to say that these people are often men.

If they have a belief that Reiki is rubbish then it would create too much congnitive dissonance to admit that they were experiencing something that goes counter to their belief, so any sensations or experiences are given a ‘rational’ explanation that excludes the possibility of Reiki being a real thing.

Sometimes this can happen subconsciously, where the recipient just ‘discounts’ or rationalises their experience as having nothing to do with Reiki, and sometimes people just won’t admit that they felt something special or surprising.

But one of the most encouraging or belief-inducing things for beginners is when a cynical partner is amazed by the feelings that they experience, and stunned by the fact that their back pain, or sore knee, or headache has just melted away, and then that person starts to ask for regular Reiki treatments. There is no better convincer for a new Reiki person than a cynic who just cannot explain the clear benefits they are experiencing! Or when the powerful sensations they noticed just can’t be explained away.

Because sometimes, say when your hands are hovering over someone’s forehead or the front of their face, they can feel heat so intense that it seems like there has been an electric bar heater installed just inches away from their face, and they grab hold of your hands to feel the heat and find that your hands are quite cool, actually, so there is intense ‘heat’ coming from hands that are cool. That can’t be explained away!

Or when you feel that there is loads of heat flowing through your hands into, say, someone’s left shoulder, and they had hurt that shoulder playing sports but had not mentioned that to you, so there was no way you would have known about it!

Such things are greatly reassuring, but don’t always happen.

[See also: Reiki sensations when you attune or treat people for further insights]

The luck of the draw

Grumpy Reiki-sceptical partners aside, it is true that people vary in their sensitivity to the flow of Reiki. This applies to Reiki practitioners, too, and in my blog I can’t feel anything happening I talk about this in more detail.

So (1) Most people will feel something happening when they are treated, with your experience as a practitioner generally tying in with what they experienced (you feel a lot of energy in one area and they felt a lot of heat when you were treating that place, for example), (2) Some people will be just ridiculously sensitive to the energy (and maybe are far more sensitive than you ever will be as a practitioner!), and (3) Some people will feel nothing at all.

Now, we need to detach someone’s experience of the energy from the issue of whether the Reiki treatment has ‘worked’, because a person’s experience of a treatment in terms of visual images (usually coloured lights) or physical sensations is not a reliable guide as to how effective or powerful the treatment was.

It’s nice when people have a powerful experience when they are treated, it reassures tham that something was definitely going on, but “bells and whistles” on their part does not mean that they received a better treatment than someone who just felt a bit relaxed.

It’s a natural response to think that a “bells and whistles” treatment was more effective than the “I just felt a bit relaxed, thanks” treatment, but Reiki doesn’t work by those rules.

So, some people don’t really feel anything. And if you only treat one person, and that person is one of those people, you won’t get any positive feedback, and you’ll feel disheartened.

What can be done about that?

How to increase your chances

The solution is to treat lots of people. Get your hands on friends, family and acquaintances. Grab hold of complete strangers! (I don’t mean that). Do short blasts on someone’s painful back, or achey shoulder, or headache. Treat someone for 10 minutes in a lunchbreak. Do head and shoulder treatments, and some full treatments when the opportunity arises.

Because the more people you treat, the more you are stacking your cards in your favour: the more people you treat, the more likely you are to find people who are sitting in the middle of the ‘Bell curve’: the ones who feel things happening when they are treated and can give you useful, interesting and encouraging feedback.

It’s a numbers game.

Treat one person and they may not feel anything: you pulled the short straw. Treat 10 or 20 and you will have treated loads of people who can feel something happening.

[For more info about the meaning of the different sensations you might experience, go here: What does it all mean?]

Most people get a benefit from Reiki

Let’s get back to those people who receive a Reiki treatment and don’t really feel anything happening.

That may just be the way they are, but it could be that this is just a one-off thing and on another occasion they may well notice some more things happening during their treatment. Or you might find that their sensitivity to the energy develops over a course of treatments, because that’s similar to what happens to Reiki people too, isn’t it?… while most people can feel something happening as the energy flows, they also find that with repeated exposure to the energy, they become better able to sense it.

And we need to always remind ourselves that the “bells and whistles” treatment wasn’t a better treatment than the apparently nondescript one.

A treatment where the recipient did not feel anything happening at all can produce as powerul a response in terms of improving a physical condition, easing stress and tension long-term, elevating mood or shifting an emotional block or mental challenge… as can the apparently more powerful session.

Reiki can suprise you, and no more so than when the treatment ‘that didn’t work’ makes a profound difference to the life of the person you shared Reiki with.

 

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