The Reiki Precepts

November 14, 2011preceptsgokai, reiki precepts, reiki principlestaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

What are precepts?

Mikao Usui gave his students a series of ‘precepts’ to follow.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary (9th Edition) defines a precept as (1) a command, a rule of conduct, and (2) a moral instruction, and they are an important part of Buddhist practice.

We know that Mikao Usui was a Tendai Buddhist, and so precepts would have been an important part of his spiritual life. Lay followers of Buddhism generally undertake to follow (at least one of) five precepts, which are given in the form of promises to oneself: “I will (try) to…”.

Here are the five Buddhist precepts:

To refrain from harming living creatures (killing).
To refrain from taking that which is not freely given (stealing).
To refrain from sexual misconduct.
To refrain from incorrect speech (lying, harsh language, slander, idle chit-chat).
To refrain from intoxicants which lead to loss of mindfulness.

So precepts are a list of guidelines for living your life. They are not framed in terms of “thou shalt not…” as in the Judaeo-Christian tradition but rather are a set of ideals to work towards, recommendations about thought and behaviour that you should follow as much as you can.

Mikao Usui’s rules to live by

Everyone who has learned Reiki will have, or should have, seen the Reiki precepts – Mikao Usui’s ‘rules to live by’ – and they are available in a variety of different forms in different lineages. Perhaps we should start by reading the text of Usui Sensei’s version:

The secret of inviting happiness through many blessings
The spiritual medicine for all illness

For today only: Do not anger; Do not worry
Be humble
Be honest in your work
Be compassionate to yourself and others

Do gassho every morning and evening
Keep in your mind and recite

The founder, Usui Mikao

A Western set of Reiki precepts

There is actually some difference between the precepts that Mikao Usui was teaching and the precepts that are quoted commonly in the West. For example, some Western versions of the precepts include an extra item: “honour your parents, elders and teachers”.

This is not original and seems to have been added by Mrs Takata to make the “list of rules to live by” more acceptable to her (largely) Christian American audience.

Where did the Reiki precepts come from?

There has been some speculation about where Mikao Usui’s precepts come from.

It has been claimed that they originate in a book that was published in Usui’s time, and it has been claimed that they are based on the edicts of Mutsuhito, the Meiji Emperor.

Certainly it seems that many Tendai and Zen Buddhist teachers were passing on similar principles in Usui Sensei’s time.

But now we know that Usui’s precepts were his wording of an earlier set of precepts that have been traced back to the early 9th century, precepts that were used in a Tendai sect of Shugendo with which Usui Sensei was in contact. These precepts were a way of addressing aspects of the Buddhist eight-fold path in a simplified form, and they are the very ‘hub’ of the whole system.

The precepts were the baseline, the foundation of Usui Sensei’s teachings, and it was thought that individual could achieve as much spiritual development by following the precepts as could be achieved by carrying out all the energy exercises.

Negative affirmations?

Incidentally, you may find some commentators saying that negative affirmations are not a good idea: such things are said to be more effective when framed in positive terms.

What we have presented to us in the precepts is just a quirk of translation from Japanese to English: the precepts are actually a recommendation that we exist in the moment in a state where we are free from anger and worry, a ‘worry-free, anger-free’ state.

For me, Mikao Usui’s precepts represent both some of the beneficial effects that Reiki can produce in your life if you work with the energy regularly, and they represent a set of principles that we need to follow to enhance our journey of self-healing and self-development with Reiki.

Try my ‘releasing exercise’

My main purpose in writing this article is to introduce you to a way of working with the precepts in conjunction with the Reiki energy.

This is something that I have been experimenting with: a way of directly experiencing the effects of a precept in terms of energy flow.

I would like to suggest that you do the following, for a couple of minutes at a time, twice a day, for a month: Sit with your eyes closed and your hands resting in your lap, palms up. You are going to be releasing energy through your hands.

Stage One

Sit comfortably with your eyes closed and your hands resting in your lap, palms up. Take a few long deep breaths and feel yourself becoming peaceful and relaxed. Your mind empties. Say to yourself “I now release all my anger…”; say this three times to yourself if you like. Allow energy to be released through your palms, and be still until the flow of energy subsides. This may take a little while, particularly the first time you try this exercise.

Stage Two

Now say to yourself “I now release all my worry…”; say this three times to yourself if you like. Again allow a flurry of energy to leave your hands and be still until it subsides. Again this may take a little while, particularly the first time you try this exercise.

Alternatively, try carrying out the releasing exercise in time with your breath. Breathe in gently, say to yourself “I now release all my anger…” and then breathe out, allowing your anger to flood out of you on the out breath. Gently breathe in, and repeat.

Over to you

Why not try my releasing exercise for a few days na dsee what difference it makes to you.

And post a message below to let me know how you got on.

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Picture Credit: César

Back to basics: Reiki Second Degree

November 11, 2011attunements, distant healing, intuition, reiju empowerments, reiki energy, reiki symbol, reiki treatments, self healingattunements, distant healing, intuition, reiju, reiju empowerments, reiki meditations, reiki symbol, reiki treatments, self treatmentstaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

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

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

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

Second Degree is all about:

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

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

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

Enhancing your Connection to the energy

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

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

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

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

Being “attuned” to a symbol

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

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

“Sacred Symbols”

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

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

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

Using Symbols in practice

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

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

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

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

Why the symbols are there

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

Making ‘distant’ connections

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

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

Intuitive working

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

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

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

Finally

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

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

November 10, 2011reiki energy, reiki treatmentsfreestyle treatments, reiki, reiki treatmentstaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

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

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

But is this really necessary?

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

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

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

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

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

Basically Reiki is a hands-on practice

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

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

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

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

How can that be?

How are we connected?

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

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

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

We are them.

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

Over to you

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

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

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

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

Here’s lots of advice about giving treatments

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

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

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

Here are the links that you need:

Reiki First Degree manual

Reiki First Degree eBook

Author: Taggart King

How long should I spend in each hand position?

November 3, 2011intuition, reiki sensations, reiki treatmentsfreestyle treatments, hand positions, instinct, intuition, intuitive, reiki, reiki sensations, reiki treatmentstaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

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

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

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

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

Here are the links that you need:

Reiki First Degree manual

Reiki First Degree eBook

Author: Taggart King

Pride in Being

November 3, 2011self healingsarah berrisford, self treatmentsSarah Berrisford

A few years ago, someone named me as egotistical because I so much enjoyed and took pride in the way my horse showed himself off. At the time I was taken aback, as having a major ego issue hadn’t been something I had identified myself with. The person told me all the ‘right’ things about how the ego ‘worked’ and I began to feel guilt that I should take so much enjoyment at he joyous ‘here I am’ being of my equine pal.

On arriving home, it was time for contemplation… Should I be feeling this? Am I a bad person? What do people think of me? The list goes on…

As I sat and pondered, I decided to meditate, I visualized myself with my horse, staying completely passive as he showed himself off. Something wasn’t right, the horse began to look limp and lose his ‘x-factor’.

And that is when it clicked; horses love to be admired, all animals love to be admired, I’m not talking about just saying words of “he’s nice” or “she’s going well”, I mean the energy we emit when we see something beautiful, the energy that is transmitted as our breath is taken away, when a tear comes to our eye, when our body tingles with pure love at the sight and feel of true beauty.

I realised that is not egotistical to admire the union between myself and my horse, it is something that should be loved and enjoyed. It wasn’t egotistical, because I wasn’t comparing, thinking ‘we’re so much better than others’. I was enjoying the moment and conscious of the enjoyment my horse and I were having, it was just us, there and then, nothing else existed; only that beautiful connection.

This brought more questions to my attention… animals respond, develop and mature to the slightest feeling of love and admiration; so what it going on with people??!! We are constantly judging ourselves; weight, looks, graying hairs, wrinkles – when we should be following in the footsteps of our animal friends, admiring ourselves, loving ourselves, loving every imperfection which makes us who we are.

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

I have a task for you, go and look in the mirror, look deep into your eyes and smile, see yourself smiling back at you, look at each part of your body, look deep and smile, allow your whole body to smile. Feel that energy coming from your body, transmitting to everything around you. Smile and the world smiles back!

________________________________________________

Sarah Berrisford teaches Reiki and Equine Reiki courses through Reiki Evolution at Epona Equine Reiki Centre inSouth Lincolnshire.

www.epona-equine-reiki.co.uk

Reiki Evolution National Gathering 2011

Hi Guys,

Well, that was an amazing day! On saturday October 29th we held the first ever Reiki Evolution National Gathering at Regent’s College in Central London. 80 Reiki Evolution students came together for a day of learning, fun, friendship and energy work, some coming from as far as France, Spain and even New Zealand! It was a real honour for me to spend time with such a lovely group of Reiki people and the day all seemed to end far too quickly: I could have camped there all weekend!
Continue reading Reiki Evolution National Gathering 2011 →

Back to basics: Reiki First Degree

October 31, 2011attunements, commitment, reiki energy, reiki treatments, self healingattunements, hatsurei ho, reiju, reiju empowerments, reiki meditations, reiki precepts, reiki principles, reiki treatments, self treatmentstaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

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

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

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

Connecting to the energy

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

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

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

Developing your Sensitivity to the energy

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

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

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

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

Working on yourself

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

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

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

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

Treating other people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Reiki Precepts

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

The secret of inviting happiness through many blessings
The spiritual medicine for all illness
For today only: Do not anger; Do not worry
Be humble
Be honest in your work
Be compassionate to yourself and others

Do gassho every morning and evening
Keep in your mind and recite

The founder, Usui Mikao

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

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

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

Finally

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

What Reiki hand positions should I use?

October 27, 2011intuition, reiki sensations, reiki treatmentshand positions, intuition, intuitive, reiki sensations, reiki treatmentstaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

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?

A 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

Author: Taggart King

Get out of the way!

October 24, 2011mindfulness, reiki energy, reiki treatmentsreiki treatmentstaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reiki Distant healing, Oneness and Usui’s system

October 20, 2011distant healingdistant healing, reikitaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

Distant healing in Usui’s time

Distant healing is an essential part of Reiki in the West. People on Second Degree courses are taught the ‘distant healing’ symbol and they learn how to ‘send’ Reiki to other people, in a way that transcends time and space.

But how was this done in Mikao Usui’s time?

Well, it seems that distant healing was not practised by Usui Sensei’s students, not in the way that we understand it, though they would have realised that such a thing was possible. And although we in the West are taught a ‘distant healing symbol’, these Reiki symbols were only introduced towards the end of Usui’s life, for the benefit of the Imperial Officers who trained with him, and thus most of the people Usui trained were not give symbols to use.

Most of his students used either Buddhist-style meditations or chanted Shinto mantras called ‘kotodama’ to get to grips with certain energies and states, and the work that they were doing was all about their own spiritual development and self-healing; treating others was not focused on or emphasised in the original system for example, and neither was distant healing.

So if the original students weren’t given HSZSN (the ‘distant healing symbol’) to use, and if they didn’t practise distant healing, what did they do that ties in with the idea of distant healing?

Reiki and Oneness

It’s all about Oneness, and this is a Buddhist idea: the concept that what we experience as reality is actually illusion, the idea that we are individuals, separate and distinct from other people is illusion, and that the true reality is that of oneness.

In Usui Sensei’s original system, some Second Degree practitioners who had worked for up to 18 months with the energies of earth ki and heavenly ki were given the opportunity to meditate on and chant kotodama that elicited a state of oneness, one of the goals of the original system.

For me, practising distant healing is a good way to experience a state of oneness because in distant healing you are becoming one with the recipient, you merge with them and the energy and you lose that distinction between the sender and receiver, subject and object.

It’s interesting that when we ‘send’ distant healing we are not sending and the receiver isn’t receiving: the idea is that there is no us and there is no them, and that’s why it’s possible.

A lovely conundrum!

Over to you

When you practise distant healing, what do you notice about the state that you experience?

Do you find that you’re in a space where you seem to transcend time and space?

What is your experience of oneness?

Post a message below to let me know what it feels like for you.

Want to find out more about Distant Healing?

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

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

Here are the links that you need:

Reiki Second Degree manual

Reiki Second Degree eBook

Author: Taggart King
Picture Credit: Alice Popkorn

Reiki Sensations

October 17, 2011attunements, reiki energy, reiki sensations, reiki treatmentsattunements, reiju, reiju empowerments, reiki sensations, reiki treatmentstaggart@reiki-evolution.co.uk

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.