Tag Archives: intuition

Report on the 2012 National Gathering

Well, that was quite an event. October 6th saw 140+ Reiki people from all over the country descending on Baden Powell House (right next to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington) for a day of fun, learning new things and making new friends. We had workshops and distant healing and Reiki shares, Reiju empowerments for all, and kotodama chanting. The venue was nice, light and airy, with a lovely atmosphere, and as the day progressed the place just buzzed with energy.

A few highlights of the day for me were seeing every one of the ‘Reiju’ seats occupied, with a queue of people waiting for their turn for a dose of blissfulness, or seeing everyone basically ‘take over’ the on-site café and turning it into a Reiki café, chatting on comfy sofas over tea or coffee, or maybe that experience of oneness at the close of the day, after that fantastic chanting!

It was great for me to get to meet and spend time with so many lovely Reiki people, and to publicly show my appreciation to my team of fantastic teachers.

What we did

Workshops featured Tina Shaw (“Discover your intuitive self”), Martine Moorby (“EFT for personal transformation”), Irene Forsyth (“Seeing auras”) and Marilyn Harvey (“Reiki meditations”). We were also lucky enough to have two separate QiGong sessions, the first hosted by Rhonda Bailey and the second hosted by Thalbert Allen and Maggie Tarling from the College of Elemental Chi Kung.

Attendees joined in Reiki sharing sessions and there were Reiju empowerments for anyone who wanted one (lots of people wanted one!), given by our team of lovely teachers. We held a couple of ‘chat to a Reiki teacher’ sessions and we had ‘en masse’ sessions in the Main Hall where we sent distant healing and chanted a sacred sound which elicits a state of oneness.

Useful links

Tina is now running special courses in Developing intuition and using a pendulum, which you can read about here: Special courses.

Martine teaches Emotional Freedom Technique in North Yorkshire and can be contacted here: Martine Moorby.

Rhonda teaches Tai Chi, QiGong and meditation in Kent, and you can find her here: Rhonda Bailey.

I particularly wanted to thank Thalbert for coming to our gathering to run a session for us. Thalbert Allen is co-founder and Director of the College of Elemental Chi Kung in Finsbury Park, and you can read more about the College here: Elemental Chi Kung.

Next year’s gathering

Very shortly I am going to be announcing the venue and the date for the 2013 National Gathering, and I look forward to seeing many familiar faces there next year; it can’t come quickly enough as far as I’m concerned!

Here’s a photo of me with 15 of my team of teachers:

The Kaizen of Reiki

If you have come across the word ‘kaizen’ before it will probably have been in the context of industrial quality control or personal development. “Kaizen” is a Japanese word that is usually translated as ‘improvement’, but it means more than that. The word has connotations of continuous, gradual, orderly and never-ending improvement, the willingness to constantly, relentlessly pursue improvement a small step at a time. The application of the kaizen principle is the reason why Japan’s economy was transformed after the Second World War. All workers were encouraged to make suggestions as to how quality and production could be improved, even by tiny, tiny percentages, but over time the effect of these tiny percentage improvements, applied consistently and built upon, transformed Japanese industry.

So what has this to do with Reiki? Well the word kaizen actually appears towards the end of the Reiki precepts. The line in Japanese is “Shin shin kaizen, Usui Reiki Ryoho”, which could be loosely translated as “Mind body change it for better Usui Reiki method”. So when Usui was talking about using his system to improve the body and mind, I get the impression that we are looking at a lifelong commitment to work with the system, to focus the energy on ourselves again and again, long-term, in order to produce small incremental improvements within ourselves, to dedicate ourselves to developing our effectiveness as a channel. But small changes build on previous small changes, an enhancement upon an enhancement leads to amazing development over time. And Usui’s original system gives us the solid, concrete techniques that we can use to develop ourselves: as channels, in terms of spirituality and in terms of intuition, to produce our own individual Reiki Evolution!

So how do we pursue our own kaizen of Reiki? How do we apply the concept of continuous and never-ending improvement to our practice of Reiki? Here are a few suggestions…

Root your practice of Reiki in daily energy work.

If you are serious about wanting to obtain the many benefits that are available to you through the Reiki system then you are going to have to work on yourself most days, ideally every day, and by doing so you will build up the beneficial effects of Reiki within you. It is not sufficient to use Reiki on yourself once a week, or to assume that if you treat other people occasionally then this is enough to give you the Reiki you need.

Your first priority should be yourself, and this means daily energy work. This does not need to be an onerous task, nor does it need to take a long time to carry out. Sometimes we decline to use Reiki on ourselves because we do not have the perfect opportunity, perhaps because we do not have, say, 30 minutes to work on ourselves. Yet even 10 minutes of energy work, when carried out consistently each day, would be far better and produce much better results than doing nothing for days, and then a great big blitz for a big chunk of time on a weekend to try and ‘catch up’. Spending even a small chunk of time working on ourselves each day builds up a momentum and stirs changes which build and build. Sporadic practice leads to some beneficial changes, but you are not maximising your Reiki potential.

So, how can we work on ourselves? Well, a good place to start would be to practise Hatsurei ho, a series of energy exercises taught in the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (the ‘Gakkai), an association set up after Usui’s death by the Imperial Officers who had trained with him for a while. ‘Hatsurei ho’ means something like ‘start up Reiki technique’ and consists of a series of energy meditations/ visualisations that focus on your Tanden (Dantien in Chinese) and which are designed to be carried out every day. The effects of Hatsurei ho are to:

    Clear and cleanse your energy system
    Help to move your energy system more into a state of balance
    Help to ground you
    Help to build up your personal energy reserves
    Allows you to grow spiritually
    Develop your ability as a channel for Reiki
    Help to develop your sensitivity to the flow of energy
    Help to develop your intuitive side

The exercises take perhaps 12-15 minutes to carry out each day, and can be fitted into the busiest of schedules if the will is there. We can all make this time for our Reiki practice.

But we should also focus the energy more specifically on ourselves, on our own self-healing, by carrying out a self-treatment each day. Whether you carry out the Western ‘hands-on’ method of treating yourself, or use the self-treatment meditation that Usui Sensei taught, you should focus the energy on yourself on a regular basis to help bring things into balance for you on all levels, and to help you to release things that no longer serve you: mental states, emotions, physical things. The energy will deal with many aspects of your body/mind, many deeply-embedded imbalances, if we give the energy the opportunity to do its work on us, digging deep and chipping away at the ‘baggage’ that we carry, over time.

We prefer to use Usui Sensei’s self-treatment meditation because it seems more intense and versatile, but all self-treatment approaches are valid. Usui’s Sensei’s system was all about spiritual development and self-healing, so Hatsurei Ho and self-treatment can lie at the very heart of your Reiki practice. You need to put yourself first, and the principle of kaizen means that by working on yourself consistently, great transformations are possible. You owe it to yourself to allow yourself to obtain the benefits that are available to you through Reiki.

Receive spiritual empowerments throughout your training and beyond.

Training with Usui was rather like martial arts training, where you were in ongoing contact with your teacher over an extended period of time. Part of your training involved receiving simple spiritual empowerments from Usui Sensei, repeatedly, at all levels. Each empowerment reinforced your connection to the source, cleared your channel for the energy, allowed you to develop spiritually and enhanced your intuitive potential. To echo this practice, Taggart sends out a distant Reiju empowerment every week, on a Monday, which can be ‘tuned in to’ by any Reiki person. You can find out about this, and what to do, by visiting this page of the Reiki Evolution web site:

Reiju Broadcast

On each occasion that you receive Reiju you are given what you need, and as your needs change from one occasion to another, this simple spiritual ‘blessing’ helps you to develop. A one-off attunement or empowerment does of course give you something permanent, and when you learn Reiki for the first time the attunements or empowerments that you receive provide you with the ability to use Reiki permanently, but it does not stop there: by receiving empowerments on a regular basis you are building momentum and allowing the energy to penetrate more deeply within you.

If we are committed to ongoing improvements within ourselves then we should make the time to receive an empowerment weekly. And again it is the regular commitment which is the key, the key to deepening your experience of the energy and its beneficial effects on you.

Work on developing your intuitive potential.

Mikao Usui’s original system did not focus very much on the treatment of others, and any instruction on treatments would not have involved slavishly following a set of ‘standard’ hand positions that you had to apply to everyone you treated. Usui’s method was simpler and more elegant. You allowed the energy to guide your hands to the right place to treat, different from one person to another, and different within the same person from one treatment to another. The way we have been taught to do this is through a ‘technique’ called ‘Reiji Ho’ (indication of the spirit technique’), a way of emptying your mind and merging with the energy, getting your head out of the way to allow intuition to bubble to the surface. The exciting thing about Reiji Ho is that it works for everyone, and with time – we come back to kaizen’s small incremental improvements – your hands will move more quickly, more consistently, more effortlessly, and you will start to attract more intuitive information. So every time we treat someone we should spend time cultivating our ‘Reiji’ state of mind, and gradually, gradually, we develop.

Learn to become the energies.

…that you are introduced to at Second Degree and Master levels. Usui’s system didn’t involve symbols as far as most of his students were concerned. Students were expected to carry out meditations over an extended period of time in order to learn to experience different energies and, at Second Degree, students were introduced to the energies of “earth ki” and “heavenly ki”, which represent two fundamental aspects of our being. By practising ‘becoming’ earth ki and heavenly ki again and again – a powerful self-healing practice – these energies became so familiar to the students that they could ‘connect’ to the energy direct without having to use a prop like a symbol. Usui provided some Shinto mantras for some of his students to use to invoke the energies, but it was possible to move beyond these mantras with time, too. In my article ‘A Simple Way with Symbols’ I describe a meditation that you can use to ‘become’ these energies.

But again we see that to obtain the greatest benefit, to enhance self-healing, to free up our practice and move beyond symbols, takes time and commitment. A quick meditation carried out a few times is not enough: Usui Sensei’s students spent 6-9 months meditating on just one energy, and this was done because the principle of kaizen – plugging away and developing by small amounts again and again – led to deep changes over time.

Live your life according to Usui’s guiding principles.

Usui’s simple principles to live by offer perhaps the best example of the principle of kaizen in our Reiki practice: Usui Sensei’s precepts are a work in progress. They are not something that you read through and think “OK, got that”: the precepts are simple to read and understand but they are something that you drip-feed into your daily life over time, more and more over time.

We may begin by thinking about the precepts when we first come across them on a First Degree course: we reflect on how they might impinge on our lives, our thoughts and emotions, our behaviour; we might imagine situations from that past that might have proceeded better had we exemplified the precepts, and we might imagine situations in the future and see ourselves behaving in a way that demonstrates that we are living the precepts.

But this initial surge of interest in the precepts is not sufficient to produce the beneficial changes that the precepts can produce in our lives.

To fully embrace Usui Sensei’s spiritual principles takes regular reflection and ongoing thought. On an ongoing basis we consider our thoughts and our behaviour, we reflect on the principles and what they mean to us. If we do this then over time we will find that living the precepts becomes easier, that our behaviour is modifying itself, that there are more permanent changes in the way that we react and behave and relate to other people. But this will only happen if we ‘chip away’ at our current behaviour patterns, using the precepts as our guiding light. There are no quick fixes: the precepts are not just for First Degree. The precepts are the essence of our Reiki practice.

Now, we do not need to be perfect, we do not need to beat ourselves up for not applying each and every principle on all occasions, but by dedicating ourselves, and by forgiving ourselves, and by trying to do a little better each day than we did the day before, we transform ourselves.

That is the key to our kaizen of Reiki: dedication and commitment, patience and forgiveness, and openness to the source. Long term.

Back to basics: Reiki Second Degree

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!

How long should I spend in each hand position?

timing of reiki hand positions

Treat like clockwork?

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

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

Altering your treatments to suit the client

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

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

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

How to know how long to take in one position

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Over to you

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

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

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

Here’s lots of advice about giving treatments

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

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

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

Here are the links that you need:

Reiki First Degree manual

Reiki First Degree eBook

 

 

 


Author:

What Reiki hand positions should I use?

reiki hand positions

Are there hand positions that you should always use?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Varying your hand positions for each client

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

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

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

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

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

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

Want to find out more about Intuitive working?

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

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

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

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

Here are the links that you need:

Reiki Second Degree manual

Reiki Second Degree eBook

 


Author:

Intention in Reiki work

do reiki attunements work

It never fails to inspire me how this word *intention* can be so subtle, yet so powerful.

Apparently, in the non-physical realms, (for use of a better word), as we think , we are there, as we intend, it happens etc. etc………………

I have worked with the Universal energies for many years and I can still be absolutely amazed at how powerful our intentions can be.

It is us who make it complicated and complex.

At times sometimes we can feel very much on our own,  especially if you are like myself, and don’t experience any whistles and bells  with angels floating around the room!

Initially it is wonderful to get proof when we first start to work with Reiki, but like most things, it balances out and starts to calm down. The *honeymoon phase* may be over for a while, but rest assured, it will return when you are least expecting it.

This is what I love about channelling this energy, it surprises us time and time again.

We don’t always get what we want though. It can manifest in many different guises, and that is why it is very helpful to be open, to be alert and to surrender to what the energy is presenting to us.

Live the 5 Reiki Precepts. Be mindful. It is all happening NOW1

Be childlike and trusting and put no conditions on anything!

When something does manifest, for heavens sake *trust* what you are being shown or given. Your intuition is never wrong. It is the language of the Soul basically!

Sometimes we think it is wishful thinking, we are imagining things, or it’s my mind playing tricks.

Our Western chattering minds can tell us all sorts of untruths about ourselves, that we are not developed enough, that we cannot sense anything, and that everyone else is getting something except little old me!!!

Getting our heads out of the way for a start is a good thing, asking Reik to assist us to be more open and trusting helps.

You know, we are Light Beings having a human experience while in body. So why, as a Spiritual Being can’t you believe in yourselves? You come from Light and you will go back to Light.

{You have just forgotten this temporarily}

You are part of the whole Universal Cosmos. And it is awesome, is it not? You are Reiki, (and Reiki is just a word which came up later in Usui’s time on earth)  but now you know this *consciously* due to the courses we offer at Reiki-Evolution.

O.K. I have went off track and twittered on a bit,  and I want to keep my message simple and uncomplicated.

Reiki is meant to enjoyed, not endured!

My students are very precious lovely Souls, who yearn for deeper and further knowledge, and I always talk a lot about Intention at the courses I host.

What I put out, comes back to me. I am very much aware of these Universal Laws, therefore it is important to keep our thinking as kind and loving as we can. Example if we put out aggression, if we are judgemental of others etc, then that’s what we’ll come up against.

Intolerant and unkind people! Usually with unbalanced egos!

But yes, they are learning too and have a right to be here

We are all playing out a drama prior to an agreement we made at some point!.

For some it is challenging and painful, while others seem to skate through life. Who said life would be fair anyway? We create our experiences, consciously or unconsciously.

 

 

A number of years ago, I had a student who completed all of her Reiki training with myself. This lady was paralysed from the waist down, due to a major road accident years before.

She gets around very capably in her *jet set buggy* and has the most beautiful and positive attitude to life. Nothing is a problem she can’t overcome. She has walked the road of the *suffering* so to speak, and life’s challenges will not hold her back from what she has to do.

She runs Reiki courses on a regular basis.

Now, remembering that this lady cannot stand, has no physical power from the waist down, manages to transmit the most powerful Western Reiki attunements at her Master classes, purely by *Intention*

She also transmits the Reiju Empowerments very beautifully, while sitting in her chair, all by *Intention* (And Usui Sensei did this also!) Without any rituals. All pure Intention!!!

I have received from her and have experienced her transmissions, and have been witness to the uplifting and wonderful energies when she is working.

This is *Intention* at work. She believes, *no she knows who she is* . A Lightworker!, following her inner guidance.

And can I say that this Soul could teach us all about *humility*

She works quietly and powerfully.

 

Another example I would like to share with you is about a student of mine who came along to do her Reiki Two with me a few months ago.

In the afternoon when we were going through the level 2 techniques etc, I was explaining to  her the *many hands* method.

She brought in her ethereal hands and was being gently guided by the energies. She then asked me if it was O.K. to direct some of these energy hands to *her own back* which was painful and uncomfortable. I noticed that she had been stooping a bit.

“Well, why not, I said, “we are all working as one, we are one, we are connected together as one energy, yes bring some of these hands around to your own back, and intend that the Reiki energy flows into your own back.

(I was very tempted to put my own hands on her back, but wanted to see what would happen)

Lo and behold, after a few moments she started to feel a warmth coming in, like a soft soothing balm being applied to the affected area, just being in the moment and experiencing this was a very powerful revelation for her and the other students.

Yes, we are all one!

 

This is the power of *Intention*

No doubting, just trusting and being open to what is. It. may not always be what we would expect, but Reiki only works for the greater good of all concerned.

I wish each of you a magical and transforming Reiki journey.

May your path be strewn with opportunity and growth, and of course much joy!

Like the Angels, lets take ourselves *lightly*

 

Warm Wishes

Margaret  Craig


glasgow reiki course scotlandMargaret Craig is one of the Reiki-Evolution team of teachers offering Reiki training at all levels in and around Glasgow and beyond since 2001.

Margaret has a nursing background which she discontinued a number of years ago. She is trained in many of the Complementary Therapies which she also practices. Hypnotherapy and Past Life Regression work also keep Margaret very busy in her Holistic practice.

Glasgow Reiki courses

Seeing the same stuff

When you’re fully merged with somebody’s energies in a Reiki treatment, it sometimes happens that you ‘see’ the same things as the person you’re treating. I once carried out a treatment on a friend who I had just attuned to Reiki for the first time. As it wasn’t a formal course (she was one of my first students, in the days before I began teaching for Reiki Evolution), we went with the flow and did a simple treatment swap. During the treatment I saw a huge red crystal, the size of a football. It was a vibrant scarlet and you could see right into it, with pentagon shaped facets that you could peer through (and look, I’ve found a very lifelike image of one for you to enjoy too!). After the treatment, with not a word passing my lips, my friend described how she had seen a huge scarlet crystal exactly the same as I had seen. Naturally we pondered on the meaning of the scarlet crystal and concluded it was to do with the energy of the root chakra, which was somewhat out of balance for her at the time.

I’ve heard of quite a few students over the years who have had similar experiences, and certainly at Reiki shares, when a few people are treating the same person together, it never ceases to intrigue me how often people pick up the same ‘visual’ information from treating the same person. And sometimes the recipient will see the same too. It always seems to cause awe and wonder – no bad thing in my book.

Anyway… make sure you find time to have that chat with your client after the treatment has finished – share what you’ve both experienced and you might be surprised as how much more has been shared that the Reiki energy that has passed through you and into them!

 

And please feel free to post any similar ‘Reiki Visual’ stories below if you’d like to share them… hopefully then everyone will see, IT’S NOT JUST ME – it’s really quite common when working with Reiki!


kent reiki training coursesLouise Heseltine is one of the Reiki Evolution team of teachers, running courses in Kent.   Louise began teaching Reiki in 2005 and has worked as a complementary therapist, offering Reiki, aromatherapy (Tisserand trained), reflexology and Indian head  massage. Louise also runs Reiki Retreats and has taken Reiki people to Egypt and run regular retreats to Spain to develop their healing  skills.

Her website can be found here: www.silvermoon.org.uk.

Click here to ‘like’ Louise’s Facebook page!

 

 

Standard Hand Positions or Freestyle?

how to start a reiki treatment advice

One of my favourite topics when I’m teaching my Reiki First Degree students is the subject of ‘standard hand positions’ or ‘freestyle’ treatment techniques.  By this I mean whether to work on a client with the 12 standard hand positions taught on most Reiki courses, (often, it seems as the be all and end all of conducting a Reiki treatment), or whether to go with the energetic flow of the treatment and flow through an intuitive, ‘freestyle’ session. I have seen therapy centre and health spa websites which describe Reiki as a treatment whereby the practitioner channels Reiki into the client in 12 different positions… fair enough, if that’s the system their Reiki practitioners choose to work with. But… guess which style of treating I prefer? I’m a person who doesn’t cope too well with the grind of a dictated routine; I’m creative and intuitive, and I’m afraid that I have a relatively low boredom threshold. Some or all of these qualities probably apply to you as well, so perhaps you can see where I’m going with this. Following 12 standard hand positions is great. To begin with. While you’re learning Reiki it’s a really sound idea to give some standardised treatments, it truly is. You really should know what they are and get comfortable with them. The hand positions are pretty convenient, they work well on clients on a treatment couch, and they are the basics that you ought to know. Definitely. But don’t feel that is all there is, please! Those hand positions can start to feel mighty restrictive when everything in your head, or indeed your hands, or heart, is telling you that the Reiki needs to flow to a different area from those standard positions.

Far more fun is there to be had, far more opportunities for amazement and challenge and ultimately learning, are to be gained by going where the energy guides you. I love the feeling of exploring the client’s energy system and supporting it by providing the Reiki as I feel it flow more strongly. I love not knowing where I will be lead for that period of time. Trust me, you have the ability to feel the flow of Reiki, to notice the varying qualities of what you are feeling in your hands. I’ve seen it hundreds of times on my Reiki courses; students are regularly startled by what they find they notice, even on day one of working with Reiki. They very quickly learn to be guided in this way. I really hope that, if you’re a Reiki person, you’ve had this experience as well.

My favourite way of working on clients is by what I call ‘listening with my hands’. I always advocate for my students to listen to their intuition because, yes, that’s what is directing you, along with being merged with the energy of the person before you. Now there are so many ways that intuition can manifest itself that I can feel another blog, or even a book coming on! But hey, you don’t have to call yourself clairvoyant, be a medium or read the tea leaves to be able to pick up intuitive information from the person you’re treating with Reiki. I have had a lifelong a passion for psychic work and have had a wonderful range of formal and informal teachers over many years, but I still maintain that anyone can learn to listen to their intuition during a Reiki treatment, with none of this kind of experience, training, or background whatsoever. And through my experience of working with my students, this has been born out over and over again. The approach is really very simple when you’re starting out: where your hands feel busy with energy, that’s where the client is drawing more Reiki through you, so stay there longer. Where your hands feel nothing much, move on and scan somewhere else until you find a busy area. Go with your gut instinct. With practice, this simple method alone will grow and evolve into a more sophisticated, intuitively informed treatment approach. And your approach will quite possibly be unique to you once you’ve learned to listen to the language through which your intuition is communicating. Keep an open mind, and explore what happens when you go with your instinct.

The vast subject of working with intuition is something I’d like to tackle in subsequent blogs, so please watch this space. In the meantime, (if you don’t already,) please, listen with your hands as a starting point for developing your own freestyle Reiki treatments. If you’ve never tried it before, you have an exciting journey ahead of you! Just get your hands on some folks and put in some regular work. You’ll teach yourself so quickly, and in any case, the Reiki will flow to support your learning. And you’ll always find giving a Reiki treatment an adventure. Trust the intuitive process and enjoy the ride!

 


kent reiki training courses

Louise Heseltine is one of the Reiki Evolution team of teachers, running courses in Kent.   Louise began teaching Reiki in 2005 and has worked as a complementary therapist, offering Reiki, aromatherapy (Tisserand trained), reflexology and Indian head  massage. Louise also runs Reiki Retreats and has taken Reiki people to Egypt and run regular retreats to Spain to develop their healing  skills.

Her website can be found here: www.silvermoon.org.uk.

Click here to ‘like’ Louise’s Facebook page!