When I was 15, I took Level I Reiki from a great teacher, Beth Gray, and Level II from an even greater teacher, Colleen Kennard. I practiced it for 12 years. It has made me, in many ways, the person I am, both for good and ill. Here are my life lessons from that reality, in my own words!
"Some things I have learned about Reiki, and through Reiki a little about life and myself . . ."
Reiki is not a philosophy or a religion or even a spiritual path. It is a form of healing that requires no scalpel or needle or pill. As it was given to Usui, it is a powerful, complete and simple way of restoring the body to health, if given enough time. Do not mistake it for metaphysics or mysticism.
Reiki is not an exercise in techniques, it is a system so simple that a child can learn it, and apply it with as much success as an adult. There are the attunements, there are the hand positions, and there is the patience to thoroughly cover a person’s entire body with the hands to fill it with Reiki. That is all.
Boredom and creativity are the anti-Christ’s of Reiki. To come to the massage table with just your hands and your intention to do Reiki, without getting caught up in the impulse to “be creative” and use entertaining techniques and extra symbols and all the other forms of alternative healing – to simply sit there, for minutes or hours at a time and just let the Reiki flow THAT is bravery and discipline. Are you up to trying some discipline?
When you are attuned to Reiki, your hands become the most powerful diagnostic tools that a human can have. Through them, you can feel the pull of the energy in the client’s body. You can feel where they need more, and you gently slip your hand to cover that area. Some people can feel vibrations or tingling or pulsing or even movement, but they all boil down to the same event – the client’s body pulling Reiki through you, and your hands telling how and why it’s doing so. Listen to your hands. I say again, listen to your hands.
Being a Reiki channel does not make you healer. Many are called, few are chosen. If you were not born with the personality and the constitution of someone who is here to “heal” people, Reiki will not give it to you. But, that does not mean that Reiki will not help you or help others through you. Simply recognize the truth of whether you are genuinely here to make sick people well, or if you are simply trying something new and interesting.
Power is a dangerous reality to be given, and Reiki is actual, REAL power. It can literally change living things. Because of this, people have abused its simplicity and manifested all kinds of unhelpful energies, using the symbols and initiations to make them real. There is no real benefit in this. Look to the way Usui, Hayashi and Takata practiced Reiki – with discipline, simplicity, patience and integrity.
Reiki heals best that which it is made to heal. What is Reiki? It is a concentrated form of life-force energy. If the cause, or the effect, of an illness is the depletion of life-force, Reiki often creates what appear to be miraculous recoveries. I have seen it. But, more often than not, life-force is not the cause, or the effect, of the problem, and Reiki requires time, sometimes lots of it, to make a significant difference. This is where patience and discipline, of both the channel and the client, are required to make Usui Shiki Ryoho work.
Perhaps the most important thing to be forewarned about being a Reiki channel is this – if you do not practice the Triangle of Giving, Reiki will lead you astray. There are three aspects of Reiki that should be practiced – giving Reiki to yourself, giving Reiki to others, and receiving Reiki PASSIVELY from other people. Each is has an important role in keeping both the energy and the activity of Reiki balanced in your life. Not only your body, your life.
- When we give Reiki to ourselves, we keep ourselves tuned in to the ebbs and flows of our own bodies. We fill ourselves up so that we are always ready to give Reiki to others.
- When we give Reiki to others, especially those who actually need it (hint – people with genuine illness, esp severe ones), we learn the life lessons of humanity: birth, death, tragedy, recovery, growth, connection and above all simply being a presence in someone else’s life. No amount of reading, seminars or seat-warming at Reiki conferences will give you that. I suggest you go out, find someone with AIDS or cancer or leukemia, and give them Reiki, every day for three months. And prove to yourself that Reiki is here to heal bodies, not titillate your spiritual curiosity.
- And finally, receiving Reiki passively from others is the ultimate way of giving to yourself. You can let go and let someone else do the driving, and this lets us experience rest. Real rest. From burdens, from cares, from responsibilities and from internal conflicts. Giving to yourself by receiving Reiki is good for your soul AND your self-identity, and it builds trust, it builds Reiki communities, and it just feels . . . good.
Let me end by saying that becoming a Reiki channel was the most miraculous thing that has ever happened to me, but I’m also glad that I don’t practice it any more because I know better. My life has been the lessons learned above, and I did it the hard way.
Namaste
"Some things I have learned about Reiki, and through Reiki a little about life and myself . . ."
Reiki is not a philosophy or a religion or even a spiritual path. It is a form of healing that requires no scalpel or needle or pill. As it was given to Usui, it is a powerful, complete and simple way of restoring the body to health, if given enough time. Do not mistake it for metaphysics or mysticism.
Reiki is not an exercise in techniques, it is a system so simple that a child can learn it, and apply it with as much success as an adult. There are the attunements, there are the hand positions, and there is the patience to thoroughly cover a person’s entire body with the hands to fill it with Reiki. That is all.
Boredom and creativity are the anti-Christ’s of Reiki. To come to the massage table with just your hands and your intention to do Reiki, without getting caught up in the impulse to “be creative” and use entertaining techniques and extra symbols and all the other forms of alternative healing – to simply sit there, for minutes or hours at a time and just let the Reiki flow THAT is bravery and discipline. Are you up to trying some discipline?
When you are attuned to Reiki, your hands become the most powerful diagnostic tools that a human can have. Through them, you can feel the pull of the energy in the client’s body. You can feel where they need more, and you gently slip your hand to cover that area. Some people can feel vibrations or tingling or pulsing or even movement, but they all boil down to the same event – the client’s body pulling Reiki through you, and your hands telling how and why it’s doing so. Listen to your hands. I say again, listen to your hands.
Being a Reiki channel does not make you healer. Many are called, few are chosen. If you were not born with the personality and the constitution of someone who is here to “heal” people, Reiki will not give it to you. But, that does not mean that Reiki will not help you or help others through you. Simply recognize the truth of whether you are genuinely here to make sick people well, or if you are simply trying something new and interesting.
Power is a dangerous reality to be given, and Reiki is actual, REAL power. It can literally change living things. Because of this, people have abused its simplicity and manifested all kinds of unhelpful energies, using the symbols and initiations to make them real. There is no real benefit in this. Look to the way Usui, Hayashi and Takata practiced Reiki – with discipline, simplicity, patience and integrity.
Reiki heals best that which it is made to heal. What is Reiki? It is a concentrated form of life-force energy. If the cause, or the effect, of an illness is the depletion of life-force, Reiki often creates what appear to be miraculous recoveries. I have seen it. But, more often than not, life-force is not the cause, or the effect, of the problem, and Reiki requires time, sometimes lots of it, to make a significant difference. This is where patience and discipline, of both the channel and the client, are required to make Usui Shiki Ryoho work.
Perhaps the most important thing to be forewarned about being a Reiki channel is this – if you do not practice the Triangle of Giving, Reiki will lead you astray. There are three aspects of Reiki that should be practiced – giving Reiki to yourself, giving Reiki to others, and receiving Reiki PASSIVELY from other people. Each is has an important role in keeping both the energy and the activity of Reiki balanced in your life. Not only your body, your life.
- When we give Reiki to ourselves, we keep ourselves tuned in to the ebbs and flows of our own bodies. We fill ourselves up so that we are always ready to give Reiki to others.
- When we give Reiki to others, especially those who actually need it (hint – people with genuine illness, esp severe ones), we learn the life lessons of humanity: birth, death, tragedy, recovery, growth, connection and above all simply being a presence in someone else’s life. No amount of reading, seminars or seat-warming at Reiki conferences will give you that. I suggest you go out, find someone with AIDS or cancer or leukemia, and give them Reiki, every day for three months. And prove to yourself that Reiki is here to heal bodies, not titillate your spiritual curiosity.
- And finally, receiving Reiki passively from others is the ultimate way of giving to yourself. You can let go and let someone else do the driving, and this lets us experience rest. Real rest. From burdens, from cares, from responsibilities and from internal conflicts. Giving to yourself by receiving Reiki is good for your soul AND your self-identity, and it builds trust, it builds Reiki communities, and it just feels . . . good.
Let me end by saying that becoming a Reiki channel was the most miraculous thing that has ever happened to me, but I’m also glad that I don’t practice it any more because I know better. My life has been the lessons learned above, and I did it the hard way.
Namaste
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