MountainZendoAndHealingCenter.com Blog

What Do Reiki Attunements Do, Anyway?

by Susan Downing

Everyone who receives formal training in Reiki receives what is called an “attunement” from his or her teacher.  Teachers give their students attunements are given at the beginning of each level of Reiki training (or sometimes more frequently,) and to an outside observer, it would look like the teacher is simply laying his or her hands lightly on the student’s head and then hands, while doing specific hand movements, or mudras. And yet, the effects can be very profound.  So, what exactly does an attunement “do” to or for the student? Since different teachers understand attunements differently, today I’ll share some of these views, including my own.

The standard answer, put forth by most Reiki teachers here in the West, is that the attunement enables students to practice Reiki by connecting them to the source of the energy they will then use in their healing sessions.  What doesn’t resonate with me here is that this view seems to imply that we can’t access that energy unless we receive an attunement.  I don’t believe that’s the case.

An explanation that appeals to me a bit more is that attunements initiate students into the practice of Reiki.  Pamela Miles describes it this way in her book Reiki: A Comprehensive Guide:  “Rather than adding something, I would say that the initiation process opens and strengthens what’s already there, what is already ours: the access to primordial consciousness that is our birthright.”  This is similar to how I explain attunements to my students. I say that although the energy you use when giving Reiki is already present within your body, when you receive an attunement, your awareness of this energy generally increases, so that you have the sense that suddenly there is energy flowing in you, energy you can use in Reiki sessions for yourself or others.

But here’s yet another way to think of what goes on during an attunement.  Reiki’s founder, Mikao Usui, was a Buddhist practitioner.  As part of his training, he would have received initiations from his teacher or teachers.   These initiations, often called empowerments, or blessings, in Buddhism, take place in a formal setting and involve certain rituals.  They formally mark the beginning of a student’s engagement with the given practice for which he or she is receiving the empowerment.  Sometimes this involves the students taking vows of some sort.  Following an empowerment, the teacher might sometimes take the students’ hands or place a hand on the student’s head.

The empowerment is a key factor in the student’s practice: it establishes a formal and conscious link between student and teacher and formalizes the student’s commitment to the given practice, a commitment to working with the teacher within that practice.  Even so, these empowerments don’t do anything to a student in the sense that they don’t literally enable a student to practice: with or without an empowerment, one could technically carry out all the practices associated with a certain training, assuming you could find out what they were! All the same, even if the empowerment doesn’t flip some “on” switch in the student, the student does experience an effect from receiving one.

For example, if you have received this kind of empowerment from a Buddhist teacher, you might have noticed that you experienced very strong positive emotions and even physical sensations during or after the empowerment.  Maybe you felt very happy, or full of energy, or maybe you felt even overcome by emotion.  Perhaps you felt an increased connection to the teacher who offered the empowerment, a feeling of gratitude and a strong motivation to practice, a sense that you had become part of some wonderful joint effort that includes not only you and your teacher, but all those before you who have engaged in this same practice.

So, although it would have been theoretically possible for you to engage in a given Buddhist practice without an empowerment, receiving the empowerment gives your confidence and motivation a big boost, connects you to the tradition in which you’re practicing, and assures you of the ongoing commitment of your teacher, so that as you move forward, you will be certain that you are learning and carrying out the practice correctly.

The responses to empowerments that I mention above are not only common among Buddhist practitioners.  They are also very similar to what Reiki practitioners experience following an attunement.  So, there is a very real benefit to receiving the attunements that Reiki teachers offer, even if we can’t always identify exactly what goes on during an attunement.

There is also, I hasten to add, a very real benefit to establishing an ongoing relationship with a Reiki teacher, one that will sustain and nourish you long after your given Reiki class has ended.  Although, as I noted above, it is possible to engage in various Buddhist practices on one’s own without receiving guidance or empowerment from a teacher, I feel strongly – and my personal experience with my own teacher has confirmed this time and again – that one is much better off working consistently with a teacher.   The teacher encourages you, helps you see where you are misunderstanding things, and points you in the right direction.  A stable connection with a teacher also helps keep your motivation and enthusiasm up during the inevitable periods when you feel you’ve hit a plateau or somehow gotten off track.  You can think of it this way: each moment of contact with your teacher becomes a mini-empowerment, a new blessing, whether it is formal, or ritualized, or takes place unconsciously in the course of study or a conversation.

This is exactly what your Reiki teacher can give you on an ongoing basis.  (And this is definitely the way I feel about my relationship with my own Reiki teacher.)  This, for me, is the real significance of the attunements that I offer my students.  Giving you an attunement doesn’t somehow magically transform you into a Reiki practitioner.   Anyone who wants to do self-Reiki can learn to do that by following a few easy instructions (see my last blog, “No Experience Necessary”.) And that is fine as an introduction, just the way it’s fine to pick up a book about Buddhism, read about the basic concepts and begin trying to put them into practice.  But once you’ve tried a little self-Reiki, if it resonates with you, then you should find a teacher and do some formal training, just as you would do if you wanted to learn to practice Buddhism seriously.  And this is where the attunements come in.  I always give my students attunements in my formal classes, because this is the point at which they have decided to make a commitment to practicing Reiki.  Giving my students attunements establishes the teacher-student connection and commitment and is encouraging and inspiring and motivating for the student.  It is a starting point on the student’s path of developing a regular Reiki practice.

So, somewhat paradoxically, you could say that Reiki attunements are in one sense unnecessary if you want to practice Reiki, but in another sense, absolutely vital if you want to establish a strong Reiki practice.

And I want to say one more thing about attunements. Receiving attunements is very joyful and inspiring, but giving them is even more wonderful. There is something so beautiful about marking and sharing the moment when a student makes that commitment to beginning a Reiki practice.  During attunements, it feels to me that all is possible for the students as they start off on their Reiki path. And even if I never see them again after the class ends, at least they will know, from experiencing the connection that is established with me during the attunement, that they are not alone on their path. They will always have somewhere to turn for guidance or for some shared Reiki, or simply for a conversation that will be a sweet blessing for us both.

What Is Reiki Energy, Anyway?

by Susan Downing

When we Reiki practitioners explain what we do when giving Reiki, we tend to talk about sending energy out through our hands into the recipient’s body.  But if you ask what that energy is and where it comes from, you can get a variety of answers.  Reiki’s founder, Mikao Usui, just called it “Reiki energy”, and described his initial contact with it, during a meditation retreat, this way: “While I fasted, I touched an intense energy and in a mysterious manner, I was inspired (I received the Reiki energy.)”  He described his method of healing as “a spiritual method that goes beyond medical science.”*

Now, Usui seems never to have talked about the energy being something independent that comes from outside the practitioner and flows through him or her and into a recipient.  But I think it is probably Usui Sensei’s description of Reiki as a spiritual method that led those who began practicing Reiki in the West (taught by Hawayo Takata who learned from one of Usui’s students) to describe the energy as “Universal healing energy” or “Divine healing energy” or “God’s energy.” And so it’s not surprising that most of us were taught that we practitioners are conduits for the energy, which flows into the recipient through our hands.

I can see that there would be pluses to presenting it this way. First of all, it can help the recipient relax if he can imagine receiving benevolent energy from a non-human source, even if it’s a non-specified non-human source. The recipient can name this energy in a way that appeals to him: Universal healing energy, God’s energy, Spirit, and so on.

I think another reason the “conduit” explanation has been so prominent is that it can put recipients at ease in another way:  since they’re receiving energy that is supposedly not the practitioner’s, then they can feel confident in its goodness and ability to bring positive benefit, rather than wondering whether their practitioner embodies and is sharing goodness or compassion or other positive qualities.

But there are also drawbacks to the “conduit” explanation.  If practitioners are only conduits for delivering the healing energy that flows from some outside source, then in principle every session from any Reiki practitioner should feel the same, shouldn’t it, since it’s always the same energy that is flowing, all from one source?  And yet, anyone who’s had Reiki from more than one practitioner knows that sessions from different practitioners feel different.  We talk about how we like this or that person’s “energy”.  This would seem to call into question the idea that all Reiki practitioners access a single, independent, outside energy source when they give Reiki.

I began considering this question in earnest a couple of years ago, as my  Buddhist practice deepened, and when thinking of the Reiki energy as having a divine or independent source outside the practitioner no longer felt compatible with my spiritual practice. So, I began to reflect on how I could explain the process of giving Reiki in a way that would not depend on referring to an independent source energy outside ourselves.  Here’s what I came up with:

When people ask me what Reiki’s all about and how it works, I first ask them how they feel when they’re in the presence of someone who really loves them.  People often respond by saying that they feel very happy, relaxed, calm, soothed. Their muscles relax and their breathing eases, too.  They smile. They simply feel content.  I say that this is very similar to the way it can feel to receive Reiki: like feeling loved.

Maybe we can say that we feel the way we do when we receive Reiki because what we are receiving is deep love.  Could we call Reiki energy simply the energy of love?   If so, then what’s the source of that loving energy?  The practitioner? God? Spirit? The Universe?  Maybe what we think of as Reiki energy functions not on its own, but only in dependence on and collaboration with the hearts and minds of the people through whom it flows.  We can’t know for sure.  Nor do I think we need to know.  Think of it any way you want, in any way that resonates with you. I think that what’s important is not trying to identify the source of that feeling of joy and well-being, but rather, accepting it for the great blessing it is and being grateful that we can experience it, however it makes its way to us.

* This quote comes from an interview given by Mikao Usui sometime between 1922 and 1926, and translated and published by Frank Arjava Petter in his book The Legacy of Dr. Usui.

Reiki With a Chance of Insight

by Susan Downing

In recent posts I’ve been writing about how to use Reiki to survive turmoil in your life, and about how learning to practice in this way will help reduce the intensity of the storms that swirl around you.  But that’s not the full extent of what Reiki can do for you: by carving out a quiet space and time and going more deeply into your practice, you also make it possible for profound insights to bubble up, insights you can use as the basis for making positive changes in your life.

Every time we do Reiki for ourselves or receive a Reiki session or attunement from someone else, we experience the release of tensions in our body and mind.  Knotted-up muscles can relax, and disturbing thoughts and emotions can also relax their grip on us.  We can describe this process as a letting go – if only for a short while – of patterns of thought and behavior that have caused us discomfort.  One way experiencing this helps us is obvious – we simply feel better! But it can also help us in another way.  During each Reiki sessions, our thought and behavior patterns’ negative effects on our body and mind are temporarily relieved.  We can see this as temporary liberation from habits which do not serve us well, which serve not to increase our health and well-being, but to impair it.

But when we sit up after a Reiki session feeling marvelously relaxed and happy, the last thing we’re inclined to reflect on is what habits may have led to the discomfort we’ve just released while we were lying on the table.  We’re so happy to be free for now of that pain or tension, which at that moment is good enough. And really, we don’t have to consciously go down that road.  Rather, all we need to do is be open to gaining insights, because it’s precisely in the hours or days after a Reiki session that we are likely to gain new awareness of habits that cause us pain.  Reflecting or meditating on insights can help us get even more out of Reiki than temporary respite, whether we’re practicing on ourselves or receiving Reiki from someone else, because they can lead us to make changes that will free us from the habits themselves and not just their unpleasant effects.

This process of recognizing habits and then seeking insight into them is not something you can begin by force of will.  You will gain the moment of insight only when you’re ready to address a given habit.   Here’s an example from my own experience.  All my life I have had an incredible sweet tooth.  I have long known that I was probably consuming more sugar than was good for my body and mind, but I never took any steps to change that habit.  I never saw any need to.  Or rather, I pushed aside any concerns that would occasionally surface.  But one day about a year ago, I suddenly came to the conclusion that it was time to do something about the sugar. A day or two later, I happened to read an article by a nutritional therapist acquaintance about the ways sugar negatively affects the body and mind, and, much to my own surprise, I decided to take the plunge and give up sugar.  I worked with my acquaintance to develop a plan, and within a few days I had cut sugar out of my diet, although it had been an overwhelming food addiction for me my entire life.

It just so happened that this thought popped into my head at a time when I was both giving a receiving a great deal of Reiki.  I have noticed in the past that during such periods I will often gain insight into some long-standing area of tension or conflict in my life, or that it will occur to me that there might be a new way of looking at a situation, if only I would take the time to reflect on it. This is what happened with the sugar – for decades I was not at all convinced that it could be harming my body and saw no reason whatsoever to even consider that possibility, but one day my mind simply opened up and I had a Hmm…. moment: maybe it made sense to look at this issue after all?   I accepted that challenge and was able to make a change in my life that has brought me tremendous benefit.

That is exactly the kind of opening up or shift in perspective that Reiki can facilitate within us.  Sometimes it happens after one session, sometimes after many, or after more intensive Reiki work.  I can’t explain how this works, but I know that it happens, and not just to me! Here’s one way I’ve thought of to describe it: the more frequently and fully the body and mind relax, the more often and deeply we temporarily release our harmful patterns. There eventually comes a tipping point at which we gain both clear conscious awareness of one of these patterns and also a subtle openness to the possibility of changing things.  And in my experience, that is the time at which we have the opportunity to take action in our lives to change those habits for good.  In my case, there was actually once a four-day period after I did a number of Reiki attunements three years ago, when I totally lost my taste for sweets.  But even then I did not take action to cut down on sugar permanently, not for another two years.  I was not ready.  But the opportunity presented itself again, and when it did, then I took the necessary steps to change my pattern.

It’s important to note here that while the Reiki treatments and practice help our body and mind release the effects of our habits for short periods of time, Reiki alone generally does not remove the habit itself.  But when we have reached that tipping point, Reiki can help us gain awareness of the habit so that we can take the steps that are necessary to change it, if only we pay attention to that tiny willingness within us to do so.

That’s what I was able to do with my sugar addiction: the thought occurred to me that maybe I really should look at this situation and delve deeply into trying to understand it.  In other words, I gained the awareness that my craving of sweets really was harmful.  That was the insight, the shift, the new way of seeing things – a willingness to look at the problem of eating so much sugar, instead of resisting looking at it and telling myself there was no reason to stop. And after I had the insight, it was up to me to do the conscious inquiry and take the steps to adjust my behavior.

What this means is that instead of using Reiki only to relieve the effects of my harmful patterns on a temporary basis, I was able to use it to gain insight into how to change the habit and relieve those effects long-term.

Facilitating this type of transformation is one of the most powerful ways continued Reiki practice – or receiving Reiki on an ongoing basis – can help us, and being consistent and diligent with our practice is key. The more frequently we use Reiki to get our energy moving, the more quickly we will reach the tipping points that help us release the patterns that are disturbing our body and mind.  And what I really love about this is that you never know what insights will bubble up.  Out of the blue, one day, you will find yourself taking a new look at a long-standing habit or belief or way of thinking.  When you do experience this, that’s the time to do some reflection, because that’s the time when you are finally ready to make some profound changes in your life.  By receiving (or even giving) Reiki, you can feel a question arise: you can experience a Hmm…  moment.  And then you can take that Hmm… moment and with some reflection,  turn it into an Aha! moment, one that can motivate you to work to shift the way you live in this world and take one more step on the path of healing your body and mind.

When You Feel Loved

by Susan Downing

The question people most frequently ask me about Reiki is, “How does Reiki work?”  There are a couple of ways Reiki practitioners usually answer this. Sometimes they describe themselves as conduits for what they refer to as universal healing energy, which flows through them and out to you through their hands.   Other practitioners, like Bronwen and Frans Stiene, talk about being Reiki, which they explain this way:

The practitioner sees herself as one with Reiki, it is nothing separate, she is the Reiki and everything outside of her is                     also Reiki. She also sees her client from this view point, so she is the client and the client is also her and Reiki – no                           separation, but oneness. 
In summary, when she places her hands on her client she doesn’t see it as “doing Reiki” or                        ”channeling Reiki” but just “Being Reiki”. (from the International House of Reiki website)

I don’t find either explanation satisfying. The first suggests that the practitioner doesn’t really make a contribution to the process of giving Reiki to a recipient, aside from serving as a pipeline for healing energy outside us. The second, full of spiritual buzz words, doesn’t give us insight about what actually goes on when we offer Reiki to someone.  Today I’m going to offer you a much simpler way to describe what happens during a Reiki treatment. And there’s some reader participation in this one, too!

I’ll start by asking a question: How do you feel when you’re with someone who really loves you?  Think of someone who loves you deeply, whose love makes you very happy.  Do that now: take a couple of minutes to close your eyes and call that person and their love to mind.  Just remind yourself of how much they love you. Allow yourself to soak in the feeling of their love coming your way, and notice what it feels like to receive it.   Really, give it a try for a couple of minutes.  Then come back and keep reading.

So, what did that feel like?  When I do this with my students or with folks who attend informational talks I give about Reiki, people get big smiles on their faces. They relax visibly.  One time, one woman said to a coworker across the table from her, “Hey, you’re blushing!” And she was!  That’s how happy she’d gotten, just from thinking about being with someone who loves her.  Imagine how joyful she’d have been if the person had been with her right then!

When we’re with someone who loves us, when we feel deep love coming our way, we relax almost immediately.  The tension in our body flows away, we feel safe and soothed, worries fade, and deep happiness and calm take their place.  We can lose all sense of the passage of time as we settle into this joyful frame of mind where we forget that anything exists but the happiness that envelops us.

This is exactly what happens when a Reiki practitioner places hands on you, focuses on being right there with you and lets his or her pure and sincere affection for you flow.  You can call this affection love or compassion, but it is not romantic love, or even the kind we feel for those in our family.  Think of it as a heartfelt wish that through this connection, the person you’re with will feel happy and calm and supported. In its strongest form, the Buddhists call this wish bodhicitta: the altruistic deep love for other beings that prompts you to do all you can to end their suffering. You do this not so that it will make you look good, or so that your clients will refer you to their friends, but because you can’t not offer this loving support.

When a Reiki practitioner gives you Reiki motivated by even a small degree of this selfless love or affection, you can experience the same relaxation response and deep feeling of well-being you feel in the presence of someone who loves you.  That’s because he or she does love you, just in a way that’s different from the kind of love we’re used to talking about. Think of it this way: when you come to me for Reiki, I connect with you from my heart — and although this phrase is also such a cliché as to have lost most of its meaning, it really is what I mean. This makes a lot more sense to me than thinking of what we do as pulling in some self-existent  positive energy from outside us.  Rather, we are tapping into the warm feelings within us and allowing them to flow freely to our recipients.

So, you can think of Reiki as a method practitioners use to help you relax and feel happy by sharing their selfless loving feelings with you. That’s a pretty simple explanation, but that doesn’t mean the method itself takes no effort.  That’s because it’s not necessarily easy to approach everyone we encounter with this affection.  As the Dalai Lama stresses, we are not born knowing how to do this.  We have to learn how to cultivate bodhicitta, practice doing that, and carefully nurture that love when it first appears within our hearts, so that it can continue to grow.

If, as Reiki practitioners, we are to be able to connect with our recipients so that we can share this kind of love with them and help them experience the great happiness Reiki can bring them, we need to feel it within us and develop it. That is where the need for our own personal practice comes in: we must find and make use of tools — such as a combined spiritual and self-Reiki practice —that will allow this love to arise within us. We also need to cultivate skills — such as meditation — that will help us improve our own focus and concentration. That way, we can get better and better at being fully present with our recipients, and we’ll be able to offer them a strong and steady flow of that love.

As I see it, this is our responsibility as Reiki practitioners: to cultivate this selfless love and our ability to pass it on, because the true heart of Reiki — and the key to truly benefitting our recipients — lies in sharing the love within our own hearts.

In the Face of Pain

by Susan Downing

When I walk into the room where I give Reiki sessions and glance at the walls, I notice that they’re blue. When I step out onto my porch on a summer evening, I may hear frogs croaking, or glimpse a firefly’s light.  I feel the softness of my cat’s fur when I pet her.  As I move through my day, my senses constantly give me information about the world around me.  But, although I see the walls’ blueness when I look at them, my own skin doesn’t grow blue as a result of that seeing.  And I wouldn’t think of suggesting that my own hair could grow softer or more lustrous because I’ve petted my cat.  All that I experience when interacting with everyone and everything around me just tells me something about their state at the moment.

This happens when I’m giving Reiki, too, but in addition to seeing and hearing what’s going on with the recipients, I also gain information about them in other ways.  If they’re anxious, I may feel as if my own breathing is restricted.  When they have aching shoulders, mine may hurt, too, or I may feel my clients’ sadness well up in my own chest.  Oh, and I will become aware of their happiness, too as I feel a smiling coming to my face.  Once the person leaves, this awareness fades, just as I no longer hear frogs croaking once I’ve gone inside from my porch.

I began learning about my recipients in this way as soon as I began practicing Reiki, and at first I didn’t know what to make of it.  That’s because you’ll often hear Reiki practitioners talk or worry about “taking on” their recipients’ ailments or “absorbing negative energy”. There’s also a lot of talk about learning to protect oneself from the absorbing illness or disturbance from those to whom we give Reiki.  My students frequently ask about this.  I hasten to reassure them that we absolutely cannot “catch” a disease or illness or depression from our clients by giving them Reiki, any more than an oncologist can develop cancer from treating cancer patients. But I think this fear has spread because practitioners sometimes do feel their clients’ pains or negative emotions, but lack a positive way to view them. That’s what I’m offering you today:

When we notice our clients’ pain or disturbing emotions by feeling them ourselves, it’s not that we’re “taking them on.”  When I temporarily feel a client’s sore knee as my own, it’s analogous to glimpsing a firefly’s flickering: it’s an awareness of a state at the moment.  Sensing another’s emotional or physical state this way is like having an extra sense. And I’m grateful for this additional way of learning about those to whom I give Reiki.

When I first began learning things this way during sessions, I mentioned it to my Level I Reiki teacher, who sternly told me, “You do not want to be taking that stuff on!” She saw my experiences as evidence that I had weak boundaries.  I saw them as a benefit to my Reiki practice.  That was largely because a key focus of my Buddhist practice is developing my ability to understand others’ point of view, and deepening my connection to them.  And as you may recall, if you’ve been reading my blog posts, I am convinced it’s precisely this ability to connect and be present with recipients (whether or not you get any of this other type of info about them) which enables deep healing to take place.  So this awareness seemed like a great blessing, an indication that I was connecting to my recipients strongly.

And since I see this process as just one more method of information gathering, I don’t fear it, especially because anything I feel in my own body or mind fades when my sessions end, or even sooner.   There’s nothing to be afraid of: although I may notice a client’s sadness or anger or pain, I don’t develop genuine anger or pain, any more than a frog’s croak becomes my voice.  So why do practitioners worry that what they sense in clients can become part of them?  I think it’s because they don’t understand that this way of understanding is like another sense.  It’s just one that not everyone accesses, so it can be disconcerting at first.

To be honest, when I first began noticing my recipients’ state reflected in my own body and mind, it felt strange to me.  Then I realized that I’ve had this kind of awareness all my life, especially with those close to me: I’d notice my stomach beginning to be upset, and then one of my kids would come up to me and say, “Mom, I feel like I’m going to throw up.”  That kind of thing.  When I began practicing Reiki, I became aware of others’ feelings more easily because of the close energetic connection with the recipients.  That’s when I figured out that I’ve been sensing others’ states this way for years.  People who have this kind of awareness are often call empathic, and there’s been a lot written about how unpleasant it can be to feel what others feel, particularly if they’re sick or upset.  We tend not to like to feel even our own discomfort, much less anyone else’s, so this keen awareness has come to be seen as something to be avoided.   Thus, lots has been written about how those who are empathic can shield themselves from others’ energy.

But no one seems to be writing about the positive benefits of being able to gather information in this way.  What about the times when you become aware of others’ extreme joy? Any Reiki practitioner who’s felt other’s pain as their own has certainly felt others’ positive emotions, too, but no one seems to have suggested we try to avoid that. I mention this to show that there can be a very positive side to possessing this kind of awareness, even if you’re not a Buddhist practitioner who sees it as a spiritual benefit.  At the very least, you can view it as a neutral thing: if you see all that comes in through your senses just as information about the world and people around you, instead of as a new feature of your own body or mind, then you can begin to not be afraid of it.

That’s the first step: allowing the awareness to be there without being disturbed by it, because you know it will fade when your session is done, the way you can be in a really noisy place without freaking out, because eventually you’ll leave the place and the noise behind.  Once you begin to let go of the fear, you’ll be able to welcome this profound closeness with your Reiki recipients: you can simply be there with the recipient, unimpeded by anxiety about “taking on” a headache or anger.

I’d even go so far as to say that as Reiki practitioners, we in fact sign on to be present with all that our recipients bring to us, whether positive or negative.  People come to us for comfort and support, and we will be able to provide that fully only if we manage to not pull back in the face of their pain.  That is the nature of our commitment to them and to our healing mission.  Though we willingly place ourselves alongside others in their suffering, we can do so without being thrown off balance by it ourselves.  We do that partly by having a regular and strong self-care practice, and partly by gaining insight into this awareness that draws us closer to our recipients and can bring them — and us — such great benefit.

Just for Today, Do Not Worry

by Susan Downing

My last post, regarding Mikao Usui’s first Reiki precept, “Just for Today, Do Not Be Angry,” led to a wonderful discussion with one of my students.  She was wondering whether one could express the precept’s gist using a”do this” phrase, rather than “do not”.  Another student asked me about that a couple of months ago.  Both of them felt that they would feel better repeating a phrase that reinforced an intention to act positively, instead of one that exhorted them not to do something.  This is an appealing idea, especially since Usui Sensei’s last three precepts are “do” phrases.  Just to review, here are all five of the Reiki precepts:

Just for today:

Do not be angry

Do not worry

Express gratitude

Devote yourself diligently to your work

Be kind to people

It wouldn’t be hard to come up with admonishing versions of the last three precepts – “don’t be ungrateful,” etc, but restating the first two positively is a tougher task, since being angry and worrying don’t have obvious opposites. Besides, since these are two very powerful negative emotions, I imagine Usui Sensei wanted to call particular attention to them, so he mentioned them by name.  Thus, translating them in an affirmative way is a challenge. In fact, translating them at all is tricky: if you tell people not to get angry, that doesn’t strike the right tone.  The first precept has most commonly been translate as “Do not anger,” which really is not correct English.  I’d learned the precept this way and had always taught it using this wording, but when I was writing my book, one of my readers asked what was up with the awkward English wording, and that got me thinking about how best to express that precept in English.  My student’s question led me to expand that reflection to the second precept, too.

Both of the first two precepts’ Japanese wording refers to one’s state of mind, so it’s as if Usui Sensei was saying, don’t be in the state of mind where anger and worry are present.  That’s a pretty awkward way of phrasing it too, but you get the idea. But I believe that Usui Sensei meant the precepts both as guidelines for our actions, and also as descriptions of what diligently devoting ourselves to Reiki can help us experience.  So, we do our best not to be angry and not worry, and over time, we find that we are less and less in a state of mind in which worry and anger are present.  Using “do not be angry” and “do not worry” does work pretty well to express these two meanings of the precepts.

Even so, both phrases do tell us what not to do.  My student found that discouraging: she said that if she’s setting it as her goal to not be angry or worry, but does end up experiencing angry, or worrying, then she’ll feel that she’s failed at upholding the first two precepts.   As we continued our discussion, it occurred to me that a possible positive version of these first two Reiki precepts could be:  ”Just for today, allow anger to fade.  Just for today, allow worry to fade.” This can work with the multiple purpose I see the precepts fulfilling: if you engage in a consistent, diligent, sincere  Reiki practice, you will find that it will be easier for you not to be swept away by anger and worry when they do arise; that they will begin to fade more easily; and that over time, these two disturbing emotions will just not arise as often.   My only hesitation about this wording comes from the fact that it seems to assume that anger and worry will be present (unless you add a phrase like “if it should arise,” but then you’re back to really long precept wording…) whereas the “do not” phrases, for all their “nots”, do hold out the possibility of no anger arising at all, and I like that.

But if you’re working on the assumption that anger and worry might indeed come up, phrasing the precepts the new way can serve as a reminder of how to respond when anger and worry do come up: allow them to fade instead of allowing them to rule you.  Note that you’re not actively trying to prevent them from arising.  You can’t, by force of will, decide that you will not allow anger or worry to arise in your mind. But your Reiki  practice gives you powerful tools that help you allow anger or worry to fade: when you begin to feel upset, give yourself Reiki as soon as possible. Even for just five minutes. My students tell me that they love that idea, but ask what to do if they’re at work or in the middle of a conversation with someone and they start to get really angry or worried?  They don’t want to start giving themselves Reiki in the middle of a meeting!  Here’s my advice:  as soon as you can, excuse yourself and go to the bathroom.  Seriously!  It may be the only place where you have real privacy, and most people are unlikely to follow you there to continue a discussion or argument.  Give yourself Reiki for five minutes or longer.  Repeat the relevant precept silently, or in a very low voice, like a mantra.  That will help the anger or worry fade, too. Giving yourself Reiki and reciting the precepts will help you ride out these disturbing emotions without being swept away by them.

This last point is key: using Reiki will help you maintain your composure when you find yourself in a situation that really pushes your buttons.  If you’re in the grip of anger or worry, it’s very difficult to have the presence of mind to deal rationally with whatever you’re facing. You can’t think straight, and when you’re in that state you can end up saying or doing something you might regret because you’re overcome by anger or worry.  That doesn’t mean you ignore the negative circumstance at hand, or look the other way when others are out of line.  Maybe you do need to address an upsetting situation or inappropriate or unkind behavior, but you’ll do it in a kinder, more rational way if you’re calm and collected.  That’s where self-Reiki and the precepts come in. They help your anger and worry fade, so you can go back out and face whatever you need to face without causing more distress to yourself or others.

In terms of expressing the precepts, choose whichever version resonates most with you.  Do or do not. What’s most important is that you do, as Usui Sensei reminded us, “Repeat the precepts and keep them in your mind and heart.”  Keep the essence of their meaning in your mind and heart, no matter which words you use.  That, together with consistent Reiki practice, allows the disturbing emotions to fade, and gratitude and kindness to arise in their place.  So, keep practicing, both on a daily basis and when turmoil strikes.  Even if you end up spending a lot more time in the bathroom!

Just for Today, Do Not Be Angry

by Susan Downing

This week I’m continuing my series of blog posts devoted to the Reiki precepts that came down to us from Mikao Usui, Reiki’s founder.  Here they are, beginning with his two-line explanation of Reiki as a system:

The secret of inviting happiness through many blessings

The spiritual medicine for all illness

Just for today:

Do not be angry

Do not worry

Express gratitude

Devote yourself diligently to your work

Be kind to people

Do Gassho every morning and evening

Keep the precepts in your mind and recite them

Have you ever wondered by Usui Sensei chose “do not be angry” and “do not worry” as his first two precepts?  I think it’s because these two powerful disturbing emotions make it difficult for us to follow through on the other three precepts: feeling grateful, devoting ourselves to our work, and being kind. In this post, I’ll take a close look at what relevance the first precept has to our lives in general and to practicing Reiki, too, and how our practice can help it fade.

I’m sure any of us can easily recall times in our lives when we’ve gotten angry.  But what about if you’re a Reiki practitioner? Has anger ever come up as you were practicing Reiki? That might seem unlikely at first.  After all, we associate giving Reiki with happiness and comfort.  Really, have you ever ended up yelling at someone during or after a Reiki session? I doubt it!  Even so, anger and annoyance can arise.  Maybe we’re doing Reiki for a friend or family member with whom we’ve recently had a disagreement.  Maybe we’ve reluctantly agreed to give someone Reiki at an inconvenient time and we’re feeling a little taken advantage of.  Maybe a client was late to a session, or even didn’t show up.  In any of these cases, we might feel annoyed, if not downright angry.

Anger and annoyance can also take more subtle forms during or after a session.  Let’s say the recipient doesn’t seem to experience any immediate benefit.  Maybe his knee still hurts after receiving Reiki, or she is still depressed about a breakup, or even seems more upset than before the Reiki.  Or, maybe he’s new to Reiki and had the nerve to sit up after the session, shrug, and say, “I didn’t feel a thing.”  Because these people have not responded to Reiki as we’d hoped they would, we may get annoyed — at them or at ourselves.

If we can say, oh my gosh, yes, I’ve felt this kind of annoyance and even anger, does that mean we are awful Reiki practitioners?  No.  It means that we are not immune to anger just because we practice Reiki.  It also means that we can benefit by taking Usui Sensei’s precept to heart: Just for today, do not be angry.  The question is, how do we manage not to be angry?

Usui Sensei’s instructions explain exactly what to do.  They don’t tell us to banish anger from our mind, or suggest we use other active methods to get rid of it.   They say, “keep the precepts in your mind and recite them.” In my recent post, “The Secret of Inviting Happiness,” I suggested that in addition to providing a guide for our behavior, the precepts also show what we’ll be able to achieve if we devote ourselves fully to our Reiki practice: “If you practice diligently, you’ll be able to not be angry.”  Practicing Reiki this way really does allow anger to fade. We place our focus on our practice instead of on our anger. We recite the precepts and give ourselves Reiki every day without fail and let our sincere, consistent practice do the work.

But what to do when you do feel anger rising up within you? In such cases, your practice can help you ride anger out without being swept away by it.  You can silently repeat, “Just for today, do not be angry,” when you find yourself beginning to feel angry. Repeat it to yourself silently like a mantra, over and over, distracting your mind with it until the anger or annoyance fade.

Giving yourself Reiki can also help keep your anger from growing once it appears.  If you begin to feel angry, try to find a place where you can sit for a few minutes and give yourself Reiki.  Reciting the precept at the same time will help your mind focus on something other than the person or situation that’s angering you.  If the anger persists, set aside some time later in the day to give yourself a longer Reiki session.

By using your practice this way, you’re not pushing anger down or away.  Rather, the practice elements are helping you remain calm in the face of the disturbance, making it possible for you to ride out the turmoil until it fades on its own, which it will. The key is to remember to use the practice elements when you begin to feel upset. The more you practice this, the easier it will become for you to recognize anger when it’s just beginning to arise, and you’ll be able to turn quickly to the precept and self-Reiki.

So, devoting yourself fully to your practice will allow you to feel less angry over time, and your practice elements can help your anger fade in your day-to-day life, too. Maybe this seems illogical to you, not active or conscious enough, but believe me, it works!  After two of my Heart of Reiki students had been practicing for a couple of months, they began to notice that they were feeling less anger, and that when they did start to get angry, they’d catch the feeling early enough that they could avoid being swept away.  Not by repressing it, but by putting their focus on reciting the precept or giving themselves Reiki.  This surprised them, because they hadn’t been consciously thinking about not getting angry.  They were experiencing the natural benefit of their practice.

So can you.  If you’re a Reiki practitioner, never forget that in your Reiki practice, you possess a powerful tool that can help you both in the long run and in the moments when you are most upset.  All you need to do is remember to use it!

The Secret of Inviting Happiness

by Susan Downing

When I teach students to practice Reiki, one of the first things I give them are the following words that have come down to us from Mikao Usui, Reiki’s founder.

The secret of inviting happiness through many blessings

The spiritual medicine for all illness

Just for today:

Do not anger

Do not worry

Express gratitude

Devote yourself diligently to your work

Be kind to people

Do Gassho every morning and evening

Keep in your mind and recite

The first two lines explain how Usui Sensei viewed Reiki and what he saw as its purpose.  Then come the five precepts, followed by instructions on how to work with them:  we recite them daily and also “do Gassho”, which means that we put our hands in front of our chest, palms together, and bow slightly from the waist. In this way we express our respect and gratitude for the teachings that Usui Sensei gave us.

When you read the five precepts, maybe they remind you, as they did me, of the Ten Commandments or the precepts that Buddhist practitioners observe.  Like these, Usui Sensei’s precepts are words to live by.  And yet, Usui Sensei was not teaching his students Buddhism, but rather, I believe, offering them a practice method that, although inspired by Buddhist teachings, was suitable for everyone, no matter what their spiritual beliefs. I am sure he did not intend for the people he taught to accept the precepts as religious dogma, as articles of faith.  Rather, I’m sure he hoped the precepts would inspire his students to engage sincerely in their Reiki practice.  There’s a difference.  Had Usui Sensei just thought of the precepts as a way to tell people how to live, teaching them would resemble a spiritual teacher’s exhortations. But as a Buddhist practitioner, Usui Sensei would have known that simply giving people the precepts is not all it takes for them to be able to put them into practice. After all, it’s one thing to “keep [the precepts] in your mind and recite”, as he instructed us, and quite another to be able to pull that off consistently.  That’s why he taught not just the precepts, but the hands-on Reiki energy practice, too.

To me it seems crucial that Usui Sensei told his students to keep the precepts in the their mind and recite them, just the way one might recite prayers or a mantra. That is, in fact, how he taught his students to work with the precepts; he didn’t give them specific instructions about how not to anger, or worry, or how precisely to go about being grateful and assiduous and kind. Of course he would have hoped the precepts would inspire his students to take care with their actions, thoughts and speech. But he also would have known, from his own Buddhist practice, that committing to precepts does not magically make it possible to live them. He would have known that if you want to see your disturbing emotions fade so that the virtues of gratitude, devotion and kindness can arise in their stead, you need to do two things: you need to both make a commitment to live according to virtuous principles and devote yourself to a practice that both brings tranquility and makes insight possible. This is precisely what spiritual practitioners such as monks and nuns do: they state their commitment to an ethical life by taking vows, and they have a rigorous practice framework which both helps them keep those vows and makes it possible for them to gain deep spiritual insights.

Now, although Usui Sensei was teaching laypeople, not monks and nuns, it seems clear that he based his own work with students on these same principles: he gave them basic guidelines for how to live, and taught them a practice that would help them keep to those standards.  And although he was not teaching within a monastic setting, and his students would not be taking formal vows, I imagine he wanted a way to help his students affirm their commitment to the ethical life the practice was helping them live out. Buddhist teachings stress the importance of taking vows, explaining that all actions we take in accordance with vows are much more powerful in their effect than those we take under regular circumstances, without a previously-stated commitment. Usui Sensei would certainly have been aware of this, and I believe that encouraging students to recite the precepts daily is his way of offering them the chance to make a commitment to their practice that resembles the commitment a spiritual practitioner makes by taking formal religious vows.

But I believe Usui Sensei had even more in mind by teaching the precepts.  I believe he saw them both as a set of standards of behavior to which students commit, as well as a description of what they can achieve if they engage wholeheartedly in their practice.  So, using Reiki the way I believe Usui Sensei taught, his students would have gradually come to experience less anger and worry.  As they saw their disturbing emotions fade, their gratitude for the practice would have grown and their motivation to practice would have increased, as would their ability to treat all those around them with kindness.  It’s as if, by presenting the precepts, Usui Sensei was saying to his students, “Practice the way I teach you, and this is what will happen. Commit to the precepts, and yes, pay attention to what you say and do and think, because you do have control over that, but also put your focus on practicing Reiki diligently, just as I’m teaching you to do, because that is what will transform your mind in the long run and make it easier and easier for you to observe those precepts, thereby inviting happiness into your life. “

As I’ve been working on my book, I’ve been reflecting on each of the precepts, and have come to view them differently than I did when I began practicing Reiki.  So in my next few blogs posts, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on each of the precepts with you.  And I’ll end this post with expressing my gratitude to Usui Sensei for giving us the Reiki system, and for the opportunity to share my thoughts about it with you.

Right There With You

by Susan Downing

It sometimes surprises me how much my way of practicing Reiki has changed since I first began a number of years ago.  As my Buddhist and Reiki practices gradually and simultaneously deepened, I found that they became inseparable for me, and that I was both consciously and unconsciously bringing my Buddhist training and study to bear as I practiced Reiki.  I shifted away from a novice’s enthusiastic desire to fix every condition a client brings with him, to offering Reiki with no goal or outcome in mind, aside from that of offering the recipient a loving presence and connection.  Teaching my students the value of approaching Reiki this way has been easy, except when it came to teaching the Reiki symbols in Level II.  But in my Reiki II class last month, I suddenly came to see a way to teach these symbols that’s consistent with my overall approach to Reiki.

Let me start by explaining what the Reiki II symbols are.  These are supposedly images that Mikao Usui, Reiki’s founder, received during meditation and passed on to his students. When I received Reiki II training, my teacher taught that we can use these three images during our sessions to give recipients strength, or to promote emotional balancing or release or to help alleviate distress from the past and facilitate spiritual development. We are told that we can imagine or trace the symbols in the air with our hands while reciting the words that identify them, to help effect certain changes in the recipients.

I didn’t question this when I was first starting out with Reiki, but as my own way of practicing Reiki changed, I found that I was uncomfortable with this explanation.  I didn’t want to pass it on to my students, because it seemed so at odds with the way I was teaching them: how can you take such care to help people practice Reiki without focusing on getting results and then give them these symbols that are presented as a powerful way to facilitate a specific outcome?

Then I recalled what I know about how Usui Sensei seems to have used the symbols.  We’re told that he didn’t teach them to all of his students. He taught them only when he felt a student needed help establishing a connection with the recipient.  Sometimes he would teach the student one or more of the actual symbols.  Other times he would teach them the mantra associated with a symbol and have them repeat it in their minds.  Now, I was taught that these were the symbols’ names, but if Usui Sensei gave them to students to help their focus, then it makes much more sense that they would be mantras, which are a common method within Buddhist practice of helping practitioners distract their busy minds and enter a meditative state. And this is exactly the state most suitable for practicing Reiki, assuming you’re practicing without trying to make something happen in the recipient.  So, concentrating on tracing a symbol with your finger in the air, or visualizing it in your mind, or repeating one of the symbols’ mantras silently can help clear away the distractions we may experience when we’re doing a Reiki session, so that we can be more fully connected with the recipient.

Thinking of the symbols that way was a start for me, but it didn’t totally solve my dilemma. After all, I teach three symbols in Reiki II.  If they’re intended just to help the practitioner concentrate, why do we need three? The traditional explanation is that as we give Reiki to someone, we are open to gaining awareness of the recipient’s physical and mental state.  When we sense physical weakness and want to send power, we use the first symbol; when we sense emotional or psychological disturbance and want to promote balance and release, we use the second symbol, and when we pick up that the recipient is striving for spiritual development and want to provide a boost in that area, we use the third symbol. But that seems impossibly results-oriented. That’s what’s been bothering me.

But then, one day, it clicked into place for me.  Here’s the way I explained using the symbols to my most recent Reiki II students.  Most Reiki practitioners enjoy it when they pick up some intuitive information about the recipients when they’re giving Reiki.  Maybe they sense sadness or anger or weakness, etc.  There’s no problem with becoming aware of the recipient’s physical or emotional state.  The problem comes — and this is totally my view; some practitioners might disagree with me — when you take that awareness and based on it, you try to make the feeling release or shift energy away from or into a certain area of the body.  It’s analogous to if your best friend showed up on your doorstep terribly upset and instead of hugging her and listening to everything and just being there with her, you immediately started trying to fix everything without even hearing her out.

But there’s another way to respond to her.  You can sit and just be with her in her distress, hold her hand, let her know you love her and are there with her and for her.  That’s a cliché, but it doesn’t make the approach any less valuable. Be with her and let her know you care.  She will probably feel very comforted and soothed. Then if she wants to ask for help, she will.  But most of the time, the help she wants most is your focused, loving presence and attention.

This is just the way I encouraged my students to think of the Reiki symbols.  If you’re giving someone Reiki and sense distress when you have your hand on her heart, feel free to imagine the second symbol or repeat its mantra. As you do that, you are giving your full attention to having a strong connection with her, to simply being with her and letting her know you are supporting her with your loving presence. Without trying to fix anything.  It’s as if you’re saying, “I can tell you’re upset.  I’m going to sit here with you for a bit and be with you in your sadness. ”  Or weakness, or vulnerability, or anger, or desire for spiritual clarity.  Approach it this way, and each time you use a symbol, it can be a sacred affirmation of your commitment to just being right there with the recipient in that moment in time, giving him or her your full, loving attention. As if you’re saying, I sense your suffering, and I’m right here with you.  That’s what the Reiki symbols can help you say, if you’ll let them.

First for Yourself, Then for Others

by Susan Downing

Last week I had occasion to be chatting with a woman who’s a practicing massage therapist, and who’d just recently done a weekend Reiki Level I training  with a local teacher.  I asked her how she was liking Reiki.

She tilted her head to the side, sighed and replied, “Well, that attunement really took it out of me – depression, I felt crappy….”  I told her that attunements can definitely affect us strongly, since receiving that big burst of energy makes deep healing possible.  I said that giving herself time to move through whatever her body and mind are releasing will help.

“But are you enjoying doing Reiki?” I asked, thinking this would give her something fun to talk about.  Instead, she looked almost despondent.  Again, she sighed.

“I’m having trouble integrating it into my massage work,” she explained. “It’s hard to figure out how to do both at the same time.”

“You know,” I replied, “it’s best to hold off using Reiki in a professional practice until you’ve had a chance to settle in with it yourself.  Get used to how it feels, how you like to work with it on yourself. Then, once you’re feeling confident, you can think about using it with your massage clients.”  She listened, but I’m not sure whether she took in what I was saying.

I took great care when I said this, partly because this was only the second time I’d ever had a conversation with her.  But mainly I wanted to choose my words carefully because I feel very strongly about this topic, and it wouldn’t have been fair to pour out my philosophical position on a near stranger.  So, I’ll pour it out on all of you!

It really bothered me that this student had somehow come away from her training thinking there was no reason she shouldn’t immediately begin using Reiki in a professional capacity, combined with massage.

The conventional wisdom within the Reiki field is — or at least it used to be — that Level I practitioners should use Reiki first and primarily on themselves, and then on family members or close friends.  Not on professional, paying clients.  I tell students who want to practice professionally, that they should wait until after they’ve completed Reiki II training.  But it seems that either Reiki teachers aren’t making this point to their students, or the students are disregarding it.  In recent weeks, a friend told me about a Reiki teacher she knows who works in a spa setting. This teacher gave Reiki I training to a large group of practitioners of other modalities and then immediately put them on the schedule to give Reiki sessions to clients.  Many of these practitioners feel very uncomfortable doing this.  And rightly so.

Why might newly-trained Level I practitioners  — or their teachers — assume it’s okay for them to go right out and give formal Reiki sessions to anyone they want?  Maybe it’s because Reiki students don’t have to learn about muscles the way massage therapists do, or master acupuncture points. Or because there are no hard and fast rules about where to put your hands.  Or because when we practice Reiki we are not in the business of diagnosing or trying to cure disease.  It’s true that it’s amazing simple to learn the basic technique of giving Reiki. Perhaps because of this, especially if the teacher doesn’t stress that Reiki is a practice, students can mistakenly conclude that Reiki doesn’t involved anything other than getting the technique down.  This is far from the truth.

When you’re beneath the hands of an experienced Reiki practitioner who has devoted his or her life to this practice, the potential for emotional, physical or spiritual transformation you can experience is, in my opinion, unlimited. But if you’re a Reiki practitioner, getting to the point where you can bring that to the table requires that you commit to engaging with Reiki as a practice, with humility, recognizing that when you start, in fact, you know pretty much nothing aside from the basic technique of putting your hands on someone’s body.

Although you’ve probably practiced self-Reiki in class and have maybe even done a couple of sessions on other students as part of your training, you still really have only a very limited idea of how Reiki can affect you. And that means you have have pretty much no idea how it can affect others to whom you might give Reiki.  It’s devoting yourself to developing a personal practice that will help you begin to learn all of this.  Give yourself Reiki every day — yes, every day — and you start to get a sense of how it feels to you.  You begin to realize that you can experience releases of physical and emotional tension as you practice Reiki for yourself, and you begin to understand what that can feel like. You become aware of how it can help with anxiety, insomnia, and physical pain.  You understand this because you are experiencing it yourself as your own Reiki practice deepens.

As you go through this period of getting acquainted with Reiki, you’re not just learning what Reiki does for you and how it can feel to you.  You’re also gaining experience that will help you once you do begin giving Reiki to others.  This early self-Reiki practice gives you the confidence and knowledge to be able to talk to someone else about what Reiki can do and about what they may experience as the energy flows from your hands into their body.  You can give them some idea of what to expect because you’ve felt it yourself, in your own releases and healing.

But after you’ve settled into a consistent Reiki practice for yourself, you still won’t have much experience to draw on.  That’s why, once you feel you’re stable in your own practice, I encourage you to begin giving Reiki to those closest to you: family members, good friends, but not to jump to practicing Reiki professionally. The reason I say this is that Reiki can facilitate profound releases in recipients, and people react to them in a variety of ways: some laugh, some cry, some sob, some experience pain that intensifies and then suddenly vanishes, some experience increasing antsiness, some with a history of trauma experience flashbacks.

If you’re a novice Reiki practitioner, even if you have been doing a lot of self-Reiki, responses like these can take you by surprise, and they can upset the recipient.  Now, if this happens when you’re practicing on your family members or close friends, they’ll know that you don’t know everything yet, so if they have a strong reaction, it’s not such a problem: you can contact your teacher and ask for advice or and explanation, and then give your friend some feedback.   I have these kinds of conversations with my students often. This is why I encourage students to practice on people they know well — so that everyone can get experience in a low-pressure setting.  Little by little, you’ll gain knowledge and confidence, and when questions or concerns come up, you can  ask your teacher or other experienced Reiki practitioners for advice.

But now consider a different scenario.  Let’s say you’ve moved from your Reiki I training right into doing professional sessions. Maybe you’re doing a little self-Reiki, but you haven’t established a consistent practice routine, choosing instead to put your energy into giving Reiki to others right away.   This means you will not have much sense at all of how Reiki can affect a recipient.  So it’s possible that after you’ve been doing formal Reiki work for a week or two, one of your clients could sit up after a session and says to you, “I feel like I’ve just been through the wringer.  I remembered this awful incident from when I was a kid.  What’s that all about?  Is that normal?”  If you’re an experienced practitioner, a client’s powerful response is a great opportunity, because you can help them understand what’s going on and explain how it’s part of a healing process.  And if you’re a novice working on a family member or friend, you can be honest and say, “I don’t know, but I’ll ask my teacher and then I’ll tell you what she says.”

But if you’re presenting yourself as a Reiki professional, while lacking enough experience to know how to answer your client, either you’ll admit your lack of experience and say you’ll check with someone and find out, or you’ll shrug and say, “I’m not sure.”  In either case, you’ll probably feel you’ve let the client down, and the client may mistakenly conclude the Reiki has actually caused some harm.   At the very least, they’ll leave feeling uneasy. At worst, they’ll be freaked out and never try Reiki again.

That’s a problem, because when our clients lie down on our table, they’re putting themselves both in and under our hands.  They have a right to expect us to be fully prepared to work with them, to support and guide them through whatever releases or reactions they might have during a session.   And the best way to prepare ourselves to be able to do that is to make sure that our personal Reiki practice is strong and consistent before we start working on others.

If I sound very serious about all of this, I am.  I feel that the biggest mistake novice Reiki practitioners make is to think that because they’ve had a short Level I class and done a short practice session or two, they have all they need to go out and practice on others. And one of the biggest mistakes Reiki teachers make is allowing students to believe this is the case.  Encouraging students to approach Reiki this way does everyone a disservice.  It limits students’ development as practitioners by allowing them to conclude that there’s no benefit to be gained by devoting time and energy to developing a serious personal Reiki practice.  And it does a disservice to clients by bringing them into contact with inexperienced practitioners who don’t really understand what Reiki can do or how to help clients get the most out of their sessions.

So, how can we avoid this scenario?

As teachers, we should encourage Level I students to use Reiki as much as they can — but mainly on themselves at first.  Suggest that before beginning to give Reiki to others (aside from the occasional session for family, which will really boost their confidence,) they establish a strong personal Reiki practice.   Encourage them to give themselves Reiki daily, so they can get a good sense of how the energy affects them, and what it can do for them.

I strongly believe that if you’re a beginning practitioner, what’s most important is to give yourself the time to practice Reiki regularly and enjoy it, to fall in love with it. To come to respect Reiki and all it can do for us (and, later, for others) if we treat it, right from the start, as a beautiful, powerful, profound and deeply transformative practice. A practice that can enable us — if we devote ourselves to it — to connect in a gentle, joyous, loving way with ourselves and those around us.  Mikao Usui, Reiki’s founder, described Reiki as “the secret method of inviting happiness.”  But if you skip the initial period of getting to know Reiki, you can easily end up missing out on the happiness Reiki can bring, because you are treating it as just a tool, rather than as a whole new approach to your life, one which can help joy blossom within you and those with whom you eventually share it.

It’s that joyful enthusiasm for Reiki that I didn’t sense when speaking with the new Level I practitioner last week, and which was missing in my friend’s description of those Level I students who moved directly from the classroom to the treatment room.

So, if you’re a beginning Reiki student, please do take it slow.  Let the Reiki flow through your hands and your own body; relax into it and allow the joy to arise within you. When you can do that, then’s the right time to build on your personal practice and start sharing Reiki with those closest to you, because at that point, you’ll come to those practice sessions with full of joy and enthusiasm for Reiki.  Your recipients will feel your engagement with Reiki and with them. And that is a fine foundation, both for your personal practice, and any professional Reiki sessions you may begin to do as your practice matures.