Christmas…

I love this time of year, reflecting on the Christmas story of the light coming into the world bringing love, hope and healing to all. This year my reflections have included all that I’ve learned since I started travelling on my Reiki path. It has made me realise just how closely linked the two pathways are.

The Christmas story tells how God loved the world so much that he sent his only son to bring heaven to earth. To experience this, a person needs to shift the focus from their material way of life and centre their being on loving, helping others, giving thanks to God for all things and allowing the Holy Spirit to assist them in the healing of themselves and others.

The Reiki story is about one man’s search for enlightenment. He discovered that to experience enlightenment it was necessary to focus your life away from material things, homing in on self knowledge, thankfulness, compassion and practices of energy exercises to allow healing to take place within and without each person.

I’d love to hear how your ‘Spiritual Story’ compares with these.

Attunements

If you study Reiki with a Western trained Reiki Master you will go through a series of ‘attunements’ as part of your training programme. There are an enormous number of different variations within each tradition.

Attunements are the procedures which Western Reiki masters use to connect their students to Reiki Energy at Level 1, to three Reiki Symbols at Level 2, and to the Master Symbols and various other symbols at Level 3. Each level has a prescribed number of attunements attached to it depending on the tradition being taught.

Attunements are for life. Once you have received the attunements at a given level there is no need for them to ever be repeated. However some students like to have them repeated and there is no problem with this.

Empowerments

If you study Reiki with an Eastern or Japanese trained Reiki Master you will experience a series of ’empowerments’ as part of your training programme. You will also be encouraged to receive empowerments as a regular and ongoing part of your daily life subsequent to your connection to the Reiki energy.

Empowerments, or Reiju Empowerments as they are correctly named, consist of Tendai Buddhist Blessings given to the students with the intention that they will receive whatever they need. There are many different variations of the details of the ritual which depend on the lineage and traditions of the Reiki Master performing the Reiju Empowerment. This is the tradition of the course I am following:

First degree focuses on connecting you to the Reiki energy
Second degree focuses on connecting you to the three Reiki symbols – Cho Ku Rei, Sei He Ki and Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen
Third degree (Masters) focuses on connecting you to the two Master symbols

Following the First degree course, students are advised to ‘tune in’ to weekly empowerments. This works on the same principle as distant healing. In addition, teachers are encouraged to hold ‘shares’ where students can get together to share experiences, practice on each other and receive empowerments from their teacher.

Arithmetic!

Thinking about Thanksgiving later this month, I chose this Sunday’s quotation from Eric Hoffer.

Why is it that if we look back over any given day in our life, we can easily come up with a long list of grumbles and complaints, but find it so much more difficult to list the good things that have happened? Could it be that we just take the good things for granted?

Since I started practising Reiki I have been trying to be more aware of the good things in my life every day as part of my daily precept meditation. Although we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here in the Uk, I intend to make November a Thankful month and keep a daily tally of the things I am thankful for. Do you have any special plans for Thanksgiving?

Why All the Hard Work?

Reiki for me is as much about self-development as it is about healing others. I have always believed that you need to heal yourself before you can help others effectively. This is echoed very strongly by the Japanese Reiki training programme which originally focused almost exclusively on self healing.

I have been practising energy exercises and meditations virtually every day since the completion of my Reiki l course. During this time a number of changes have been taking place. I have become much calmer and more able to cope with difficult situations. The flow of Reiki energy during my treatment of others has got much stronger and more consistent.

Would this have happened without the exercises and meditations? Definitely not. I have been experiencing and experimenting with different kinds of energy on and off for the last thirty years. I learned a lot about the energies, but it never had any lasting effect on me or my life.

Is it worth the effort? For me the answer is a resounding, Yes!

A way of Life!

Studying Reiki in the lineage I have chosen is not just a case of reading a book or learning symbols and hand positions, it is about making it into a way of life! My teacher, Irene, doesn’t just show us how to do things then leave us to get on with it, she offers us ongoing encouragement and support as we continue to develop ourselves and our practice.

One of the first things we learned about was Reiki energy, what it is, how to experience it, and how to channel it. The energy is also known by other names – chi, prana, ki – but it is more easily understood in the west when it is referred to as ‘Life Energy’ or ‘Universal Energy’. It is that magical substance which animates all living things.

Since I began my Reiki studies I have learned the importance of making time in my life for daily meditations and energy exercises. Each successive course has necessitated changes to my routines as I have learned to deepen my connection to the Reiki energy firstly through the use of symbols and subsequently through additional symbols and sounds.

It may sound like a lot of hard work, but the benefits are enormous.

Change of Voice

When I started out with this blog at the end of August I wasn’t really sure where I was ultimately going with it, I just knew I wanted to impart some fundamental information so that anyone visiting the site could gain a basic understanding of Reiki.

Since I wrote the last post about Study, I have been accepted to study Level lll – Shinpiden. I thought it might be interesting to document my progress.

The course of study I am following comes complete with a 200+ page manual which I have to read and study before I attend the ‘in person’ part of the training. I have symbols and sacred sounds to learn, energy exercises to practise, and meditations to incorporate into my daily routine. I have Western attunement procedures to learn as well as Eastern empowerment practices to master. It’s going to be a very busy month!

Reiki Study

Reiki study is normally divided up into at least three levels:

Level l – Shoden
Level ll – Okuden
Level lll – Shinpiden

Level l – Shoden forms an introduction to Reiki giving the student a grounding in the history of Reiki. It teaches about the Reiki energy, provides attunements/empowerments which align the student to the energy, teaches treatment of others, self-treatment and on some courses, the use of distant healing.

Level ll – Okuden builds on Level l deepening the student’s connection to Reiki. It teaching three symbols – Cho Ku Rei, Sei He Ki and Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen – how to draw them, pronounce their names and use them. The course includes further attunements/empowerments and focuses particularly on distant healing.

Level lll – Shinpiden otherwise known as the Master/Teacher course summarises all that has gone before. It teaches the master symbol and possibly other symbols and mantras and includes further attunements/empowerments. Most importantly it teaches the student how to teach all that they have learned and how to pass on the attunements/empowerments.

There are many different traditions and styles of Reiki to chose from. You should research carefully before deciding on a specific course.

Self-Treatment

When Mikao Usui originally taught Reiki, it was as a self-treatment and personal enlightenment system. Reiki practitioners are taught the importance of meditation, daily energy exercises, and self-healing practices during their first level course and this forms the basis on which they build their practice. The reason for this is that practitioners are simply channels for the Reiki energy and as such they need to maintain those channels in order for the energy to flow freely through them.

Anyone can learn to channel the Reiki energy. The training is available to everyone regardless of whether or not they wish to become a practitioner. Many people study Reiki levels 1 and 2 simply so that they can learn to treat themselves and their families.

For Animals

Reiki energy is helpful to every living thing, and animals can receive great benefits from Reiki Treatments. Any qualified Reiki practitioner is able to treat animals but some practitioners specialise in animal treatments.

Animal treatments tend to vary in length of time relative to the size of the animal. Taggart King (Reiki-Evolution) suggests a few minutes for a gerbil, 10 minutes for a cat, and 20 minutes for a dog as examples of this relationship. There really are no hard and fast rules regarding optimal times, but animals normally make it quite clear when they have had enough.

It is just as effective for animals to receive either in person treatments or distant treatments, and in some cases it may be preferable for the animal to be given a distant treatment if it is of a particularly nervous or highly strung disposition.