Reiki

Reiki

History

Reiki is a formal system of healing originating in Japan based on the teachings of Dr Mikao Usui. While reiki has Buddhist roots and can be seen as a form of spiritual healing it is not based on religion and honours the unique understanding of each individual. Brought to the West by the Hawaiian lady Hawayo Takata in the thirties reiki did not begin to spread until she began teaching in the seventies. In the thirty years since it has spread to every country on earth and there are an estimated 600,000 people trained to reiki level three or master level.

Treatment

Reiki is a very gentle therapy with no contraindications and yet it can be a profoundly powerful healing experience. Treatment simply involves the practitioner projecting reiki energy through the hands into the recipient, the practitioner may guide this energy and focus on areas of need but ultimately it works intelligently of its own accord aligning to the state of being of the recipient and seeking to restore balance.

Each individual will experience reiki in a different way, some simply feel very relaxed 'on the edge of sleep', some feel the energy moving and may see colours, others may be taken on an inner journey. The same person may experience very different treatments on different occasions depending on what they need. A good way to describe the feeling is that it is like going into deep meditation without effort or concentration. The practitioner will always bring a person out of this deep state and close the session appropriately.

Reiki can be beneficial to any condition of the body, heart, mind or spirit and will work to promote an individual’s innate self healing abilities at all times. It works at an individual’s own pace; healing may be dramatic but is more regularly a steady progression back to health. Reiki is not a quick fix, where necessary it will gently enable a person to see the things in their lifestyle that may need to change before healing can take place. It is very useful for people who are sensitive and may have strong reactions to more physically invasive forms of therapy. Reiki will work alongside medications and other types of treatment actually encouraging the body to work in harmony with these. Sessions are generally conducted on a treatment couch to allow a person to relax fully and involve no disrobing.

Training

Reiki is the ultimate self healing tool and the basic techniques involved in first degree reiki are taught in a day. This allows you to work on yourself, friends and family and is deeply empowering, any time you or those close to you have pain on any level there is something you can actively do to alleviate it. Anyone can learn reiki and once the training is complete it is active and remains so, even if you don’t use it for twenty years when you do, reiki will flow. As with all things the more we practice with reiki the better our skills with and understanding of it become. Reiki is a spiritual practice yet one does not need to be pure of heart and mind to learn, the idea being that with the tools reiki offers us we can easily work towards a more pure state of being. The learning never stops, as we delve deeper into ourselves our knowledge and understanding grows, we are able to face more complex challenges and we are drawn inexorably to learn and understand more of the true nature of our reality.