After teaching Reiki for 15 years I am once again its pupil. I’m not just redoing all my attunements, I’m also completely changing my curriculum and as a result my business is flourishing. What I’m doing has re-energized my students who are excited again to learn more, talk to people about their experience and refer people they care about. The personal and professional benefits are outstanding and the reason is fairly straightforward: I’m putting Reiki back into the context of an Energy Medicine technique.
I love Reiki. Learning it transformed my life and despite these many years and additional skill sets, it is still the foundation for much of what I do. Being invited to share it with others is one of the more meaningful experiences I get to have. I have a justifiably deep and abiding respect for my first Reiki Master Teacher and the lineage she initiated me into. But there were gaps I always felt, and areas that didn’t sit quite right. In response I learned to work around it by keeping what worked and filling in the rest with information from other areas of my life. I know that I am not the only Reiki Mater Teacher who’s felt this way.
For example, asking, “What is Reiki?” is such a simple question that could be the beginning of all other learning. But when answered with “Universal life energy, divine love, connects to your higher self” and similar, it is difficult to understand what that actually means specifically or how it could be turned into information that was usable for my students or created credibility and value for the experience.
Answering people’s questions about Reiki, explaining what it does and how it works could ignite people’s curiosity and relief to know it exists for them. But like many other Master Teachers I found that unless I was speaking to someone who was already on a similar path, it often turned people away confused or dismissive. This made it very difficult to build a business large enough to include people with different perspectives or belief systems, and was devastating for people that turned away from solutions they truly needed for their health.
Putting Reiki back into the context of Energy Medicine, the branch of healthcare focused on the energy systems of humans, resolved these issues. Now when I am asked, ‘What is Reiki?’ I can say with confidence and directness that Reiki is an energy vibration naturally occurring on our planet, analogous to gravity or sunlight.
I then offer Reiki into their palm so that they can have their own direct experience and further explain that Reiki affects two parts of a human’s anatomy, the aura and the physical body. Its effect is to remedy the imbalances created through our daily exposure to the energy of people and places that negatively impact us and leave us feeling depleted. We often experience that impact as tension or stress, and if it is not remedied it will create symptoms and can eventually lead to dis-ease. Without Reiki, humans are missing a natural remedy available for ‘rebooting’ from the day, finding balance and achieving the natural relaxation we crave.
I can equally discuss Reiki’s limitations and why it can be perceived as inconsistent when it is not. Because Reiki provides direct remedy to only two areas, it cannot remedy all imbalances. There are times when other healing vibrations are needed. This opens up a larger discussion about Energy Medicine, human health and other solutions available to them to optimize their well-being.
I finally have words, insights, information and opportunities that match the strength of what I know Reiki to be. Speaking of Reiki in terms of Energy Medicine is not vague, encourages credibility and is accessible to a far greater range of people looking for answers. And most importantly to me, it feels wonderful. I can be the advocate that invites people to learn more, not turns them away.
The ripple effect of all of this in my business has been extraordinary. Students whose Reiki practice was initially strong then dribbled away are fired up again: attending advanced classes, introducing people to the clinic, and unshakable in their commitment to their own Reiki self-care. It’s as if they finally ‘get it’ in a whole new way, which of course is, in fact, the case.
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