Reiki

Reiki. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a hands on energy healing method that originated in Japan just over one hundred years ago. Reiki is not the only hands on energy healing method in the world nor is it the first or only method from Japan. So, while it is the most well known, it is not by any means unique. Humans have been laying hands for the purposes of healing or blessing for millennia.

In the US, Reiki is usually taught in a one day or weekend workshop. In just three weekend workshops, you can be a ‘Master’ Reiki Healer. I completed two such trainings and attained a Reiki Level Two certification. Afterwards, when I began seeing clients, I felt completely unprepared for their actual needs. What do you say to someone who feels sad or ill or scared or triggered or feels like they’ve exhausted all their options and has nowhere else to go for help or needs to share about something deeply traumatic that they need help healing? How do you handle discussing what you perceive in someone’s body when you are not a medical professional? There was a session when I told someone they had a ‘heart stone’ which was how I perceived the grief in their heart. They began looking for medical information on heart stones and how to treat them. I felt awful and like I was doing more harm than good. The workshops I attended were more focused on the ‘rules’ of Reiki. The do’s and don’ts of Reiki. There was a lot of ‘this and this only is how you do Reiki’ and that required a great deal of rote memorization.

I was told quite a few times the way I was naturally using Reiki was ‘wrong’. I kept trying to do it the ‘right’ way, but memorizing and using a very specific set of hand placements just didn’t come naturally to me. To me, it felt like my hands were moving wrong. I felt my training was inadequate, but wasn’t sure where to turn. I knew healing was more than just channeling Reiki for someone and sending them on their way. But I didn’t know how to bridge the gap between just channeling Reiki and what clients truly needed. Ultimately, I ended up abandoning my Reiki practice and study.

Years passed and Reiki wasn’t even really on my radar. It was just something I tried and decided not to continue with.

There is a saying that when the student is ready the right teacher will come along. I wasn’t looking for more Reiki training. I was done with Reiki. I had moved on to other things. Other pursuits and professional endeavors. But then I met the right teacher. Izzy Swanson of Transformation Reiki.

Izzy offers a nine month trauma informed Reiki course. And wouldn’t you know it, but that course was about to begin just one month after I met Izzy. A course that normally didn’t start so late in the year. But there it was ready for me to sign up. Choosing to enroll in a nine month Reiki course is unusual. What could you possibly do for nine months studying Reiki when it could all be done in three weekends supposedly? The prospect of committing to nine months felt daunting. With so much uncertainty, where would we even be nine months from the course start date? Add all that to my previous negative experience, I almost didn’t do the course.

What swayed me was an embodied experience. I met Izzy, and for the first time in years (maybe close to a decade) I felt the heat of Reiki energy in my hands. I was surprised. I hadn’t felt that heat nor did I expect to feel that heat ever again. But here it was. Ready and waiting for me to be ready. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. That activation was not something I could ignore.

I believe, very strongly, in listening to the signals that my body sends me. There is a value and a power to embodied wisdom. I have ignored it before and it was to my own detriment. Embodied wisdom can be very difficult to feel and experience. We have step counters telling us how much to move, we have screens telling us how to feel, we have heart rate monitors, sleep tracking apps, outrage factories (social media), and more. All of this interferes with an individual’s ability to hear their own body. If your fitbit is saying you must walk three thousand more steps then why would you listen to your body saying it wants to walk eight thousand more or only one thousand more. You wouldn’t because the fitbit is deciding. Wading through all the distractions, getting back to my body, and noticing this Reiki activation was not easy. Nonetheless, I enrolled in Izzy’s nine month course.

I am truly glad that I enrolled. These nine months have been beyond valuable. This training touched every part of my life. I understand myself better and my clients better. My connection to my embodied knowing is clearer. Nine months ago I doubted doing this course even though I felt the embodied knowledge. Now it is easy to recognize, know, and follow. I know what is for me and what is not. It was worth every minute of the nine months we put in. I like and am very proud of the person I have become through this nine month process.

I have a deep appreciation for how this course was run. It did not begin with the mechanics of Reiki. It began with what is Reiki, where did it come from, the time and place it came from, and the people it came from. We learned the history of Japan, the history of Reiki, how Reiki arrived in the West, and cultural appropriation. We learned the difference between how Reiki was practiced one hundred years ago in Japan, how it is practiced today in Japan, and how Reiki is practiced in the West. We learned how and why Reiki changed when it arrived in the West and how it continues to change.

We learned how to care for clients beyond just giving Reiki energy. How to care for their mental, emotional, and physical safety to the best of our ability. What trauma informed care is before, during, and after a session. I learned to have greater care with my words and word choice as a careless word can hurt. Now I would never tell someone they have a ‘heart stone’. I know I need to translate what I perceive into information for my clients. There is so much better language to engage with grief than what I had used before.

And of course, we learned how to channel, use, and share Reiki. I learned that I was never ‘doing it wrong’ when it came to how I did Reiki. In the West, there is a very rigid protocol of how Reiki is taught and must be done. This, however, is not how Reiki is done in Japan. I learned my fluid style was very much in the style of how Reiki was done before it arrived to the West. I learned it is actually impossible to do Reiki ‘wrong’ because the practice is actually very individual and depends on the practitioner. The goal is to channel Reiki for your client. If you have done that, then you have not done it wrong. This was a relief and made Reiki a joy to engage in. I got to explore Reiki in ways that never felt allowed before. I got to experiment, find what worked for me as a practitioner, and find joy.

I loved that we had homework assignments, reading assignments, and developed a meditation practice. It felt like diligence, self development, self care, and meditation were all part of the course as much learning about history and doing Reiki. I loved the time between classes when I got to meditate and practice. My daily meditation practice blossomed.

To me, it made perfect sense that it was months before we got to work on a client. There was so much to know before we engaged with a person. By the time we did work on practice clients, we were equipped for the possibilities of what we and the client could experience and how to handle those possibilities.

This care and consideration was given to every aspect of Reiki and to each of us students as a whole person. Each facet of our lives personal, professional, and student was welcomed into the room. Izzy demonstrated treating us as whole people so by the end of nine months, we had a very clear example of how to treat our clients as whole people. Izzy didn’t just see students to stuff knowledge into but people with professional successes, frustrating jobs, new relationships, breakups, and more. Izzy wanted us to bring all of us into the classroom, just as our clients would bring all of themselves to a healing session. Izzy did all this without pomp and circumstance. They weren’t showy about it. They were just being them. So we could just be us.

There is something that happens, or at least happened for me, when engaging with Reiki for a sustained period of time over nine months. The work we put in echoed and rippled out into my day to day personal and professional life. Reiki, to me, is an energy of clarification. Anything that doesn’t fit or make sense just kind of falls away. Working with Reiki made my life clearer. I cleaned out my garage, chose paint colors for my bedroom, sharpened focus on my passions and relationships, and anything that didn’t fit fell away. I stopped shrinking for anyone who told me I was ‘too much’. I am exactly as much as I am, and if it is more than you want or need in your life, then I am not for you. It is a relief to show up exactly as I am, and not spend anxious brain energy about whether I might be disturbing anyone. I have a clarity and discernment that I don’t think I had nine months ago. Not only am I more me than I have ever been, but also it feels easier to be me than it has ever been.

After nine months of study, I’m very proud of the hard work my classmates and I put in. This was nothing like the weekend workshops I had taken. There is a much greater depth and breadth to learn than can be afforded in a weekend. I am grateful to my past self for trusting the embodied knowledge and taking the leap of faith to enroll.

I am integrating what I learned into all services that I provide - coaching, tarot, and workshops. All of my services are now becoming trauma informed services and where relevant, I am learning the historical context of the services I provide. I want my clients to feel like their time spent with me is a soft place to land, that they can relax, show up with all of themselves, and more than not feel anxious, they feel held.

With this diploma I am better equipped to serve.

I am excited, proud, and looking forward to what comes next.