What Is Reiki?
The practice of Reiki is an original method of healing developed by Mikao Usui in Japan early in the 20th century. Reiki is a natural healing energy that works on every level, not just the physical, and is understood to promote the body’s regenerative self-healing ability.
Reiki is a safe, gentle, and relaxing healing method which can be learned and used easily by anyone.
How Do Reiki Healers Heal?
One of the most important rules being that says healers are channels for the healing energy, whether they are channelling prana, Ki, Reiki, spiritual healing or other forms of healing energies.
Healers do not create healing energy within themselves, do not take it from other people or from a random source of energy. They do not push, manipulate, interfere nor they use their mental energy to create the results they want for themselves or for the client.
Healers should make use of their clear intention to be objective and impartial in the whole healing process. They should strive to put aside their ego, personality, unfocussed thought and emotions, and simply being present and fully available to the incoming healing energy.
In a Reiki 1 course a student receives a Reiki attunement which will allow him/her to be opened and aligned to the Reiki energy and enable him/her to channel Reiki for life.
What Is A Reiki Attunement?
The Reiki attunement is the most important part of the initiation into Reiki Healing. During the attunement the ability to channel Reiki energy is transferred to the student by the Reiki Master.
The meaning of attune is “to bring into harmony with”. During this energy transmission the students’ body of energy is being attuned to the higher frequency of Reiki which sets up an energetic channel in the student and empowers them to channel Reiki for the rest of their life.
During the attunement process the Rei or spiritual consciousness makes adjustments in the student’s chakras and energy pathways and also in deeper part of one’s consciousness to accommodate the ability to channel Reiki energy; it then links the students to the Reiki source.
The Importance Of Self Healing
Takata Sensei always taught her students to start their healing practice with themselves, providing Reiki self-treatments daily. Before you can help others to heal, you must first heal yourself.
Even if you only have five minutes per day, use that time to place your hands on yourself and allow the Reiki energy to flow. This will not only help you master the skills needed for Reiki, but it will help to keep your energy flowing freely and improve the health of your body, mind, and spirit
Whenever possible, perform a full Reiki self-treatment, which includes 16 hand positions. Hold each hand position for three to five minutes. This is why Reiki is a discipline – because to help others heal you must have the discipline to put in the time and practice to heal yourself.
Think about Reiki self-healing sessions as just another form of personal hygiene – like bathing or brushing your teeth. When you combine it with daily meditation, you’ll find you can make Reiki a part of your daily life, no matter how busy you are.
Reiki Self-Treatment Is Meditation
In Reiki, the energy flows automatically without prayer, concentration or meditation. It is important not to try to control the energy. You cannot overload cells with Reiki energy. One of Takata’s axioms was “No such thing as a Reiki overdose“.
Regular self-treatment with Reiki can turn into a very rewarding and pleasant form of meditation.
There is no need to have any specific agenda during these sessions; just go with the feelings and the sensations and just allow your mind to quieten. Become the observer within your mind and just allow your everyday thoughts to drift by without analysing them.
When You Can Give Yourself Reiki
Reiki can be used in any situation in any place and it’s not actually necessary to sit down formally for a Reiki session in order to help yourself.
– Practice Reiki while you watch TV.
– You might want to give yourself Reiki on the bus, or while you are at work.
– Give Reiki to your food and water for a minute or two before you eat or drink it.
– Practice Reiki with one hand while you’re reading or driving.
Good times for a self-treatment are in the morning when still in bed and again in bed at night before falling asleep.
You don’t necessarily have to give yourself a full body treatment; you can treat as many or as few parts of your body as you like at any time.
Hand Position For Self-Treatment
The front of the body
From behind the head:
1) Cover eyes and cheeks, Third Eye Chakra
2) Cover temples and jawbones
3) The back of their head rests in your hands, Third Eye & Crown Chakra
4) Hold your hands above the throat area, Throat Chakra
5) Upper chest, Heart Chakra
6) Lower chest, solar Plexus Chakra
7) Abdomen, Sacral Chakra
8) Lower abdomen, pubic bone, Root Chakra
9) The crown, Crown Chakra
From behind
10) Neck and upper shoulders, Throat Chakra
11) Shoulder blades, Heart Chakra
12) Lower lungs & kidneys, Solar Plexus Chakra
13) Lower back, sacrum, Sacral Chakra
14) Coccyx, Root Chakra
15) Knees
16) Top and bottom of the feet.
Remember to keep your fingers together to focus your energy. Lay on your hands lightly without pressure, staying in each position for one to five minutes or whatever feels right for you. Keep your legs and arms uncrossed to ensure the free flow of the energy.
During the treatment, no particular conscious effort has to be made. You have already intended that the treatment is for your own highest good and you can just repeat this intention throughout the treatment. If your mind wanders off, then just bring it back gently to the present sensations in your body.
End every full body self-treatment on your feet to ensure you are grounded and back with the programme. You can brush your aura again from head to feet to seal the energy. Massage your feet; take a few gentle, deep breaths and stretch. Wait at least ten minutes before you drive a vehicle or work machinery.
There are no rights and wrongs here, but I would recommend trying to practice Reiki on yourself every day. If you don’t have time to carry out a full treatment, then work out ways that you can encompass a self-treatment into your life. You don’t have to do all the hand positions or spend 3 minutes in each position.
As a minimum and easy/effective solution, I would suggest five to ten minutes of Chakra Balancing (see below) in the morning after waking up and/or at night before falling asleep. This is actually pretty easy to achieve once you get into the swing of it.
Balancing Your Chakras
This can be done on the front of the body or from the side (working with others).
Simply intend to balance your (or the recipient’s) chakras and then place your hands on the appropriate pairings of chakras as follows:
1. Balance the Root Chakra with the Crown Chakra.
2. Balance the Sacral Chakra with the Third Eye Chakra.
3. Balance the Solar Plexus with the Throat Chakra.
4. Then treat the Heart Chakra with both hands.
The Chakra Balancing is a good way to start a Reiki treatment as it harmonises the whole system. It can also be given as a mini-treatment on its own. It can take five or ten minutes or as long as you like.
Minimum Daily Reiki Self-Healing Practice
There are no rights and wrongs here, but I would recommend trying to practice Reiki on yourself every day. If you don’t have time to carry out a full treatment, then work out ways that you can encompass a self-treatment into your life. You don’t have to do all the hand positions or spend 3 minutes in each position.
As a minimum and easy/effective solution, I would suggest five to ten minutes of Chakra Balancing (see below) in the morning after waking up and/or at night before falling asleep. This is actually pretty easy to achieve once you get into the swing of it.
Regular self-treatment with Reiki is a wonderful way to help you on your spiritual and/or life path and in doing so you build and maintain a healthy relationship with yourself
– Through experiencing the body as what it is – a network of energy and intelligence.
– Through paying attention to subtle sensations in the body and so quietening the ripples on the surface of the mind.
– Through bringing healing to all aspects of your being – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual (healing = becoming whole).
– Through conscious experience of the connection with your Source (Rei).
– Through fostering intuition and honesty with yourself based on self-acceptance.
My Own Protocol
As we said earlier, in Reiki, the energy flows automatically without prayer, concentration or meditation. However, this does not mean that we cannot have rituals and prayers while we are channeling Reiki. In fact, I personally believe that the whole process is hugely enhanced.
This below is my personal protocol that helps me focusing and grounding my intention when I am giving myself daily Reiki treatments.
1. Create your space, feeling comfortable, removing watches, glass or jewellery, ground yourself, tune into Reiki and say a prayer and intend that the treatment is for your own highest good.
2. Take a few moments to prepare yourself energetically and mentally. You might wish to spend a few minutes doing a shower of light meditation. Alternatively you can simply carry out another simple grounding exercise by imagining your feet firmly rooted to the floor and feeling your connection with the planet (it doesn’t matter if you live on the fifth floor of a block of flats as energy follows thought).
3. Imagine a beam of light extending from your heart chakra down your spine, out of your body and all the way down into the earth, going all the way down into the very centre of Mother Earth. Feel or imagine that energy anchoring down in the centre of the Earth and bring it all the way back up into your heart chakra and feel the grounding energy coming up into your body.
4. Imagine or see a beam of light extending from your heart chakra up your spine and out the top of your crown chakra, up through the ceiling, up through the rest of the building and then out through the sky and the Earth’s atmosphere and out into the Universe.
5. Intend to connect with the Highest Source of Reiki, feel or imagine and then intend the connection and allow the Reiki energy to come back down your beam of light and into your heart chakra and allow it to mix with the grounding energy.
6. You might like to say a prayer and/or call upon the assistance of Dr. Usui, Dr. Hayashi, Hawayo Takata and other high level Reiki guides.. Then feeling grounded, protected and connected with Reiki you can begin the self-treatment
Other Ways To Work
Using the Distant Symbols to send Reiki to the source of a problem.
Distance healing is the process of making Reiki available across space and time. One way of looking at that is that it happens through the infinite field of Rei, the Universal Consciousness. At the level of Rei, separation does not exist, but it is merely a projection of the mind in order to create individual experiences.
Following the same logic, at the timeless level of Rei the root cause behind any condition or effect is still present and is therefore still open to change. The root cause is the subjective experience of an event that creates a significant emotional imprint. This imprint can lead to certain beliefs and associations, which then may influence our choices, and can lead to consequences such as emotional imbalance, disease, unhelpful habits etc.
Healing at the level of the root cause heals the imprint and supports positive choices.
Send Continuous Reiki To Yourself Using a Reiki Grid
The Reiki Crystal Grid is a powerful configuration using eight crystals charged with Reiki energy so that they will continuously send Reiki to anything you place in the grid. This technique is more effective than the use of a single crystal and can be used to send Reiki to many destinations at the same time.
Once your Reiki crystal grid is charged, you can place your name or picture under the central crystal to continuously receive distance healing. You can also place descriptions of your goals and they will be blessed with Reiki.
> How To Create A Crystal Grid
Work With Your Chakras
Chakra is a Sanskrit word meaning wheel or vortex . They are an integral part of the body’s energy system and they are transformers of subtle energy. They take the Ki that is around us and transform it into the various frequencies our subtle energy system needs to keep us healthy.
It is generally agreed that there are seven major chakras in the human body and there are also more than twenty minor chakras .
You can work with individual chakras during your self-treatment. For example, you may want to check the energy of each chakra, sending Reiki healing to any imbalance or block you may find. Some chakras may require more attention than others, depending of your current circumstance.
Giancarlo has over ten years of experience in practicing and teaching Healing Arts. He is a Reiki Master Teacher of Usui/Tibetan, Holy Fire® and Karuna Reiki® systems of healing and works as a Consultant Spiritual Healer at the College of Psychic Studies in London.
