Reiki - The Japanese Healing System

There Is An Art to Reiki

There is an art to Reiki, and a Japanese one at that. This is an art that grows from a practitioners hard work and dedication, and much of that development, I believe, also comes from the practitioners desire to truly work on themselves. As with all arts, over time, practitioners can become more skilled and obtain a more truthful connection to the origins of this system.

I trained in Reiki almost 30 years ago. Back then, Reiki was deemed as ‘woo woo’ as it came. An esoteric practice that had little substance to it’s claims. Over time, I like many Reiki practitioners, have seen this beautiful system of healing become more and more westernised. This is mainly due to lack of global standards, and a desire to transform Reiki into something more ‘commercial’. What this commercialisation has done though, is push Reiki into the mainstream. It is now offered in many NHS Hospital trusts as a holistic support to conventional medicine. Helping cancer patients navigate through their cancer treatment programmes. It can also often be found on the treatment menus of large corporate spas (something that was relatively unheard of 30 years ago) and thousands of social media posts across the world now feature Reiki Healers and New Age Mystics!

So what is it?

The word ‘rei’ can be defined as sacred or spiritual. ‘Ki’ can be translated as energy. Therefore, Reiki could be defined as spiritual or sacred energy.

Reiki Healing was born in Japan. A hands on healing system that enables both practitioner and recipient to connect with Ki. Ki, or Qi (pronounced chi in Chinese) is often described as the life force or universal energy. An energy that eastern philosophy believes runs through our human energy system to sustain our human experience. Ki energy isn’t something that is just referred to in Reiki, it’s an energy that both martial artists and Zen practitioners cultivate also (to name just two). Usui (Reiki’s founder) himself drew influence from his own Tendai Buddhist practice, as well as Shintoism and martial arts.

But what is Ki?

Ki is an energy that cannot be measured or contained. Although it most definitely can be cultivated and felt. As a Zen Buddhist, it’s something we come to know very intimately through a disciplined and sincere meditation practice. Over the years, I have also come to learn that the energy centres and meridians that traditional Japanese trained Reiki Practitioners work with, are the same as those we cultivate in Zen training. Contrary to popular belief, Usui did not train his students using the Indian Chakra systems. Reiki practitioners who refer to Chakras, are most likely to have been trained by Reiki teachers influenced by the western adaptions to Reiki. These adaptions occurred due to the popular New Age movement in the 1980’s and 1990’s. I am blessed to have experienced both sides of the coin, having undergone training with a Master influenced by the western adaptions to Reiki, and also with a deeply respected (and very strict) Japanese trained Master. In my younger years the new age movement influenced both my Reiki treatments and my spiritual development. But over the years, as I have developed in my roll as a holistic practitioner and grown within my own spiritual practice as a Buddhist, both now rest with the deepest respect of the traditional Japanese teachings, and a Zen outlook on life. I feel very passionately, that as western practitioners, we do not need to adapt the truest nature of these teachings to suite our western lifestyles or beliefs.

To understand the concept of cultivating or influencing Ki imagine a flower garden. Regularly tending and caring for this garden is a necessity if one wishes to see an array of beautiful blooms. If weeds, hard soil and rocks are preventing the roots from being able to work freely through the earth and grow, there will be no progress. Every effort one makes to work on this garden, no matter how small, will always affect its outcome.

Humans too must tend to themselves by practicing good habits and walking on the earth gently. Day by day we practice our own techniques, each action or thing, no matter how small, affects the outcome of our lives. Good habits (and there are many) directly impacts not only how our Ki energy flows through the body, but also how we cultivate it.

The Reiki Effect - And The Myths

To understand how the effect of Reiki impacts our physical or emotional states it must first be perceived that humans are more than a physical body. There are essential components to our human existence, including the mind and heart connections. Each of these influence the other and one is not separate from the other.

The Japanese energy systems of the body is made up of three key Ki components and lines of energy channels (meridians). Simply put, when the Ki energy flows freely through these components and channels, our physical and emotional states are balanced and robust. But many of our human experiences, including lifestyle choices, supressed emotions and unresolved pain or trauma can directly influence how freely our life force energy flows. Ki can actually become stagnant, blocked, sluggish and even travel the wrong way along the energy meridians. Over time, if this isn’t addressed, it can have a detrimental effect on our emotional and physical wellness. A Reiki treatment can enable these areas of disrupted Ki to clear, encouraging the energy to flow more freely again. Over time, regular Reiki treatments can help with various human emotional and physical states. Promoting positive changes to our overall wellbeing.

Tenohira is the act of supporting Ki to emanate from the palms of the hands for healing purposes. Contray to popular belief, as practitioners, we do not ‘channel or push’ the Reiki energy from ourselves to another. We simply support the Ki to allow it to flow on it’s own accord to the recipients body. A person who practices Reiki is not a healer, but a practitioner, for the simply reason, that the practitioner is not the one doing the healing, rather the universal Ki is attempting to flow as freely as possible itself.

During a Reiki treatment, the recipients will remain fully clothed as the practitioner places their hands over various parts of the body, to allow the Ki to begin to flow. As practitioners we have no control on where the Ki travels, or what impact it has on the recipient. In fact, authentic Reiki Master will teach students to remove all intentions relating to outcomes from the mind when treating someone.

More experienced practitioners may work intuitively, but Usui believed this took years for a practitioner to become accomplished enough that they could in fact work in this way. Despite the fact that new practitioners can work through the training levels of Reiki in a matter of months nowadays, this isn’t in line with the way that Reiki’s founder, Mikao Usui worked himself. He established early on in training his students, that to become a true authentic Master in this practice, a student needed to work diligently and for many, many years (usually decades) to allow both their understanding of connecting to the Ki energy and their personal spiritual practice to develop and deepen overtime. It is reported that out of 2000 students, Usui only ever made 20 of those students Reiki Masters. Within the spiritual practice of Zen, it’s the same. You cannot speed up the process of working through the ranks of Buddhist Temple life. It takes many, many years of dedicated and diligent practice for unsui monks to reach the level of Zen Master.

Developing as a Reiki practitioner is in fact a deeply spiritual practice. A process that can help us support our clients bodies to enter a flow of gentle cleansing and healing, completely independently of us as the practitioner. Rei Ki it isn’t something that is mystical or magical. It’s simply the lifeforce that every living thing has present within them. We are not independent of it, and it is not independent of us.

We have two Reiki Practitioners at the spa, myself (Elizabeth) and Karen. We offer Reiki Treatments as a stand alone treatment or incorporated into a facial. Karen has also recently qualified as a Sound Healing Therapist and we will soon be offering Reiki and Sound Healing together at Aquavie.

If you would like to book in for a Reiki Treatment with us at Aquavie, I work on selected Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays and Karen works on Saturdays.