Yoga Journal Presents Your Guide to Reiki

Use This Powerful Healing Energy to Restore Your Body, Mind, and Spirit

Journal Yoga

• Publisher: Adams Media
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781440593857
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

Discover the healing art of Reiki!The Japanese healing art of Reiki enhances balance and amplifies energy while reducing stress, promoting healing, and significantly improving your quality of life. In Yoga Journal Presents: Your Guide to Reiki, you'll find expert information on the popular hands-on holistic therapy that encourages relaxation and eases pain by transmitting energy between the practitioner and recipient. This accessible and comprehensive guide teaches you how to:

• Identify where energy enters and leaves the body and encourage the flow of this energy where it is needed
• Connect with the Universal Life Force through a Reiki attunement
• Establish your personal Reiki routine for self-treatment and healing others
• Balance energy flow throughout the body
• Participate in Reiki shares
• Create a Reiki-centered spiritual lifestyle

Whether you're new to Reiki or already a practitioner, this guide will help you deepen your practice and restore balance throughout the body, mind, and spirit.

PART 1
WHAT IS REIKI?

Be the peace you want to see in the world.

Gandhi

In this part, you’ll be introduced to the basic concepts of Reiki. You’ll find out what it is, where it came from, and how it developed. You’ll discover the way it uses ki (life force) energy to help create healing. You’ll learn how and where energy enters and leaves the body, and you’ll learn about the basic techniques practitioners commonly perform to encourage the flow of this energy where it is needed. You’ll also discover what it feels like to perform and receive Reiki treatments and how to measure the Reiki pulse to facilitate flow.

CHAPTER 1
REIKI ENERGY AND SENSATIONS

The energy we give heals our own wounds.

Jaclyn Costello

THE TERM “REIKI” is derived from two Japanese syllables, rei and ki (pronounced “ray key”), meaning Universal Life Energy. Rei represents the source of this energy and ki represents the energy’s movement within and around us. In this chapter, you’ll discover more about Reiki energy, how to channel ki, and what experiencing Reiki feels like. You’ll also find out the appropriate way to honor Reiki and you’ll learn the basic techniques of how to perform Reiki.

Finally, you’ll find out more about Reiki sensations, including why you may not experience any at all, why Reiki healers are sometimes said to have “hot hands,” and why you may sometimes feel extra hands are helping you.

What Is Reiki?

Usui Reiki Ryoho is an energy healing art that derived from ancient healing practices that intentionally channels ki energies to promote balance and well-being. Ki is the Japanese term that refers to the life force, or living energy, that connects us to everything and sustains our life breath. Ki animates the body and gives life its pulse. Every living thing exists because of ki. Without ki, there is no life. When a person, animal, tree, or any living thing is in poor health, it is an indication that ki is not functioning as well as it could be. A sickly body’s energy is blocked in some way, meaning that ki is not able to flow freely. The Reiki practitioner assists the recipient by channeling pure ki energies into the body to help break through blockages and balance his or her life force. It is important to remember that a Reiki practitioner does not “heal” the recipient, but helps the recipient heal himself or herself. A Reiki practitioner is simply a channel for energy that the recipient will use for its highest and best use.

Reiki Is Energy

Reiki is the source of Universal Life Energy, and it is also a term used to describe the healing modality that accesses and transmits that energy. Reiki as a healing instrument operates through the concept that there is an unlimited supply of Universal Life Energy available for us to tap into.

It can be difficult to describe what Reiki is to someone who has not come into contact with it, but it can be helpful to think about how you would describe the wind to someone who has never experienced it. You cannot actually see the wind. You can feel and see only the effects of the wind; you feel its warmth or coolness against your skin when a breeze is gentle, and you see its strength when trees and homes are leveled during hurricanes. Wind upsets your hair, sweeps and scatters leaves about, waves your flags, and so on. It is an external force that you feel outside of your body. In contrast, Reiki could be compared to wind internalized. Reiki’s life source fluctuates within your body and can be depleted by physical or emotional stress, but also restored through healing.

Reiki, in its purest form, is basically an uncomplicated system of healing. You do not have to believe in Reiki for it to work. The practitioner cannot claim or take responsibility for healing or nonhealing when Reiki is applied. Reiki works at the level of acceptance of the person who is receiving it. Acceptance is not a matter of faith or belief. Acceptance suggests that there is a willingness to move from a painful experience into a less painful experience.

REIKI REFLECTIONS

Many people in the healing community now substitute the term “dis-ease” for the word disease. In this way the emphasis is placed on the natural state of “ease” being imbalanced, or disrupted, with less focus on any particular ailment.

Reiki As Love Energy

Because of its gentle nature, Reiki is often described as a love energy. Its infinite healing power is limited only by our self-made boundaries. As you open up to Reiki’s love energies, you will discover the myriad of benefits it offers, including the following:

• Reiki replenishes vitality of life.
• It treats causes and symptoms of dis-eases.
• It clears away toxic and stagnant energies.
• It serves as a stress reliever and calming agent.
• It boosts the immune system.
• It enhances intuition.
• It does not conflict or interfere with any religious beliefs.
• It complements other healing modalities.
• It is always available, wherever you are.
• It promotes balance in all aspects of your life.
• It offers unconditional love.

How Reiki Enters the Body

Also known as energy vortexes, or wheels of light, chakras are funnel-shaped centers within our bodies that serve as intake and outflow mechanisms to control the flow of ki energies that sustain us. Healers are familiar with seven major and twenty-one minor chakras. Chakras are discussed in more detail in Chapter 17. Reiki enters the body through one or a combination of these centers. Some people believe that Reiki is pulled upward from the earth’s grounding energies through the soles of the feet at the earth chakra. Others believe it enters from a celestial source through the top of the head at the crown chakra. Others feel it enters through the tan tien (the energy center located just below the navel, also called the hara or sacral chakra), and some feel it enters through the root chakra (at the base of the spine).

Open and functioning chakras spin clockwise, allowing energy to vitalize our auras and nourish our physical bodies.

How Reiki Flows from the Body

When Reiki is applied to the recipient, healing energies flow out of the practitioner’s body through the palms of the hands as they touch the recipient’s body. The energy flow varies in speed, depending on various factors such as the extent of the recipient’s illness, degree of blockage, and readiness to accept change. The source offers an unlimited supply of Reiki so that we, as facilitators of Reiki, are never depleted.

REIKI REFLECTIONS

Reiki is not a religion. Having a belief system is not necessary for Reiki to work. Reiki does not infringe on your right to believe what you wish and does not require you to change or switch your religious faith. Christians, pagans, agnostics, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews may freely adopt Reiki as a means to heal and bring harmony into their lives.

How Is Reiki Taught?

Reiki is taught through the process of passing attunements from Master to student. An attunement is best explained as a metaphor. Think of your body as a radio with the power turned on. You have access to energy (or a radio station) all the time. An attunement allows your body to be adjusted like a radio dial so you can hear the station clearly. An attunement clears and opens the channels in your own body so you are now connected to the source of universal ki. Attuned Reiki students are then able to serve as conduits of an unlimited supply of Universal Life Energy that can be transferred to others, assisting them in healing.

Reiki is so powerful that a healer that has had an attunement will notice that life changes start to happen. In order to be a conduit for pure, loving ki energies, you must let go of things that are no longer serving you. Awareness of the possibility of experiencing subtle, and at other times, pronounced, changes in your life as an aftereffect of an attunement will benefit you in the long run.

Before attempting to draw upon this powerful healing reservoir, a person must be able to accommodate it, so that the life force can flow freely. Through the attunement process, a passageway is cleared within the body to serve as an empty vessel for channeling the ki energies.

Keep in mind that in order to become a Reiki practitioner, you must be attuned by a teacher. Some people have proclaimed themselves to be Reiki practitioners without ever having been attuned by a teacher. This is not ethical behavior and dishonors the Reiki rite of passage. However, this is not to say that you cannot tap into the life force and do energy-healing work without being attuned to Reiki. There are other energy-healing modalities that do not involve attunements; however, it is the initiation process involving attunements that makes Reiki different from other energy-healing techniques.

REIKI REFLECTIONS

Much of this book focuses on becoming a Reiki practitioner, how to do self-Reiki, and how to go about giving Reiki treatments to family members or friends. But before you immerse yourself too deeply in the academic aspects of Reiki, and before signing up for a class and becoming attuned to Reiki, schedule a session for yourself with a practitioner and experience it firsthand. Reiki is for everyone, but not everyone is for Reiki. Consider getting at least one or two treatments before agreeing to an attunement.

Reiki Sensations

What does Reiki feel like? As Reiki energies flow between practitioner and recipient during a Reiki session, the two bodies may respond or react with particular sensations. These sensations are nearly always pleasant. You may feel heat, warmth, cold, or sensations of subtleness, steadfastness, or forcefulness. The fact that you can feel Reiki energy flowing, whether you are giving or receiving it, is verification that the energy is being welcomed.

What It Feels Like

Reiki works like a thermostat that regulat...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: What Is Reiki?
• Part 2: Getting Started in Reiki
• Part 3: Treatment Fundamentals
• Part 4: Putting It All Together
• Part 5: Exploring Reiki
• Appendix A: Frequently Asked Questions
• Appendix B: Glossary of Terms
• Appendix C: Additional Resources
• Copyright
• Table