A few weekends ago I attended a workshop to become a Level 1 Reiki practitioner. This is something that I had been planning to do since massage school back in 2003 but had yet to pursue this modality. Since this class was the first Reiki class offered by the Institute of Structural Energetic Therapy and I had planned to sign up. My fellow SET therapist and dear friend, Marce, contacted me to say she was attending and this was the motivation I needed to get in my deposit. It turned into a weekend of reconnection and restoration; I hadn't seen Marce since we graduated from the SET Training program in 2008 and our time together combined with the class to create a rejuvenating day.
Reiki is a Japanese form of energy healing. It is used for stress reduction and relaxation and can be incorporated into any bodywork approach, though it is usually performed by a simple "laying on of hands." The practitioner allows the life energy to flow from their hands to the patient's body; this flow can be sensed by heat, cold, pulsing, and vibration. Though we all have access to this energy, we can increase our ability to tap into and direct the energy through "attunements" administered by an upper level Reiki practitioner. It is like we all are radios capable of playing the beautiful melody of life energy (ki, chi, qi), but when we are not tuned to the station all we might be able to play is static. The attunements tune our frequencies to the right vibration. During this training I received my first "attunement," and both facilitated and received a treatment with a partner in the class. We ended the day with group healings (multiple practitioners performing Reiki on a single person) which was nothing short of bliss.
Marce and I both noted an incredible increase in sensitivity in our hands; it was like everything we touched was hot but the heat wasn't coming from the object, it was the sensation of the space between our hands and the object. We gave Reiki to my dogs who all seemed to enjoy it. My black lab had been bullied by our recent chihuahua-pompillion addition who would bark at her ferociously, while she cowered in silence. Marce and I gave Gracie, the black lab, so Reiki on her throat and she's been much more vocal ever since.
The next morning, Marce told me that she had a revelation. She was thinking about how amazing this technique was, in it's ease of administration and accessibility to all, that she wondered why more people are not "attuned." We started to fantasize about eventually doing mass attunements. One of the neat things about Reiki is that it can do no harm. In some cases it may not change a condition, but when it does it is only for the better. We started to imagine a world where everyone is attuned and able to conduct life energy more efficiently than we already do. We both felt like it shifted our relationships with our bodies, the space around us and our consciousness. It is these shifts that the world needs. A reiki revolution.
Reiki is a Japanese form of energy healing. It is used for stress reduction and relaxation and can be incorporated into any bodywork approach, though it is usually performed by a simple "laying on of hands." The practitioner allows the life energy to flow from their hands to the patient's body; this flow can be sensed by heat, cold, pulsing, and vibration. Though we all have access to this energy, we can increase our ability to tap into and direct the energy through "attunements" administered by an upper level Reiki practitioner. It is like we all are radios capable of playing the beautiful melody of life energy (ki, chi, qi), but when we are not tuned to the station all we might be able to play is static. The attunements tune our frequencies to the right vibration. During this training I received my first "attunement," and both facilitated and received a treatment with a partner in the class. We ended the day with group healings (multiple practitioners performing Reiki on a single person) which was nothing short of bliss.
Marce and I both noted an incredible increase in sensitivity in our hands; it was like everything we touched was hot but the heat wasn't coming from the object, it was the sensation of the space between our hands and the object. We gave Reiki to my dogs who all seemed to enjoy it. My black lab had been bullied by our recent chihuahua-pompillion addition who would bark at her ferociously, while she cowered in silence. Marce and I gave Gracie, the black lab, so Reiki on her throat and she's been much more vocal ever since.
The next morning, Marce told me that she had a revelation. She was thinking about how amazing this technique was, in it's ease of administration and accessibility to all, that she wondered why more people are not "attuned." We started to fantasize about eventually doing mass attunements. One of the neat things about Reiki is that it can do no harm. In some cases it may not change a condition, but when it does it is only for the better. We started to imagine a world where everyone is attuned and able to conduct life energy more efficiently than we already do. We both felt like it shifted our relationships with our bodies, the space around us and our consciousness. It is these shifts that the world needs. A reiki revolution.
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