This picture from Dianne Stern’s book Essential Reiki gives you some ideas of different ways to do a distance healing.
Distance healing
In doing distance healing, be open to whatever might happen, to whatever comes up.
Our bodies, minds and spirits and the animals’ body mind and spirit are capable of the most extraordinary healing when they’re not blocked up. I like to send the energy so that it will go where it is best needed and clear those blockages so that future healing too, happens more as their body was designed.
If you prefer more structure than that, or want to work on a specific problem, you can use the specific hand positions for treating others, from your Reiki Level 1 manual and apply those positions to the Reiki pillow or Reiki bear that we talk about below.
Distance healing does not take nearly as long as a hands-on treatment. You only need a few minutes to send distance healing.
There are many ways of doing a distance healing session
If you put 10 Reiki Masters in a room they would probably all do distance healing in a different way, so don’t worry if you hear of even more ways of doing it than these and feel free to be creative yourself and share those ideas on the forum.
Keep paper and pen beside you to make notes for the person that you’re working on. We talked about this in Reiki One – it’s important that you communicate EXACTLY what comes to you in the session – no more and no less.
I was taught to use my symbols in this order for a Distance Healing session:
Cho Ku Rei first, then Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen (because you have two Hon Sha Ze Sho Nens pick one, or if you’re drawn to, you may use both) , then Sei He Ki, then Cho Ku Rei again. And then “bless and dismiss”at the end with another Cho Ku Rei.
Absentee healing can be a process of visualization i.e. imagine or “see” the person you want to send healing to – just draw or visualize whatever symbols you are drawn to use and decide / intend to send the energy.
Or you can imagine whoever you are working on (person or animal) as small enough to fit in your hands – then draw the symbols and channel the Reiki energy.
If imagination isn’t your strong point (or if you choose), you can use a teddy bear or a special pillow (that you specially keep for this use only) – set the intention to use the teddy bear or pillow “as” the person or animal, use that as a “body” to place your hands on while you draw the symbols and send the energy to them via the pillow or the bear.
You can use your own body as a surrogate for the other person. Be particularly careful to “bless and dismiss” and use an extra Cho Ku Rei, to disconnect from them when you use this method.
Or you can use a photo for the connection if you have one. In these days of wonderful technology someone can email or text a photo with their phone to give you a good energy connection to that person or animal. You can use your symbols over the photo and cover the photo with the palm of your hand.
If you don’t have a photo or anything else handy, don’t worry about it just send the Reiki anyway. I will sometimes send to animals or people that I don’t know (like a relative or friend of someone else that I have received in an e-mail) and I only have their name and relationship to that person. (And their permission!) No problem, think of the person and use your symbols, it still works – it’s the intention of sending Reiki that makes it work.
There was also a time when I used to work off a tiny hair sample and I would use the hair as a connection to the person or animal and send the healing energy via my connection to their hair by holding the hair in my hand and turning my Reiki on.
The process of doing a distance healing session
Set yourself up ideally in a relaxing and energetically clean place, good posture maybe, paper at the ready and pen in your hand.
Quieten your mind by taking your attention inside your body with gentle attention to the movement of your ribs on your outward breath, listen for your heartbeat, feel the energy moving around your body, allow yourself to feel any emotions, be aware of any sensations and allow the thoughts and ideas to drift across your mind and use the symbols on anything that comes up in yourself until you feel relaxed and ready to proceed with the session.
Remember what I called Vanilla Reiki? You don’t NEED to do the actions above, because you can “just” top yourself up with healing every night and when you need to put your hands on someone else, you “just” use the symbols and the reiki will run.
But being in a place of Inner Awareness and having done a little work on yourself, you WILL open your ability to be more Present and your intuition to be more clear. Not only will that prepare you to do the best session possible, but you yourself will be getting more and more Present, more and more balanced, and have your own understandings flow more and more easily – whether that’s in relation to your healing work, your horsemanship or your life outside of horses.
Once you’ve prepared yourself, think of that person or animal and ask permission to do the session now. Remember your Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen means you can heal around time and space, so if “now” isn’t OK, then ask if you can send that healing to the future, when they are in bed for example. And if you get a clear yes, then you can proceed.
If the yes is not clear, then pause and wait until it DOES become clear. (You could maybe put a Cho Ku Rei into your third eye and feel the relaxation of that as you decide to understand whether or not you have permission to do this session.)
Once you have permission to proceed, then formulate a clear intention to send the Reiki energy, use the Reiki symbols and feel the energy flow.
I was taught to use Cho Ku Rei first, then Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen for the distance connection, then Cho Ku Rei again to strengthen that, then Sei He Ki for the appreciation and understanding to flow (God and man become One) then Cho Ku Rei again to add power to that.
FEEL into this process – feel into the power of using these those symbols during such a healing. Cho Ku Rei to Place the power of the Universe here; Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen to work through time and space into the cause of their symptoms, to open the book of life and now read; Cho Ku Rei again to strengthen that (as if it even needed strengthening!), Sei He Ki for the understanding that brings mental and emotional healing, the deep appreciation of that whole process, God and man become One; and Cho Ku Rei again to add power to that. Wowwww…
Then at the end of a session “bless and dismiss” with the Cho Ku Rei, pausing for a moment to feel the gratitude and appreciation of our connection to the divine in this other being. You can have your hands in prayer position and bow your head a little while you’re doing that if you prefer.
In the Hayshed
We cannot do any harm to anyone with Reiki, even if we ARE out of balance, so long as we keep ourselves topped up with energy, the energy will flow for others when we need it to.
However, I don’t like to do a session on someone else when I’m out of balance – I simply don’t have the same enjoyment – so when I had a nightmare that left me feeling yucky in the morning, I needed to do a reiki 2 meditation on both the nightmare and the feelings before I could go into doing an attunement that day. I did a combination of Quiet Mind and used my Reiki symbols where I felt my third eye was tight with the fear I was resisting in the nightmare and doing that, supported the understanding to flow more easily. I talk about this more specifically in another lesson.
We’re all unique, so you might be guided to do your session on yourself differently.
Up Next:
You can skip on ahead to the next lesson about Understanding our connection to others and how that happens in and even before a healing session with someone – or you can wait for your email. 🙂
Refresh the previous lesson
Click here for working on others with Reiki 2