Reiki Level One – Introduction

What is reiki?

Simply put, Reiki is the power of The Universe, channelled by the laying on of the practitioner’s hands. We call ourselves Reiki Channels.

Through that channelling, Reiki raises the body’s vibration, accelerating the natural healing ability of the body – sometimes phenomenally. Reiki’s gentle but powerful healing energy brings renewal, harmony and balance for the mind, body and spirit.

Like electricity it can’t be seen, yet its effects are just as profoundly felt.

Reiki and religion

Throughout this training manual, you’ll hear me refer to God, The Universe, Source, The Divine, All That Is – all with the same reverence and meaning. Reiki has no religious boundaries.

Reiki and what you can do with it

Reiki is like having your own first aid kit in your hands.

Whether it’s bites, burns, stings, someone falling off a horse, me falling off a horse, or coming on an accident somewhere, Reiki is the first thing that I do while I figure out what other action to take.

You don’t have to believe in Reiki for it to have a deep effect on you. You can help other people who don’t believe in it too and it will have just as profound effects as it has on those who have experienced its benefits already. I have had many personal examples of that.

The energy flow in your Reiki One is switched on by your intention to use the energy, although many times I’ve had my hands switch on all by themselves. We’ll talk about that later. 🙂

Reiki complements medical and other healing systems, is non-intrusive and promotes healing at all levels:

# Reiki also cleanses the body of toxins, relieves pain, soothes shock and calms emotions – at the same time producing a state of relaxation and well being.

# It helps reduce colds, flu, headaches, cuts, nausea, allergies, sports injuries etc.

# It accelerates the healing of burns.

# Reiki also promotes recovery from surgery,

# Promotes self healing of chronic diseases,

# Assists in the withdrawal of drugs and toxins – I’ve had people stink with the smell of anaesthetic on their skin during a session, as they’ve released those toxins after a surgery.

# It reduces stress and tensions.

# And because it’s unnecessary to remove clothing, it’s unobtrusive. I’m always puzzled at all those lovely Reiki photos on the internet with bare shouldered people draped in towels because it’s completely unnecessary to remove any clothing at all.

# There is no massage or manipulation involved in Reiki, although a lot of masseurs and other alternative therapists add it to their toolbox and Reiki certainly adds to the quality and feel of a massage.

# It doesn’t interfere with religious beliefs.

# And here’s the big one for sensitive people – it helps you deal with overwhelm by making it easier and quicker to deepen your Quiet Mind and get the understanding that you need, to feel really good again. And Reiki 2 is even better at that than Reiki 1 and you’re going to love how Reiki 1 will help you find comfort with your sensitivity.

How do you know it’s working?

You’ll feel the energy in many ways – heat in your hands, or cold (often when the injury is new, the receiver will feel ice cold even though your hands may feel hot), you can feel tingling or pulsing vibrations.

Sometimes you’ll feel nothing and in that case ask the person what they’re feeling. If they feel nothing physically then, just as importantly, it will be working on a mental, emotional or spiritual level. In these cases – if it feels right – you can use the support of the Reiki energy while they explore their thoughts and emotions – to help them to observe those and understand them.

Reiki 1 is first focussed on self healing – THEN using on others. From time to time, I’ve come across people who doubt their Reiki is working and invariably it’s because they haven’t been using it on themselves regularly. The energy tops you up before it works on others – so you HAVE to look after yourself first in order to be an effective “healer” for others.

Reiki always works for the highest good of all concerned and can do no harm.

Reiki never lessens a practitioner’s energy while working on someone else. Both the giver and receiver of Reiki receive healing while you’re working, so treating someone else always increases your energy and leaves you feeling peaceful and revitalised.

Attunements

Before we pick up energy, we have to be tuned to it. It’s a bit like tuning in a radio frequency. You are attuned by your Reiki Master and after these attunements you will always have the ability to channel your Reiki. You’ll receive three attunements in your Reiki 1.

Reiki 2 is an even higher vibration that overcomes the limitations of time and space. It allows us to work by distance (you can sit in your chair at home and actively send healing to someone in Brazil), you can work into the past and into the future and it dramatically reduces the time spent on a session. Reiki 2 has another high impact on spiritual growth, enables us to engage in active environmental protection

And there are more attunements again in Reiki 3, which is the Master and Teacher level.

The attunements themselves can have dramatic results on you and start a healing process that affects the body – toxins can be released as well as feelings and thought patterns that are no longer useful to you. Make sure that you drink plenty of water after an attunement, to flush out any toxins that have been released and if you get faintly headachey – drink more water.

You can also expect physical and emotional effects from your attunements and you may even have some spiritual experiences.

In the Hayshed

When we do clinics and workshops and programs in person, chat time around the kitchen table and in the hayshed hugely adds to our clinic. Even though we’re working across vast distances in our on line programs, I like everyone to experience the stories and feel part of our community as if they are right here with us.

Reiki stories

Reiki has underpinned my healing work for 22 years now and there’s so many lovely stories of healing with people and animals woven into our lives. Sometimes it’s phenomenal, like my husband’s healing of 14 spinal fractures before he got to hospital after an accident.

He had taken our two boys and grandson for a day at the snow on toboggans. He described the accident later – saying that he was going too fast and that instead of sliding along the snow, the toboggan kept bouncing off the top of the curves with enormous impact on each hit. The three children were all Reiki channels.

So the three kids had their hands on and the Reiki running from almost the first moment of the injury.

I got the phone call just as he was leaving in the helicopter. There “just happened” to be two more Reiki Channels sitting at my kitchen table that afternoon – we were all Level 2 trained as distance healers – so three more of us started giving him Reiki. I made a phone call to my Reiki Master and she and someone else there started work too. So there was 8 Reiki Channels working on him.

When I got to the hospital, some hours away from home, the nurse came out and said “Sorry to tell you but your husband has broken his back.” Gosh I can still remember the bluntness of those words and his manner. “You can’t see him yet because he’s on his way down for an MRI. They’re worried that all those old spinal fractures might be covering up more damage than what they can see on the xrays.”

“What old spinal fractures?” says me “He’s never broken his back before.”

The xrays had showed 14 healed spinal fractures and two very nasty current ones – 2 vertebrae that were crushed on both sides of the wings but with the spinal cord intact in the centre. (Same injury as Christopher Reeves, but Merv’s spinal cord was intact.)

About 7 years earlier, Merv had had a very bad truck accident – a sweet little old lady driving the community bus had gone through a stop sign at 60 miles an hour, looking backwards at her passenger for some reason and he just happened to be on the main road part of the T intersection. He had crushed both legs across the kneecaps, one thigh bone was in pieces and his arm was in many pieces from the base of the fingers to the elbow. He was operated on for 11 hours with five separate teams working and in hospital for 7 months.

The xray file from back then and the subsequent years of surgery was so thick that you couldn’t carry it. He had been xrayed all over that first night of the first accident and many times later, in great detail – including his spine. There were no spinal fractures back then. The hospital for the toboggan injury was the same specialized trauma hospital – reputed to be the best in the country, certainly the best in our state.

I’ve asked doctors about these 14 old spinal fractures many times since and nobody has any medical explanation. Everyone says it’s impossible that the best xray specialists in the state missed 14 spinal fractures back in that original truck accident. It was a teaching hospital and not only would the xray people and their students be looking at them, but a whole barrage of orthopedic specialists and their students were looking at them too.

The only answer is that they didn’t miss 14 old spinal fractures because they weren’t there. The only other answer is that 8 Reiki channels supported his body for massive accelerated healing of these 14 spinal fractures before he got to hospital.

In another example of accelerated healing of broken bones, a friend of mine had their child fall off the slide in a playground and broke her arm. While they were waiting in emergency for quite a long time, she was soothing the child with Reiki. When they eventually got medical attention and x-rays, the doctor was very stern with her because he thought that the injury had happened days before – where in fact it had happened about three hours earlier. The healing was clearly accelerated.

A burn story. I and my own Reiki Master once healed a nasty burn in just 10 minutes. Christmas evening and a little tipsy on two glasses of wine, I was checking the stove and put my hand on the hotplate for too long and seared the rings of an electric stove into my hand. We used a combination of taking the burn back to the heat of the stove and we used Reiki and Vivian used Chi Gung as well. Ten minutes later I was back cooking Christmas dinner holding pots with that hand.

Taking burns back to the heat was a technique that I learned in a kinesiology class. There was a nurse in an iron foundry in Wales who noticed a pattern of workers healing from very nasty burns incredibly fast. What the men were doing, was going back TOWARDS the heat that burned them in the first place, waiting there for a bit until they experienced a rush of blood or energy to the burn. Even bad burns were healing in just a few days.