Spirituality is the practice of seeking the wisdom of the soul. It is the act of raising our vibrational frequency to a state of higher consciousness in order to experience ourselves as an energy body — the energy that makes us who we are without our physical body or mind. There are many ways to go about practicing spirituality. India gave us yoga, China gave us qigong and Japan gave us reiki. I have chosen the path of reiki because it has been my experience that this simple and effective practice can help us engage the world in profound and meaningful ways.
Reiki is an energy healing system that connects us with Universal Life Force. This is the energy that exists in all living and nonliving things on the planet. It is the Universal consciousness that we all originated from. Most practitioners of reiki including myself have been drawn to it by a longing to know something more about life and ourselves and to fulfill a deep calling of the soul. It is this calling that invites the teacher and practice to align with the seeker. The practice is simple and begins with an initiation followed by shared teachings of self-treatment, daily meditations and mantra. Some practitioners go on to share reiki with others in healing sessions, as I have chosen to do.
Reiki Initiation
Reiki practitioners are initiated into the practice by a teacher who performs a ceremony called an attunement. The attunement is an initiation or invitation to become aware of ourselves from a 360 degree view. It creates a shift in our frequency which opens us up to align with intentions that match that higher frequency. The shift widens our perspective of the world and is similar to seeing our lives from the viewpoint of a large window on the 100th floor of a highrise versus a first floor window. Our view from the first floor will be limited to the immediate surroundings like the parking lot and the courtyard, for example. From the 100th floor we can see the parking lot, courtyard, surrounding buildings, the streets and intersections, local businesses, and even into the windows of other apartments. This shift in our view of ourselves and the world allows us to understand the events in our life as lessons and guidance from the Universe.
How Reiki Works
Once initiated into reiki, we learn how to channel this energy through our hands and we learn the most vital areas on the body to place our hands to maximise the effectiveness of the healing. This intelligent energy provides the balance our physical body needs to heal itself. In this optimum environment created by the energy, places in our body where emotions like fear, shame, anger, grief, frustration and sadness have been stored or repressed can surface and heal in a safe and loving way. The daily self-treatment fills our body with unconditional love and transmutes these emotions to peace, love and joy. People often find that these emotions stored in the body are the cause of their physical pain or illness and once released they no longer experience the pain or make peace with the illness they have and use it as a tool for deeper spiritual awareness. In much the same way we perform reiki on ourselves we can share it with others and help them to experience the benefits of reiki.
What Reiki Feels Like
Many practitioners experience reiki in the form of heat or warmth in the hands, although the energy is present regardless of whether we feel it or not. The practice of reiki can be fully devoted to our own self healing. In fact, performing daily self treatment is the main purpose because it is the work on ourselves that makes the greatest impact on the health of our body, mind and spirit and that of our environment. When we treat ourselves to reiki daily, we are shifting our vibrations to higher consciousness and this in turn has an impact on our surroundings including our family, pets and home. We are indirectly creating a space that supports living in our highest self and this opens the door for our family and friends to do the same. It can also push people away who do not want to live in that state of higher consciousness. Living from our higher self brings a plethora of benefits including peace, joy, physical health, and intuition. We are more easily able to tap into the flow of life and become conscious creators of our lives. A thought becomes a vision and before we know it that vision comes to fruition and we are manifesting the life of our heart’s desire.
The Miracle of Reiki
How does this happen from a simple practice of self-healing? It is a result of living from our heart space. Reiki self healing opens our hearts. It removes the blocks and walls we have created from our past experiences that were meant to protect us from getting hurt or suffering the same fate again. However, those walls have also kept us separate from the unconditional love that we are a part of. When we perform reiki self-healing treatments, we return to a place of wholeness, a place of oneness with ourselves and the planet. We fall into alignment with the ebb and flow of the planetary vibes. It is this shift from individual consciousness to oneness with all that is the miracle that reiki brings. We develop more compassion and are able to see ourselves in others, we become less judgemental of ourselves and others, and we learn to be less reactive to situations that may trigger us.
Reiki becomes as much a part of our lives as breathing and we can emanate this goodness to all those around us.