Learning Reiki To Heal Yourself And Others

The process of learning Reiki is, as you would have guessed by now, not based on reading tones of books, attending lectures, and passing exams – although there are different “degrees” of advancement on the ladder of evolution.

There is no single “Reiki University” or “Reiki College of Healing” that disburses certificates to successful candidates after their attending a “Reiki Course” of fixed duration.

Reiki is actually taught to newcomers by the practitioners themselves. This “decentralized” system of training has one benefit upfront: people can undergo the course at a local Reiki training center; and at their own pace and speed. (I am coming to the subject of self-learning in a later chapter.)

Since there are no prerequisites expected from the learner in terms of educational achievements or spiritual attainment, just about anybody can learn.

A natural side-effect of there not being one single, “centralized” system of training is that there is no one “uniquely” single method of Reiki that prevails, and there is nobody to monitor and ensure that there is just “one” Reiki method that is followed all over the world.

For any other therapy, this might have been a negative side-effect. Not so with Reiki.

The very fact that Reiki works at the mind level and deploys the invisible energy omnipresent throughout the ether, lends itself to other schools of thought for healing being added to the Reiki domain.

This means that besides the original “Usui System of Natural Healing”, first propagated by Dr. Mikao Usui, there are now several systems that are variants of the original Reiki. Since the basic foundation of Reiki: working at the mind level, and deploying the invisible energy omnipresent in ether; remains the same, all these variants remain equally useful.

Where these variants differ is the way the symbols (described ahead) get handled, the different hand positions, and the style in which “attunement” (initiation into Reiki) takes place.

In this chapter, we take a look at the process by which Reiki has been traditionally learnt. We first start off with a basic introduction of the symbols, something that I have touched upon in the earlier chapters as well.

Next, we look at the different levels of attainment that Reiki practitioners are required to go through in the Usui system.

Finally, I describe the hand positions.

Continue >>