Recently, I was asked what advice to give to a new Reiki practitioner. I thought that I had touched on most of the issues that I had faced. However, days later, the most important lesson that I learned during my first Reiki training has been the most valuable piece of advice that I was given, and I would like to share it. My teacher, as a side note to the William Lee Rand textbook, paused and said, “I want to make it clear that Reiki is Reiki. Nothing else is Reiki. You don’t need to add anything, nor do you need to feel that you must offer more. Don’t cloud the concept of Reiki. If you choose to use crystals, incense, or other modalities, then make it clear that they are aside from and different from Reiki.”
There’s Massage Reiki, Crystal Reiki, Reiki with Tibetan Sing Bowls, etc. that use Reiki paired with other healing methods. I was excited to explore many of these areas and that’s one of the great things about Reiki. It’s so malleable and all encompassing that it can easily be partnered with many forms of alternative care like yoga, meditation, reflexology, Shinrin-Yoku.
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Stress can come from deciding that Reiki must have another component to it, that offering Reiki itself must have more, in order to gain clients. As my teacher instructed us, always make it clear that Reiki is energy healing, so that there’s no confusion among non practitioners, in seeking treatment, as to what constitutes a complete Reiki session. For example, I once went to get a reflexology treatment. I had a rudimentary understanding of what a reflexology treatment should consist of, however, what happened had nothing to do with meridians or my physical body. The practitioner had posters depicting reflexology, but instead, without explanation, the practitioner did an aura cleansing and disconnected what he was convinced was a connection that I had to the planet Jupiter. It’s been twenty years since that visit and I’m still not entirely sure what healing modality was practiced on me. I know it wasn’t reflexology.
This piece of advice has served me well all of these years and kept me grounded in my Reiki practice. When I first became a Reiki practitioner, I felt that I needed more, more knowledge, but also I saw online how many people use Reiki with other modalities. I felt that I needed to have training in other areas instead of “just” Reiki. I forgot my teacher’s advice and fell down the proverbial rabbit hole into trying to find the perfect Reiki add on. I explored crystals, reflexology, singing bowls, tarot, and more. Then I realized I was making choices based on not how I wanted to practice Reiki, but on how I perceived Reiki as needing more because of so often seeing it offered alongside another modality.
Image by Vicente Villamón
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