While I recognize it may surprise just about anyone that follows me that to know that I'm into reiki I want to put this life detail out to the community for a second. Yes, a salty contrarian may be into "spiritual stuff." Frankly, while that seems ironic to many, it's actually one of the major causes of being a salty contrarian. Part of waking up was realizing just how much of this world is organized against the common person, and part of my energy work as well as my activism is to spread peace, abundance, liberty, and love. That love is probably best written as "tough love" since I'm into pretty raw honesty.
Benefits
The benefits of Reiki are a clear head, a deep sense of universal love for your planetary family, a concern for the well being of all people, and a desire to create positive change within and your surroundings. I've been a part of what many would consider miracle healings. My favorite personal story is helping a female former MMA fighter who had lost all movement in an arm for months regain motion spontaneously after a 1-hr treatment with me. My hardest Reiki moment was with my mother as she was dying from late stage brain cancer. She had recently suffered a stroke and by all appearances had an aneurysm leaking blood into her brain. Sending conscious loving energy stabilized her condition where all ER doctors assumed she would pass. She lived for another month and settled many of her affairs prior to passing peacefully in the middle of the night in her sleep.
Some of the people I have attuned (you can read about that in a sec) have woken people up out of 30 year comas. They have healed disfiguration from stroke. They have healed deep emotional issues such as addiction, grief, and depression.
The amazing thing is you don't need a background in this. You don't have to be a particularly spiritual person. You don't even really have to believe. If you can set even a minimal intention to suspend disbelief for a moment you too can feel the life energy flowing into and out of you in a like form of heat, cold, or an itchy sensation.
So, here's some basics. Reiki was channeled from the ether by some Japanese dude (Dr. Mikao Usui) last century. He learned how to manipulate his chi/universal life force such that he could start healing himself and other people. He also figured out how to share the practice and it turns out it really isn't that hard to accomplish.
Typically Reiki practitioners go through three steps:
1. Initiation- This is typically a 20-30 minute process where a Master opens up your channels to tune to the love transmission better. Love is a frequency. Just like a radio in your car can isolate and amplify radio signals your heart, stomach, and brain have the ability to tune into love, amplify it, and broadcast it. This first initiation is honestly like working with an old radio where you have to manually adjust it to the right channel. One would work each major limb of a body to be tuned to that frequency.
2. Distance work- Second level Reiki is usually about learning how to send energy not just to the person in front of you that you may or may not be in physical contact with, but how to broadcast this energy to someone(s) on the other side of the planet if need be. There are some very specific rune like patterns used to empower and send Reiki energy, but from my experience those symbols are less important than the intention one is setting.
Second Level Reiki attunements are about embedding symbols to accomplish and unlock empowerment of the love frequency and sending it. Again, there are formal symbols used by the formal schools, but I've found that creating my own symbols has been more powerful for me personally. As I send reiki that needs empowerment I often think about the unofficial occupy movement closed fist. That feels like a symbol of unified strength to me. When I send distance Reiki I often think about filling freight cars with loving energy, and shipping off whole trains.
3. Master Attunement- The master attunement is about putting everything into context and place. My master attunement took place in an aquaponics greenhouse where I was surrounded by huge plant growth and a 100+ fish cheering me on. The attunement is mostly embedding the master symbol into the practitioner and that symbol has always struck me as looking like a puzzle piece.
As I received my attunement I was suddenly filled with a deep understanding of our connectedness and oneness as a species and a planet. I understood that everything is frequency, love is the master frequency, and that everything from the air we breathe to the water we drink carries that frequency with it.
Reiki Practice
The process of doing reiki is usually in a room or outdoor space you consider a spiritual sanctuary or haven. You'll sit comfortably in a mostly darkened room with some peaceful ambient music. Nothing with words that may distract you, but something to fill the space to help quiet your mind. At that point it's a process of channeling love energy from the outside in. You'll clear your own energy space with breath work and creating an energetic flow. When your body, mind, and heart feel cleansed you'll focus on a sensation of love and start radiating it outward. You can radiate from your heart, your brain, your stomach, or more precisely through your hands.
Reiki Thought
When you realize that we're all interconnected beings on a spiritual level things change. We have the same spark of eternal essence/god/creation within us. It resides in our heart. When you realize that we may be experiencing temporary separation from the god consciousness by housing it in our meat sacks (body) you start to realize that we're all one entity living out an individualized existence. We're like 8 billion fractals of the same creation source experiencing creation. We're all one and the harm I do to you or me is the harm I myself experience, and the love and kindness inward and outward that I share is experienced for the benefit of the whole being.
You are me. I am you. We are one. We are experiencing temporary separation, but the universal life force that keeps us alive and unique is a quantum singular experience that we all have in common.
Setting an intention
When you mean to do something you set an intention. Setting that intention is an action. "I'm going to complete my homework tomorrow." "I'm going to brush my teeth tonight." "I'm going to buy my wife flowers." Are all examples of intentions.
In Reiki the most common intention to set is to send love inward and outward with a mind to heal. Your essence focuses on love and care for another, empowered by your favorite visions and feelings of love, with a set intention to heal yourself or be accepted in love as a healing energy by another.
Reiki Energy Flow
You bones are hallow. The energy flows through the empty cavity and travels up and down your spine through your arms. It's empowered primarily by your creation essence housed deep within your gut, and by your emotion processor (heart) setting an intention to radiate love.
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Tonight I offer you all blessings of peace.
Blessings of love.
Blessings of kindness.
Tonight I'll put away the NaCl, I'll set my intentions for this community in particular to prosper and grow. I ask that you set a similar intention as well as setting an intention to receive this energy and let it heal and empower you.
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Namaste- The divine within me honors the divine within you.