Time for a Reiki spring clean?

Reiki treatments are carried out in a lot of different ways and many rituals have been developed and passed on in different lineages.

Reiki has also been affected by the belief systems of people who are involved in other energy practices and it’s natural for Reiki teachings to become ‘coloured’ by a teacher’s personal quirks and idiosyncrasies too.

Trouble is, these practices end up turning into “this is the way that you have to do it” as they are passed on from teacher to student, teacher to new teacher, and that’s unfortunate since some people end up lumbered with quite complex rituals that they feel they have to carry out for a treatment to be done ‘properly’.

Reiki is greater than that.

Reiki works simply and intuitively and doesn’t need to be accompanied by a lot of dogma. There will be Reiki practitioners out there who treat their clients using a lot of rituals that other effective Reiki practitioners do not use, and there will be people out there using Reiki effectively while not carrying out stages and rituals that other practitioners regard as essential.

Let’s look at a few examples of ideas and practices that I regard as unnecessary.

If you were taught to do these things, why not experiment and find your own approach.

Keep at least one hand on the body at all times for fear of losing your connection

I have written about this one before, and if we can send Reiki from one side of the planet to the other just by thinking of someone, there will be no problem in ‘losing’ your connection to a client on a treatment table in front of you should your hands stray a few inches from their body.

‘Connection’ is a state of mind and comes through focusing your attention on the recipient. If you’re doing a Reiki treatment on someone then you are connected to them!

Treat from head to toe and then you must go back up the body from feet to head

Seems a bit clumsy to me, and is sometimes combined with the previous paragraph, so you end up with “always keep at least one hand on the body at all times and work from head to foot, and then back to the head again”.

The general approach within Reiki seems to be to work from head to feet, though working the other way might be the right thing to do sometimes.

My approach is to work intuitively so I don’t follow a set of rules that have to be applied to every client in the same way. Why should every client receive the same format of treatment? They have different problems, different energy needs.

‘One size fits all’ doesn’t fit very well with me.