Reiki

Last weekend I got my Reiki Level 1 certification and I think I have finally formulated my thoughts on it.

I have always been fascinated by Reiki and the chakras and I do believe everything is connected and in an energy that we may not be able to perceive normally. On a practical level, I am hoping I can use Reiki to alleviate personal pain, both physical and psychological.

The course was an interesting experience for me. Reiki Level 1 is meant to teach you Reiki for yourself and maybe some people close to you. Reiki Level 2 is for people who want to start treating people professionally. So when I went in I did not expected to mainly do Reiki on myself and maybe learn a little theory on how to apply it to others. Not so. The course seemed very much aimed at people who want to do the Reiki Level 2 course as well and will start having clients. The instructor even referred to the classmate we were treating as "the client". I am not a natural people person and this was not something I was very comfortable with at the start - I even got nauseous and almost fainted giving my first treatment - but looking back I do think it was useful even though holding your hands out over someone can be very difficult on your arms and shoulders. The instructor, who I had received a treatment from in the past, was very good and told us about his journey. One of the messages he received from an acupuncturist was that everything is a gift. This is a hard concept for me to grasp and when he told us he applied this when he was diagnosed with leukemia I may have made some protesting noise. But perhaps adopting some of this attitude will be good for me as I do not deal well with unexpected setback and should I ever get cancer, I do believe a positive outlook will help a great deal. After the course I wrote down other things that I need to work on within myself as well.
When receiving a Reiki treatment from someone else, I did find it very relaxing to the point of almost falling asleep. I did not always feel anything in particular in terms of energy from who was treating me but I did occasionally twitch which is a good thing. When the instructor was giving me a treatment, he used a symbol signifiying emotional clarity on me, immediately after which my eyebrows twitched into a frown (I'm taking him on his word of course, I felt me brows twitch but as my eyes were closed I've no clue what he was doing). This makes sense as I had received an e-mail from my father that morning that left me very emotionally confused.
Since the weekend, I have been practising Reiki on myself every morning with mixed results. Some days I felt very little but this morning as I drew a symbol onto my heart chakra I felt moved to tears, I repeated this three times with the same results. Even on days I did not feel much from the treatment I found the day going smoother and things did not bother me on as profound a level as they might do normally.

Tonight I will be giving my husband a treatment for this first time, so I am interested to see how that goes.

Thanks for reading and I hope you found it interesting and/or useful.