Usui Reiki Ryoho Healing Method

If you've ever had a great massage, you understand how you can feel both relaxed and invigorated at the same time. This seeming dichotomy of emotions allows you this feeling of well being because a massage loosens muscles, increases oxygen and blood flow throughout the body, and encourages the free flow of the body's own energies, known as "Qi" (sounds like 'key'), or "Chi" (ch-ee).

The Japanese healing art of Reiki (pron. 'Ray-key') has similar practical purposes—to increase and free the unbalanced energy flow in the body. While massage is more vigorous and manipulates the muscles, Reiki uses only touch and sometimes merely the proximity of the healer's hands to particular parts of the body.

Benefits

Reiki encourages healing on all levels: physical, emotional, and spiritual. After a person receives a Reiki healing they usually feel relaxed, calm and rejuvenated. Often, the sources of physical disease can be found at the emotional or spiritual levels. Reiki is a powerful means for:

• strengthening the immune system and
• supporting the body's natural ability to heal itself;
• stress reduction and promoting relaxation;
• relief from allergies, arthritis and chronic disorders;
• re-balancing the energy centers in the body and spirit;
• overcoming mental and emotional obstacles;
• promotion of personal awareness;
• clearing toxins, enhancing meditative states,
• changing unwanted habits;
• bringing the body into harmony by releasing physical and emotional blockages;
• promoting a state of total relaxation.

Research

According to the National Center on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health:

• In a 2007 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1.2 million adults reported they had used an energy healing therapy such as Reiki within the previous year. In addition, about 161,000 children had used such therapies in the past year.
• NCCAM-funded researchers are studying the effectiveness of Reiki on these conditions or diseases: symptoms of fibromyalgia; quality of life of AIDS patients; disease progression and/or anxiety in people with prostrate cancer; and reducing nerve pain and cardiovascular risk among people with Type 2 diabetes.
• Learn more: http://nccam.nih.gov/health/reiki/

Treatment

Reiki treatments are usually performed on a massage table and take about an hour to complete. The patient lies on the table, fully clothed and the practitioner places their hands on them in a specific sequence. A series of 12 to 15 hand positions are used as the practitioner begins to feel the warmth and flow of energy. The series starts on the face and the head and then moves to the front of the body from the throat region to the hips. It then continues on the back, from the neck down to the tailbone. Each position is held about 2 to 5 minutes.

Some people feel heat coming from the practitioner’s hands (most common), other times they feel cold from the practitioners’ hands or they feel a breeze on their feet or other part of their body. Every treatment is unique to the individual. A good practitioner also follows their intuition and feels for energy blocks and may hold a position longer or place their hands in a customized sequence. Touching the patient is not necessary, but combining this modality with bodywork has the potential for a long term wellness plan.

Personal History and Lineage

During July of 1994 I completed a 2 year apprenticeship with my Master/Teacher, Mona Reilly (who trained under Maureen Wier, a student of Virginia Samdahl, who received her Master/Teacher attunements from Mrs. Takata, who learned the traditions from Dr. Hayashi, who was initiated by Dr. Usui himself - which grants me a 6th generation Master/Teacher lineage) and began practice as a Usui Reiki Ryoho Master/Teacher. Having gone through training similar to the agenda outlined on my "Reiki Class Description" page, I have had this type of careful training confirmed over and over again. Because of it, I truly believe my students and clients have been better served.

Being attuned to this tradition can take as many turns as the individuals who take it up. Easy, if not downright gentle. Startling, and at times, numbing.  Most often it is an awakening that brings you closer to yourself and others. Learning the history, hand positions and how to plan therapy for a client is not where the work truly begins. What the Reiki books, the web sites, the seminar marketing ads can never truly explain are the intangibles that come with it. Being initiated into any healing tradition will put you on the path of self-discovery to "Know Thyself" and believe me, this will relate to your role as a Healer where you must "First, do no Harm" nor ever infringe upon another's free will.

For me, it added another reference point and helped direct what was already there.

My maternal grandmother came from a long line of mid-wives who were generational village wise-women (Savina Tula A., daughter of Theodosia). My paternal grandmother was a well-known astrologer from the East Coast (Helen Foye) who liked to take me to "forward-thinking" seminars when she visited my childhood home in San Francisco (The Silva Mind Method being my very first). Fairly young, both my grandmothers decided that the time I spent with them was going to be about learning. I made teas and tonics for the one, from herbs she grew outside her back door, while the other insisted I learn the concept of past lives, self-responsibility and the awareness of what trials and triumphs we bring into this world when we are born. Both were adamant in how this knowledge would be used, and respected.

Having been involved in some sort of training my entire life, whether it was with herbs, healing modalities and/or spiritual practice, I have found that being of service to others is at once rewarding and demanding. How to handle that sort of responsibility and navigate its complexities is a role both my grandmothers involved themselves in, charging me to be mindful of how it was passed on to the next generation.

It is this way of being that is not usually captured in books.