Traditional Reiki?

When I was updating these pages since learning Reiki Ryoho, I thought I would have to do some serious editing here. However, having read it over again, it seems just as true now as it was when I wrote it. What I would add to the below is this: Takata taught everything she knew - having acquired a copy of the Gray Book it can be seen from her diary that she passed everything on. Unfortunately, in the intervening years much has been lost, with its significance failing to register on students and teachers as the lineages lengthened.

So what makes what we call Reiki so special - why all the rigmarole around training, names, ceremonies etc?

For a clearer view on this, I think we have to go back to the name of what Takata brought back with her from Japan - Usui Shiki Reiki Ryoho. This translates to "The Usui System of Reiki Healing". You will notice the word "system" - indicating that what Takata gave to us was a system of healing accessing the vast ocean of energy that gives us all life - and this, I believe, is what Traditional Reiki is - a fully rounded system.

So of what does this system comprise? Obviously, the ceremony called "attunement" by some and by others "initiation" is a basic part of the system. There are many who believe that this is all there is to it, that all one needs is the initiation into the energy itself and that all else is the trappings of control. Let's look more closely at this. Of those who believe this, who can reproduce the miracles that Takata seemed to facilitate? Cancers healed without medical intervention, chronic conditions disappearing, women who had previously not been able to conceive bearing live healthy children. All Takata had was Reiki and surely if all there was to it was the initiation, we would all be able to do these and the other miracles with no thought at all. So what is it about that which we in the West call "Traditional Reiki" that sets it apart from the less traditional?

What did Takata teach? She taught First Degree Reiki over four evenings, giving four separate initiations. Why? Wouldn't one do just as well? My belief is that Takata would have only given one initiation at First Degree if she had believed that one was enough. Obviously, she didn't. Each initiation fills the human energy field to the brim with Reiki, clearing the energy chanels of a lifetime's gunk and clutter so that we each become able to chanel the energy. A lifetime of coffee, cigarettes, preservatives, sugar, additives, emotional traumas and general everyday living takes more than one short ceremony to shift obviously. Between each initiation a partial treatment is given, partly to teach the treatment to the student and partly to support and facilitate this clearing and cleansing. The leap from the everyday to Reiki healer is a large one and at First Degree the four initiations are necessary so that by the end of the class, the student's energy field has been cleared and filled with Reiki to capacity - and so the Reiki journey begins.

Takata also taught hand positions - a basic all over body treatment of four positions on the head, four on the front of the body and four on the back, adding the knees and feet. There is a general belief - which I share - that Reiki goes where it's needed, so the emphasis on the hand positions are often misunderstood. Say, for example, you fall and twist your ankle. The pain is in your ankle, so the obvious place for a Reiki healer to put their hands is on your ankle. However, Mrs Takata would emphasise to start at the head, give a full treatment and then treat the damaged area. This is to treat the whole person, the reason behind the twisted ankle, which may be a balance problem (ears) or a nervous problem (sympathetic nervous system - back) or any one of many others. So why not just hold your hand for a while? In my opinion, Reiki does go where it's needed - however, to get from my hand to your ankle it has to travel through a fair amount of the body, healing as it goes. It's a lot quicker to give a treatment and then treat the damaged area - "a little Reiki is better than none" says Takata "a lot is better than a little".

So a full treatment covers the head, the major organs, the endocrine system, digestive system and the nervous system, with any areas of damage being treated locally at the end of the full treatment.

She taught the Usui story - the story of a man who would not give up in the face of adversity and eventually was rewarded with the greatest of gifts. With this story she began all her classes, telling it in her own inimitable way, adjusting the story for her audience, but always with the same central points - dedication, service, study, practice and determination. Many of us would recognise these qualities in our own or others' Reiki journeys, though we start with an advantage - it doesn't take so long as it took Usui, because part of the gift he received was that the system could be taught.

Takata taught the Five Precepts as another significant part of the Reiki healing system - Do not anger; do not worry; honour your parents, teachers and elders; work hard; count your blessings. Usui's followers placed so much emphasis on these precepts that they reproduced them on his grave. The Five Precepts are a central part of the system, both as a method of living and as a method of being when giving Reiki - when we allow ourselves to be distracted while giving a treatment we know we are blocking the flow, that's obvious. What isn't so obvious is that the precepts as a method of living allow us breathing space to pause and consider what life is showing us, letting the Reiki flow smoothly through to whatever is the cause of any of our everyday issues. We cannot be two completely different people - one in everyday life, the other as Reiki healer. The living of the precepts allows the dichotomy in our lives to disappear and become one with the Reiki. Eventually. This journey takes a lifetime - and so the precepts remind us not to worry.

The energy exchange part of the system is often a point where we all have a problem. Energy exchange is just that and covers a multitude of options - coming together in community to swap treatments, service of some kind and, yes, payment for classes and treatments. According to Wanja Twan, Takata said that the exchange "did not need to be much, a loaf of bread, a jar of jam, a bag of fruit from their own trees, a work exchange, or money." It is a question of placing value on what is received, not for the benefit of the teacher or practitioner, but for the benefit of the receiver. Most of us need to give something to receive full benefit from the gift. My own emphasis on the energy exchange is to urge my students to give and receive Reiki often in sharing groups and at gatherings when they are available.

Takata said that Reiki brings health, happiness and security - health because Reiki is a healing system, happiness because healthy people are happy for the most part and security because one would always be able to work, never have to have another day off sick. Quite a stunning thought that for a very small investment of time and money one's life can change so dramatically.

The classes were also an important part of the Reiki healing system as taught by Takata, the actual fact of being in the presence of the master/teacher to receive what he/she had to give. Her own story includes the detail that Takata, never having heard of Reiki before she returned to Japan when she was sick, learned First Degree, worked in Hayashi's clinic for several months and then learned Second Degree. When she was given her Master's Degree, she took the trouble to travel back to Japan to be with Hayashi to receive it - no small amount of time, trouble and organisation in the 1930s.

And finally, self treatment. During Takata's brief speech when she presented the first of her masters, she stated that John Gray had given Reiki to himself or someone else every day since he first learned it - she obviously considered that use of Reiki to be very important. Reiki to others and in self treatment. When we self treat we are taking conscious responsibility for our own health and well-being physically, emotionally and spiritually and that consciousness is, in my view, very important in the practice of Reiki - we accept that our lives are our own, make our own decisions, recognise and deal with our own issues working with Reiki all the time to grow, thereby becoming more conscious, loving practitioners of Reiki healing.

So, is it possible to do without everything except the "attunement"? In my opinion, the traditional method includes all of the above and is the most efficient in healing - my own story includes cervical cancer which I treated with Reiki to great effect, without medical intervention except in a monitoring role.

My work with Feng Shui has taught me that all energy is Universal Life Energy - it is the method, or system, of accessing that energy that makes it healing in what we call Reiki. In Feng Shui that exact same energy can and does have many different moods, not all of them supportive of human health. In the traditional version of the Usui System of Reiki Healing, all touches are beneficient.