Some of my first-level students have had fears during their first Reiki sessions because they don’t feel comfortable trying to do therapy by themselves, some are afraid of doing things wrong, and also about what the patient could think or do if they do something wrong during therapy. In this article, I’m going to give you some clues to help you with your first sessions and get rid of the fears you may have as a first-timer.
As you may know, there is not a single way of practicing Reiki, but if you are a first-time practitioner, you could feel you are not ready for doing a session on your own. This is very common and natural thing, some practitioners take some time before receiving clients because it is not the same to have someone guiding you during a session with a patient than doing it all on your own, especially when some patients still consider Reiki as something fancy or strange. These feeling are not limited to Reiki, we all may feel strange or nervous when we are trying to do things by ourselves for the very first time.
One of the hardest things in everything you have to do is dealing with people, every person has a different story, different skills and also different issues, but as a Reiki practitioner you have several advantages to help you in your practice, so don’t be nervous with your first patients.
The first advantage you have with Reiki is that since it is a spiritual thing (and a very powerful one), you cannot possibly do things wrong. Just do your session as you practiced with your master during lessons. If you forget about something it’s ok, you might remember about that later, or maybe you didn’t need to perform that specific technique with this particular patient that time.
If you started sending energy to the 7th chakra instead of the 1st, skipped a chakra, or forget drawing a symbol, it is ok too! As I have mentioned before you cannot do Reiki wrong, so don’t be afraid.
Image by dziambel
Another huge advantage you have as a Reiki practitioner is that the patient usually has his/her eyes closed during session. This helps a lot since the patient cannot see what you are or are not doing.
Sometimes during the session, patients may start laughing or saying he/she feels something strange, or feels heat somewhere. In other cases, the patient may feel a little sore, but in most cases, the patient just let go during the session, he/she may feel so comfy during it, that may fall asleep! Here, waking the patient can be a little… fun, so enjoy it; if you do enjoy the session, the patient is going to feel more comfy during it too. Just, try to wake him/her slowly.
And last but not least, here are the two most important things you will ever learn, and these are not limited to Reiki but to anything you do in your life:
- Your patient (or client) doesn’t know what you know.
- Your patient (or client) doesn’t know what you don’t know.
Even your patient has his/her eyes open or something, he/she has no idea of what is going on during a session, he/she doesn’t know how a session should or should not be, the patient has not been to your Reiki course so he/she cannot and will not correct you about anything.
Let’s say you giggle during a session because you are nervous, the patient is not going to ask you about that, because he/she doesn’t know if that is normal during a session; if you forget how to draw a symbol, the patient is not going to correct you because he/she doesn’t even know about symbols, even if you feel the session was too short or too long the patient is not going to ask you about that, because he/she simply doesn’t know about sessions at all. During the sessions with your patients, you are the expert, not them.
It’s like when you hire a lawyer, take your car to the mechanic… or go to any specialist in any area. You are not correcting them during their job, you trust they can and know how to solve your problem since they have the knowledge and the tools to do it. So, if your mechanic starts hitting with a hammer something in your car you trust that he/she is trying to solve your car’s problem unless you were an experienced mechanic and you knew exactly what your car needs, and that a hammer wouldn’t help.
Based on this, we can say that even you could do something wrong, your patient usually is not going to notice it, because the patient is not a practitioner, he/she is not an expert. The patient does not know what should or should not happen during a session, but again, don’t worry about that since you cannot do things wrong during a Reiki session.
This doesn’t mean that you can do whatever you want during a session, you have a big responsibility as a therapist, because here we have some important things too: trust and confidence. When patients come to you is because they are giving you exactly that, and that is a very precious thing so do your best always in each and every session, because those two things are hard to get from people in most cases, and if you have already got them cherish them because your patients are giving them to you and not to somebody else, so take the sessions with your patients seriously. Always be respectful with your patients and your therapy.
Don’t be afraid of new things and give yourself the opportunity to help others with Reiki, it is going to change your lives for good.
Article by Alejandro Sánchez Martínez
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Alejandro Sánchez Martínez is an Engineer, Hypnotherapist, Reiki master and freelance writer. As a Reiki master he teaches and practices Reiki on daily basis because he loves helping others, especially when he can teach them how to help themselves. Alejandro likes talking to others about spiritual things. Because of his Reiki practice he has been able to have visions of other realms, and angelic entities who usually help him and guide him during his practice. As a hypnotherapist he discovered he loves helping others live their lives the way they want to live them, and by using Reiki he has discovered he can help them achieve that on a much deeper way.
You can find more of his works on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Iris.ASM and on Twitter twitter.com/asm124.
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