Your clients need your ongoing support on the road to recovery. Create a kit for your new clients to help them move towards health and to complement your work with them during their sessions.
It is disheartening when clients enjoy great benefits from your Reiki but then go right back to doing what put them in poor health in the first place. Short of having them move in with you so you can monitor their progress (not gonna happen…), it could be prudent to give them options and ‘homework’ so they can work with you towards better health.
Depending on your client’s needs and goals, I think it best to tailor your kit on a client-by-client basis, and depending on which type of Reiki you use.
These days, it is also easier to email your kit to your client rather than give them paper.
Please remember to treat your client’s email addresses with the utmost respect. Never share it, include them in a ‘round robin’ so others can see their email address, never add them to a mailing list without their permission and respect the digital privacy laws of your country.
All the kit ingredients below are emailable.
Your kit could include:
- A ‘progressive relaxation guided session’ to teach them to tune into deep relaxation so the reiki can flow through them more easily
- A suggested reading list and, if appropriate, the Reiki Rays Library
- Chakra chart
- A beginner’s short meditation concentrating on quieting the mind
- Grounding advice
- After-care advice digital leaflet
Progressive Relaxation Session
We all know that the more a person receiving Reiki is relaxed, the easier the Reiki can flow. It is why the client relaxes on a table or comfortable chair in order to gain the maximum benefits.
Perhaps you have had clients that really struggle to relax. To some, lying still when it is not bedtime is completely alien to them. Their mind becomes agitated and their body becomes restless.
Educating your client to relax could be one of the most beneficial gifts you can give them as the blessing will spill into every area of their life.
Learning to relax properly for the first time, involves feeling tension and a corresponding relaxation in the major muscle groups of the body. The recorded session below, is done lying down on a comfortable surface and can be practised daily until a relaxation response can happen on mental command alone. Try it for yourself before sharing it with clients so you can feel the benefits.
Create A Suggested Reading List
Clients experiencing Reiki for the first time may have many questions about its origins, effectiveness and spiritual connectedness.
It might be useful to add the books that led you to Reiki or books of a more spiritual nature. If your client is experiencing a particular crisis such as cancer, grief, mental health issues or addiction, there are many excellent self-help books that specifically support people through their challenges which complement the goals of Reiki.
If your client shows an interest in learning how to practice Reiki, it might be appropriate to introduce them to the Reiki Rays website and their Library. Or you can hand-pick reading material from Reiki Rays to send to them.
A Chakra Chart
The energy system used in Reiki is not taught in school biology class, and it is a complex subject too. However, most people are familiar with the word ‘chakra’ even if they don’t fully understand what it is and what it does.
Getting your client to think in terms of their energy system will help them from undoing all your hard work on the couch. See this chart as a starter for your client. Although the positions of the chakras are not mentioned (and open to some different interpretations), you can educate your client during your sessions on what chakra you are working on and why.
A Beginner’s Short Meditation
If a restless mind is bothersome to your client and you think they might benefit from learning meditation, then share with them some meditation practices so they can learn the basics.
Learning mindfulness is a great place to start, but it is not for everyone. Hypnosis-style countdowns and visualizations, gentle music or gazing at yantras or kaleidoscopes might be more suitable.
Other beginner’s methods may include candle gazing, a walking meditation, counting the breath or using an app such as Headspace, Calm or InsightTimer.
Grounding Advice
When life pushes all our stress buttons at once, our saving grace can be in staying grounded. This is true for Reiki practitioners as well as their clients.
Grounding exercises:
- Walking barefoot outdoors
- Spending time in nature
- Taking baths
- Using grounding crystals
- “Thinking in your feet”
- Foot massage/reflexology
- Yoga
- Tai Chi and Chi Gong
- Grounding meditations
This grounding chart gives advice on grounding, grounding crystals and a short, grounding meditation that your clients may find useful.
After-Care Advice Digital Leaflet
If you don’t already do so, provide your client with some after-care advice. Having a leaflet emailed to them after their session will help them to implement your advice once they have left the treatment room. Create your leaflet in Microsoft Word or similar word processing document and spend some time adjusting the layout so it looks professional. You can convert your document into a PDF if you do not wish the receiver to edit the document in any way.
A leaflet can provide the following information:
- A reminder that Reiki is a holistic practice, not an experience isolated from the rest of their daily life
- A reminder of what Reiki does
- What they might experience in the hours following treatment
- What to eat/drink and what to avoid
- General self-care advice
- Possible side-effects
Other options you can add to your after-care leaflet:
- Links to your social media
- Ask your client to leave a review
- Offer a ‘recommend a friend’ scheme
- Offer a discount for a course of Reiki, pre-booked and paid for in advance
- Your terms and conditions and/or available payment methods
An Example of a ‘Client Support Kit’ Email
Dear Bob,
I hope you enjoyed your Reiki session with me today.
As discussed, in order to help you further with your work-related anxiety, I recommend the following resources:
Progressive relaxation technique to be practiced daily until our next session:
https://youtu.be/PWxadalxKxc
A grounding advice sheet with grounding crystals that you can use in your daily meditation sessions.
Based on our conversation, I recommend the following books:
- https://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Based-History-Reiki/dp/1886785414
- https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Art-Therapy-Exercises-Techniques/dp/1646111621/
You mentioned that you used to enjoy painting as a hobby and I hope you find the inclination to pick up the brushes again soon. See you at our next session.
Best wishes,
Article by Phoenix Fenegan
Free eBook download: We’ve created an eBook with our best articles on this topic, and offer it for free to all our newsletter subscribers.
Phoenix Fenegan is a Reiki Master Teacher, YA 200hrs Yoga Teacher, Meditation Teacher, and spiritual & energy explorer. Phoenix has a YouTube channel called Intuitive Meditations which has many resources for Reiki students and those looking to experience meditation. She is a writer of some note on yoga and spiritual matters which were first published way back in 1997.
You can contact Phoenix through her website: phoenixfenegan.com.
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