Reiki as a Meditative Self Study

Article by Millennial Path

Every weekend, many of us complete our Reiki training and walk out of the rooms feeling enlivened by our attunements, our new knowledge, and excited about the next steps. But what are those next steps? A workshop is a great start but it is only the first step in learning Reiki. The goal of this article is to put forth what I have found to be a strong launching point to understanding Reiki (as a beginner or even later when we want to revisit and dive deeper). If we focus on Reiki as a Meditative Self Study, then we allow ourselves to understand the energy and the practice and build our natural sensing abilities. This inspires confidence in our work and creates a solid foundation!

What is a Meditative Self Study?

Let’s break down each of these words to start.

• A “Meditative” state allows us to travel inwards to discover ourselves. Treating Reiki as “meditative” means that we are focusing on the sensations that occur during a treatment to better understand them. We are there simply to observe them.
• “Self” means focusing on ourself. You are both practitioner and client in this scenario and thus can experience both sides.
• “Study” means to get curious about it! Treat it like an exploration and get excited to learn. You do not need a teacher to tell you what or how to feel, you can discover it all on your own through the work, the energy, and your guides.

Having now understood what a Meditative Self Study is, we will explore three topics that will build upon each other to provide you with a plan to move from working on yourself to others.

• First, we will explore what we can do to treat Reiki as a meditation.
• Next, we will learn how this practice can provide a framework to understand the work.
• Finally, we will look at how to translate the knowledge you have gained to working with clients.

I. How to Treat Reiki as a Meditation

There is an immense amount of value in self-treatment. To start, it has wonderful health benefits. The more that you work on yourself and keep your own vessel clear, the smoother Reiki energy is able to flow through you. It is incumbent upon us as practitioners to keep our vessels hollow so that we can be of the highest service to clients. But the focus of this article is on how we can treat this practice like a meditation. During self-treatment, you can have experiences both, as a practitioner and client. It is thus a unique situation that allows you to better understand the feelings and after effects of a treatment.

During self-treatment, observe what you feel, sensations that arise, and anything that you experience. You can do this by making a mental note, but it’s best to write it down (It is helpful to keep a self-treatment journal to hold all of your observations). While Reiki is universal, how we feel and work with it is unique to each one of us. While I may feel a blockage as sticky and liquid, you may feel it as jagged and solid. Meditation gives us the space to better observe what arises. Thus we can better understand what we are feeling when we work with the energetic body.

During the self-treatment, allow your mind to train into the stillness of the energy. Take the time to not only feel the energy of your body but feel the energy coursing through you. At any time when intervening thoughts arise, including doubt, label them as “thinking” and let them drift away. If you already meditate this might be a concept you are familiar with. If you do not, then it is a great new practice to learn. Extraneous thoughts will appear during the treatment and that’s OK. But what we want to do here, is not latch on to them, allow them to move out as easily as they moved in.

An ongoing meditative self-practice can help you to learn your body, mind, and Reiki energy in so many new ways. Each day you will learn new aspects of your own practice. Take the time to write down your experiences so you can track and analyze them! This running journal will become your textbook as you continue to grow as a practitioner.

II. Providing a Framework to Your Learning

The first part was all about the experience. We noted sensations but we did not do any analysis. Now, we will discuss how to understand your work. After you have done a fair amount of self-treatment you can start to draft out your overall takeaways. Sit with your self-treatment journal from section one and start to review your findings. What commonalities do you see? Are there any one-off experiences you had? As you review this, you can start to draw some conclusions about your own work.

Start with the basics. You can divide this into “Client” and “Practitioner” findings.

• For the Client, you may want to review your journal and jot down conclusions about what felt the best, what the common sensations were, and anything that was uncomfortable. Remember to focus on both the in-treatment sensations and post-treatment ones.
• As for the Practitioner notes, what common denominators did you find there? Did certain symbols work differently? The manner in which you drew them? Unique hand placements or hand distance? Did different Chakras react differently and thus need unique attention?

In the end, you may find you have a lot of statements like: “I work best when…” “It felt good when I…” “Throat chakra blockages sometimes feel like…” You are building your own training manual from your work! By creating this personal research project you are learning the effects of your practice, the power of the energy, and how you need to handle yourself during a treatment. Moreover, you are developing your own language for explaining sensations to clients. Pretty exciting right?

One note is that different people will present differently. So while you are learning about your own energy, remember to be open that different clients’ energy may present differently. This is where your intuition and guides come in. This work sets the framework for understanding but your intuition and guides will ultimately help you uncover the best course of work.

III. Transitioning to Work with Clients

In the final section, we are looking at how to take your self-treatment practice and transition into treating others. To recap the work so far, you have been actively involved in self-treatment to keep your energy running smoothly. You have also started to understand the different feelings that arise during a session. These feelings have been translated into your own words and can act as a guidebook for you to understand the best hand positions, use of symbols, distance to utilize, etc.

As you start to work with Clients, you no longer are receiving the treatment yourself and thus will need to trust your gut, your work, and your guides. To begin, you should now have a robust vocabulary to help explain to a client the different sensations they may or may not experience. You will also be able to complete a body scan and understand what the different sensations may represent as you begin treatment. As you conduct a body scan, think back to what those sensations meant to you and the ways that you were able to work through them. As you go through a session, you will start to remember what it felt like when it was time to move on from an area, or when it was necessary to spend extra time.

At the end of a session when you are talking to the client, remember that they are the client now, not you. This means you will want to listen intensely to hear what they felt. Listening to their reaction is a part of the work too as it will inform you on how to continue to develop your practice. Give them the space to be honest and speak as needed. There is no need to dissect and pick apart the entire session, but if they want to share anything or have questions be sure to allow for that.

I wish you the best of luck as you embark on this Meditative Self Study of Reiki! Take the time to listen: to your self, body, energy, guides, and clients. They all have a lot to teach us.

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Millennial Path is a Reiki Level II Practitioner whose practice has been geared toward helping his family and friends find a sense of balance in their lives. Since finding Reiki, he has opened his eyes to new ways of understanding his own life, his connections to other people, and his connection to the world. Working with energy has a way of plugging you into a whole world that you never fully knew existed. For the last 7 years, he was a hotelier by day and energy explorer by night. He has worked with his own spirituality to allow him to burn through norms and shine light into alternative definitions of success.
Get in touch with Millennial Path at Millennialpath.wordpress.com and on Instagram at instagram.com/the_millennial_path