Usui Reiki Level 1 Training

Slightly nervous for what awaits me, I proceed into the sizable room full of four other souls who are also unsure of what exactly to expect. I grab a blanket and a bolster and make my way to an open spot in the semi-circle created by the others.

We all take turns sharing a brief introduction about ourselves and our experience with reiki. Two of the ladies were massage therapists, seeking to expand their practice in a more spiritual way. Another lady, who had really taken a liking to yoga recently, had been experiencing more anxiety and stress than usual and was dying to know how reiki could help with those difficulties she had been going through. The last of the five of students was a middle-aged man; I could tell he had been through a lot recently. He seemed to have been hurt by something or someone and was here today to take away some of that pain. I was by far the youngest student in the course, although I wasn’t phased by it, as I am normally the youngest in just about everything I do.

Our reiki shinpeden (Japanese term for “Reiki Level 3 Master/Teacher”) was a very knowledgable man with the most calming and accepting presence. He started out the course by saying that he was not giving us a new power or something foreign, he was simply enlightening us on how to use what we already have had inside of us.

The course consisted of three separate stages, lasting a total of eight hours. Stage one included of the history of reiki, as well as the studying of exactly what this healing form is and what the benefits of it are. The content we learned about included: our lineages, central figures in reiki, techniques, symbols, the seven chakras, human energy fields, and much more.

Stage two of the course consisted of the Reiki Master giving us four attunements. Once you have received the attunements, you are then able to transmit the teachings and attunements into yourself and others. In Japan this is referred to as “Shoden.”

Just before the attunements began, we were instructed to look at five different cards, each with different sayings on them, and to place them in order from easiest to most difficult. Mine were placed as the following:

1. (Easiest) “Just for today, show gratitude for the many beings.”
2. “Just for today, honor and respect all beings.”
3. “Just for today, do all work honestly.”
4. “Just for today, do not anger.”
5. (Hardest) “Just for today, do not worry.”

When placing these in order of easiest to hardest, I struggled. “These are all easy to do,” I pondered to myself.

Simultaneously, the man next to me says allowed “But, these are all so hard to do.” My heart ached for him, I could tell that his soul had been through some hardship and he was damaged from that. I am not entirely sure why, but I wanted to walk over and give him a hug, while reminding him that everything was going to be perfectly okay.

The attunements made me anxious, I didn’t have a clue what to expect.  I had gotten reiki performed on me two times before, once in Indonesia and once in Taiwan by the lady who was hand-poking a tattoo on my arm. They were two very different experiences, making me feel two separate ways.

Five chairs were placed in a circle, facing each other, around a very large crystal placed in the center of the circle. We were advised to get water and our five cards with the statements on them and to sit in the chairs. We would be going into a state of mediation for at least an hour, while we were receiving the attunements. With the five cards placed in front of us, in order from easiest to hardest, we were instructed to focus on the them throughout the attunement process.

I am not entirely sure what happened during the attunement, as I was in a deep state of meditation and my eyes were shut throughout the entirety of it. But from what I could gather, our reiki shinpeden went around to each of the students several times, while following the path of the circle, performing different energy movements on us, along with a series of different breaths.

1st Attunement: While sitting in the circle among the others, I started to repeat one of phrases on the cards in front of me. I began to meditate. After some time, I noticed that I had an overall blanket of warmth inside of my body, which is incredibly rare for me. Although I had full awareness of my physical body, I started to lose touch with certain parts of my body. I felt an overbearing feeling of unease, possibly due to the lack of certainty with what was going to happen during these attunements. This was something I was completely ignorant about, so I wasn’t very thrown off by the uneasy emotions. My breaths were not controlled and I was very self-conscious.

“Was I breathing too fast? Maybe I am breathing too slow? Should I be sitting like this? Are my hands supposed to be placed on my legs? I am going to uncross my fingers. Or, better yet, maybe I should leave them crossed.”

I desperately wanted to open my eyes, just to look at how everybody else was reacting to this. I felt as if I almost didn’t belong. I refrained from doing that and trusted the source energy from the universe to continue with my attunement process.

2nd Attunement: I began to feel pain in my left wrist, throbbing pain that started to concern me. I had never had wrist pain before, what the hell was this feeling? My thoughts started to diminish, and my focus on the cards had almost completely vanished. Occasionally, notions of the cards would pop back into my brain. The pain in my wrist had caused my fingers to feel like they had swelled up with energy and were about to burst open at any given moment. I was later told that this was the energy being released out of my the tips of my fingers.

3rd Attunement: Feelings of mental release. The built up energy in my fingers had felt like it bursted open and energy was seeping out of me onto the floor. The ability to sense my physical realm had surrendered; I was floating. I observed my body twitching, in attempt to bring back awareness to my body. My mind had drifted into an unfamiliar space, where I could no longer connect my mind with my body. I began to think about where my legs and my fingers were physically located, and I simply was not capable. I no longer could remember if I was sitting or standing or if my arms were above my head or crossed on my chest. I made zero effort to figure out the questions I had concerning my body’s whereabouts. I let the universe take over, and I absorbed every second of it.

4th Attunement: Heavenly. I have typed and erased about forty different sentences, because none of them can truly describe how I was feeling during the fourth attunement. Heavenly is the only description that I am semi-satisfied with. Completely separated from everything; I was bombarded by feelings I had never experienced before.

All of a sudden, I felt something inside of my stomach building up. It felt as if the energy was circling around in the pit of my stomach. I was sitting indian style in a rather uncomfortable fold out chair; somehow I never once felt uncomfortable. The energy was circling faster and faster, and I knew it was going to move to a different part of my body. In a very snake-like motion, the energy moved up my stomach, into my chest. The spiraling “snake of energy,” wiggled its way (very rapidly) up from my chest and through my throat. It was moving out of my body fast; I was alarmed, as I had never felt a sensation like this before. As the energy advanced up my body, it jolted my entire body forward, causing me to almost fall face-first out of my chair. My eyes shot open, and I immediately glanced at my reiki master in embarrassment.

I have absolutely no idea what in the world just happened to me. I quickly squeezed my eyes shut, trying to pretend as if it didn’t happen. As if I didn’t just almost throw myself out of my chair while sitting in a circle full of people.

All five of us had received the four attunements and were capable of moving reiki energy through ourselves and others.

After the attunement procedure was completed, we took a break to write in our journals and sip on water and/or tea. I still felt so far away from my body, even my vision had seemed to be slightly altered. I didn’t know how to feel about all of this.

My reiki shinpeden asked how I was feeling. “Slightly bothered,” I responded hesitantly. I made him aware of what happened to me with the snake-like energy and he asked if I knew what Kundalini energy was. I had never heard of it, and he briefly informed me of what it was and said it was absolutely necessary for me to look it up when I got home.

After researching what it was, I gathered this:

Kundalini, a sanskrit term from Ancient India, is an energy/consciousness that has been coiled at the base of the spine since birth. Kundalini will begin to unravel in response to life events and/or spiritual practices, as we gain a higher consciousness. It is said that the snake-like (YES! Hi!! This is exactly how I described it!!) uncoiling can be blissful or even frightening (100% frightening, if you ask me,) and can feel like an explosion in your gut or out of your head. Kundalini awakening can lead to both positive and negative feelings. But, for those called to a  particular spiritual path, it is said to offer a profound opportunity.

FREAKING OUT!

I have always been a huge believer in signs and messages from the universe, and I truly believe that the universe is reminding me that I am on the right path. Reading the information on Kundalini really brought a sense of terror. What I was reading was describing how I felt, almost word for word.

Terror, yet, reassurance. 

Stage three was the learning and practicing reiki on ourselves and others. We went over a series of spiritual and mental cleanses to practice, as well as how to perform a reiki treatment. I was so into this shit, at this point. I loved every single second of it.

Now, we would perform a forty-five minute reiki session on another classmate. Then, we would switch and receive a forty-five minute reiki session from a classmate. The man who was sitting to my left in the semi-circle in the beginning, and to my right in the circle during attunements, asked to be my partner. I was over the moon about this because I could feel his pain, and knew he had something weighing down on him. At the same time, I was nervous. He had been receiving reiki treatments from our reiki master for some time now, and I knew that I would be a little upset with myself if he didn’t take away anything from the reiki I was about to do on him. Overall, I was ready to perform my first ever reiki treatment on someone.

Three massage tables had been set up for us to use and we were instructed to act as if this was a client, not just another student in the reiki course. So, I did just as I was told. My “client” laid on the table and I launched into the healing process.

Starting and ending with a brief guided mediation, I successfully performed a forty-five minute reiki session. It is incredibly difficult to expand on the emotions/energy I was feeling while executing this. I noticed that certain parts of his body were much more receptive to the energy I was transmitting than other parts of his body.

Earlier, I mentioned how I got the sense that I didn’t belong in this course. I no longer felt anything remotely close to that consciousness; I felt the complete opposite. I had genuinely found something that I truly believe I was meant to do.

I want to heal people. 

While I was working on flowing the energy through his hands, I could tell that there was an energy blockage in this particular micro-chakra. He was resisting my energy, which told me that I needed to spend a little extra time right here, to help him release that energy out of his hands. During this, I had a flash of a memory in my head. It was of me when I was much younger, writing on a piece of paper. The flash happened so quickly; it showed me doodling “I will change the world,” onto a brown piece of construction paper. This memory had been absent from my repertoire of memories up until now, but it was so clear in my head and I instantly remembered this exact moment.

At that very second, I knew I was on the right path. I knew that reiki meant something special to me, and I knew that I wanted to continue healing and passing my energy through as many people as I possible could.

I had found something that meant so damn much to me. 

Once I was finished with the energy healing, I asked him how he was feeling. He brought it to my attention that he was feeling a little light headed, so I performed a technique that I had just learned how to do when a client is feeling light-headed after reiki (apparently, this is pretty common.)

After the light-headedness wore off, he looked at me with his big, bright, brown, eyes. I could see that he had definitely felt something.

“Wow! You are really good at this. Your energy is so powerful.” He said to me.

While jumping up and down ( I am supposed to be remaining cool and calm, but I was pretty stoked,) I shrieked, “No way? Really!?”

The only emotion running through my body was pure bliss. I questioned if he had any unusual sensations or feelings during the reiki session. He stated that at the beginning of the healing process, my hands were as cold as doctors’ hands. But the further I moved into the session, they got warmer and warmer. By the end, they were unusually hot. I also felt this sensation.

Our reiki master had told us earlier that the way people respond to reiki varies for everyone. Some have the ability to actually see the energy, which is so fascinating. Some, myself included, can feel reiki energy physically. This feeling can be interpreted as both hot and cold, it really just depends on the specific person. Some other sensations that I personally feel include: tingly, buzzing, heat, throbbing, swelling, and shaking.

Next, we switched positions and I became to client. The session he performed on me was really moving. Because I had spent an entire day learning about it and channeling my energy, I felt that was more receptive than normal. After the forty-five minute session was completed, an immense feeling of calm overtook me. Instantly, I was very sleepy. But, that could have also had to do with the fact that I had been studying something new all day.

We closed out the course by sharing our personal experiences (and some hugs,) and receiving our certificates.

I was so proud of myself for being able to flow this energy through someone else; it completely inspired me to want to take this beautiful healing form further. I am typically known to always switch up the life path I am on, but I definitely plan to spend a little bit on time following this one. I can’t hardly wait to get my Reiki Level 2 certification in June.

With that being said, if we are ever in the same area and you are wanting some reiki, let a sista know! I am your (certified) gal.