Reiki Articles

How to Cure Chronic Issues with Reiki

Most Reiki practitioners have no trouble curing acute issues (be they physical, psychological or emotional). A headache, the flu, emotional shock - these things can often be healed with just one Reiki treatment.

Where it gets difficult is with chronic issues. These are the things that have troubled us for a long time, and as such have dug themselves deeper into our 'cellular memory'.

In simple terms, this means that we have come to accept their long term place in our body (or being), thus making it harder to get rid of them.

Cancer, weight problems, deep emotional hurt - all of these things can insinuate themselves so deeply into our thought patterns that we feel we can never get rid of them.

The Problem with Traditional Reiki

The reason traditional Reiki practice often struggles to solve chronic issues is that it is not targeted enough.

To make this clear, let's take the example of a long-standing emotional hurt that occurred, say, when your partner left you for another person.

Let's imagine that this event happened a year ago, but you still haven't emotionally got over it. Sometimes you might forget about it - sure - but little things continue to trigger the pain, so you know you haven't healed.

What to do?

The general Reiki approach would probably just be to give yourself a full body treatment (or, more likely, many) and hope for the best.

This may work; but if it does it will usually only be after considerable effort.

The reason for this is that while the Reiki energy is most certainly doing something, it might nevertheless find it difficult to target the issue you want healed.

The reason for this is made obvious if we imagine someone coming to you for help with a sprained ankle. It's pretty clear that the best way to fix it with Reiki would be to treat - you guessed it - the ankle.

You wouldn't tell the person to lie down and then spend 95% of your session working on his head or chest. It just wouldn't make sense.

And yet that is precisely what we do with most ('non-targeted') issues. We heal around the issue in the hope that some of the healing will eventually filter through to the site of our actual problem.

But wouldn't it be simpler just to heal the problem directly? And if so, how can we do it?

Getting to the Root Cause of Our Issue

Let's return to the example of your partner leaving you for another person. Time hasn't healed the pain; general Reiki hasn't appeared to help; what can you do?

The approach I recommend involves a three-step healing process. You can actually apply it successfully without Reiki; but if you have been attuned it will be more powerful if you Reiki your 2nd chakra while following each of the steps.

Since the 2nd chakra (otherwise known as the hara) is the energy centre of the body, giving it Reiki (while directly targeting the issue with the steps outlined below) will not only replenish energetically depleted areas, it will also help to rebalance you on a physical and emotional level.

(Note: the 2nd chakra is located a few centimetres below the belly button) .

Step 1. Target the Issue

This step involves summoning up the feelings associated with the break-up and then working with them.

In other words: do whatever you need to do to feel the pain; pinpoint it to a certain part (or parts) of your body; open yourself up to the feeling.

To understand this process you need to realize that feelings associated with an issue can always be experienced in the body.

If you look within, for instance, you might find that thinking about the break-up causes a tightening in the heart region or perhaps a pain in the stomach.

The sensations caused might just be tingling or heat or any other of a thousand different things - the particulars don't matter. What matters is that you locate an area in your body that is associated with your pain and then open up to it.

Opening up to Pain

To open up to your pain you need to override your default mode of behavior which is to flee from it.

This happens when you try to push your pain away, repress or defend yourself against it.

None of these approaches work, because while you may be able to successfully push an issue away for the short term, that doesn't mean that you have got rid of it. Far from it.

Instead, what you have most likely done is simply pushed your pain into your unconscious mind. This is unfortunate, since it thus becomes impossible to track - and that makes it dangerous.

It can resurface and attack you when you are least expecting it; it can manipulate your thoughts, feelings and actions from behind the scenes.

And since it is invisible to you, you will have no way of controlling what it does. This is a highly regrettable situation to be in.

Fortunately, the solution is a simple one: Stop repressing things that bother you. Instead, you need to do the exact opposite and bring them out into the light.

You need to open yourself up to your problems - feel them as deeply as possible.

Don't Fight - Just Observe

The most important thing to remember when opening up to pain is that you must never fight it. Opening up means feeling the pain - and observing it.

You are not trying to get rid of your pain. You are not trying to dissolve or overcome it. You are not trying to do anything. You are just watching and feeling it and waiting to see what happens.

If you can just sit with your pain you will most likely discover an amazing secret - it will dissolve and go away, even without you doing a thing.

But if you fight it; if you actively try to manipulate this level in the healing process, you will actually only 'fuel the fire'. You will give energy and attention to the 'problem' and that will merely cause it to grow larger.

Step 2. Visualization

One of the reasons chronic issues are so difficult to deal with is that we end up believing in their absolute reality. If our partner leaves us, we believe that we have been irrevocably hurt by him or her.

If we are overweight we believe that is simply the way it is.

If we have skin problems we resign ourselves to most likely always having them.

Yet it doesn't need to be like this. We can change the situation.

But to do so we need to start reconditioning our belief patterns. We need to start imagining that our situation could be otherwise. We need to start to feel what it would be like for our situation to change - for us to be happy and healed.

The way to do this is to stop concentrating on the 'problem' and instead put our attention on the 'healed state'.

In other words, imagine ourselves healed.

We need to visualize our healed state and experience the associated feelings of happiness this gives us.

Do this several times every day; replace any negative thoughts and images about our issue with ones of health and happiness; and healing cannot help but occur.

If we stop feeding our illness with our beliefs then it cannot survive.

Step 3. Love Yourself

Most illness is associated with a lack of self love. In many cases this involves guilt; at other times a lack of self worth. Whatever the case may be, negative feelings about ourselves attract negative results.

What we therefore need to do is reverse the process. Instead of having negative thoughts and feelings about ourselves that lead to negative results (both physical and emotional), we need to have positive thoughts about ourselves that lead to positive results.

To do so it can help to make positive affirmations like: 'I am lovable', 'I accept myself exactly as I am' and 'I approve of myself'.

We can use the above affirmations or think of our own - it doesn't matter. The trick is simply to try to feel the truth in them. At first this might seem difficult - or even a lie. But if we persist, in time we will come to believe what we are affirming.

And with that belief will come a new reality that validates the belief!

Conclusion

No one can say if and when a chronic issue will be healed. If we follow the above steps, however, chances are high that we will not only get much better results than we would if we followed traditional 'non-targeted' Reiki, but also that our health (on all levels) will soon be restored.

(Jeremy O'Carroll)

Reiki and the Power of Ritual

Many people have an aversion to ritual in spirituality.

I certainly did.

To me it was always associated with dogma and unthinking religion. The kind where people were obliged to bow down before teachers and statues and incense without knowing why they were doing it - and how it could benefit them.

Anyone who has travelled much in the East (or to most local churches, for that matter), has seen an abundance of rituals that appear devoid of any inner significance.

But it doesn't need to be like that.

Rituals can actually be a powerful tool. A tool for helping you access deep inner states without needing to spend lengthy amounts of time 'getting into the zone'.

They are a bit like the bell in Pavlov's experiment with the dog. The bell just needed to ring for the dog to start salivating - so conditioned it was to receiving food immediately after the bell went off.

You can use rituals like the bell to generate focus (or energy flow) almost immediately.

To do so, you simply need to do something repeatedly - like 'dry bathing' (kenyoku ho), or placing your hands together in a prayer position and focusing - right before you hope for the desired effect.

This 'ritual' will then serve as a trigger to active the required inner state. Done often enough it will prove a large time saver.

Some people also use a 'sacred' place to achieve the same result. To do so they simply use a place exclusively for, say, meditation or healing.

The brain then sees this spot and immediately understands that it needs to get into the right state.

If you wish, you can further enhance this by always doing an activity - like meditation or Reiki - at the same time. This works as a kind of conditioning - like sending small kids to bed. At first they object, but after a while the pattern sets in and they trot off to sleep with few objections (at least relatively speaking!). Likewise the mind learns to settle down on cue.

Naturally, you can use all three methods (a repeated action, place and time) to get the fullest effect.

If you are struggling to calm the mind and focus during your healing or meditation sessions, then ritual might just be the tool you need.

Good luck experimenting.

(Jeremy O'Carroll)

Why Your Reiki Might Be Stalling

Imagine you want to cook up a nice vegetable stew. You gather your ingredients: some potatoes, carrots, zucchini, pumpkin, onion, garlic, chick peas, salt, pepper, olive oil and water. You throw them all in a pot together and stew them for thirty minutes.

The result?

Hard chick peas, mushy zucchini - and everything else somewhere in between.

So what went wrong?

Structure.

Sequence.

To get a dish right you need to put everything in at the right time. First you soak the chick peas, then you fry the onion and garlic, then you add the water, then the chick peas, the potatoes, the carrots and on and on all the way down to the zucchini.

That way everything will be cooked just right.

Now imagine throwing in nine potatoes, twenty cloves of garlic, a quarter of a pumpkin, 100 grams of salt and only a little of everything else.

How tasty would that be?

Not very.

So not only do you need to get the sequence right, you also need to get the quantity right.

And Reiki is the same.

Most courses and methods fail because while the individual components taught are all valuable, they don't fit properly together.

There is no system or structure and, as a result, there is no cohesion.

So if you want to get the most out of Reiki, you need to ensure two things:

You learn a system that is coherent.
You practice that system in a coherent manner.

There is no point learning a coherent system if you then simply practise whatever you want in a random order. That certainly won't get optimum results.

Why the Huge Majority of Reiki Systems Fail

There is a simple historical explanation for why most Reiki courses (systems) taught today are not coherent: they have come down from a Western lineage (i.e. from Mrs Takata's) which, over the years, has had many additions made to it - in particular from Indian / Tibetan spiritual traditions.

Now, don't get me wrong: there is nothing wrong with the practices that have been added to the Reiki system. In general they are powerful techniques - that is why teachers have included them.

Unfortunately, however, a champion team will generally beat a team of champions. The team that works together gets the best results.

In a Reiki context this means you'd be advised to learn a system where each piece complements the other; where each piece builds on the one before it.

If you learn a system like this you will naturally make progress. If, instead, you learn a bunch of disparate techniques then you will generally get the feeling you just aren't quite making the progress you would like.

I learnt this the hard way as I originally studied Western Reiki systems that were not coherent. This led to a long period of slightly aimless practice. It was only once I came into contact with the classical Japanese Reiki tradition that I saw and experienced a complete system that was coherent.

A system where all the pieces worked together.

The Classical Japanese Reiki System

It is often a case that your weakness is your strength - and vice versa. The Japanese can frustrate you for their near pathological dislike of questioning their teachers on 'how things are done' - a problem that inhibits growth and innovation (here, naturally, we are only talking about the spiritual realm).

The flipside of this, however, is that they can maintain the purity of a tradition for centuries - even longer.

In the case of Reiki it meant that when it was 'rediscovered' in Japan in the 1990s, it still existed in something close to its earliest form.

And this form was structured and coherent.

It was built around the 'five diamonds' (or 'pillars' as I call them) - attunements, meditation, healing, mantras and symbols, and the Reiki precepts - and all of these 'diamonds' fitted together perfectly (for a more detailed look on this, please see my article, 'The Five Building Blocks of Traditional Japanese Reiki').

The trick for modern day practitioners of this system, therefore, is simply to spend time on all of these components (note: mantras and symbols only come into play for level 2 practitioners).

Don't just work on the healing aspect of Reiki, because if you do you will be missing out on much of the system and, ultimately, it will be your healing that will suffer.

Healing is greatly strengthened by the other four 'diamonds'.

How to Practice

All participants of my courses get a 21-day e-program with each Reiki level. This is a great place to begin your practice as it will help you develop all of the components of the classical Reiki system.

After that I recommend that you contact me for advice on taking the next step. In many cases this will simply be to do 'more of the same'. Keep working on the techniques covered in the e-program and go more deeply into them.

What you will then discover is that the Japanese tendency to have fewer, rather than more techniques, is very profound. It enables you to touch their essence and, as a result, taste their nectar.

Not surprisingly, Japanese Reiki techniques can generally be studied for years without you ever feeling you have mastered them.

You are always journeying more deeply into them. You are always learning more.

And if you don't introduce too many foreign elements into the system, if you practice all five diamonds, then your balance will generally be right too. It won't be a case of too much 'salt' or too much 'garlic'.

You will develop all of the core strengths needed to make Reiki progress and that, ultimately, will greatly accelerate your growth.

Conclusion

If you want to get great Reiki results, be systematic with your practice. Practice all five 'diamonds' and try to do a little practice every day.

If you do this you will find that consistency builds momentum, and momentum leads to breakthroughs.

(Note on innovation: I would never encourage people to be dogmatic. In fact, everyone should experiment with new things. I myself teach things - like the chakras - they were not part of the original Reiki system. The trick is first, not to neglect the 'diamonds', and second, to only make changes and add things once you have firm grasp of the original system. Otherwise you will be making changes before you have truly tasted the wisdom of the original system.)

(Jeremy O'Carroll)

The 4th Reiki Principle (Ignore this if you want to be miserable)

Henry David Thoreau once wrote that 'the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation'.

Sad but true.

How many people are trapped in lives they don't like, in jobs that deaden them?

Of course, it isn't a simple thing to change the inner quality of your life; but your job?

That's a simple 'yes / no' equation.

Either you keep doing your job - even if you hate it - or you do something different.

Two possibilities - the correct answer to which is crucial.

Because think about it: how much time do we spend in work related activities? How much time do we spend preparing for work, getting to work and thinking about work?

So unless we want to be miserable, it's not good enough to just float along, to nod resignedly and say that 'at least it's a job, that at least it pays the bills.' Because this is the majority of our daylight hours that we are talking about. The cream of our life.

And that's why the 4th Reiki Precept - 'Be honest in your work' - is so important.

Not because it tells us to be fair with people when earning our livelihood. Not because it tells us not to cheat them as we go about making our money. But because it instructs us - amongst other things - to be honest with ourselves. It instructs us to find a job that is in harmony with who we truly are; a job that resonates with the deepest part of our being.

Because anything else is being dishonest in our work.

It is dishonest to who we are. To our essence.

So unless we want to be like the masses who lead lives of quiet desperation, then we had better spend some time pondering the question: What type of job would resonate with who I truly am? What sort of job would make my heart sing every time I went to work?

Because surely this is one of the most important questions we can ever ask.

And if that is so, it deserves our full attention. Indeed, it is not good enough to shrug our shoulders and say we wished we were like Jo Schmo who just 'knew what he wanted to do with his life'.

No, if we don't know, we need to do whatever is necessary to find out. We need to invest our time. We need to dig to the core of our being to get to the answer.

For if we don't do that, if we just drift along in a job that is only so-so, then we are growing weaker by the day. We are sending a message to our unconscious that not-good-enough is the best we can hope for. We are prostituting our life to security.

So if you are feeling discontent; if you are feeling trapped; then get thinking.

Yes, it might take time and effort to transition over to something you would prefer to do. Yes, it might be a risk.

But isn't it worth a shot?

(Jeremy O'Carroll)

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