In 2007, Jeremy O’Carroll had a thought: What if he could turn his love of Reiki and meditation into a full-time job?
Since the early 90s, meditation and – some years later – Reiki, had become his burning passion, but it was only in 2007 that the question bubbled up into his conscious mind.
Because how good would it be to make a living simply doing more of what he already did in his free time?
Perhaps a more prudent soul might have tiptoed into things. Perhaps a more careful soul might have pushed the thought away and resigned himself to a regular job. But Jeremy had a passion and he wanted to live it – not just for a couple of hours every day, but all day every day.
So throwing conservative jobs to the wind, he founded Om Reiki and, perhaps because he was living his calling, was soon able to make a living and support his family by doing what he loved.
That said, Jeremy did learn on the job and, over time, the way he taught changed a lot.
You see, initially, he did what almost all of us do: he taught Reiki in a similar way to how he had been taught.
This way worked well, sure, but he still had the nagging feeling things could be improved.
The feeling caused him to reevaluate everything he did and, from what he learned, he created a new system – one that took his students results to an entirely new level.
Perhaps it was Jeremy’s background in teaching (among other things, he had both lectured and tutored previously at the University of Melbourne). Perhaps it was his attention to detail and drive to create the best courses possible. Whatever it was, Jeremy soon realized that while teaching the way everyone else taught worked well enough – particularly for the ultra-dedicated students – it wasn’t ideal for the majority of people, especially those who led busy lives.
These students needed more support than a simple 2-day course provided, and they needed a tighter system and structure to ensure the original Reiki teachings could be fully appreciated and implemented.
The thing is, in many ways, Reiki’s strength is actually its weakness. It is brilliant because you can learn level 1 (and, as a result, do Reiki) in a single weekend. But if there is no follow-up after the course, then it is easy – no matter how enjoyable and fulfilling it was – for the ‘busyness’ of everyday life to ultimately consume you until, bit-by-bit, just like the gym membership, you end up letting go of your practice.
With the proper post-course support, however, Reiki becomes both something you feel confident using and a deeply entrenched habit.
It is something your body loves to receive. Something you look forward to doing. Something that brightens your entire day. As such, it is also something you find time for – even when you are run-off-your-feet busy. In fact, it something you turn to especially when you are run-off-your-feet busy!
It is for this reason that Jeremy created 21-day post-course programs for all of his courses, and it is also why he created his unique video and articles learning portals for each Reiki level.
These created a step-by-step path which, thanks to all of the written material and video instructions – made it dead simple for students to take everything they learned in a course and confidently put it into practice.
Later on, in a bid to improve his system still further, Jeremy also added a pre-course program to his courses. The idea here was to energetically prepare students for the course to ensure they got the maximum from it.
One reason Jeremy worked so hard on his supplementary materials was because he witnessed too many teachers and Reiki schools only doing things in a half-hearted way.
It seems shocking, but many Reiki teachers today are not fully ‘invested’ in Reiki. Instead, they are really yoga teachers or massage therapists or kinesiologists, etc. who, once upon a time, learned Reiki and now, from time to time, dabble in teaching it.
As a result, their courses tend to lack coherency and rigor and, very often, have scant materials and follow-up to go with them.
Not surprisingly, even though these courses are still typically enjoyable, they create students who, too often, give up their practice when life gets hectic.
It is for this reason that Jeremy decided that he would only ever hire Reiki teachers and healers who are dedicated Reiki practitioners. Sure, they could also study other things – in fact this can even help their Reiki – but they needed to practise Reiki daily on themselves. It needed to be part of their life.
This adds a layer of authenticity to what they teach, and it means they have a far richer collection of personal experiences to share with their students.
This ‘authenticity’ carries with it a certain energetic quality that means students relate better to everything they learn.
Another thing that Jeremy came to appreciate – having taught Reiki for a few years – was the coherency of the original Traditional Japanese Reiki system.
He already knew that it was powerful from personal experience. But with more practice and more students, he came to fully understand how all of the different parts of the original Reiki system fit together to create a beautiful and powerful whole.
This, unfortunately, is something that most students miss out on, and something even Jeremy missed out on when he first learned Reiki.
The sad reason for this is that most Reiki teachers practice and teach a confused, hodgepodge of healing techniques – many of which have nothing to do even remotely with Reiki!
These techniques are not bad techniques (indeed many are powerful!), it’s just that they don’t complement each other. As a result, you can’t fully appreciate the healing ‘progression’ that is built into the original system, and you can’t fully master many of the more advanced Reiki techniques because they are built on the back of many others which get edited out of most courses to make room for fancy, non-Reiki-related techniques.
That said, times change, and things that weren’t known or fully understood back in the 1920s when Usui, the founder of Reiki, created his system, have come to light.
As a result, you never want to be rigid and dogmatic. If modern technology or a more modern understanding of the body’s energy system are useful, we should use them. It is just that we need to be careful to keep the integrity of the original system intact.
Jeremy’s solution to balancing old and new was simply to teach all of the Traditional Japanese Reiki techniques but then, where appropriate, carefully include additional information that can help students go deeper into the traditional techniques.
One example of this is Jeremy’s use of an aura machine in his courses. This helps students learn more about their energetic configuration and well-being, so it is a useful addition even if such things didn’t exist in Usui’s time.
Discussing the chakras (the body’s main energy centres) is another good example.
In Usui’s day, they didn’t use a chakra based energy system. Instead, they focused on just three energy centres (what some people would relate to the 2nd, 4th and 6th chakras).
Since the chakras are useful for better understanding our body’s energetic anatomy, however, Jeremy will discuss the chakras and how an understanding of them helps our healing.
This might not be Traditional Japanese Reiki, but it nevertheless helps students practice Traditionall Japanese Reiki more powerfully.
Another thing that Jeremy learned as he continued to teach is the value of making Reiki – and your entire spiritual practice – something that permeates your entire day, not just the half hour or hour that you practice it.
To make this possible, he created a system that highlighted the many diverse ways Reiki can be practiced, ways that go far beyond shutting your eyes and meditating in a silent room!
Similarly, Jeremy wanted Reiki to become something for everyday people, not just those who are unusually gifted in spiritual things.
To do so, he worked hard to remove all of the unnecessary mysticism and New Age mumbo-jumbo.
He believed that even abstract spiritual ideas could be conveyed in everyday terms – terms that made sense both on a logical and gut level.
This approach worked and, over time, more and more people from all walks of life started attending Om Reiki courses.
Bankers, nurses, builders, mums, dads, people suffering from depression and stress and physical injuries – they all joined the many energetically sensitive souls who were once the only ones who showed up for a course like this.
Ultimately, it became clear that everyone has healing talent, it is just that the myth that you have to be someone ‘special’ to be a healer has prevented many people from giving healing and energy work a shot.
Om Reiki was born in Daylesford (Victoria, Australia) and, at its first course only two people showed up (and one of them was a friend Jeremy convinced to attend for free to pad out the numbers!). Now, almost 11 years since he founded the Om Reiki Centre, it has grown to the point that it has taught thousands of students to heal both themselves and others.
The Om Reiki Centre has also trained over 150 Reiki Masters, many of whom now work professionally.
From Daylesford, Om Reiki expanded to Melbourne, and it is about to take the next big leap and start conducting courses first in Sydney and then, later on in 2019, around other major Australian cities.
Jeremy has always hoped to help create a critical, positive, mass-energy movement and, teaching people Reiki is an amazing way to achieve this goal.
Teach one person to heal and they go on to heal friends, family and acquaintances.
Teach someone to teach and the positive reverberations are near endless.
If enough people shift their personal energy, and if enough of them help to shift the energy of their city, country and planet, then person by person, true change can happen.
This is change that doesn’t depend on who is in political power, change that doesn’t depend on any external force. It is people driven and, if enough individuals change, everything will change.
This is Om Reiki’s mission – to change the energy of enough people to impact the way our entire society thinks, behaves and connects with each other.
We hope that you can be part of the movement!
If you read the above history of the Om Reiki centre, you'll no doubt have a feel for Jeremy and his approach to Reiki. If you want a few more facts about him, however, read on...
Jeremy is a traditional Usui / Shamballa Reiki Master who has received Master Level training from five different Reiki Masters.
He has studied Reiki in India, Thailand, Australia and the United States of America. His teachers include Japanese Reiki expert Frans Stiene, William Lee Rand (founder of the International Center for Reiki Training), arguably the world's most famous Reiki expert and Indian Reiki 'Grand Master' Usha Dobhal.
He has also studied his Karuna Reiki Master Level - a Reiki level for pre-existing Reiki Masters - with respected teachers Laurelle Shanti Gaia and Michael Baird in Sedona, USA.
He is a Teacher member with the ARC - Australia's leading Reiki association - and the Australian Association of Reiki Professionals. This guarantees that his Reiki lineage goes back to the founder of Reiki, Mikao Usui.
Jeremy is also the founder of the Om Meditation Centre, the creator of the CBM (Core / Body / Mind) Meditation technique, a level 3 Pellowah practitioner, and founder of the Melbourne Pellowah Centre.
Apart from Reiki, Jeremy has studied many other healing systems, including Light Dynamics, the healing codes and chakra balancing, and he has regularly travelled around the world to study with renowned teachers like Brendon Burchard, Jack Canfield and Tony Robbins.
Jeremy is now well known in his own right, in particular for his 100+ articles on Reiki and meditation, his Reiki book 'The Perfect Reiki Course - Everything You Need to Know Before Your First Class', and his two novels: Full Speed and the soon to be released 'Call of the Silver Cockatoo'.
Before founding the Om Reiki Centre in Daylesford (Victoria), Australia, he spent many years travelling through Europe, South East Asia and the Sub Continent.
In total, he has visited over 25 countries, all of which taught him something in his quest to understand more about human nature.
Jeremy has gained invaluable experience as a teacher, first at the University of Melbourne, where he both tutored and lectured, then around Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand where he trained teachers in the Fitzroy Method of learning English.
For the past 20+ years his primary focus has been first on meditation and then Reiki, and he has studied both in India, Nepal, Thailand and many other countries. He is now a much praised Reiki teacher with a passion for bringing clarity, logic and intuition to an art that often gets trapped in unsubstantiated theory and dogma.
Reiki is his passion and he is committed to giving the best possible energy work possible.
Over the last few years he has seen Reiki do amazing things and knows it can heal and energize people on many levels.
Little known fact: As a teenager, Jeremy represented Australia in chess.
Reiki Master Greg Riddell has been involved in Reiki since 2003 and has studied extensively in both Western and Japanese styles of Reiki - most recently completing the Shinpiden level with Frans Steine. He has a deep passionate for Reiki and is committed both to his personal practice and the healing of others.
Greg is also a level 3 Pellowah Healing Practitioner and a university-trained musician. He writes healing music and has released 2 albums to date, “Reiki Music” and “Journeys”.
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