The Art of Using Reiki Hand Positions

Anyone who has ever used the Reiki hands positions will tell you they do a magnificent job.

The hand positions work on all of the body’s main energy centres (chakras and the like), as well as the body’s main organs (liver, spleen, kidneys, etc.).

As a result, they facilitate the flow of life-giving Reiki energy to the parts of your body that typically need it most.

What’s more, the sequencing of the hand positions is highly strategic: they not only work on the best parts of the body, they also work on these parts in the optimal order.

Reiki Hand Positions – Where to Begin?

The Reiki hand positions start with the head.

The reason for this is simple: calm the mind and you calm the body.

There is little more frustrating than working on someone whose mind is in hyper-drive, for it will typically make it very hard for them to relax enough to be fully receptive to your healing.

I’m not saying that clients don’t receive any benefits when their minds are whirling about; but it will generally decrease their receptivity and, as a result, the effectiveness of your healing.

But when you calm the mind, you help the body to relax – since it is almost always the mind that is preventing the body from relaxing in the first place.

So, working on the head will calm the mind, which will, in turn, calm the body.

The Argument for Working from Head to Toe

Another simple way to optimize the effectiveness of the hand positions is to work from head to toe.

This often works better than covering all of the positions in a random order because this way, the positions work harmoniously together.

Clearing energy channels from head to toe will better enable your Reiki energy to flow throughout the body, helping you avoid times when it gets restricted to the area of the body you are currently working on.

The importance of this is most clearly seen when you reach the feet (home to many acupressure points).

The feet are energetic gateways to the rest of the body, but energy will only flow from them to the rest of the body if it can do so without getting blocked.

Unfortunately, most people have many energy blocks in their body, so instead of Reiki energy being able to flow, for instance, from the feet to the kidneys, it will get stuck at the knees if energy is blocked there.

By working on the knees before the feet, however, this section of the body will be cleared, enabling energy to happily flow through it.

By covering the entire body before you get to the feet, energy will be able to flow unimpeded throughout the body the moment you give Reiki to the feet.

If you instead jump about with your healing, then your client’s body will often resemblea collection of disconnected islands, with no way for energy to flow between them.

By working in sequence, however, you systematically connect one part of the body to the next, enablinggreater and greater parts of it to energetically communicate.

And the more energy that can flow freely from one part of thebody to the next, the better you and your clients will feel.

Don’t Be Dogmatic!

All that said, the key thing to remember about the Reiki hand positions is never to become dogmatic.

Many Reiki practitioners use them in a ridiculously rigid way, believing that they always need to be used.

This is far from the case!

In fact, the real truth is that the hand positions are actually a ‘crutch’.

They are something to fall back on when you’re struggling to tap into your intuition.

Because intuition will always trump the hand positions.

Always.

Intuition deals with specifics, while hand positions deal with generalities.

Intuition looks at the specific needs of the client in front of you, while the hand positions deal with the typical needs of an average client.

Looking at things in this light, it is clear that effective use of intuition will always give you a more precise healing than one relying solely on the hand positions.

In practice, this means that you should always obey your intuition when it speaks to you during a healing, but if it is quiet, you simply default back to your hand positions.

In that way, you get the best of all worlds.

You are guided by intuitive inspiration when it occurs, but also have something to fall back on when you can’t hear your intuition.

What’s more, because you know you always have something to fall back on should your intuition fail you, you can relax during a healing session and, as a result, will find it easier to access your intuition.

Conclusion

The art of healing is to remain flexible.

Open yourself up to intuitive guidance and follow it each and every time it comes to you.

But if such guidance doesn’t come, no problem. Simply revert back to your fixed hand positions, knowing that they will always do an excellent job.

As a rule, your intuition will improve the more you practice Reiki, but there is no rush.

Reiki energy is pretty good at going where required without you doing anything to help it, so you are best served to simply relax when healing and be happy with whatever guidance comes to you.

Hands positions are great. Intuition is great.

So when you think about it, you really can’t lose :)

PS If you practice Chi Activation, you can happily use the Reiki hand positions as outlined in this article. Use them until your intuition suggests something better!