Finding Healing Through the Lens of Reiki
In class I tell Reiki’s history - the discovery and development of Usui Shiki Ryoho. I connect my students to the experiences of our lineage to understand how the Grandmasters, and in turn how they have come to find themselves called to Reiki practice. And we share how Reiki has presented in these experiences for healing.
With the great gift given to us in Reiki and our gratitude to those gone before, it’s easy to idolize the Hero’s Journey of each of our teachers. Indeed, they were all extraordinary. I tell students about the remarkably intelligent & curious Mikao Usui whose persistence & dedication took him around the world to find healing. And, I talk about Hawayo Takata, the country girl who turned her lessons into a global phenomenon. Reiki calls us all in amazing ways, down our spiritual lineage, and each of us individually.
Recently, I’ve been reflecting on the suffering – the fear, the worry & the pain – that is part of this calling and what healing really entails. What caused Usui - with a wife & children at home - to embark on a global trek when travel was so time-consuming, expensive, and cumbersome? And, with the loss of her husband at 29, single mom Takata’s body was failing her in a myriad of ways. Without suffering, people will not change.
As a practitioner, I try to meet my clients and students in their suffering so they too can find health. But, our modern ideas of healing are also idealized. In fact, a student once asked in class, “If Usui had Reiki, then why did he die?”
When someone comes for Reiki perhaps after a traumatic event or a devastating diagnosis, I encourage them to see this pain as the healing. When they can, inevitably the healing ensues. Time and again, I’ve heard the grieving widow say, “I would do anything to have my husband back, but I didn’t know my own strength until now” and the battered wife say, “Without this, I wouldn’t have seen my own worth and I will demand it from now on.”
And, though it sounds odd, I ask my cancer fighters if they think, “Perhaps cancer is the healing?” I’ve seen the disease force its sufferers to change their lives radically and surrender to the unknown. Palpably, Reiki treatment helps them sleep better, eases nausea and calms minds, and with that the healing possibilities multiply. But, healing may not come in remission but in realizing untapped inner strength, recognizing & accepting support around them, enhancing love and human connection, and finding gratitude in what a terrifying journey brings.
In my experience, Reiki’s healing has given me the opportunity to fully experience life – which is and always will be a mixture of pain and ease, happiness and sadness, stress and joy, comfort and fear. Reiki allows me to sit calmly in the present with full awareness of the past and all the possible futures to find and allow the healing.
