Frequently Asked Questions

Any illness such as psychological or an organic disease can be cured by this method.

Quoted from an interview with the founder of Reiki, Mikao Usui

No. It’s not like a psychological method of treatment or hypnosis or other kind of mental method. There is no need to have a consent or admiration. It doesn’t matter if you doubt, reject or deny it. For example, it is effective to children and very ill people who are not aware of any consciousness, such as a doubt, rejection or denying. There may be one out of ten who believes in my method before a treatment. Most of them learn the benefit after first treatment then they believe in the method.

Quoted from an interview with the founder of Reiki, Mikao Usui

Many people report that Reiki brings effortless quiet and focus to the mind, similar to concentration meditation. However it is possible to do Reiki without focusing your mind.

No. Massage involves pressing and manipulation of muscles and pressure points. In Reiki, the hands of the practitioner are gently rested on the body of the recipient, unmoving. Reiki can also be practiced without touching the body at all.

The initiations trigger release within you. This occurs on every level: spiritual, mental, emotional and physical. You can therefore expect to feel a bit different afterwards, and for changes to accelerate in your life. This could be anything: feelings of peace, elation or sadness as you let go of unneeded emotions; increased physical energy or increased need for sleep as your body adjusts; or changes in your eating and drinking patterns as you let go of unhealthy habits. Since Reiki is balancing for the individual, everyone’s response will be slightly different.

For many people the initiation triggers releases of old blockages that have been held in either the physical, emotional or spiritual bodies. As these blockages get touched by the loving energy of Reiki they soften. The cleansing period is your first phase of reactions to this. Traditionally in Reiki we are taught that this cleansing period lasts for 21 days—the same amount of time that Usui spent on Mount Kuriyama, but it’s more accurate to say that the cleansing continues for as many years as you continue to practice Reiki. However, it’s especially important during the 21 days following the first initiation to give yourself lots of hands-on healing, to drink plenty of pure water, and to look after yourself with extra attention.

Many Reiki teachers separate the master level into two parts: Master-Practitioner and Master-Teacher. These are also called level 3a and level 3b, respectively.

In the Usui Shiki Ryōhō lineage, these courses are generally taught as one combined course.

Please take a look at the preparing for a Reiki Initiation section.

Sure! Take a look at the recommended books page.

Please see the page on initiations.

Short answer: Not with us! If you’re keen to become a Reiki Master as quickly as you can, then the approach taken by the International School of Reiki will not suit you. If you really want to get certified to that level, then the most direct route is to take a free online Reiki Master course, and then download and print your certificate. You can do all of this within just one day for little or no money. But ask yourself, what will you be missing by taking this ‘quick as possible, cheap as possible’ approach to learning the art of Reiki?

Long answer: What are you hoping to gain by getting your Reiki Master certificate? Please think about that for more than a second before continuing to read.

If you answered “I want another certificate for my portfolio” or “I want people to call me a Reiki Master” then here it is again: free online Reiki Master course.

But if you are really going to walk the Way of Reiki then it’s got to be something deeper than that, because learning Reiki is more than just learning a set of techniques.

Let’s begin our enquiry with those techniques. The techniques of Reiki can be demonstrated in video or PDF. But observing a skill and actually becoming competent in that skill are two very different things. How many times do you need to practice a skill before you can say you have mastered it? More than once? And how many times would you need observation and feedback from someone skilled in the art to ensure that you had really got it? More than zero? Right. So even the techniques themselves take time and patience to develop skillfully, and guidance from someone who knows what they are doing.

But as I said, Reiki is more than a set of techniques. It’s a journey of inner transformation, and this journey is going to involve encountering your inner pain. This is not something you can experience by reading a PDF or watching a video. The tears you shed will be real. No-one can tell you how long this journey is going to take, and that’s why the International School of Reiki will not tell you that you can become a Reiki Master in X amount of time.

As you are personally transformed by this journey, you will develop your ability to respond to the needs of others and facilitate them in their own paths of healing. To get to the level of teacher, this is going to involve significant time and dedication. You don’t need me to tell you that this kind of journey takes more than a month, and certainly more than a day. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or hasn’t yet walked the path themselves.

So the question changes from “How quickly can I get my Reiki Master certificate?” to “How can I take the next step in my journey of healing with confidence, knowing that I will have clear and trustworthy guidance at each step?” You can forget about the quickly because if you’re going to become a Master then you will become a Master: you don’t need to worry about when it will happen. It will, and the Universe (G-d) will make this path and its timing clear to you.

So what’s the first step? Either getting a Reiki treatment session, or doing Reiki Level One.

Post-Script: Won’t I get more power from the higher levels?

No you won’t! A common misconception is that at Reiki One you get a little power, Reiki Two more power, and Reiki Masters the most power. If you want more power after that, you can try learning lots of different types of Reiki, each one giving you a power boost.

But how could this be true? If it were true, it would mean that the people with more time and more money would be the greatest healers. The richest people who can fly around the world and get to Master level in all lineages of Reiki would become super-practitioners, chanelling every possible healing vibration at once, while the poorest people who can only afford a single level one course would be very weak healers. This is obviously not the case.

Effective Reiki comes from sincere, regular practice. You can move mountains at level one if your heart is right. You don’t get more power at the higher levels, you simply learn new techniques, find new ways to connect with the energy, and create new opportunities to deepen your healing journey.

There are many lineages, some claiming to give you higher vibrations or certain secrets that are not available to the others. Some people seek attunements from several Reiki Masters in order to resonate with these various energies. In my experience, the spirit of the teacher is more important than the particular Reiki lineage they carry. See who and what you connect to.

You are probably trying too hard. Reiki does not depend on you giving, or trying, or doing anything special at all. Just relax, and don’t worry if nothing happens during the session. (If nothing happens, it’s because the client isn’t ready for anything to happen.) It’s not up to you, it’s up to reiki.

Many Reiki practitioners believe that as they do give Reiki they are topping up the energy levels of the receiver. A bit like topping a car up with petrol. If you let the car drive on too long, it will break down, but if you give it some regular top-up, it will run just fine.

We need to understand the difference between adding energy and energising. When adding energy, like filling a car with petrol, the receiver will always have to keep going back for more, relying on an external source of energy. When energising, it’s different. Imagine a laboratory rat that has been given amphetamines. The amphetamines did not add any energy to the system, just facilitated the burning of existing energy in the system.

The beauty of Reiki is that we are able to energise recipients without giving from our personal store of ki.

If you give your own energy during a healing, you’re trying too hard. You’re also manifesting certain beliefs:

• that the receiver needs you
• that there is not enough energy to go around.

Neither of these beliefs are true. There is plenty of energy to go around, and the practitioner is not the one helping the receiver. Reiki is helping the receiver help himself.

Relax, allow the energy to flow, and let the healing happen without you adding anything.

In one version of the Reiki story Mikao Usui treated people for free:

[Usui] decided after a few days to go to the beggar city in the slums of Kyoto to treat the beggars and help them lead a better way of life. He spent seven years in the asylum treating many illnesses. One day, however he noticed the same old faces kept coming. When he asked why they had not begun a new life, he was told that working was too troublesome, and that it was better to go on begging. Usui was deeply shaken and wept. He suddenly realised that he had forgotten something of great importance in his healing work, namely to teach the beggars gratitude. In the following days, he thought out the Reiki principles…

With the lesson being that Reiki practitioners should not give their time and efforts away without some form of energy exchange. In today’s world, money is the most convenient way of making this exchange, but it can be anything.

The concept of exchange has its roots in three Japanese concepts: giri, okaeshi.

Giri, in this usage, means obligation or indebtedness, and it is a big deal in Japanese culture. Such indebtedness can weigh heavily on the mind, and can even carry a degree of shame.

Okaeshi means ‘a gift in return’, and is the way people free themselves from obligation. Okaeshi can be money, or another service, or any kind of assistance. When it is given, the receiver becomes free from indebtedness, and truly owns the gift. There is no feeling of obligation or guilt.

If you provide someone with a reiki healing session and ask for nothing in return, they will feel unsure about how they are supposed to feel. They will feel unsure next time they do something that might jeopardise the healing: how could they possible go out and get drunk after the beautiful healing you have given them? However when they have given their gift in return (the energy exchange), they are free to own the healing, to make it part of their life, and eventually to realise that they are the master of their own healing journey.

Many healing modalities distinguish between too little energy (kyo in Japanese) and too much energy (jitsu in Japanese). So why in Reiki do we assume that we can just keep giving energy to an area and solve the issue? Don’t we risk giving too much energy to one area that is already overloaded?

Reiki is different to healing techniques such as qi kung or shiatsu because Reiki is not about topping up deficient energy or removing excess energy. Reiki is about transformation.

It is the very beginning of understanding to think of reiki as energy, like electricity, which can be applied to an area that needs a kick-start. As your depth of practice matures, so you will see deeper into the phenomenon of reiki, which is a more subtle practice than that. It connects to the very core of the human (which some call the spirit) and looks for the quickest way for positive change to be affected.

With reiki, hyper-energised areas are transformed into balanced areas, and hypo-energised areas are simultaneously transformed into balanced areas.

If this all seems too simple, it’s because it is. Reiki requires very little intelligence or skill from the giver, just a receptive awareness of where the hands need to be placed now.

Nothing need be added, and nothing need be taken away.

No. It’s relatively common to feel this, and it’s not something you need to change. In fact, you can use it to your advantage. Use your dominant hand for areas that feel they need the most energy, with your non-dominant hand playing more of a support role. For example, you may be giving energy to the head and sense that the healing is becoming intense. You may choose to move away from this area and treat somewhere lower down the body, but what if you want to continue treating the head? Leave your dominant hand there, and place your non-dominant hand on the sacral area. This will help ground the client while allowing you to continue treating the head.

You may also find your non-dominant hand more sensitive when scanning.

When I feel depleted after a healing it is because I am trying too hard. Perhaps I am trying to impress the client with my healing powers, and instead of relying on Reiki I am pushing too hard, and using my personal store of ki.

The solution to this is easy. Relax and let Reiki flow.

For more details on unwanted energy transfer, please see the page on protection.

Please see the page on protection.