Advice to Novice Reiki Healers:

Five Guidelines to Smooth Your Path

By Wanda Buckner, EdD

You’re ready! You’ve completed Reiki I and II and are excited to offer your skills to family, friends, and clients. May the guidelines below smooth the way as your Reiki practice expands and your journey continues.

Providing Reiki is an honor and sacred trust. People are vulnerable in your presence. They share deep concerns with you. Help your clients be comfortable; be in service to them.

1. Create a safe environment.

   • Have water available.
   • Assure confidentiality of records and information.
   • Be obvious about handwashing and fresh linens.
   • Have a blanket available even when the room is warm.
   • Check to determine if they can comfortably lie on their back during the session. If not, offer alternatives such as lying on their side or sitting in a recliner.
   • Demonstrate hand placements on your body so clients know where touch will occur.  Let them choose whether to have a hands on or hands off treatment or combination.
   • Offer clients an opportunity to use the bathroom before the session begins.
   • Ask if they have any questions before you start. Attention to these details helps clients be comfortable and relaxed during the session.

2. What you offer is enough.

   • You may have doubts that you have the skills to respond to the challenges they present. Set aside your ego. Reiki does the healing, not the practitioner. You will attract the clients you are meant to serve. They will be both your clients and your teachers.
   • After the session, you may be concerned you talked too much or fault yourself for your wandering mind. Consider how the session could have gone better and make adjustments. Self-assess, take classes, and gain insight from your clients and other practitioners. Continue to learn and grow throughout your career.

3. Reiki is not talk therapy.

   • Let clients know they can tell you anything or nothing at all.
   • Avoid getting caught up in the client’s story. Out of respect for the client’s privacy, don’t press for details and record them.
   • Understand clients are releasing their experiences to the universe. Allow the universe to answer them through Reiki. Trust Reiki to respond in the manner and level appropriate to the situation.
   • Healing happens on the table, not during the intake.

4. Refer clients to resources.

   • Reiki is both a stand-alone treatment and a supplement to other interventions. When clients have chronic issues that are not resolved through Reiki, recommend they seek additional resources such as Alcoholics Anonymous, medical doctors, or licensed mental health professionals. Perhaps you suspect diet is the cause of the client’s fatigue, but unless you are trained as a nutritionist, do not give advice, refer to a medical professional. There may be underlying issues, such as pre-diabetes, that need to be addressed along with diet. Stay within your scope of practice.

5. Honor the client’s experience.

   • Avoid building expectations for a particular type of experience or healing during the session. Clients are unique and their responses will be unique. Some will feel the energy working; some will not. Some may hear sound or see color or angelic beings. Some will exhibit physical phenomena, like a leg jerking.
   • The client’s experience on the table is not an indication of whether Reiki is working. One person’s response is not better or more valid than another person’s.
   • Following the session, ask neutral questions, such as. “Would you like to share anything about your session?” Allow silence. Give clients time to integrate their experiences. Leave the interpretation of what happened during the session to them. They are the experts on themselves.

As you build your practice applaud your client’s successes, welcome change, and continue growing. Trust yourself. Trust Reiki.

Providing Reiki is a gift to others and to yourself. Allow your practice to unfold. Withhold judgement, allow change, keep learning. Trust yourself. Trust Reiki. We welcome you to the long, honored line of healers that extends from the far past into the distant future.

Namaste.

You can Contact me at this link or call or text (360) 491-3187