Reiki is a Japanese healing system involving the movement of healing energy from the practitioner to the person seeking the healing. It can be used to rid the patient of negative energy which manifests itself as disease and blockages (whether physical, mental, or emotional). There are several different schools of reiki, including the traditional Japanese, the western school, the Tibetan school, and others. The practice involves specific hand positions to get energy to flow toward the area that needs healing. Practitioners also occasionally use what are known as reiki symbols, which can be used to enhance the practitioner’s power of healing visualization. The practitioners work with chakras, which are energy centers located on the body’s midline from the top of the head to the bottom of the spine. Chakras can exist in various degrees of openness, and reiki practitioners seek to open them up to receive more energy.
One of the things that makes reiki different from many other healing systems is its overall accessibility to anyone who wants to learn, provided the students undergo training and initiation. Students of reiki are able to practice it relatively quickly as it does not require years of study. Practitioners are created in the reiki system through the process of attunement.
A reiki attunement involves the permanent transfer of healing energy from the master to his or her student, making the student a reiki practitioner. This transfer of energy is one of the things that makes reiki a unique practice. The attunement is of vital importance because unless a reiki student undergoes one, he or she cannot become a practitioner.
The attunement is conducted like a ceremony. During the attunement, the reiki master will first meditate on the occasion and open up their spiritual selves so that they may be an effective conduit for the healing energy. It is also important during this attunement for the students to open themselves as well. Then the master will walk around the room, stopping at each student’s spot and doing a series of visualizations, silent meditations on the meanings of the reiki symbols, touching of the hands and heart, and blowing healing energy onto the student and into their hands, in order to complete the transfer. All of these activities represent the reiki master unlocking the subconscious of the student to open up their physical body to the source of this valuable energy.
After the attunement, the transferred energy then begins to form patterns around the students from its entrance through the students’ seventh chakras (the one located at the top of the head), and, depending on the level of the attunement, the students will be able to do anything from allow healing to flow from their hands to perform attunements of their own. It is the reiki master’s special initiation of the student that creates a new reiki practitioner. Without going through the process of attunement, the student’s seventh chakra would be blocked from receiving this energy and as a result the energy will fail to flow from them.