Reiki Help Blog

Shoden / Level I Reiki Training

at Florida Atlantic University’s

Christine E. Lynn’s College of Nursing,

Boca Raton, Florida

2-Day Training

Saturday, Sept 20 & Sunday, Sept 21
10 AM—5 PM

College of Nursing room 116

Presented by Pamir Kiciman, BA, RM, CHt

This foundational training offers specific techniques for tapping into spiritual and healing consciousness and energy. Reiki fosters spiritual evolution, bodily and mental/emotional health; has uses for food, water, environment, relationships and work. Reiki holistically augments care giving, enhanced learning, social projects, global thinking, animal and pet care.

Training Summary

• Hikari no Kokyu-ho: method for breathing in Light
• Gassho Kokyu-ho: method for breathing Light through hands
• Kenyoku-ho: method for personal energy cleansing
• Self-Treatment / Reiki for Others
• Additional uses: pets, plants, home, work; mental, emotional, spiritual healing
• Nentatsu-ho: method for healing the subconscious
• Jakikiri Joka-ho: method for purifying the energy in objects

and much more…

Prepaid reservations required, space is limited
Registration closes one week prior to training
Everyone must be registered by then

954-661-HAND (4263) or info{at}reikihelp{dot}com for details

Related:
Anatomy of a Reiki Training: A poetic rendering in text and slideshow.

This is dedicated to my mother, a good friend, and my paternal grandparents for whom I was woefully unavailable, as well as all caregivers.

___________________________________________________________________

Are you the caregiver for a dependent? Does it feel unrewarding? Is it burdensome?

Well, take a load off. It wouldn’t be caregiving if it was all fun and games. You’re not a robot. Sometimes, perhaps often it’s not going to feel good. At all. Ease up and be good to yourself. It is a great and arduous service.

Here are four qualities to cultivate as you navigate this experience:

• Compassion
• Detachment
• Recognition
• The long view

Compassion

Compassion is a selfless form of passion, a self-indulgent emotion transformed by wisdom into empathy for the suffering of others. The emotional energy of compassion is every bit as potent as ordinary passion, but rather than scattering energy and disrupting equanimity with bouts of unrestrained emotion, compassion focuses energy and motivates intent to apply one’s wisdom and other resources towards helping people.

–Daniel Reid

Compassion is an essential life quality. If it can help the Dalai Lama keep his equanimity, it can help you. When compassion becomes an anchored part of your being, your human heart becomes greater. It is no longer so little and fragile. There is this grid that becomes available, like steel rebars that support concrete buildings. Except this steel is steely without losing feeling; strong without being harsh; immaterial but so very present; long lasting without loss of meaning.

Compassion makes the heart sacred and it is from there that you serve, not from your personal heart. Compassion is the extra hand to carry, ear to listen, pep to finish, patience to linger, forgiveness to smile, and surplus kindness.

And it isn’t only for the other. It is for both of you. Compassion is available to you and you are in as much need of it as your dependent. Compassion doesn’t separate and classify. There isn’t any hierarchy in it. Compassion isn’t allocated by approval, you don’t have to qualify.

You do have to make yourself available to it.

Detachment

Learn to detach…Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent…But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate fully. That’s how you are able to leave it… Take any emotion–love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions–if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them–you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that love entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.’

–Mitch Albom

Detachment is a place of self-control and objectivity. It is the starting place of the long view. When detached your goat is ungettable! Your buttons are unavailable and you protect yourself. There’s fluidity of motion and action and patience is effortless. Detachment allows service to come through you, rather than from you.

Caregiving is a series of tasks, on one level. These tasks may become tiresome and put pressure on your time and energy. Yet the tasks are unavoidable. When approached with resentment, dread, inattention and emotional escalation, you’re tired and unavailable from the get-go.

Detachment creates spaciousness in heart and mind, and powers your limbs for the tasks at hand.

Recognition

I wasn’t able to find an appropriate quote for what I want to say here, so this one is mine:

Recognize that everything that rubs you the wrong way about your dependent is an unhealed part in them expressing itself, crying out for help, looking to be recognized and loved, to be heard and held, to be made whole however desperately.

Recognition is to see the person behind the dependency. More, to see the soul behind the person. Recognition is to not equate the person with their suffering. Suffering is part of the person, but it is not the person. It is something they are going through and they are in fear. So are you probably.

When you recognize what is actually happening, your buttons are again unavailable, your goat is happily bleating and there is more spaciousness. The way your dependent makes you feel is not personal. It is about them and it simply is. You must let their behavior bounce off of you, for they can’t help it.

The other side of recognition is to be very aware of your own resources and limits. Like compassion, recognition works both ways. Where do you stop and the other person begins? You may be a caregiver, but you retain autonomy and the two of you haven’t merged.

Recognize not only your limits but also your own needs. Endlessly giving doesn’t work for either party, quality care suffers and so do you. This requires a promise. A promise you keep and act upon. It is simple but you must be resolute. If you need a fill-in, be resolute about that too.

The long view

Kalpa: An exceptionally-long (but varying) period of time in Hindu and Buddhist thought.

Every 100 years, a bird flies over the summit of Mount Sumeru and, in so doing, brushes the pinnacle with a red silk scarf held in its beak. A kalpa is the period of time it takes to wear the mountain down to nothing by this activity.

No, that is not how long you have to give care! It is only a lens to help you get perspective. The burden of care you’re giving is circumscribed in the temporal. There is much more to reality than the temporal.

Service is merit and merit is spiritual currency you want to have as you navigate eternity.

Not only that, but when you serve meritoriously it gives the served an opportunity to grow and evolve too. This may be very hidden and completely unobservable, but do not despair. Practicing awareness enhancers such as compassion, detachment and recognition creates a crucible of heart energies and thoughts for personal growth and spiritual development to take place, even if the other person is not actively engaged.

Furthermore, the way you view the person you care for, how you approach and interact determines greatly what responses and reactions you receive. If you think they are cranky and demanding, then that’s what they will be. You get what you expect. One way to avoid this is to expect something different. Envision and affirm more productive and cooperative behavior and interaction.

Hold this person in a new light, the light of possibilities. They may be entrenched in their patterns and misery, but you can trust that they would rather not be. They would rather have dignity returned and show appreciation, share a smile and a warm look.

Create the space of sacred heart for mutual acknowledgment, trust and solidarity. You’re in it together and the sooner you surrender power struggles, the more rewards there will be. This may include you neutralizing any power plays coming from the person in need of your care. Yes, it seems like you have to do all the work, all the inner work, and all the outer work. Yet, right there a gate opens to a garden where the sun shines and the beauty of flowers is available equally to both of you.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

– Kahlil Gibran

Exactly one week ago, Oasis Reiki (yours truly) and several practitioners I’ve trained shared Reiki at Barry University’s Health Fair, in Miami Shores Florida. The fair was put on by the Division of Nursing.

Our booth was very popular with a constant stream of people all day. Demand was so high that at times it felt like having a few more hands would’ve been extremely helpful. There were five of us there and most of the day we had to seamlessly continue with the next person.

The only real break we got was when the whole fair had lunch. Even then we talked about Reiki and I answered some questions that puzzled practitioners.

It was interesting that before lunch things were a little chaotic insofar as organizing recipients, sticking to first come first served, and crowd patience wasn’t always available.

After lunch, the wait became self-organized! People signed in of their own accord and waited in proper order by the table given us.

This was the influence of the divine energy of Reiki, building up through the morning and really filling our corner, spreading out from there with its balance and harmony.

When I got there first thing in the morning, the thought that appeared independently was: Reiki is the way of gentleness. It is a corner of peace in your life.

This proved to be true all day, starting with the first two practitioners to arrive thanking me for Reiki on their traffic-less morning commute. One also reported: “the night before, during and after I was filled with an overwhelming sense of peace, love, happiness, sweetness, and eternal gratefulness.”

One highlight moment for me was when I felt the movement of an expectant mother’s baby. We helped people who were seeking relief from:

• knee pain
• shoulder and neck tension
• high blood pressure
• digestive disorders
• high cholesterol, headaches
• cataracts
• all over pain
• cervical concerns
• getting ready for surgery
• lower back pain–”amazing how it can work right through a chair”
• rapid heartbeat
• sciatic nerve pain
• low energy and so many more

One practitioner shared this:

One of the last receivers sat on the chair looking a little nervous and incredulous about Reiki. He stated he had lower back pain and high intraocular pressure. I left it in God’s hands…when I stood in from of him to focus on his eyes, a cold, practically tactile and almost painful sensation went through my hands. It was so physical that my eyes opened and I saw how his expression changed to a surprised and excited one (his eyes were closed). The sensations decreased in intensity and when they stopped completely I finished the session. When it ended, he was excited to know how Reiki works.

We also saw a high amount of:

• life, work and school stress
• worry
• mental confusion
• family tensions
• grief
• relationship anxiety

One practitioner shared this:

I intuited some sadness, loss, and even scattered energy. Those who were emotionally hurting made me feel more awareness of LOVE flowing through me. I knew they needed healing and wanted it to be powerful for them.

What else can we learn about life, being human and Reiki from this day? Well there’s nothing quite like a good Reiki story. Let me tell you some more, for Reiki’s benefits are far-reaching. One of my practitioners is in nursing school. She’s overworked and her time isn’t her own. Yet:

Later my mom and I spent some time together and she commented how she had been stressed and worried, sad, with a migraine the whole day but suddenly realized she’d changed to a calmed, more positive state with no more headache. She insisted it was my presence. She told me that this state had lasted the rest of the day. Maybe I just felt so blessed with the Reiki experience that I could still transmit healing without conscious intent. I not only felt calmed for the rest of the day but very “awake” too. It’s so easy to “fall asleep” and become connected to this world, that trying to remember to be conscious is very hard and “work” for me. Today, after all that Reiki, I was very awake.

When the fair was over and all other booths had packed and left, we still had a waiting line. Slowly chairs became empty and we starting folding up our stuff too. None of us disagreed that it was an intense day.

I felt great at the end of the day, with a lot of energy and very peaceful. I prayed and gave thanks for this blessing. Since this was my first time giving Reiki intensively, to so many people, I was worried about having enough energy to do this. How little did I know…the more I gave, the more energy I felt!

All in all we gave Reiki to about 125 people, maybe more. Like I said it was intense. Yet so worth it:

Yes, it was rather intense. I did indeed feel peaceful and honored to give Reiki. I felt like time flew! I felt joyful while doing it, and since.

And:

All I want to do, all I ask the universe is the opportunity to help others through love. My dream, my purpose, what I want to do the most, was realized today. I felt this the entire time to the degree that I was almost euphorically happy!

This is the efficient beauty of Reiki. The giver and receiver are both enriched. I wish there was more to report directly from those that sat under our hands. Mostly it was nonverbal, but faces all expressed the mysterious wonder of each brief encounter.

There was the physician who wants to integrate healing with allopathic medicine. There was the woman who waited patiently for me to finish with someone else to find out how we know which areas are troubling the person. There was the young student who simply said, “I really liked it!” but it was her face that I can’t convey here: those words came from a sincerity of soul. There were multiple thanks from the organizers. Then there were moments like this:

One of the ladies I gave Reiki to spoke no English. She was so sweet and spiritual. She communicated with me the whole time using her eyes (this communication occurred with several of the receivers). After the session, she desperately wanted to tell me something. I tried and tried to understand what she meant until I got it…”You prayed for me but I also prayed for you” meaning she knew somehow I was praying for her inside and that she will pray for me too.

What else can be said? It took me a week to distill this experience and I feel so much has been left out. May silence now convey the rest.

“When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.”

–Rachel Naomi Remen

Related:
Anatomy of a Reiki Training

Update 7/31/08:
This Reiki outreach has been mentioned in The Reiki Digest, a regular roundup of news about Reiki from around the world.

The founder of Reiki, Mikao Usui (Usui Sensei) was born on August 15, 1865 in the village of Taniai (now called Miyama cho) in the Yamagata county of Gifu Prefecture, in Japan. There are four influences that went into his Reiki teachings: Buddhism, Shintoism, Martial Arts, and Shugendo (mountain asceticism) Here, we’ll briefly look at his martial arts training.

Usui’s family was hatamoto samurai. The hatamoto were the shogun’s personal guard. The Usui family crest, also known as the Chiba crest, is a design that is a circle with a dot at the top. The circle is the universe, and the dot represents the North Star. The North Star is a polestar, it never moves, is ever constant, while life moves around it.

Three Japanese budo masters were contemporaries of Usui Sensei. Gichin Funakoshi founded Karate. Jigoro Kano started judo. Morihei Ueshiba created Aikido a little later on. Mikao Usui was born a Tendai Buddhist and studied in a Tendai monastery as a young child. At age 12 he began the practice of a martial art known as aiki jutsu, made popular by Takeda Sokaku who was Ueshiba’s teacher. This form included harmonizing with Ki, making it possible to experience calmness, concentration, willpower and physical fitness. He also studied yagyu ryu, and it’s interesting that this tradition includes both life-giving and -taking techniques.

About two years ago I had come across a Samurai’s song. It was impressive and thought-provoking. Let me share it here and we’ll look at some ideas that emerge.

A Warrior’s Creed

I have no parents
I make the heaven and earth my parents

I have no home
I make awareness my home

I have no life and death
I make the tides of breathing my life and death

I have no divine powers
I make honesty my divine power

I have no means
I make understanding my means

I have no secrets
I make my character my secret

I have no body
I make endurance my body

I have no eyes
I make the flash of lightening my eyes

I have no ears
I make sensibility my ears

I have no limbs
I make promptness my limbs

I have no strategy
I make “unshadowed by thought” my strategy.

I have no design
I make “seizing opportunity by the forelock” my design

I have no miracles
I make right action my miracle

I have no principles
I make adaptability to all circumstances my principle

I have no tactics
I make emptiness and fullness my tactics

I have no talent
I make ready wit my talent

I have no friends
I make my mind my friend

I have no enemy
I make carelessness my enemy

I have no armor
I make benevolence and righteousness my armor

I have no castle
I make immovable mind my castle

I have no sword
I make absence of self my sword

–Anonymous Samurai, 14th century

Admittedly it’s a little austere and minimalist. This has advantages, however. Many times, there’s nothing quite like a bare bones view to gain clarity and hone in on essentials. Let’s break it down.

• In Reiki we work very closely with heaven and earth in the form of Earth and Celestial Ki.
• Uncluttered awareness in the moment is key.
• Understanding is an enhancer of Reiki practice, whether it’s better results with techniques, or with people. When Reiki is practiced or shared with understanding, its power deepens.
• Reiki constantly gives us ample opportunities to improve our character.
• Quieting the busy mind is a core practice that rewards in multiple ways.
• Right thought, right speech, right action are built-in Reiki ethics.
• Being the bending but not breaking bamboo is the adaptability Reiki brings us.
• Knowing when to be empty and when to be full is a skill Reiki helps us develop.
• Befriending ourself is where healing begins.
• Being careful is a prime example of being full. Full of care.
• Reiki is the way of compassion, which includes benevolence.
• Immovable mind is the beginning and end of meditation.
• Absence of self in the Self is the way of peace and enlightenment.

As previously announced here, Oasis Reiki (that would be me) held Shoden/Level I Reiki Training at Florida Atlantic University’s Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, in Boca Raton, Florida. I can’t rave enough about the space that has been designed there for a nursing program deeply rooted in caring. So first let me share a slideshow. Please read below to get a real sense of what transpires in Reiki Training.

Reiki is a way of living with wisdom and compassion. It’s a way to reclaim your authentic self. To move out of the past, return from the future and live fully awake in the present. Reiki shifts your paradigm too, revealing the many layers of reality. It helps you find energetic integrity. Reiki heals the human condition. It transforms your consciousness so you can be your true self. Your heart and mind become unified and you’re empowered to walk in peace. Reiki brings you what you need. Through the years, I’ve witnessed with inner joy and gratitude everything student practitioners share about their Reiki training experiences. These are nothing less thanpoetic and I’ll now attempt to convey some measure of what I was privileged to witness this past weekend.

An ocean, cloud and light was received. Plans changed many moons ago came to completion and an ordination was received. Tears inspired by sheer beauty flowed. Peace was tangible. Never before reached depth in meditation was commonplace. After lunch heartburn relieved completely. Back pain healed. Several first-time spiritual awakenings. The courage to face things one doesn’t want to. A young person’s talent validated. Success affirmed. Shoulders lightened. Realization of inner powers. Wonder. Recognition.

And hugs. Heart on heart hugs.

Always heart on heart hugs.

Updated July 2, 2008

An early testimonial:

“…Now that I have had a little time to reflect and absorb, I want to thank you for being YOU and what you brought to me this weekend. I can already notice changes in me, there is a deepening sense of calm within, much more energy both physically and spiritually. It has been both a fulfillment and rebirth of sorts. I am different, I am one with myself, and my surroundings. The teaching and empowerments brought through you this weekend are amazing. Thank you for thus far guiding and teaching me. The teaching and tools you brought to me will continue to aid and guide my journey…”

–J.G., West Palm Beach, Fla

Consciousness is the substratum of everything, the first thing created that creates everything else.
–Dr. David Frawley

We all know there’s a brain in each of our craniums and it is what ‘thinks.’ Yet our brain is 90% fat and water. How exactly does fat and water ‘think’ as well as self-organize and self-regulate? After all, the brain really doesn’t have a direct experience of the world.

Wisdom traditions such as Vedanta and Buddhism accept that before creation there is a nondual state. To make a simplistic correlation to quantum physics, this is the unified field. Wisdom traditions identify this field as Pure Consciousness; Chit in Sanskrit. Pure Consciousness is unborn.

Chitta on the other hand, is conditioned consciousness (thought) and is the primordial state out of which the universe is born. This field of thought is high vibration subtle energy which is the basis of material creation. Thought creates all, but this is at a primordial level compared to our ordinary mental reactions.

The ghost in the machine is consciousness! A consistently effective and reliable way of outing consciousness and working with it to our benefit is to implement an authentic spiritual practice. Reiki is one such practice.

Neuroscience has mapped mindbody functioning in terms of electrical, chemical and hormonal signals from one part to another. The brain has been identified in all of its parts: cerebrum, cerebellum, limbic and reptilian. Each has a specific function; thought and action, movement and balance, with feeding, fighting, fleeing and procreation assigned to the remaining two brain structures.

Yet, we are still unhappy, depressed and ill. The observation and tweaking of the physical components of the mindbody web is inadequate in finding wellbeing.

At the moment of enlightenment the Buddha said, “How strange–all living beings have the fully awakened nature, but none of them knows it….” Luckily it doesn’t have to remain unknowable. The Buddha and every authentic wisdom tradition advocates a return to the ground state of consciousness.

You may have heard of Reiki or even experienced it. What you may not know is that Reiki is much more than a healing modality alone. Reiki is an authentic wisdom tradition. It’s a path of enlightenment, with healing being a natural part of personal evolution.

We have to turn to wisdom teachings and practices to first understand consciousness and then delve deeply into it. Consciousness is our true nature. It also has the capacity to remember our divinity. This is true memory and not the false memory of our personal history.

Going back to the question of how our mindbody does in fact have the capacity to self-organize and -regulate…Dr. Frawley again:

Consciousness is responsible for the existence and movement of the cosmos. It functions behind all forms of matter and energy. Some type of consciousness exists everywhere in Nature, even in inanimate objects. It sustains the cosmic process on all levels, staring with the atom itself. Whatever exists must contain some degree of consciousness or it could not be perceived.

So there is a vast intelligence with which we are inextricably linked. This intelligence naturally produces methods with which it can be accessed. The human spiritual software is perfectly matched to run on this cosmic operating system, while harmonizing and balancing human hardware.

In the next part we’ll look at how Reiki is able to reestablish this link between the personal and the universal.

Reiki links personal & spiritual consciousness

We’re encased in skin, our largest organ. We have mind and ego to navigate this plane. All three have specific functions to make the physical experience work.

Yet all three also separate and disconnect us, even in mundane terms. We may feel disconnected from our heart, loved ones, our job, our friends and our body.

Still underlying these is a core separation. The skin, ego and mind, separate us from the source of our being. As it is, this happens so easily in a limited physical world where we rely on sensory information to perceive and understand. The separation is compounded by all that is unhealed in us.

Our person needs healing. The little self has healing to do physically, emotionally and mentally. This is important work for it is foundational.

Then there’s the healing of ignorance. Not knowledge ignorance, but spiritual ignorance, which is essentially not knowing that we are only in part skin, ego and mind. Only in part.

Reiki is able to grow us out of personal pain, and out of self-imposed and design limitations because it sources at an non-collapsed level of reality, whatever you may want to term that. Here it’s termed consciousness. Any practice that arises out of consciousness heals the little self and opens the gates to everything beyond the hard and wetware of our being, because consciousness is always overarching and all-encompassing.

Reiki is mostly accepted as energy and a modality. Reiki is in fact a spiritual teaching that doesn’t fit well in the skin of modality.

As for energy, consciousness is really far too subtle and vibrating too quickly to be considered energy. It has to further densify to manifest form. During this densification, ‘energy’ or life force as we understand it begins to show up. This energy is still very subtle, compared to say electromagnetic energy.

To say that Reiki is ‘universal life force energy’ or any of variation of this statement needs to be qualified: Life force is dependent on, supported by and sources out of consciousness. Healing takes place in Reiki at the level of personal consciousness being transformed, with a solid connection to the greater field.

There’s the direct action of life force moving through the mindbody and engendering healing through balance and harmony, but the real transformation takes place in consciousness.

Reiki as Consciousness parts 1 & 2.

Oasis Reiki (yours truly) is conducting Shoden / Level I Reiki Training at Florida Atlantic University’s Christine E. Lynn’s College of Nursing, in Boca Raton, Florida.

The College is deeply grounded in a philosophy of caring. This extends to a holistic approach in all aspects. Even the building is Green, one of the few LEEDS “gold-rated” educational buildings in the United States, featuring Feng Shui principles and environmental sustainability. Included are several spaces for meditation and holistic practice and contemplation.

This foundational training offers specific techniques for tapping into spiritual and healing consciousness and energy. Reiki fosters spiritual evolution, bodily and mental/emotional health; has uses for food, water, environment, relationships and work. Reiki holistically augments care giving, enhanced learning, social projects, global thinking, animal and pet care. See contents of this training.

Saturday, June 28 & Sunday, June 29 10 AM-5 PM
College of Nursing Room 116
Presented by Pamir Kiciman, BA, RM, CHt
Prepaid reservations required, space is limited
954-661-4263 or info [at] reikihelp [dot] com