Reiki Help Blog

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

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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

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.

Do you have personal challenges that stem from your business? Is diet, exercise and turning off the Blackberry on weekends (you wish right?!) not enough to address your challenges?

You’ve heard of relaxation techniques, CDs, gadgets and products. You even have some MP3s on your iPod but have yet to listen. These are inviting and make sense on the surface, but perhaps you’re a ’show me’ person. Do you only operate in two modes? Go, go, go, and crash? Do yourself a favor and read this.

There is an all-around lifestyle enhancer and it’s called Reiki. You can receive Reiki from a qualified practitioner until your challenges dissolve. You can also further invest in yourself and become Reiki-trained for lifelong benefit. In either case ROI is through the roof!

Reiki stimulates all factors involved in whole-person wellbeing simply and effectively. Meet Peter, a 30-something upper management guy with a wife and two kids. He has chronic back pain, doesn’t see much of his family and despite all the hours he puts in, his productivity is plummeting. It’s harder and harder for him to wake up after having trouble falling asleep. The day drags on, he doubts himself and low grade anxiety has become near panic for him in meetings, conference calls and in front of his team. He feels he’s losing his edge, his eyesight and acumen.

Out of sheer desperation and dislike of mood medications, he opts for Reiki. After only a little time, he starts to demonstrate observable changes. He feels much less pressure and is sleeping better. His back improves although the pain returns when he compromises his self-care. There’s more spaciousness around his anxiety and it escalates less frequently. His team is responding better and he feels more confident once again. He still struggles with productivity and seeing his family.

After a little more time, he starts to develop a crucial self-awareness. This helps him observe his mental and behavioral patterns. The insight he receives from such observation gives him the ability to be responsive and adjust his patterns. This in turn brings more spaciousness and his back begins to feel very solid and comfortable. His mind is sharper and anxiety only returns when there’s a real fire to put out. He’s much happier and realizes that when he commits to family time, all his work deadlines are met anyhow.

Reiki helps you physically but also helps with everything that is human in you. For anyone in business (corporate or home office) in the computerized and digitized world here, are some common challenges Reiki will alleviate:

Physical:

• Postural/Musculoskeletal
• Repetitive strain injury (RSI)
• Eye strain
• Headaches/Migraines
• Dizziness
• Insomnia
• Longterm effects of being sedentary
• Sick building toxicity
• Exhaustion
• Loss of sex drive
• Weight gain or loss
• High blood pressure
• Ulcers

Emotional & Mental:

• Overwhelm
• Lack of focus
• Depression
• Interpersonal issues
• Job dissatisfaction
• Ennui
• Lack of motivation
• Emotional eating
• Mental dullness
• Lack of creativity
• Worry
• Multitasking drain
• Stress
• Work/Life imbalance
• Fear of layoff/Fearful anticipation
• Poor memory
• Powerlessness

Living our life deeply and with happiness, having time to care for our loved ones–this is another kind of success, another kind of power, and it is much more important. There is only one kind of success that really matters: the success of transforming ourselves, transforming our afflictions, fear, and anger. This is the kind of success, the kind of power, that will benefit us and others without causing any damage.

–Thich Nhat Hanh

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story of recovery and awareness — of how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another. Below is the video and its transcript.

Here is the latter part of the transcript:

When I awoke later that afternoon I was shocked to discover that I was still alive. When I felt my spirit surrender, I said goodbye to my life, and my mind is now suspended between two very opposite planes of reality. Stimulation coming in through my sensory systems felt like pure pain. Light burned my brain like wildfire and sounds were so loud and chaotic that I could not pick a voice out from the background noise and I just wanted to escape. Because I could not identify the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expensive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through the sea of silent euphoria. Harmonic. I remember thinking there’s no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.

But I realized “But I’m still alive! I’m still alive and I have found Nirvana. And if I have found Nirvana and I’m still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana.” I picture a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives. And it motivated my to recover.

Two and a half weeks after the hemorrhage, the surgeons went in and they removed a blood clot the size of a golf ball that was pushing on my language centers. Here I am with my mama, who’s a true angel in my life. It took me eight years to completely recover.

So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are — I am — the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the “we” inside of me.

Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.

Read the first half of the transcript…it’s worth it!

[read more…]

From Joseph Chilton Pierce, author of “The Crack in the Cosmic Egg”:

Molecular biologists have discovered that the heart is the body’s most important endocrine gland. In response to our experience of the world, it produces and releases a major hormone, ANF that profoundly affects every operation in the limbic structure, or what we refer to as the “emotional brain.” This includes the hippocampal area where memory and learning take place, and also the control centers for the entire hormonal system.

Neurocardiologists have found that 60 to 65% of the cells of the heart are actually neural cells, not muscle cells as was previously believed. They are identical to the neural cells in the brain, operating through the same connecting links called ganglia, with the same axonal and dendritic connections that take place in the brain, as well as through the very same kinds of neurotransmitters found in the brain.

…in other words, there is a “brain” in the heart, whose ganglia are linked to every major organ in the body, to the entire muscle spindle system that uniquely enables humans to express their emotions. About half of the heart’s neural cells are involved in translating information sent to it from all over the body so that it can keep the body working as one harmonious whole. And the other half make up a very large, unmediated neural connection with the emotional brain in our head and carry on a 24-hour-a-day dialogue…

The heart responds to messages sent to it from the emotional brain, which has been busy monitoring the interior environment of dynamic states such as the emotions and the auto-immune system, guiding behavior, and contributing to our sense of personal identity. The emotional brain makes a qualitative evaluation of our experience of this world and sends that information instant-by-instant down to the heart. In return, the heart exhorts the brain to make the appropriate response….

…Meanwhile, biophysicists have discovered that the heart is also a very powerful electromagnetic generator. It creates an electromagnetic field that encompasses the body and extends out anywhere from eight to twelve feet away from it. It is so powerful that you can take an electrocardiogram reading from as far as three feet way from the body. The field the heart produces is holographic, meaning that you can read it from any point on the body and from any point within the field. The intriguing thing is how profoundly this electromagnetic field affects the brain. All indications are that it furnishes the whole radio wave spectrum from which the brain draws its material to create our internal experience of the world.

“…we now know that the radio spectrum of the heart is profoundly affected by our emotional response to our world. Our emotional response changes the heart’s electromagnetic spectrum, which is what the brain feeds on. Ultimately, everything in our lives hinges on our emotional response to specific events.