The Joy of Working as a Reiki Practitioner

This month it is 31 years since I learned Reiki and I have been thinking about how wonderful it is to be able to work as a Reiki practitioner.  Compared to many other jobs it has a lot of advantages!

Flexibility – as my own boss I can choose when and how much to work.  Although I am committed to seeing clients regularly, I find I am able to balance their needs with my own so that I can care for my own health too.  As a diabetic not on medication, it is important for me to be able to eat at specific times.  Being my own boss gives me the flexibility to make this possible.  Having heard how some NHS staff are expected to work without even proper breaks for meals I am very grateful to have this ability to choose my own timetable.

Necessity to receive Reiki treatments – I love receiving Reiki treatment, so it feels like a real benefit that those who are giving treatments to others regularly are expected to receive Reiki treatments.  I give myself Reiki treatment most days (an enjoyable way to prepare for work!). By self-treating I help to maintain my own health and well-being, so that people who come to me for Reiki meet a calm and happy practitioner who is in the best health possible.  I also find it both enjoyable and beneficial to receive Reiki from someone else on a regular basis to further support my well-being.  When I was less experienced about Reiki this was also a good way to learn more about how it works and what treatment can offer.

Mindfulness practice – I have noticed that giving Reiki treatment is a form of mindfulness.  As I treat, I pay attention to the sensations in my hands and body.  I also watch signs from the person I am treating such as sighs, twitches and facial expressions.  These things help me to maintain my attention in the present moment.  What wonderful work that requires mindfulness practice for an hour at a time!  It isn’t necessarily easy, but I find that reiki energy fosters a meditative mental state in practitioners as well as the person receiving healing.  As a result, I often feel calmer and more centred myself at the end of the treatment as well as having helped the person being treated to achieve deeper relaxation.

In service to others – there is something deeply satisfying about helping another person who is in some sort of distress to feel more peaceful.  The Dalai Lama points out that being in service to others is a way to achieve joy in our own lives.  Giving Reiki treatments is one way we can help to relieve suffering and improve the quality of people’s lives.

Simplicity – attending a webinar aimed at nutritionists recently which included a lot of technical information I felt grateful that I do not have to remember so much detail to give Reiki treatments.  With no diagnosis involved in Reiki, I don’t have to work things out and risk making mistakes.  I find that anything I need to know comes to me intuitively and I am grateful for the grace and ease of this way of working.

There are challenges too of course, such as deciding what to charge, being comfortable giving treatment and knowing how to maintain appropriate boundaries, but I value these as part of the personal and spiritual growth this kind of work offers.

I am grateful to be able to work as a Reiki practitioner and I hope more people will enjoy this way of making a living.

Integrative health Convention

I was grateful for the invitation to accompany Feona Gray, founder of Connecting Reiki with Medicine, to attend the Integrative Health Convention in London last month.  This convention is an   

opportunity for doctors and other NHS professionals to meet with a variety of complementary health practitioners.

I share Feona’s vision that Reiki could play an important part in healthcare:  I would love to see Reiki as a choice for patients alongside conventional care in the NHS, which is struggling to cope with the rising need and diminishing funding and staffing.  Reiki has the potential to be part of the solution. However when Feona first explored bringing Reiki into St George’s she learned that there was a very negative view of it, in fact it was banned in many hospitals.  In many situations Reiki is not trusted as a complementary therapy, so practitioners are not welcome.

I found that this convention gave me hope that my dreams of this changing, so that Reiki gains the respect needed for it to become integrated, could come true.  I met doctors who are not only open to complementary therapies including Reiki, but positively see the benefit.  Margaret Coats, from the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, commented to me at the end of the weekend that there had been a lot of talk about Reiki!

The keynote speaker was Dr Michael Dixon – a GP well known for his work in integrative health care.   He was one of the instigators of Social Prescribing, which may be one way that Reiki practitioners can receive referrals.  Dr Dixon noticed a 20% reduction in GP appointments once Social Prescribing was introduced in his area.  

He talked about conditions he and most GPs see frequently and often have nothing to offer to help: tiredness, back pain, IBS and stress.  11% of the population, he reported, are on medication for pain, depression stress or sleep problems. These are all things that complementary therapies, including Reiki, can help with.  He spoke strongly about the need for doctors to work together with complementary therapists.  He dismissed the assertion from some doctors that complementary therapies are not safe, giving the example that 2000 people die annually from anti-inflammatory drugs.  He also noted that GPs with an interest in complementary therapies prescribe 25% less antibiotics.  Given that 1 million people each year die from antibiotic resistant infections this is a significant difference.  Compered to this, complementary therapies are safe – and with no known contra indications of course Reiki is one of the safest – and will become even more so, he said, if doctors and complementary therapists communicate better with each other.  

What particularly excited me was his report that NHS England has recognised that “The future needs to be a future that empowers the patient”.  Taking responsibility for our own health and well being is a core value of Reiki practice, so fits perfectly with this approach.  I hope to see more professional Reiki practitioners, adequately prepared work alongside doctors and other health professionals, sharing the work of caring for those in our community who doctors struggle to help.  Connecting Reiki with Medicine’s project at St George’s Hospital, London is demonstrating how beneficial a professional team of Reiki practitioners can be, to patients and staff.  For this sort of project to be repeated around the country we need more practitioners who are willing to prepare for this work.

I would also like to see Social Prescribing include teaching people Reiki so that they can care for their health and have some useful tools to assist them towards a healthier and happier life.

Visiting Connecting Reiki with Medicine at St George's Hospital, London

A few years ago, my friend Feona Gray thought of celebrating Dr Usui’s birthday by giving reiki taster-treatments in hospitals around the country.  She approached someone she knew with the idea, only to discover that reiki was not welcome in NHS hospitals, due to concerns about the unpreparedness and lack of professional training  of practitioners.  Feona decided to explore further what would be needed for this to change; as a result we now have Connecting Reiki with Medicine, which has enabled six reiki practitioners to undergo specialist in-hospital training and be paid by the charity ‘Full Circle Fund Therapies’ to give reiki treatments to patients on critical care wards of haematology, oncology and neurology at St George’s Hospital, London.

I have followed this inspiring project from the start so was excited to visit in July, with Johannes Reindl, our new Lineage Bearer.  Arriving at the hospital we met Suzanne Ruggles, CEO of Full Circle Fund Therapies who introduced us to the work and was our guide for the afternoon.  We then met one of the practitioners, Raquel Martin who took us to the bone marrow transplant and haematology ward.    Many of the patients, being critically ill, have compromised immune systems, so good infection control is essential.  Johannes and I were required to wash our hands, use the hand gel and to wear disposable aprons and gloves before going near the patients.  We observed a treatment for a woman with leukaemia, seeing how reiki eased her discomfort, so she was able to rest.

On a different ward we met the Nurse in Charge, who, when asked about her views on reiki on the wards, was very appreciative of what it offers to both patients and staff.  She talked about how the reiki treatments create a quiet time on the busy ward.  We heard similar comments from another Nurse in Charge and a matron from other wards we visited.  What is of particular note about this project is that, due to the specialist in-hospital training they receive, the practitioners are appreciated as members of staff, allowed to access and write-up  patients’ medical notes, rather than as complementary therapist visitors.

We met another practitioner, Anne- Marie Carratu, who took us to see her patient who had just received upsetting news from the palliative care team.  When asked about her pain, she rated it at 5 on a scale of 0 to 6, even with the hospital pain management medication.  Anne Marie and Raquel began treating her, then Johannes and I were invited to join them.  At the end of the 20 minutes the patient sighed and said “I feel as if all my burdens have been lifted.”  When asked about her pain level she said it was zero.  When Anne Marie checked back half an hour later, she was still pain free.

Over a three year period, six reiki practitioners have completed the training and  give 20 – 30-minute reiki treatments on the wards.  They have delivered 900 treatments and reiki is now available five days a week.  450 patients, over a one year period, were asked what symptom was most of concern to them.  The most common symptoms in order of frequency were pain, difficulty with sleep, anxiety and depression.  Where possible they were asked to rate their symptom before and after treatment based on a scale of 0 to 6.  129 patients responded after the treatment - many of the rest were asleep, in spite of reporting pain was keeping them awake, so they were not disturbed to find out how they felt!  No increase in symptoms was reported.  The average symptom before treatment was rated at 4.2 and after reiki was 2.9, most of which was reduction in pain.   On 13 occasions the score was reduced to zero.

While they work primarily on oncology, haematology and neurology wards, the practitioners are also receiving referrals from other wards, such as cardiology.  Such referrals always require the agreement of the consultants and nurses in charge, especially in these highly complex areas of medicine. With further much needed research, reiki could even be recommended for some in support of medical treatment and become a part of mainstream integrated medicine.

If you would like to make a donation to support this valuable work you can do so here: http://www.totalgiving.co.uk/charity/full-circle-fund-therapies

Sharing the Wonder

Receiving Reiki treatments after my father's death inspired in me a desire to offer the same experience to other people.  I had never thought of being a practitioner of any kind: at the time I was running a theatre company, directing and secretly still wishing to be an actor!  However there was something about Reiki that touched me deeply and I wanted to share it.

So I was delighted to be giving my first full Reiki treatment to someone outside my immediate circle of family and friends just a couple of weeks after taking the 1st degree class and  I have been giving Reiki treatments ever since.  In those early days I didn't know how much I didn't know!  I naively thought that having completed 2nd degree I was fully prepared for working with the public.  Now, after over 25 years of experience, I have a different perspective.  However my fundamental wish to share the wonder of Reiki with others hasn't changed.

Reiki Master Kate Jones giving Reiki treatment

Giving Reiki treatments, I have found, can bring much joy.  I have recently been reading "The Book of Joy" which is based on conversations between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu.  They express the belief that humans are fundamentally good and that showing our compassion for others is the best way to a happy life.  Seeing Reiki treatments as a way to offer service, one of the fundamentals of a spiritual life in many traditions, has taken my practice deeper and brought more happiness and satisfaction to my life.

Treating family and friends can offer this sort of practice, but I have found that offering Reiki treatments to people I don't know is even more profound.  In the early days, treating strangers for the first time, I discovered that although I didn't like everyone who came for Reiki, something happened during the Reiki treatment that resulted in me having compassion for them no matter who they were.  I believe that Reiki creates a field of grace, in which there is no judgement and where connection in our essential humanity is natural.  This grace creates a space for their physical, mental and spiritual healing.  To be a part of this miracle still moves me.

I have been involved for many years in helping to set standards for Reiki practitioners who wish to offer public treatments.  I am interested in seeing other practitioners be successful in offering Reiki treatments, so that more people can benefit from Reiki.  This means ensuring that those receiving Reiki treatment are honoured and respected, that practitioners maintain their integrity and can offer Reiki in a supportive and comforting way.  Although this may seem to impose restrictions, I see this as a way for practitioners to explore their practice more deeply, because challenges can inspire personal and spiritual growth.

So if you have learned Reiki and would like to deepen your Reiki practice I would suggest that there is nothing better than becoming a public practitioner.  Sharing the wonder of Reiki in a way that will be recognised by wider society as being responsible and ideally professional can benefit you and those you treat.  It can be a wonderful way to give service in the world that can enhance our quality of life: offering comfort and kindness to strangers can bring joy to the giver as well as the recipient.