This weekend my wife and I completed our Shoden (First Degree) Reiki Healing Art training in the Komyo Reiki Kai system of Traditional Japanese Reiki.

We studied under Jennifer Kimbley of Mountain Sky Reiki.

Over the past few years I’ve been growing more and more interested in alternative health methods, fitness and healing.  Two years ago I finished my Advanced Nutrition Diploma program from Alive Academy, which gave me a solid understanding of proper nutrition as it relates to fitness, health and healing, but this was my first class in energy healing of any kind so I didn’t really know what to expect.

Our teacher, Jennifer, was great.  My wife and I immediately felt comfortable with her and enjoyed the class a lot.  I learned a lot about Reiki healing, both on the theory/history side of things as well as the practical side as well.

Jennifer covered the history of Reiki in general, as well as more specifically the Komyo Reiki Kai system of Traditional Japanese Reiki.  We learned about our Reiki lineage, The Five Precepts, standard and traditional hand positions for self-treatment as well as some simple Buddhist meditation techniques.

We also got a chance to practice Reiki self healing on ourselves as well as a standard Reiki healing session on each-other.

By the time the class was over I felt very confident in everything I’ve learned from the theory/history side of things as well as the practical side of things.

The Reiju (Attunements)

As part of the course we received four reiju (attunements) from Jennifer throughout the day.

I have heard that some people have had “experiences” during Reiki attunements, such as for example seeing things (your eyes are closed during an attunement) or feeling certain types of sensations in the body etc.

However I have also been told that for each person the experience is unique and it doesn’t matter if you “feel” anything during the attunement or not.  Feeling something or seeing something doesn’t have anything to do with the “quality” or “strength” of the attunement itself.  It could very well be that those that “feel” something during attunements are simply people who have previously been “less connected” to healing energy.  Or it could be the exact opposite of that.

I was definitely looking forward to experiencing the four reiju (attunements) without judgment either way.  I will share what I felt during the four reiju for anyone that’s interested.

During my first attunement, I felt very grounded.  It was almost like my body gained an extra 200lbs of weight during the attunement, and I felt totally connected to the ground to the point that if someone was to walk by and try to push me they wouldn’t be able to.  It’s hard to describe the sensation, but that was what I felt.  Besides that I didn’t feel anything or see anything out of the ordinary, except maybe the feeling of being relaxed and peaceful.

During my second, third and fourth attunements I felt the exact opposite of my first one.  If I could describe my first attunement as feeling that I had instantly gained 200lbs of weight and being that “grounded” to Earth, then during my next three attunements I could describe it as losing 200lbs of weight.  I felt as light as a feather sitting there, almost like my body had hundreds of little strings attached to it with helium filled balloons that were pulling me up.

I don’t know what that meant, but those were my experiences during the attunements.

Self Healing Session

During my self healing session I felt a lot of Hibiki.  Hibiki is the sensation a practitioner feels in their hands when giving Reiki.

While doing self-healing around my heart I had the sensation of being able to feel my heart beat in my hands.  Although it felt rather strange to have that sensation, I guess it’s not that unusual to sense your heart beat in your hands since blood does flow through your arms and hands as your heart beats.

The really cool sensation that was very strange to me was when I was doing self-healing around my stomach/liver area.  At first my left hand felt as if it was vibrating/twitching a little bit.  I couldn’t keep it still.  I thought for a second that maybe I was  leaning my elbow against something which was pressing against a nerve or something that was making my hand twitch, but I wasn’t.  And then almost instantly the vibrating/twitching stopped in my left hand and moved over to my right hand and got much stronger.

My right hand was hovering around my liver area and my thumb and forefinger were totally vibrating/twitching.  It felt really neat and then after about a minute or so it stopped.  I felt another sensation while doing healing on my upper back that felt like “waves” but it’s really hard to describe it in written text.  The vibrating/twitching sensation was definitely the most profound though compared to the others.

One other thing I experienced during my self-healing session was when I covered my eyes I saw an image with a circle in it along with 8 to 12 smaller circles rotating clockwise.  It only lasted for a few seconds but it was rather unusual as I normally don’t see anything like that when I close my eyes.  I normally just see black.  The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw this circle was perhaps it was a Mandala of some sort.

Byosen

Byosen is a body scan that a practitioner does during a Reiki session to determine which areas of the body need Reiki energy.  During our practice healing session in class I got a chance to practice Byosen and I felt “cold spots” while doing a body scan.  It was really neat.  With my hand hovering above the body, it’s like my hand had the sensation of colder areas and then when I would do Reiki in that area the cold spot would go away.

I’m still learning what all of this means, but it was definitely a new and neat experience for me.

I know skeptics will say that my imagination was just making it up, but I’m just reporting what I experienced.  You can interpret it according to your beliefs any way you wish.

Only the Beginning

Even though I received my Shoden (First Degree) Reiki Healing Art Certificate for successfully completing the course, this is definitely just a starting point.    Now comes the “hard” part of keeping up with the self-discipline of practicing daily self-healing and starting to do practice healing sessions for others.