© Tuesday May Thomas 2016
Ten years ago I visited the 'Conscious Life Expo' in Los Angeles with a couple girlfriends. We attended lectures, strolled through aisles of vendors, and shared stories about our favorite mystical healing experiences. We stood in reverence, with eyes closed in front of a six-foot tall amethyst crystal, we ouhhed and ahhed at beautiful handmade jewelry and even took pictures of our auras. There were plenty of healers offering services. With so much to take in and look at, we decided to go in our own directions for a while and explore.
My shoulders were tight so I signed up with a chair masseuse for a ten minute chair massage. About five minutes in, I noticed the masseur was giving me more than a massage. I could energetically feel that he was doing something I had not given him permission to 'do' to me. The shoulder rub had stopped and his energy had shifted. I was suddenly aware of an odd feeling.
I was being Energetically Penetrated by his will!
I abruptly sat up to see he was standing in front of me with his eyes closed. He looked like he was in a trance whilst drawing spirals at me with his pointer finger. He then attempted to move the spirals into my energy body with his hand. I sat there watching while he 'gave me a massage'.
I could feel the energy he was trying to 'give me', but I din't want it. And because of my awareness, I did not take it on.
Why didn't I want what he was trying to give me?
Because a) it felt invasive, and b) I never asked for it!
I interrupted his action and called him out on it. I asked him why he decided to give me more than a massage. He answered that he was an energy healer. He could see that my crown chakra needed a healing, so he decided to heal it. But our agreement was for you to give me the gift of chair massage for ten minutes, which we both agreed to- and nothing more. In silence I gazed at him, feeling annoyed that I didn't get my full ten minute massage, yet aware of this important lesson for both of us. And in the next breath, he suddenly 'got it'. He knew he over stepped his boundaries with me. I namaste'd him and left without paying.
At that time of my life I had been attuned to Master Level Reiki for five years. In those five years I did a lot with Reiki, and still do! I held ongoing Reiki circles for my students, and shared Reiki healing with healthy everyday people of all ages and abilities. I facilitated a twice weekly Reiki program at a large nursing home and rehab facility, shared with bed bound patients in hospice, including coma patients in the hospital.
Why am I telling you this? Because I am going to make an assumption and guess that you are already attuned to Reiki if you are reading this blog, or you are interested in learning about it, or you are an energy healer/student/practitioner on some level. While I can speak for Usui Reiki as I have learned and teach it, it feels these guidelines serve most denominations of energy healing as a whole:
"Don't do something to or for someone without getting consent from them first."
Generally, when you are attuned to Usui Reiki your teacher will make it clear that you are a conduit for life-force energy and that it is the life-force energy that creates the correct conditions for others to heal by. It is not YOU doing the healing. It is the Reiki doing the healing through you.
You do not heal anyone with Reiki. We could almost go as far as saying you're not even a 'healer' when you are attuned with Reiki. What?? I hear you calling from the aisles! I know, I even sometimes say I am a healer, yet not because I share Reiki with others, mostly because I am healed. Yes I have learned and continue to learn so much about Reiki and how it can help heal the very life we live! I can share on that healing realm with others. Yet I know Reiki does the healing, not me. Reiki creates the correct conditions for others to heal by. Sure my presence helps, the space I hold helps- but long ago I let go of fishing for others, instead opting to teach others how to fish for themselves.
When you use Reiki daily on yourself, and have the opportunity to share it with many others in a variety of settings, you learn that you are the faucet, not the water. You learn you are not doing the healing, but you are a conduit for the healing energy of life-force to flow through you. You also learn a lot about a) the practice, b) your Self, c) others, and d) how to share this modality of healing with sacred integrity.
What is sacred about sharing energy work, you may ask? The most vital component is that it is asked for, or given permission for, or is granted the 'green light' by the recipient. In this way it is exchanged with honor, with potency and respect, and with no force of a will. At the most high point, it is something that is agreed upon between the recipient and the practitioner. There is no hidden agenda with Reiki. Its clear, clean and simple. Voila!
Reiki reminder - "Don't do something to or for someone without getting consent from them first."
With the practice of sharing Reiki, there is never a force of will. Yes, there are random circumstances such as having a client, a friend, a friend of a friend, or family member in the hospital, or in China- and getting a blip on your radar to send them Reiki, though they may be unconscious or unaware of it- but we will talk about that aspect of agreement through the field of Higher Self in our next post.
For now, what I desire to translate to you is the basic foundational teaching embodying the idea that Reiki is not a modality to be forced upon someone, or done without someones consent. I will add, I feel strongly about this notion with any given energy work, or healing modality.
This story brings me to what I am guided to share with you now.
At one of my recent Reiki Workshops, I got a clear download: Be open to doing a barter exchange with student 'X'. And by the end of the day, student 'X' asked if I was interested to share Reiki with her in exchange for trager and tui na massage. We had met a couple of times before this at other spiritual gatherings, so I had a basic sense of who this woman was. I also knew she was with her Level One Reiki attunement, given by another teacher. I had not experienced trager and tui na, and given my distinct download to work with her, I agreed.
The next Wednesday she came to my home and I shared an hour of Reiki healing with her. The following Friday I went to her place and was happy to receive some 'body work'. She had described the techniques she would share with me and my body was excited to try something new. There were short periods of time during the body-work where she paused before moving to the next limb when working on me and I could feel Reiki naturally flow without force. This will often happen naturally without trying.
When you are attuned- Reiki will flow of its own accord, though we may not always be aware of it. I was aware of it and it felt good- those little bursts of Reiki I received while she steadily laid hands on my left foot before beginning to move to my right foot, and so on. I could feel it was a natural occurrence of the Reiki between us.
This said, at the very end of my session I could feel her performing a different kind of 'energy work' on me. One I had not given consent to. I sensed unwanted Energy Penetration- as I had so many years earlier at the Conscious Life Expo. In my fifteen years of being a Master Reiki Teacher, I knew what she was 'giving me' was not Reiki.
I asked her what it was she was doing at the end of the session? She laughingly shrugged it off saying "I don't know,.... something to do with your chakras...". I immediately thought back to the not so 'conscious' masseur at the Conscious Life Expo. I knew it was not Reiki she was sharing with me. She knew it was not Reiki, yet she could not explain what it was she was doing, nor did she know what she was doing, and even more- she seemed to have no conscious awareness that IT was happening until I brought it up. This opportunity created a teaching moment for me to share with her, and so I did.
Readers please note- *The above is an example of inappropriate energy exchange.
With so many energy workers, and infinite practices healers share- and so many people out there just trying to help, or be of service, sometimes the lines get blurred with what 'act' is really being of service and what is not. We want to help so bad, we will go out of our way to 'do good', meanwhile the good we think we should provide isn't always what is for the highest good of all, nor does it reflect the sweet wisdom guided in the still silence of what Reiki will actually guide you to do or not do on its behalf.
Bottom line, Reiki is non-invasive, whilst in my experience many other modalities that share healing, seem to have an approach with fewer boundaries.
Years ago, one of my Reiki apprentices sought a healing with a shaman. This shaman took her through a rebirthing session which led to him 'Energetically Penetrating' her by manipulating her aura to create the healing she required (which is normal in shamanic practices- for example a shaman might physically & psychically poke into your auric field and pull out a tumor cluster and either eat and transmute it, throw it in their 'energy cauldron' or 'energy fire' to be dissolved- or a number of other means), but he went further by actually putting his finger into her vagina in the heat of an intense healing moment. He had stepped outside of his honorable position as a shaman by becoming turned on by the energy they shared during the healing and he went too far.
While she did not agree to this as part of her healing session, many would argue she must have agreed to it on a psychic level, and so therein lies their karma. This is another point we will speak on later. For now, the point is this was not a part of the rebirthing session she thought she was going to get, but it happened all the same.
As healers and recipients of healing energy, be it Reiki or another modality, we are responsible to hold the light for ourselves and others.
We are responsible to speak up for ourselves when something does not feel right, and we are responsible to give this gift of free communication to our clients when we share Reiki or any other type of healing with them. We are responsible for sharing with the highest level of impeccability we can hold at any given time and space.
And so it is, for the highest good of all. © Tuesday May Thomas 2016
