Reiki is a hands-on experience. It cannot be learned or "gotten" from a book. To learn or receive Reiki a person attends a first level class or training with an initiated teaching Master, and receives four initiations or attunements to the energy along with instruction and practice time. Everything you need to know about practicing Reiki on yourself is contained in that class and in your own subsequent practice.
So then, why this book?
Because I find Reiki absolutely fascinating. I have since the minute I was introduced to it. I find the changes in myself when I practice Reiki fascinating, also the responses of other people when I share Reiki with them. I have practiced Reiki on everything from a race horse with a broken leg (and his trainer) to radish plants for a botany project, and a lot of humans in between. To know that healing is an innate ability, and to share that understanding with others has been the most beautiful and powerful blessing of my life.
I successfully resisted writing about Reiki for years, upholding the oral tradition through which it was given to me. I also understood the reasoning that once information is trapped in words on paper for some people it can cease to be a guide and may become rules, or even a substitute for a person's own experiences, practice, and knowing. Reiki cannot actually be captured or contained in words because in its beautifully simple essence it is about application - personal practice and experience.
Keeping this in mind, I also hear the call for readable information that exists outside a class framework. I clearly recall my own desire and even need for more about Reiki - more information, more stories about people's experiences in giving and receiving, teaching, learning, and simply sharing Reiki.
I am a person who loves stories, and who learns from and through them, especially historical stories. For some years I was one of just a few practitioners, and then the only teaching Master in New York State. It was sort of lonely. I remember being so grateful when Helen Haberly and Fran Brown wrote their books about Takata. For me these books have never been a substitute for classes or practice or sharing with other practitioners. They have been an enrichment, and a place for me to share experiences - to think more deeply about my own understandings as compared with what each person has written.
In my second decade of practice in Reiki, the Usui System of Natural Healing, I now see this book as an extension of my sharing of this healing art - to write down some of my personal experiences and understandings of this system, share some stories and some information I find interesting. I hope this book is an enrichment for you in your practice of the healing art of Reiki. I trained in, have practiced (since April 14, 1985), and taught (since April 6, 1988) the Usui System of Natural Healing. My "lineage" is Mikao Usui, Chujiro Hayashi, Hawayo Takata, Phyllis Furumoto, Linda Keiser Mardis.
I want to make it clear that I do not speak for this system. What I offer you here is my experience and perspective gained through my practice, both personal and professional - sharing the Usui System of Natural Healing with people just like you all over the world.
There are three levels of training in the Usui System - first, second and master. The first level contains everything you need for personal practice. Reiki at each level is about individual practice: learning and understanding through your own experience, giving and receiving a peaceful, loving energy that brings balance to the body/mind/spirit entity and allows healing to naturally occur. To understand Reiki, experience it - put your hands on yourself (if you have been initiated), or pick up the telephone and make an appointment with an Usui System practitioner, or sign up for a class.
When I teach Reiki at the first level, there are only two things I ask my students to remember: 1. This is a hand, this is a body, this is Reiki. 2. Use it. Practice.
Almost everything else we talk about in class is merely entertainment for the left brain, keeping it busy so the right brain has a chance to remember something we all already know - how to heal ourselves and each other.
The Usui System of Natural Healing (as it was shared with me - there are other forms, more about that later) is the simplest, most effective, most user-friendly healing system I have ever encountered. It supports any other form of healing or therapy in that it brings balance to the body, facilitating, reminding, catalyzing and empowering the body to heal itself. The practice of Reiki has given me a container to hold and understand all my feelings about healing on the physical, emotional and spiritual levels. I make a promise in each of my classes - if I ever find anything simpler or more effective, I will personally write you all a letter and let you know what it is. In the meantime, the practice of Reiki has quite simply changed my life.
Welcome to Reiki! All blessings as you begin this portion of your path.
Namaste
Penelope Jewell
November, 1995
