Part III
In addition to learning about the traditional way of practising Reiki you will gain useful recommendations for living
with Reiki today
...from the experiences of
five female teachers (daishihan)
from Japan, and four from Europe
"When somebody gets sick, I can do something. Not just watching and
wondering, ‘Oh no, what can I do?’ At least I can do something. This is
really a good thing."
"It’s rare in Japan to have so many people using Reiki at work but this centre is a special place....when a mother’s labour begins, three or four midwives come to give her Reiki.
This midwife centre is promoting breastfeeding but some other midwife centres still believe mother’s milk is not good enough... I sometimes do acupuncture there as well as Reiki. We are working to educate the next generation in this traditional knowledge."
"Reiki is both [spiritual and practical]. It is spiritual but not woo woo. It’s down to earth. Actually what I think about spirituality is it is not far from our daily life, it’s the base of
everything. We do daily things on top but it is always there underneath.
We cannot separate from it – it’s like the practical part is coming out of it."
"I don’t have the kind of passion that I am going to change the world or something like that. I want to do what I can do in front of me, so when something comes to me, I like to do my best. It’s amazing to think that vision can change the world, but what we need to do is work one by one. We say in Japanese kotsu kotsu tsuzukeru. It means one step by one step, we just continue doing what we can do."
"I’d love to see all young mothers learning Reiki and using it for children, and pregnant mothers too. Then children will be open to it and learn in their future, so Reiki will be like the current first aid kits people have in their households. It will be indispensable, a first aid kit right in everyone’s hands!"
"...trying to live the Gokai [five principles] makes such a difference! Of course giving treatments and teaching, being in more contact with a variety of people gives you even more reasons to apply the Gokai than if you live alone. When I work with other people and introduce them to the Gokai, I can say, “Look, Reiki did this for me, it is possible to change.”
"My idea really is that ProReiki contributes to bring more attention and recognition for Reiki in society. Time will tell where this leads. I think Reiki needs a place in the health care system, in kindergarten and in schools, in caregiving for old or sick people, basically in all areas of society. That’s also the aim of ProReiki, they are bringing together all Reiki lineages and work to reconcile what was previously separated."
When you feel that everything
is connected so intimately, it really
doesn’t make sense to do harm to any part of life because you are harming yourself. I think this is what is inside Reiki even if there are many people who are not aware of it or interested in it. This is the core of it. It’s beautiful to have a method where even if they are not looking for it, spiritual awareness is growing in people who practise regularly.
"I started by concentrating on giving the physical treatment and the Seiheki treatment of course, and through doing that, naturally, these things that are more deeply spiritual began to surface within me. It is really important to allow
life to happen, to let it lead the dance. I learned to follow from Reiki, not to try to control things and squeeze life into the pattern that I think it should have."
Photographers:
Ikuko Hirota by Masako Kinoshita
Rika Tanaka by Lisa Horterer
Gabrielle Gietzen by Mike McCarty
Yukiko Sano by Kunio Onishi
Mari Okazaki by Sarah Sovreign
Ute Vetter by Ellen Bornkessel
Silke Kleemann by Ellen Bornkessel
Amanda Jayne by Ellen Bornkessel
Review of "Women in Reiki" by Melina Tobisch,
published in the German Reiki magazine, edition 02/22
"Through the natural style and the very personal descriptions, the reader feels as if he is really getting to know the people described. Some interviews were translated from Japanese or
German into English. The reader may identify with some aspects of the various descriptions or may have had similar experiences. In any case, while reading I recognized myself in some of the situations and share some of the views.
All nine women portrayed belong to the lineage of Jikiden Reiki. Some of them have had experience with other styles of Reiki and some of them in their descriptions draw comparisons between the so-called ‘Western healing methods’ and the ‘traditional Reiki’ which they have learned from Chiyoko or Tadao Yamaguchi.
Other Reiki styles are not criticised, but they describe their personal experiences with them.
This book is a great treasure of an enormous amount of knowledge not only about the Reiki healing method, but also about the history of the world and the culture and living conditions
of all the people portrayed in this work. Thus, this book not only provides the practitioner with an enormous knowledge, it also promotes understanding of the interrelationships between various stories that one may have heard about in a Reiki seminar, but often without enough space to deal with it more extensively.
It is also remarkable to witness the connection between practising and spreading the Reiki healing method and the political and historical-cultural events in the past. And how
the prehistory of Japan as a nation influenced the development of our present-day hand-healing. Anyone interested in the background should definitely take a few evenings to get to know this excellently researched, very substantial work.
It is worthwhile in many respects.
Certainly the focus of the authors Amanda Jayne and Silke Kleemann is on the style of Jikiden Reiki. Nevertheless, Reiki practitioners of any Reiki style can gain many ideas here, deepen their knowledge, easily find themselves in some parts and, above all, learn about
impressive biographies of the women in Reiki then and now.
Hopefully it will soon be published in German."