The Reiki Dojo

It is now 10 years since I taught my first Reiki practitioner course!

Prior to that I had participated in a series of Reiki conferences where a description of the potential developmental path to being a professional Reiki practitioner was created.  I was excited by this description and referred to it when I participated in developing the National Occupational Standards (NOS) for Reiki. These NOS then became the foundation of the standards Reiki practitioners need to meet to join the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC).

I wanted to support Reiki students wanting to become more professional in public Reiki treatments and those who wanted to become CNHC registrants, so I began developing a practitioner course, based on the NOS.

The first one, which began in October 2013, focused a lot on what the NOS describe, which I would call the function of being a Reiki practitioner, in other words what we do, including how to set up a treatment space; ensuring client safety; how to carry out the treatment and so on. At the time this it was challenging, because some of these functions as a professional practitioner were on the edge of my experience. Although I had been giving Reiki treatments to the public for over 20 years, I was still more a ‘public practitioner’. Teaching this course over the years, and continuing my own Reiki treatment practice alongside, has given me more understanding through experience of what being a professional practitioner means.

Being

Over the years of teaching the course, I realised that being professional practitioner is about much more than the practical things we do. It is also about quality of being as a practitioner.

This means being conscious of how we hold our role: our ability to show up consistently, with kindness and presence and staying rooted in our Reiki practice, our ability to be in healthy relationships with people; understanding the need for and practising self-care... As a result of this, my practitioner course began to include development of our being as well as the function of being a practitioner.

Will

I also realised, over the years of teaching, that will, a commitment and a sense of purpose, is also important. As a professional Reiki practitioner, I choose to make myself available on a regular basis, to make Reiki central to my livelihood and to am willing to risk ‘putting myself out there’. This aspect has also become an essential part of the course.

Ongoing Course Development

I enjoy continuing to develop this course. I am pleased that my course is now verified by Reiki Council, so anyone successfully completing it will automatically be able to become a CNHC Reiki registrant, but I am even more delighted with the increasing depth of practice and professionalism of the practitioners who engage with it. 

During Lockdown I offered some of the modules of the practitioner course online, which was a new development and worked better than I expected, so I still offer some online teaching. My current development is to look at splitting the course modules further so that students can take more time to practice if they wish because I know from experience that it is good to take plenty of time on this path.

I have very much enjoyed this teaching over the past 10 years. Thank you to all the students who have joined me on this adventure of exploration!  I look forward to supporting more Reiki students to develop their function, being and will as practitioners.