As a Reiki Master I do all levels of Reiki attunements – Level 1 for self-healing, Level 2 to work with others, then Level 3 the Master level, to allow people to teach/attune others.

I have learned from others who have done Level 1 and maybe even Level 2 with other teachers, that many Reiki Masters are not teaching any protection or intention. They are not telling students that the self-healing after Level 1 might be difficult. Indeed I even had one student who told me that they had had their own shadow work arising after Level 1 and their Reiki teacher told them they must be doing something wrong as Reiki is only about love and light! I was of course appalled on several counts.

I believe the vast majority of us are not perfectly healed, enlightened beings, and so one of the purposes of Reiki Level 1 is to do some healing work on ourselves before we start working with others. And what is working on ourselves? Doing the shadow work, the difficult stuff. The healing work is not about love and light. The work is about dealing with the shit!

My mantra is safety, safety, safety, and so now I have broken with convention and I give the Cho Ku Rei power symbol with Level 1. It means put all the power of the universe here and it goes into each corner of the room to create a grid of protection before doing anything else. More on why I do this is below.

After that, to open the Reiki space I initially have four parts (these came from the Monroe Institute )

1. Acknowledge that we are more than our physical bodies and that we are about to work with non-physical energies.
2. Ask for help from the field – which may include spirits, angels, guides – those whose wisdom, knowledge and experience is greater than our own.
3. Ask from protection from this same field or these same wise beings against any entities or energies that might make the experience less than optimal for our Higher Self.
4. Give thanks in advance for the healing that is about to take place.

I then specifically call in the Reiki energy at the three levels - physical, mental and emotional, always for the best interests of the client’s Higher Self, or my own Higher Self in a self-healing. And when I call the Reiki energy in at the physical level, I always ask that each and every physical cell should work optimally, if that is possible. If that is not possible I ask those cells that cannot work optimally to be released from the body as toxins, in whatever way is safe, to be replaced by cells that are working beautifully and optimally, in the perfect template of health.

The reason for this is that some cells, such as cancers and tumors, appear to love energy. I prefer to be very clear in my intention that I am not just channeling energy into each and every cell. I am channeling energy in for the optimal performance of each cell.

When people are starting to work with Reiki Level 1, on themselves, it may be the first real personal healing work that they have done and so lots of difficult, shadow energy may be released. If you are working with a therapist, it is up to the therapist to keep the space safe, but if you are working on yourself, there is no one there but you. And we are opening the space to non-physical energies. So for instance if you are releasing anger and if something arrives that wants to feed off that anger, you may get a sense that it is there and get angry at it. That of course just feeds it more. Similarly, if you are releasing fear and something arrives that wants to feed off that fear, you may be afraid of it which just feeds it more.

Putting the protection into the room by using Cho Ku Rei, and also explicitly asking the wise beings to give us protection, are two simple ways of trying to keep the space as safe as possible.

If despite these precautions you sense there is a presence in the space that you are not sure about, ask three times is it of the light? If yes, then of course it is welcome, but if not then send it love, compassion, healing, acknowledge it is in pain and suffering – and it will leave.

This is all about protection within self-healing. In my next post I will talk more about protection for clients, and who seems to benefit most from Reiki healing.