Reiki vs. Energy Healing

This has been a long time coming. And although I don’t think it will settle any disputes, I do hope to clear up some misunderstandings regarding my lineage, experience and current practice with respect to Reiki and energy healing. My students are the ones who have been most curious in this regard, but most get my company line during class.

First off, it may be confusing that I list Rosalyn Bruyere (who has no Reiki affiliation as far as I know) as one of my teachers and yet, I still promote and teach Reiki. I agree that might seem a little confusing. But several fields cross train styles and methods. And in fact, if you look at massage training, most of the top schools teach solid foundations in several different styles of massage, like Shiatsu, Swedish, Trigger Point Therapy, Deep Tissue, Thai massage, etc. The advantage of studying multiple styles of anything is for me to learn the bigger truths. And of course that never comes quickly or easily. And if we stop learning then the bigger truths may never come.

For me the reasons for my cross training mostly have to do with desire and opportunity. In 1999, once my eyes opened to energy healing and energy theory, I began reading several books on the subject. I refer to the time prior to this experience as my sleeping years. Now I am awake. One of the first energy books I read, Hands of Light, by Barbara Brennan, had such an impact on me, I had to trace Barbara’s journey to find her influences. Barbara sites Rosalyn as one of her early teachers. Once I found Rosalyn, I knew I had found my teacher. I felt an incredible feeling of being grounded as I read through her materials. In fact, her book, Wheels of Light wasn’t as mesmerizing in its details as it was in its spirit. Although I just had only the one book of Rosalyn’s, I found out where she was based (which was very close to where I had just moved) and then I began keeping track of her teaching schedule and looked for opportunities to train with her in SoCal. Unfortunately, for the first few years I found it difficult to take her classes. The ones she offered in and around Sierra Madre were mostly week-long intensives, which were difficult for me to attend with my schedule at the time. Finding a Reiki school with a schedule I could work with proved to be much more accessible for me. Though through misfortune and circumstance, Rosalyn later threw me a bone (so to speak) which proved to be a treasure. More on the treasure in a moment.

It was early 2000, after I had just moved back to California was when I really discovered Reiki. I had moved to California to start a record company with my music partner. After getting settled in SoCal, I made a resolve to find an energy healing school and to learn hands-on energy healing as soon as possible. I was already realizing that energy healing was my life work and I wanted to get started yesterday. While searching for schools, I came across Reiki and a school that was very close to where I had just moved, High Touch Healing Arts (HTHA). I remembered hearing about Reiki from a friend when I was living in NY. He had just learned the technique as a part of his massage training program. That was back before I was awake. It was the modality he enjoyed using the most. I really didn’t know much about it other than my friend liked it, and it was some kind of energy healing method that employed laying-hands as the primary administering technique. So, now that I realized "energy healing" was it's own field (ha!), I was now able to have a better understanding of what my friend had told me back when I was asleep. And not knowing much, I figured Reiki was as good a place to start as any.

So, as I went through Reiki level I, just a few months after waking up to the world of energy, I'd already read a half dozen books on energy AND I had already chosen Rosalyn as one of my teachers. Still, I planned to take Reiki seriously and complete every class the school I found offered, which meant I could become a Reiki teacher within a couple years. My Reiki teachers were very experienced. My main teacher, Irma K. Sawyer (the head of the school) had been teaching for 13 years when I took Reiki I with her. So that means she’s been at it for about 20 years by now. Her school offers teachings in traditional Usui Reiki, as well as other Reiki methods and other energy healing modalities.

Despite a good Reiki foundation, I was cursed with this incredibly western way of thinking. I needed facts, data, and most of all a science to back up all these incredible things I was studying. I'm sure that is one of the reasons I gelled with Rosalyn and Barbara so much and why Hands of Light, struck me so deeply. Barbara, a former NASA physicist had a way of organizing the information. It was also obvious she was creating a contemporary language and a very detailed method for describing the energy phenomenon. She must have felt she had to because science had yet to do it. That was completely understandable and at the time it was exactly what I needed. I still recommend her books and school to many people who ask me about energy. Rosalyn, an electrical engineer, similarly had a scientific way of thinking through and explaining ideas. But she also seemed to reach through time bringing ancient ideas to life with her descriptions and correlations. And that is precisely what we are supposed to be doing in the new age. We're supposed to rediscover the lost ancient teachings. Doesn't anyone else remember the prophetic basis to the hippy movement? They sang it right to you. It's about moving from the age of Pisces into the age of Aquarius. A Q U A R I U S S S S! Okay, more on the great ages and how they relate to where we are and where we've been later. Much later. The point is, we should be looking for people ressurecting the ancient mysteries. Not inventing them. Not that inventors can't be genius and hugely important. But when it's possible to find people practicing ancient methods that have been handed down over centuries or even rediscovered, then we had better pay attention.

I kept to my word and completed my Reiki training by 2001. Though, if you know anything about Reiki, you’ll know that becoming a Reiki master is not about mastering Reiki. That could take a life-time. Being a Reiki master (or Reiki teacher as I prefer) only means that you can pass on the ability to deliver Reiki to others or in Reiki speak, it means you can give a Reiki attunement. Anyway, while I was taking classes at HTHA, I focused mostly on Reiki and tried to minimize my focus on other energy methods. I read several Reiki books and trained with a second teacher (also from HTHA) to broaden the information I was getting from Reiki. And throughout this process, I continued to study non-Reiki energy healing methods.

And so it goes that I have really been studying as many aspects of energy healing as I have been able to find. It’s just been the case that Reiki was was a popular and accesible energy healing modality with both classes and certification availble. So, to advertise my services, I still use Reiki because that’s my only certification besides being ordained. AND, also because a lot of people have actually heard of Reiki and may have some idea of what it is.

Sure, there are some Reiki ideals that conflict with some of my other teachers theories. But I try not to get caught up in the differences as much as I try to focus on things that hold up universally. As we remember that these practices are not new and that they are ancient healing techniques that are being rediscovered, we begin to peel away the layers of history that has eluded us from these teachings. And as we begin to understand the energy paradigm, many of our notions of the world and how it works may slowly begin to change. So, I believe the best way to approach this area of study is to remain open, flexible and willing to change.

Reiki itself has changed drastically in the past seven years since I first began studying. I’m glad I haven’t stopped my study and research into Reiki, because Reiki has been sorting out itself over these years. We were originally taught that Reiki was no longer in Japan and that Takata sensei was the only one who carried the Reiki lineage, not only to the western world, but the world. As you may have read from previous posts on my blog, we have discovered this to be untrue. Thanks to dedication of people like Richard Rivard, Frank Arjava Petter and especially William Rand, we have learned so much about Reiki that was never known.

Well, that’s enough for today...