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by Cynthia Piltch, PhD, CMT - Photographs by Christopher Navin
As a massage therapist, your career is physically, emotionally and spiritually demanding. One way to avoid repetitive physical stress is to add variety in modalities, such as reiki to your practice.
My first semester of massage school, I was diagnosed with tendonitis in
both of my arms and was advised by conventional health care specialists
to drop out of school and forget a career in massage. Desperate to find
an alternative approach to abandoning my dream, I turned to a massage
therapist with a great reputation for helping difficult cases. That therapist
told me that my neck and shoulders were as “hard as marble” and that I needed energy work.
The therapist suggested that I learn reiki. When asked what that was, she
responded with “universal healing energy.” I rolled my eyes in disbelief
and told her I was a scientist. The therapist gently replied: “If you are a
scientist, then go experiment.” Without a quick retort, I decided that given
my level of pain and strong desire to stay in massage training, getting reiki treatment was worth a try.
My skepticism melted away during my first reiki treatment as I felt a
gentle, warm wave come over me and an immediate easing of tension in
my neck and tingling in my arms. I also experienced a flashback of the
moments before a rear-end collision I was involved in five years earlier. I
could see the truck that was about to hit my van in my rearview mirror.
My body shook for several minutes with the memory, and then I felt a strong sense of calm.
The power of this first experience inspired me to learn reiki and use it for self-care, which helped heal my tendonitis. Since that experience a decade ago, I have graduated from massage school and become a reiki teacher. I perform self-reiki on a daily basis, and I’m convinced this has helped me maintain a part-time integrative clinical practice and to teach reiki to several hundred students. Because of my own experience with healing myself, I am passionate about educating massage therapists, other health professionals and the public at large about the potential value of learning reiki.
Although the research about reiki is limited, what has been conducted reveals that it can be a helpful modality
for both physical and emotional well-being as well as coping with a variety of health conditions.
It’s something Sharon Woodbine, a reiki practitioner and massage therapist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has experienced firsthand. “It calms and centers me and balances my energy,” says Woodbine. “Normally my energy is a bit manic/frenetic, but after reiki, I slow down overall. It also eases muscle tension and alleviates body aches, or any physical concern for that matter.”
And in an era when massage therapists and other health care practitioners face greater physical, mental and spiritual demands, and see clients with increasingly complex and chronic health conditions, reiki can be a valuable tool that can not only support mind/body wellbeing, but also add to your practice.
Becoming a Reiki Practitioner
In many ways, the reiki profession is in a position similar to where the massage profession was a decade ago, and as the massage community did, the reiki community could benefit from some self-reflection and standardization. The reiki community could also seek ways to standardize the training and experience requirements of practitioners through some sort of certification process. At least some schools of reiki have sought to standardize the training of their practitioners.
Although there’s great variation in the training time requirements, cost and training content within U.S. schools, in general terms, a reiki practitioner is focused on balancing the seven major energy centers of the body. These centers are referred to as chakras (see the illustration on page XX). By balancing these centers— which correspond to endocrine organs of the body—reiki practitioners help provide clients with maximum support for healing on multiple levels, including mind, emotions and spirit. With reiki practice, the practitioner serves as a conduit for energy from the universe—in other words, the energy is thought to flow through the practitioner to the client rather than from the practitioner.
Different schools have varying levels of training, all of them share an intention to heal on multiple levels:
- Principles for approaching life (e.g., “just for today, I will live a life of gratitude”).
- Hand positions for use on the body (intended to maximize balancing of the system).
- Symbols and mantras that the teacher uses to “attune/initiate” the student (i.e., prepare the student to become a conduit of reiki energy).
Within the reiki curriculum, there are three levels of training that are largely distinguished by the number
of symbols and mantras the student has learned. For example, in first-degree reiki, students learn how to give
reiki to themselves and others, but learn no symbols or mantras. In second-degree reiki, they are taught symbols
and mantras for empowerment, mental/emotional healing and distant healing (similar to prayer). For third-degree
reiki, they learn the reiki master symbol, which enables them to attune themselves and others through teaching.
Sometimes the third level is divided into teaching the master symbol first and how to teach later.
The length of time required to become a reiki practitioner and teacher varies tremendously. While
Mikao Usui’s—a Japanese educator in the 1800s, who many consider to be the father of reiki—students are
thought to have apprenticed with him for years before becoming teachers, some reiki instructors train people
over the Internet or do multiple-level training in two weekends. Most others require weeks, months or years.
In Usui reiki tradition, the term “reiki master” is often used to refer to someone who has attained the highest
level of personal training of reiki, but is not yet ready to teach it. The term “reiki master teacher” distinguishes
those who are ready to teach others.
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American Massage Therapy Association®
