How I Knew I Needed to Stop Practicing Reiki
While my Reiki attunement, training and certification vastly deepened my own relationship with my gifts— on top of the profound healing and understanding I’d received over the past several years— I had enough reasons not to stay ‘here’.
Photograph and concept shot by Dale Carrasco © The Rested Revolution, 2021.
At the end of an almost 3 year relationship with Reiki (first discovered through a close friend’s sister, whom I am now blessed to also call my own friend, teacher, kindred spirit), I made a decision to stop in the spring of 2021. What started as a waffling between whether I should shelf it or not eventually shifted into clarity; my understanding now bridged with my knowing. Randy Jackson style, it was clear: “It’s a no for me, dawg.” As divine events unravel because separation is only a projected illusion, it was in the mundane that I made my decision with confidence and clarity. The building and crossing of bridges between knowing and understanding requires time, every time.
In my reference of Reiki here, I am particularly speaking to the version that has been popularized and taught worldwide by William Lee Rand, commonly credited with introducing this module along with founding Reiki.org and its directory, manuals and certification processes into North America in addition to other European communities. Rand had trained via direct students of Hawayo Takata, Kimiko Koyama, Hiroshi Doi, Chiyoko Yamaguchi and Hyakuten Inamoto, all whom carried the lineage taught and practiced by Dr. Mikao Usui. This lineage is illustrated and acknowledged in each of his manuals and scripted as a share in practitioner training; Usui Holy Fire Reiki acknowledges its Westernization with short summaries of its original roots. Most teachers who certify through Reiki are diligent and respectful in naming the Japanese lineage of Reiki so far as defining its romanized translation of universal energy, yet only briefly covering the history of Reiki once being prolific in Japan prior to World War II. The United States banned all native methods of healing, injecting “Western medicine” as the standard. Here, there still remain incongruencies in the account of its history, which are very much in themselves a part of the Reiki identity.
Intuitively, I knew early. Learning about Reiki's lineage is where my discomfort first made itself known. Because I'm not of Japanese descent; because I am a woman of color who is too familiar with cultural erasure, colonization and oppression in both Asia and North America; because I'm the eldest born daughter to Taiwanese immigrants viscerally aware of the United States' lack of accountability in its white supremacy more than ever; because my soul has always held a knowing that my purpose in this lifetime is rooted in healing and transformation unattached to a binary or single module that is required for me to share my gifts… because it took me 3 decades to be less afraid of the callings that pull on me. In line with commodified holistic care’s nature, Reiki has become a conventionally acknowledged form of energy healing. Existing in its current mainstream form because it was extracted out from its own people and then literally reworded, retaught, rearranged, resold. Hearing that Reiki was forced underground made my heart feel heavy— to hear that the US then permitted institutionally registered (paying) Reiki organizations to continue living, broke it. This is only a fraction of the history and ongoing reality of how the colonial states known as America treats Black, Indigenous and People of Color bodies.
Over the course of almost 2 years where I would further develop my own practice with Reiki, a humbling and delightful journey in honing my personal strengths in clairsentience and claircognizance. This brought such healing validation and sense-making to my entire life's experiences. Those who understand what it means to turn towards and into their humanity will relate to that sentiment. Conscious energy work became integrated into daily meditation and movement practices woven into my living, forming a ritual that brought me through every single day. I no longer think twice about tending to my energetic hygiene no matter where I am or who is around to witness it. It is not my responsibility or due labor to convince those who avoid their sentience. During COVID-19 lockdowns, quarantines and restrictions, this inner resource was life-changing. And in a fairly recent health crisis, it was a whole re-learning (which requires a whole other article). Honesty and self-awareness showed me what integrity did and did not feel like. And I couldn’t shake the empathy of what it must feel like for those of Japanese lineage to witness a whitewashed and arbitrary; admittedly, I only have this sharp reference because I know how much it hurts me to see Traditional Chinese Medicine appropriated by those who learned for the prestige, money and individualistic intentions while ignoring, competing with and invalidating those who have practiced for all their generations. Mindfulness showed me that knowing and understanding are of different natures. We need both.
The internal friction about practicing Reiki was augmented by it’s marketing an inclusive module (anyone and everyone can practice because as living things we are all already interacting with universal energy), yet it continual carries of a systemic oppression and there is modern day gatekeeping in the form of training processes and monetary investments. Yes, we must be paid for our labor of offering healing, teaching, guiding and holding space. I had so many questions, ‘What am I really doing? Who exactly is benefiting? Why are there such a small number of Japanese Masters? How do they feel about all this?’
Reiki's definitions in North America are textbook across most practitioners— as in, it’s the one written in English by an American man. There are few Reiki practitioners who are accessible by the general public who are teaching in tradition. The mainstream certification process is clearly exploitive, typically taught to groups in "consolidated" time periods of two days or a single weekend perpetuating the explosion of self-proclaimed energy healers who are not wholly invested in antioppression and the liberation of their fellow human beings. Stop hiding behind light and love; your own ancestors and generational healing are waiting for your attention and practice.
In May, my internal contemplation was bluntly echoed and illuminated in my community: Michelle of Holisticism unpacked these very aspects with Marika of Moonhouse NW. It felt like another light turned on in this dim room I was trying to sort in my heart, cluttered with things I couldn’t quite grasp. Whether you receive Reiki, are a practitioner/teacher and or have been curious, there is much to learn from Marika’s Twelfth House Podcast episode. The episode, among other important discussions, lives on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Marika is a traditional Japanese Reiki practitioner & educator who is teaching traditional Japanese energetic healing practices rooted in Japan’s indigenous beliefs, practices, and rituals. Details and more information live on moonhousenw.com. Learn, Follow, support, examine personally and in community. It is essential. And while it feels uncomfortable, uncertain and unfamiliar, I know it is because it’s more aligned and honest for me than moving forward without looking back and in. I hope that those reading this will not fall to entrapment or sunk cost fallacies, or their own internalized oppression and scarcity, and be able to reflect truthfully on where they are with their adopted modules, be it Reiki or other.
Does history invalidate this module or deem it any less needed? Absolutely not. Do we as human beings need to do things rigidly, the same way for all of time? Absolutely not. Does history inform my relationship to the module and require discernment from me as a prospective practitioner— perpetuator— in the present with all the access to privilege, knowledge and resources I have? Abso(fucking)lutely. I seek to live, work, age, create and love in a vessel, communities and world of real love and liberation. So how do my actions and decisions reflect my intentions? If we don’t embody integrity, who will build these realities? Certainly not systems of oppression that are harming and exploiting our current one right now, nor the people who uphold them and refuse to let go because they’re hurting, scared and disconnected themselves. It hurts so much to witness the appropriation of rich cultures and traditions by the white gaze and white hands while its people are oppressed in every way, invisible, murdered and dehumanized. No wonder we are all exhausted.
No wonder cultural appropriation is prevalent and still alive; when people are touched by white supremacy and colonization their severed connections and dysregulation drive them to seek extraction of what is external to them. It requires so much honesty, resilience, courage and resourcing to be able to turn toward and within your own humanity when you’ve compounded hundreds of years and generations of being one way. When you consciously and unconsciously enforce a culture of extraction without ties or awareness to your own and how that relates to others, you will naturally seek (hijack), escape and comfort for your own individualized wounding, oppressing and disconnection. In a rested world, I envision the spaciousness and dignity for all to expand through their own unique timelines and lineages— without scarcity, without exploitation and without harm or violence. Can you imagine?
Is it time for your own lineage and cultural knowledge to receive you with your time, energy and attention? What do you know; what do you understand?
Which practices, rituals or modules that you currently benefit from require your discernment? Will you continue on? Why, how? Is anything different?
Are you called to energy work for what you will get or are you invested in being responsible through being in relationship with these aspects of our connected existence?
While the 2020 year grew my practice in energy medicine through remote offerings and consults that I practiced through the framework of Reiki, it revealed something a calling beyond the module. As part of my own decolonization, the remembering and honoring of my own lineage, I would eventually realize that I was interacting with conscious energy regardless of ritual or initiation. Thank you, Marika for educating folks like me on the not-so-legitimate symbols that are taught in the above podcast. In releasing Reiki by choosing to explicitly decline further perpetuating its "Westernized" form, I turn towards my own ancestral knowledge and embodied wisdom of Taiwanese and Chinese knowing and understanding. I complete a circling home to esoterics, qi gong, Traditional Chinese Medicine, divination and practicing more of the Buddhist philosophies present in my familial bloodline, rituals and members. Thank goodness for women like Jamie of Sonouros and Mimi of Shop Ceremonie who courageously and clearly see the unseen, and generously share them while calling us in.
I believe there are different languages for the same truths. And beyond that, I also understand that language is both powerful and manifesting. What I engage with in energy medicine are the aspects of our existence and experiences which are ever non-verbal and only felt and sensed. I know and understand that we all have our innate gifts and clair-senses; how we interact with them and what we do in our Work is what is diverse, varied and mysterious. And with that, Reiki with its attachments to its current living lineage will not continue through me. I have let go of its language/naming and the framework for the foreseeable nature. Because knowing is one thing, and understanding is another. The rest is up to you.
Moving forward, the energy medicine I offer is still rooted in creating containers of care for people to continue to relax, restore and release. All bodies and insights. And no, I'm not sure if this is how I'll speak about it forever. I'm learning.
In working together, we will still connect to support the tuning, balancing and healing of your subtle and energetic bodies, inevitably rippling through to your denser and more conscious experiencing such as the mental, emotional and physical planes. And vice versa, too. As a creator conduit guide, I am here to help you identify the bridges but you will be the one to walk across them.
May we be rested in our personal and collective revolutions. May being rested mean that you lovingly tend to the unrest within yourself and simultaneously responsibly to the unrest in the world.
Here with and for you. Thoughts, feelings, questions, concerns or feedback? Connect with me.
