Adding Helpful Techniques and Understanding to Your Reiki Healing Practice

The natural healing method known in the West as Reiki (more popularly in Japan as Reiki Ryoho) is a paradoxically powerful yet gentle method that promotes deep healing, allowing the mental and emotional resistances to lessen, facilitating healing. This happens both in the form of self-healing and with the introduction of this Divine energy (from God, Source, Spirit) that stimulates healing on whichever (or all) level needs healing most immediately: Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, Physical.

Reiki practitioners throughout the West have known of the many add-on techniques that are in common use today. Of course change never arrives without controversy. How true should one stay to Usui-sensai's teachings and practice methods vs. May we find it acceptable to use methods brought into the Reiki sphere since Usui's death. This high road of dismissing any add-ons is with a comfortable dismissal of the fact that the attunements we give and receive here in the west are not at all what Usui would practiced. What we consider an attunement has reportedly been, to some extent, based on Chujiro Hayashi's own attunement, or reiju, method, which is really quite effective. In other words, change has taken place regardless the intent to stay traditional. Personally, I have vacillated back and forth between the two camps, but never to an extreme. Finding the middle way, I practice as closely to Usui's methodology as possible, always led with compassion, intention, and intuition, but I have tried many add-on methods, at times dismissing some as bringing nothing to my healing table, other times creating a permanent spot for tools like using the Hui Yin contraction and violet breath when passing on attunements.

I have also explored, intuitively, how my natural predisposition to Buddhist practices plays a role on my Reiki practice when I am in session with a client. That is how I came upon using the method I will discuss here.

In Tibetan Buddhism, a meditative practice has been used by some Buddhists for hundreds of years. This is the practice of tong-lin. To read details of tong-lin by those who are more masterful and experienced with it than I am, please go to websites for Lama Surya Das and Pema Chodron- both Western Tibetan Buddhist practitioners and teachers who have made the teachings of this old practice quite accessible. The teachings explain an spiritual form of true selflessness, courage, and, above all, compassion. I will describe the teachings briefly, then explain how I have applied tong-lin to my practice.

Tong-lin is a breathing practice used during meditation as an act of compassion. Simply stated, the practitioner creates a visualization while breathing, "seeing" the heaviness or negativity of the world (of a room, an individual) and breathing it in deeply and completely, filling oneself with the black, sticky, tarry, smokiness that is this negativity. When exhaling, a transformation occurs, and the breath supplies the void of the world with crystal clear or blue, or soft misty air, filled with a sense of wholeness, love, perfection, joyful energy. Again, slow inhalation of the heavy, dark, smoky air; exhalation of sunny, cool, sparkling air. This exchange creates a master out of the practioner who doesn't fear losing themselves when giving the world his or her strong energy. A selfless act indeed.

How I have involved this practice into my Reiki sessions includes invoking Reiki energy during this meditative routine. I usually use the practice at the tail end of my session, sensing the "loosening up" of negative energy that was not cleared or transformed during the healing session. At this time, I position myself typically at the recipient's crown or next to them, aligned with their tanden, and begin tong-lin. I charge myself with the Master symbol (the Japanese DKM), especially filling my tanden with DKM, then I begin the inhalation of the heavy energy released by my client. I draw that energy deeply to my tanden, feeling it be transformed before it even reaches this fire source. I hold my breath and this energy, completing and enhancing the transformation, then exhale the Reiki-charged energy, filling my being with compassion, intention, and a sense of joy at the change I am feeling in the room. I repeat this process, never feeling drained, until I feel it is time to end my time with the Reiki recipient.

When I teach my Reiki Master/Teachers this practice, I emphasize the importance of all students to be aware of any tendency they may have to being empathic when practicing Reiki. Reiki does not drain, nor does it cause harm. However, many Reiki practitioners are drained after Reiki because they have practiced two forms of energy healing at the same time, allowing a healing technique with which they utilize their own Ki on behalf of the recipient. This type of pracitioner needs to take baby steps when learning tong-lin, realizing their tendencies.

My suggestion is for the empathic practitioner to strongly set the intention beforehand to only utilize Reiki, not their own Ki, and to often recharge their sacral and solar plexus areas where the energy typically drains. While recharging these areas, reset the intention to only use Reiki. Over time, this will become more natural, and the practitioner may enjoy the benefits of tong-lin without creating a void within his or herself which is what allows the pracitioner to be exhausted, sick, or unable to connect with the outcome of their Reiki practice.

I am open to feedback regarding this additional practice, knowing the usefulness that discussion among the healing community brings.