In January’s ReikiUpdate I asked, “How I can help?” What I had in mind was what classes and content would help you with your Reiki practice.

What I received was much more profound. I have never been so grateful that I didn’t communicate clearly!

Many of you opened your hearts to share your dreams, your frustrations, your doubts, and the wishlists for your lives. I was deeply touched by the outpouring, and moved by your confidence that, as a spiritual healing practice, Reiki can help us accomplish our life goals.

Reiki healing practice requires practice

The key word, of course, is practice.

Reiki healing is not magical, although it can seem that way. If we really want our Reiki practice to change our lives, and we want to stabilize that transformation, we need to do our part — we need to actually practice.

As with anything else, the best results come with consistent practice.

When asked about daily self -treatment, one practitioner responded, “off and on.” Other than hands go off and on as we proceed with our hand to body placements, that’s really a NO.

Another practitioner said she practiced regular self-treatment “most of the time.” What’s regular about “most of the time?”

There’s no con in consistent

We don’t sleep “most nights,” nor do we eat “most days.” The only way to keep from conning ourselves is to be consistent in our efforts.

Architects don’t just dream of buildings; they draw the plans that contractors then build.

We build our dreams through daily practice. Daily, as in every day. Unfailingly.

(We don’t have to be rigid. It’s okay if our Reiki practice is shorter some days than others, as long as it happens and tomorrow we’re back to a full practice.)

More off or more on?

When we settle for off-and-on, “on” tends to be only when we’ve hit a rough patch. Then just as our balanced state is stabilizing, and our daily practice is about to install a level of steadiness in our lives that we never imagined, our Reiki practice is off again.

When our practice is as important to us as sleep, when we crave the nourishment we receive from practice as much as we crave food, we have connected with the power to transform our lives.

The power to transform our understanding and our lives is ever-present; our daily practice is the vehicle it needs to manifest.

How can I help?

Do you have a question about practice that is keeping you from practicing? I want to help you. Here are links that discuss the questions I’m asked most often:

Do you have doubts?

Do you have how-to questions about daily practice?

Would you like to communicate Reiki with more confidence?

Are there other questions I can help you with here? Please leave them as a comment below. If you are reading this in your inbox, click here and then scroll down to the comment section.

If you don’t receive my free monthly ReikiUpdate and would like to, sign up here.

Will we meet soon in Barbados, San Juan, or Atlanta?

Pretty bows pictured above are available on Etsy.

GUESTBLOGGER Suneil Shrivastav saved his weekly allowance to finance learning to practice First degree Reiki when he was 14. I noticed his insightful comments and thoughtful questions on Facebook and here at ReikiCentral, and asked him to share about his experience teaching Reiki in a women’s prison. –

“I often wonder what my son looks like now. It’s been more than 15 years since I last saw him,” Shakeela Bi said, her despondence more apparent in her manner and her gaze than in her words.

Shakeela, 43, was serving life imprisonment in the women’s section of the Bhopal Central Jail in Bhopal, a small town in central India. I was there with nine other Reiki masters to teach 100 women inmates to practice First Degree Reiki. We had arranged for fifteen hours over two days.

This was a first for me, but three of my colleagues had already taught over five thousand people between them.

Most of the women came from a rural background, had no formal education, and spoke dialects of my language, Hindi, that are not native to me. Speaking clearly about Reiki can be challenging in the best of circumstances; the language hurdle made it even more so. I had to figure out what exactly the women asked, and answer their questions directly and simply, without getting bogged down with unnecessary concepts.

Thankfully, the group provided instant feedback. As soon as I went off-track, they would either get distracted or question me in a very straightforward way to clarify what I meant.

I experienced the initiations with the usual sense of peace and heightened awareness, and observed the familiar indrawn calmness on the students’ faces. One of the inmates who earlier had seemed defensive and tight-lipped radiated a sense of peacefulness after the initiations. Two others felt heat in their hands and tingly all over, while other women expressed feeling freed of a heavy burden.

Our Reiki classes were silently supervised by prison staff, who were curious about what they were seeing. Whereas the meditation classes given in the prison involved either intensive breathing exercises or stringent sitting schedules, the Reiki class was offered in relative comfort and ease.

Perhaps it seemed to the guards that nothing was happening. However, the effects of Reiki – peacefulness, lightness and a feeling of comfort – were soon apparent. At one point, the staff laughed out loud, asking us afterwards if it were the dullness of the timed flute music and the hypnotic drone of our voices that had lulled the prisoners to sleep. I found out only later that many prisoners suffered a lack of sleep from recurring nightmares.

All the Reiki teachers noticed that the women who practiced Reiki treatments in groups were more chatty amongst themselves, and shared smiles with us as well as the prison staff. This was a significant change from the initial wary, defensive glares we had observed.

At the end of the class, we happily announced that our shiny new students were now able to practice Reiki for the rest of their lives. A student said, “If what you told us is really true, that we can keep ourselves in a better frame of mind and better physical condition just by putting our hands on ourselves, then you are nothing short of miracle-workers!” I had witnessed more than a few tears during the class; now it was my turn.

Based on our introductory session with prison staff, the supervisory teams prepared a brief self-report questionnaire to document physical and non-physical changes. The students were asked to complete the questionnaire three weeks after the class.

Students who practiced Reiki regularly reported a decrease in their levels of physical discomfort and bodily aches and pains. The women also reported feeling calmer and happier. They attributed these changes to their practice sessions.

If you offer Reiki treatment or training in the correctional system, please tell us about it in the comment section below.

Photograph by Jesper Wilson.

I have a special invitation, just for you: Please join me in giving Reiki to the world.

Let’s do it now.

I’m not envisioning an elaborate network of distant treatment, nor suggesting we take to the streets and get our Reiki hands on a record number of people (although that’s not a bad idea).

Reiki now

My invitation is simple: whatever you’ve been plotting Reiki-wise, whether it’s starting daily self-practice or approaching a host partner to sponsor a public Reiki event in your community, take the first step now.

Right now, take a simple action to start the Reiki ball rolling out of your dreams onto a field where others can play too.

Do it right now to make sure it gets done. Don’t wait until it’s perfect enough or convenient enough. With whatever means you have at this moment, take action.

Your Reiki action

Your action might be writing the first draft of your event plan or writing the email asking for a meeting. It might be adding your daily Reiki self-treatment to your calendar, or contacting a Reiki buddy to meet regularly to exchange treatments.

Take an action that brings you closer to giving Reiki healing a larger presence in your life, and thus in the lives of others. One leads naturally to the other.

And if Reiki’s presence in your life is already overflowing the brim, take an action that will make Reiki practice available to others. Chances are that many people would appreciate the benefits you are experiencing, or other benefits you haven’t dreamed of, that would bring greater balance to their lives.

Think what your Reiki practice has brought to you, and how it has changed your life. Don’t you want others to have that opportunity? Take action.

Reiki audience participation time

Can’t think of an action to take right now? Ok, I’ll make it easy. Please share your Reiki story to delight and inspire us.

How did you come to practice Reiki? What has your practice given you? Scroll down to the comment section, or f you’ve received this as an email, click here to tell your Reiki story.

Next week we’ll return to our discussion of healing crises.

And please have a blessed, peaceful New Year.

Are you a doubting Thomas? Would you like to be?

Did I hear you say, “I doubt it?”

Perhaps you’ve never thought of doubt as something positive, but it can be, if you use it deliberately to develop your understanding.

Let’s call this practice Productive Doubting.

Even the minds of Easy Believers have currents of skepticism. The mind naturally questions, and when we don’t engage in conscious questioning, unrecognized doubt undermines our happiness in ways we could have prevented.

Doubt is not black-and-white and it doesn’t announce its presence, but careful questioning uncovers pockets of doubt in even the most strongly entrenched belief system.

Transforming doubt

Conviction is arguably the greatest gift of transformational practices such as Reiki and meditation.

Conviction is not belief, but rather a profound inner knowing that supports us through times of challenge, a compassionate knowing that is steady and deep without being rigid or positional.

The process of developing conviction is gradual and developmental. It happens invisibly as we practice consistently over time, and we cannot fast track it.

But we can organically accelerate the process somewhat by identifying where we lack conviction and acknowledging the presence of doubt.

Uncovering doubt

What do you doubt? (This is a time for deep self-honesty.)

Do you doubt you can have happier holidays this year?

Do you doubt your healing practice is a benefit to your clients?

Do you doubt you can sustain meaningful, enduring relationships?

Do you doubt you have a purpose in life?

Here’s another approach to Productive Doubting:
what have you assumed to be true, and never questioned? (Sometimes these beliefs hide in sentences that include the word “never.”)

Productive Doubting reveals how our continuing practice is transforming our awareness in ways we might have otherwise missed. This in turn gives us patience with the process, and conviction in the effectiveness of practice.

What understanding or opportunity has opened up for you because you chose to doubt what you were told, by someone else or by your own mind? Please share in a comment below.

Ever notice that when we feel bad, no matter how sure we are that we want to feel better, what we really want to do in that moment are things that would most assuredly make us feel worse, if not immediately, then not too soon after?

It’s the Snowball Effect. The mind has momentum to keep making choices in the direction in which we are already headed.

Enter Chinese wisdom. A Chinese folk saying reminds us that if we don’t change course, we will end up where we are heading.

Changing direction

It’s clear that when we feel badly in ourselves, if we want to heal, we need to choose a different direction.

Pivot in place. About face. Resist the instinct-of-the-moment. Do precisely what you do not in that moment want to do: Practice.

Practice whatever practice you practice. Watch your breath. Place your Reiki hands. Repeat your mantra. Roll out the yoga mat (and use it). Take an action that brings you back to yourself.

A Taoist proverb advises: When you have a disease, do not try to cure. Find your center and you will be healed.

First practice

Practice. Then be bad if you want to.

But of course then you won’t want to be bad. Once you feel good, momentum starts working for you. You want to do good things to protect that good feeling, that I’m-having-a-good-time-being-myself-just-the-way-I-am feeling.

Even when when no one else is looking.

And even when they are.

Please tell us about a time when inserting even a brief practice — meditation, Reiki, yoga, mindfulness, your choice — turned your state around and headed you back in the direction of health and happiness. It could be something as simple as placing a Reiki hand on your heart before you eat, or before you hit “send.”

“There are dreamers and there are realists in this world.

“You’d think the dreamers would find the dreamers and the realists would find the realists, but more often than not, the opposite is true.

“You see, the dreamers need the realists to keep them from soaring too close to the sun.

“And the realists? Well, without the dreamers, they might not ever get off the ground.”

This bit of wisdom from the popular television comedy Modern Family set me thinking. I got the drift, and agree completely, but the language seemed a bit polarizing.

In that scenario, the realists are the debunkers, the naysayers. But what makes their rebuttal more real than what the dreamers see? It didn’t seem fair, or accurate, to put reality solely in their domain.

Visionaries and Builders

What if the dreamers were “visionaries,” and the realists were “builders?” While we each have some of both (switching sides as we please), these two functional categories of people truly need one another. Reality — making the dream happen — requires input from both sides. The vision needs a form where the world can participate.

Visionaries see the long term while builders focus on a more immediate future. Builders gather the temporal power needed to make something happen; visionaries see a subtle, transcendent power at play.

Visionaries warn builders of the unwanted side effects of what they are building; builders fashion visionaries’ dreams into a shared  reality.

What ultimately comes into form is a co-creation of visionaries and builders, and it needs constant tweaking.

What’s Your Vision?

As more people hold a vision, the likelihood of the vision being built increases.

Spiritual practice of any form –  meditation, Reiki, yoga, etc. — makes us both visionary and builder. As we practice, we give form to our vision in the world, as ourselves.

Actually being our vision (with thankfulness, work diligently) makes it more likely that our vision will show up in the world around us.

What’s your vision, for yourself and for the world? Please click here to share it as a comment.

The illustration is William Blake’s Jacob’s Ladder.

Imagine if everyone you met today, including the person in the mirror, were grounded and safe — safe for themselves, and safe for others. That would improve your day, wouldn’t it?

Living in today’s world, surrounded by a plethora of distractions — plus all the things our minds throw at us — staying grounded and safe can seem like a full time job.

For those of us who are hyper-responsive to the needs of others, it’s even more challenging. We naturally go out to people far too easily, or let them in too deeply.

Not everything that comes naturally is a good thing.

When we go out to others too readily, we lose our balance, we lose our center, we lose our roots. We go out to others because we want to help them, but what good can we accomplish in this world without roots?

Grounding for happiness and service

That’s why I encourage you again and again — ok, I nag you — to learn habits of grounding. That’s why I chose to celebrate 25 years of Reiki practice by organizing the Thankfulness Interview series.

The more reliably you ground yourself in yourself, the happier and healthier you will feel, and the more effectively you will be able to help others.

And the easier it will become to meditate. Not what you expected?

Why meditate?

Meditation is the mother of all healing (including Reiki practice), and the key to developing wisdom. Through meditation, we extend beyond our limitations to find inspiration, inner knowing, and compassion.

Meditation drew me to India many years ago. It was a move that moved everything. It changed my understanding of the mind and enabled me to see in a more holistic way. It also freed my mind to be more logical. Go figure.

That’s what happens when you give yourself to spiritual practice, whether it’s meditation, Reiki, yoga, or in my case, all three. The effects show up where you least expect them. And they keep showing up for the rest of your life.

Meditation you can do

I realize not too many people can schedule two years to live in an ashram in India immersed in spiritual practices.

That’s why I asked Sharon Salzberg and Sally Kempton, two of today’s most respected, effective meditation teachers, to bring meditation to you.

Sharon Salzberg teaches lovingkindness meditation. Lovingkindness is an accessible, deceptively simple (sounds a lot like Reiki…) meditation practice that has special resonance for Reiki practitioners. Lovingkindness requires no greater effort than becoming more mindful of what you are doing already — wishing others well, wanting people to be happy and healthy.

Simple practices, while readily accesible, arguably take longer to truly master; the skill of not doing is more challenging than any technique, no matter how complex it might be.

Learning from experienced practitioners is a great advantage. An experienced teacher helps us reach not just the low-lying fruit, but also the ripest fruits buried in the thicket of the mind. Sharon Salzberg has been teaching lovingkindness meditation for 30 years. Sharon’s new book Real Happiness leads you through the process of starting your own meditation practice. Click here to read excerpts or purchase.

Sally Kempton’s book Meditation for the Love of It: Enjoying Your Own Deepest Experience delivers everything the title promises. Sally shares generously from her 40 years of meditation experience to help you connect with the most subtle essence of your own being, that inviolable core of beneficence that is the goal of all spiritual practice.

Reiki practice is balancing, and not itself dangerous in any way.

Reiki practitioners, however, are human. When humans don’t know how to hold our balance, we can be in danger anywhere. Even in the otherwise safe space of Reiki treatment or Reiki initiation.

After all, we don’t just bring our Reiki hands when we offer treatment or initiation, we bring the rest of us too. All too often, Reiki practitioners don’t know what to do with the rest of ourselves.

I was lucky.

When I learned to practice Reiki in 1986, I had been a student of meditation and yoga for nearly 25 years. Although it was apparent to me that Reiki is a unique practice, my prior spiritual practice gave me a strong foundation that has made an enormous difference in my Reiki practice.

For example, meditation taught me to observe without becoming involved in what I was observing. This enabled me to maintain steadiness and hold my personal boundaries while offering treatment to people in even the most extreme situations, and to those with whom my life is most intertwined.

The truly ancient practices of Ayurveda

Many (many) years ago, my love of meditation took me to India, where I spent two years living in an ashram, marinating in spiritual practices, and getting acquainted with Ayurveda, the traditional medical system of the subcontinent.

Although its roots lie in antiquity, Ayurvedic principles and practices offer much guidance for maintaining health and happiness in today’s world.

Ayurveda can protect our well-being and address imbalances that conventional medicine cannot. This is especially valuable to Reiki practitioners, who are often constitutionally inclined toward imbalances that are too subtle for conventional medicine to treat.

Nourishing the mind and subtle anatomy

Starting from the most subtle aspects of our being, the Ayurvedic model of health and well-being is sophisticated and complex. The first concern of Ayurveda is protecting one’s health; disease treatment is secondary. (This is generally true of indigenous medical systems, where there is not the assumption that a doctor can always put us back together.)

Ayurveda includes perspectives, practices, and knowledge that can help us keep our minds strong and steady as we go about our lives, as we offer Reiki treatment, and while giving Reiki initiation. But the same thing that makes it so valuable to us — the subtlety and highly individualized treatment — can also make Ayurveda hard to access and implement.

The wisdom of Ayurveda can easily get lost in translation, showing up in popular literature like a long list of don’ts that don’t make sense out of context.

I’ve long wondered how to get Ayurveda’s profound context and practical substance to the Reiki community. And then I connected with Prashanti De Jager.

I was impressed by Prashanti’s knowledge, his perspective of service, and his commitment to personal and business sustainability. I knew I wanted him to be part of my Reiki Silver Jubilee celebration.

Prashanti has decades of Ayurvedic training and Crazy Wisdom spiritual practice. He has the knowledge and wisdom that we need, and he understands how to share it and make it actionable for us.

I honestly don’t know where else you can access this important information. I do know that it can make a valuable difference in your daily well-being and in your Reiki practice. I am thrilled that Prashanti agreed to be part of my Thankfulness Interview series.

This interview will include a special offer for those who are on the free live webinar on Monday, November 21 at 3 PM Eastern US time (noon Pacific, 8PM in the UK). Click here to register.

Can’t make the live webinar? No worries, I plan to record it. But only those who register will be sent the recording link.

My incomparable qigong master knows I have little time for Yet Another Spiritual Practice.

Even though I practice in bed, Reiki healing still takes time. Then I sit for meditation. And usually visit my yoga mat before or after.

So I don’t come to tai chi class as he encourages me to. But he sees that I cannot stay away.

Recently he gave me a practice I actually have time to do:

Breathe with my skin.
Smile with my heart.

He told me to practice while I walk down the street and when I go to sleep.

And now I do.

I have no expectations that I will master qigong, but I can breathe with my skin and smile with my heart, be warmed by his benevolence, and enjoy the sweetness of humble practice.

If you are not practicing Reiki, meditation, yoga, tai chi, qigong, whatever because your practice is too involved and cumbersome, how can you lighten up and find a form for your chosen practice that supports you instead of weighing you down? Please scroll down to share your practice solutions in the comment section below.

If you are a teacher, how do you engage a student who struggles with practice for whatever reason, but still shows up? Please share your success stories in the comments.

Of course, if your practice is short, you may not see results so quickly, but if it’s the practice you will actually do, and keep doing, what does it matter?

Click here to watch my Friends Health Connection interview, “REIKI: What it is, what it is not, and how it can help you.”

Steve Jobs died. As will we all.

Other than sharing the inevitability of death, you may have many thoughts how Jobs was different than you.

Perhaps the most important difference is that, as he told it, “When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’”

That got his attention, and led him to develop a daily practice.

Jobs continued, “…since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”*

See possibility, make it happen

Jobs was a rare person of both vision and execution.

Not manifestation; execution.

He made the effort. He took the risks. He gave form to inspiration. He made things real.

In this ad copy Jobs wrote, he invited us to join him:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

How you can be like Steve Jobs

Of course we can’t all be Steve Jobs. The point is: we don’t have to be. We can change the world being who we are.

Jobs said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

It’s not enough to have vision; we have to execute. And practice is the first step toward execution.

Jobs had his practice, his self-inquiry in the mirror each morning.

We have a transformational practice in the palms of our hands. A practice that changes the world by changing each one of us, changing us into people who value who we are and the opportunity we have as individuals to change the world.

Transformation is difficult. Practice, not so much. Consistent practice brings transformation. Contsistent contemplated practice brings it faster.

I’m crazy enough to know that we can change the world. Will you be crazy too?

Click here to view the Apple ad that the copy came from.
*Click here to read the Stanford University commencement address quoted above.

¿Estás  bastante loco para cambiar al mundo?, the Spanish translation of this post, is available at ReikiCentral en Espanol.