In my previous blog post “Energy Medicine: Medical Qigong and Reiki” I talked about the basics of Reiki and medical qigong and my experiences studying both and experimenting with energy medicine for more than 20 years. I wanted to share some more insights for students and practitioners of medical qigong and Reiki, so, here you go in no particular order.
Reiki says once you are attuned you never lose the ability to flow Reiki to someone or something else even if you don’t use what you learned for 40 years. But like anything, the more you use it the more powerful the flow and the more effective you are in directing it. Use your energetic healing chops as frequently as you can. Even when I am in my kitchen I try to still my mind and let Qi/Reiki flow through me and into the food I am preparing. Everything is Reiki, everything is Qi. When I approach life like this everything becomes healing and I get stronger and stronger in my ability to let if flow through me. All things become healing practice.
Dr. Qianzhi Wu said very quietly and quickly in Foundations of Chinese Medicine class one day
You can read out of a book and learn a thing or two, but being in the presence of great teachers has benefits you can’t get from a printed page. The energetic exchange between teacher and student is vital and has proven impossible to document. It does something to your Qi just to be in their presence. If you’re interested in learning from my two main teachers, Barbara Biro teaches classes in Austin, Texas and Master Li literally teaches around the world, including in Austin.
Just as it is vital to be in the presence of a teacher, being in the presence of a healer can have benefits that are hard to explain. As a healer, being completely present for clients/patients creates a much stronger healing experience than a session in which the practitioner is distracted. It takes discipline and practice to learn to quiet the mind and keep it from wandering to either the past or the present. Patients don’t often get this gift from their practitioners. The last stat I read said that on average patients get about three minutes of face time with their health care practitioners. Most of this time is spent with the doctor poring over or making notes in a chart. In energetic medicine, as well as in acupuncture, we spend much more time with the patient. If our minds are still, our hearts are filled with gratitude for the Qi, which we bring to the session and to life, and we are led by our own intuition and training, then our patient has all of our attention and all of our skills focused on them. This dynamic alone gives them a gift of Qi that they may not get anywhere else in their lives.
Just as our own energies are changed and cleansed when we come into the presence of amazing teachers, our clients’ energies are changed and cleansed by coming into our presence when we are in this state of mind. Toward this end, at the end of any healing session I recommend changing your table linens and doing a brief cleansing of your space (I use a tuning fork, some people use a singing bowl, etc.).
Integrate healing information, but let your intuition guide you during a healing session of any kind. Being present and connecting to the Universe (Medical Qigong terminology) or being led by Spirit (Reiki terminology) opens the healer to all of the resources that are available within the stream of Universal Love/Qi/Ki. AOMA trains us well in our healing arts. When you have been practicing a while these become second nature (as opposed to that struggle to recall what you experience during a test!). If you allow your intuition to guide you then the built-in skills and wisdom flow naturally and seamlessly to the benefit of the clients.
We are not healers, we are conduits. I read about a practitioner who would bow to his clients at the end of every session and say, “I release you to your life.” Our job is not to heal anyone, but to present the gift of healing Qi to clients. Detachment from results of our efforts is vital. We cannot take responsibility for another person’s path – our own is responsibility enough! Hoping for a good outcome is kind of like having a hook in someone – we want them to feel better so that we feel better about ourselves as practitioners. There are other motivations of course, but none of them are whole or healthy. Attaching to the results of your efforts is similar to planting a seed and then continually digging it up to see how it’s going. It is counter productive to everyone involved. Let them go. The Universe will care for them better than we could anyway.
As the owner of Calhoun Acupuncture & Wellness in Austin, TX, Catherine Calhoun maintains