Spiritual self-protection: Are you a leaky bucket?

By Pamela Miles

Reiki is safe, but is the practitioner safe?

If you've ever stepped away from giving a Reiki treatment feeling that a piece of the interaction was lingering, it may not be your imagination. Practicing Reiki is safe in and of itself, but when we place our hands to offer treatment, there may be more than Reiki happening. It’s not that we’re treading into dangerous territory; it’s more of a leaky bucket dilemma.

Remember that song from childhood, There’s a hole in the bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza? The song takes us through a narrative of how to fix the bucket only to come right back to the problem that there is, after all, a hole in the bucket, which of course we already knew.

It’s possible to carry the Reiki connection beautifully, but not be quite as competent in carrying ourselves. If your Reiki treatments are leaving you with negative after effects, they may be an indication of holes in your bucket, what we might call leaky boundaries.

Some people naturally have strong boundaries; most of us have to work at it. People who are interested in healing may be more sensitive to suffering than others. Having experienced Reiki’s benefits in our own lives, it’s natural to want to share Reiki with others. Natural, yes. Understandable, of course. But also where the Reiki practitioner is likely to run into trouble.

Why? Because caring for others—giving to others—often involves a blurring of boundaries. And people who are sensitive are not naturally good at boundaries to begin with. Yet maintaining clear, compassionate boundaries, and the detachment that comes with them, is our best shot at keeping ourselves and our clients safe.

Where does this leave us? Are those of us who are sensitive, who feel other’s suffering so acutely and are motivated to relieve it, doomed to be suctioning it off and taking it home with us? Not at all. At least not if we’re willing to do the work needed to stay balanced.

How can we best protect ourselves—and our clients? By making the effort to be, and to remain, as clear and aware as possible during all phases of the interaction—before, during, and after. What we will take away from a Reiki interaction—whether it will be a sense of well-being or negative transference—is largely determined by what we bring to it. If we are clear going in, it’s more likely that we’ll be clear going out.

As Reiki practitioners, we want to help, and we don’t want to hurt. We also want to be recognized, and to be seen in a good light. We want to feel that our efforts are effective, useful, and appreciated. These are all aspects of our motivation, and it’s important to be aware of each of them.

We may have additional motivations, either for offering treatment in general, or for wanting to treat a specific person at a specific time. For example, every spring I organize practitioners to offer 120 Reiki sessions at the JCC Spa Day for Women with Cancer. Although I understand why a Reiki practitioner who lost her mother to cancer would want to be part of this, it’s not necessarily the right match, especially if the loss was recent. It’s my job to do everything possible to ensure the comfort and safety of all the participants, the patients and practitioners. A practitioner who is addressing profound grief is probably, and understandably, not available to serve in the clearest, safest way.

Daily self-treatment is the beginning of the work needed to maintain clear boundaries. There are also actions we can take during treatment—keeping our eyes open and focused on our clients, staying out of meditation, staying present in our bodies (flexing large muscle groups helps), following a treatment protocol. The boundary patrol continues with ongoing contemplation and self-inquiry.

Clarity is the key to safety, and self-awareness is the key to clarity. When we offer treatment to others, it’s our responsibility to structure the interaction to maximize safety. We can start by taking stock. Here are some questions that Reiki practitioners offering treatment to others might contemplate:

• What are my motivations for being a Reiki practitioner?
• What are my motivations for giving a particular treatment?
• Am I willing and able to simply offer this treatment and remain detached from the outcome, or am I trying to achieve a particular result?
• Do I have the confidence to allow my client to have her own experience, even if it is different than mine?
• Am I able to support my client in exploring her experience without judging or interpreting it, even if her experience seems to be negative, and even if she asks me to interpret it for her?

This is not a “been there, done that,” but rather, a continuing, disciplined self-monitoring. Reiki is easy, very easy. Being human, keeping clear boundaries—that takes some effort.

Pamela Miles is the author of Reiki: A Comprehensive Guide.

The challenge of unwanted negative energy transference is not limited to Reiki practitioners. It’s common to all caregivers, whether they are professionals or lay people. Pamela explores this further in her class Spiritual Self-Protection, which she is offering in New York City on October 4 and in Baltimore on November 15.

Reiki/Catholic controversy featured in the Boston Globe

The controversy over Reiki and the Catholic Church enjoyed a new wave of headlines this past week, six months after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued guidelines denouncing Reiki.

The latest round started in the Boston Globe on Tuesday in a feature headlined, "Reiki banned from Roman Catholic hospitals as neither science nor medicine," -- the breaking-news headline not quite appropriate for a six-month-old story. As that story was picked up by the news services (and even one Catholic news publication), so did the headlines, creating a sense in some that perhaps the Catholic Church had taken yet another action against Reiki. Not so. Meanwhile, the Globe article has drawn quite a bit of interest and discussion, with 200 comments and counting as we write this.

The blog posts soon followed, including this vehemently anti-Reiki response to the article by someone who seems essentially ignorant about Reiki and uninterested in addressing that lack of information, and a calm, reasoned reaction from Pamela Miles.

The Reiki practitioner featured prominently in the article was Debbie Griseuk of New Hampshire, who spoke to us earlier this year after her Reiki program at a local Catholic health care facility was discontinued in the wake of the bishops' guidelines. Debbie did a wonderful job speaking for Reiki, and this story reminds us that any of us might be called upon to do that at any time, whether we're addressing one person or the readership of a large newspaper.

And that makes Debbie Griseuk this week's Celeb-Reiki! You never know -- next week, it might be you.

Reiki Census, Reiki Events Calendar continue to grow

We're at the 300 mark in our ongoing Global Reiki Census -- that's a great response but we just know there are many, many more Reiki practitioners in the world. So if you haven't responded to our call to stand up and be counted, please click here to do so now!

And if you have Reiki events coming up anywhere in the world, we'd like to list them on our Reiki Events Calendar. All you need to do to post your events is email editor @ thereikidigest.com and request authorization. We will need your name, address, telephone number, and email address for our files, but you can choose the contact information that goes into your listings. The listings are self-service and open to all Reiki practitioners and teachers.

Reiki Update Training: New Teleclass begins Nov. 3

If you weren't able to get into our sold-out Reiki Update Training teleclass this month, don't worry -- we'll be starting a new class November 3-December 1.

And for those just joining us, we're offering the Reiki Update Training to all Reiki practitioners who've completed Level 2 or above. You can participate live in the five one-hour weekly teleclasses, Tuesday evenings at 7 p.m. Eastern, or you can listen to the classes at your convenience and participate asynchronously. There is a class blog open only to registered students with resources, homework assignments, and class discussions. And at the end of the class, there's an exam. If you pass it, you'll be eligible for referrals from The Reiki Digest and The Reiki Dojo, as well as listing in our forthcoming directory. And you'll get a certificate of updated training to attest to your achievement and demonstrate that you've met standards over and above your original certification.

Why update your Reiki training?

If you were trained back in the 20th Century, or studied with a teacher who was, it's likely that some of what you learned has since been supplanted by more recently discovered information. Were you taught that Reiki founder Mikao Usui was a Christian medical doctor and university president? It turns out that wasn't the case after all. Or did you learn that Reiki was an ancient Tibetan Buddhist technique that Usui "rediscovered"? That, too, is misinformation (for one thing, Tibetan Buddhism isn't ancient).

Updating your training will also help you better represent Reiki to your clients, students, and community.

In this class, you'll learn:

* The documented history of Reiki
* The truth about the most common Reiki myths
* Where to find credible information
* How to keep yourself informed on further developments
* Highlights of the latest Reiki medical research
* Traditional Reiki meditation techniques
* How to get the most out of your personal practice

. . . and much more.

You'll learn ways to bring new life into your personal Reiki self-care practice, and you'll find out what makes a person a Reiki practitioner (hint: it's not the certificate).

The class will be taught by multi-certified Reiki Master Teacher Janet Dagley Dagley, editor of The Reiki Digest and founder of The Reiki Dojo in New York City. For those who are unable to participate live, recordings will be available so that you can listen at your convenience.

The Reiki Update Training teleclass is open to Level 2 and above in all lineages. We will need to see a copy of your certificate to enroll you.

Class will meet live in five one-hour teleconferences, and those sessions will be recorded for those who join us at other times.

Only $65

Click here to download the registration form

EARLY BIRD SPECIAL: Register by October 15, 2009, and pay only $55!

For more information, email editor @ thereikidigest.com or call 917-512-1330 or
toll-free (in the USA): (888) 316-5853.

Spaces are limited.

Music we love to practice Reiki by: Deuter

This week's featured artist is Deuter, who's been making Reiki music for more than a decade and recording meditation music for much longer than that. Click on the button to find out more. Thanks to iTunes for being a sponsor of The Reiki Digest! Remember, every purchase you make at iTunes by clicking on our links helps support this publication. (And you can listen to samples for free.)

The weekly waka

Change of season

As the days shorten,

We enjoy the shifting winds

That bring cool breezes.

We gather summer's harvest:

Warmth for the long nights ahead.

(By Janet Dagley Dagley)

(Waka wanted: If you'd like to contribute a waka to our regular series, check out these guidelines, write your waka, and email it to editor @ thereikidigest.com.)

This week's specials

Drum roll, please!

Please welcome our new advertiser, Shambhala Publications, whose authors include the Dalai Lama, Pema Chödrön, and Thich Nhat Hanh. Shambhala is celebrating our new affiliation by offering Reiki Digest readers 20% off all books for a limited time. Use discount code LS01 at checkout.

And we have some great specials for you from our other advertisers as well.

From Juara Skincare, inspired by Indonesian botanicals, a free gift with any purchase:

From Alen Air Purifiers, a free filter:

Hay House has some great events coming up, and they're offering discounts on admission for readers who act now:

Our advertisers help make it possible for us to bring you The Reiki Digest at no charge each week. We thank them for their support, and we thank our readers as well. Whenever you shop via the links on our web site or in our email edition, you're helping support us as well. Many thanks!

Setting sail with Reiki

It all began with a thought -- a thought in the mind of a 12-year-old boy, more than 40 years ago.

"I was about twelve when I decided that I wanted to build a boat and travel the world," Reiki Master Teacher Gordon Brown says, "This desire never left me." He's 54 now, and this week, after all those years, all that dreaming and all the ways the distractions of life can get in the way of those dreams, Gordon's finished boat, the Amnesty, made it into the water at last. Reporters from three local Massachusetts newspapers showed up for the launch, and the next day the front page featured a photo of Gordon at the helm in a victory salute.

Victory, yes. Mission accomplished? Hardly -- this guy's just getting started. He's going for more: a victory lap around the world, accompanied by a flotilla of others who, like him, have survived cancer.

Gordon got his first mention in The Reiki Digest back in March, when he was interviewed by a local reporter about his boat and his plans. We named him a Celeb-Reiki for that. But such an ambitious and inspiring quest deserves much more than a mention. Now that the Amnesty has been launched, Gordon has agreed to check in with us from time to time during his travels, and we look forward to his dispatches.

You can read more about Gordon and his journey in the recent newspaper articles about him:

"Amnesty" on the high seas

Cancer survivor takes step toward dream

And there's even more on his web site, The Victory Lap.

Gordon's dream-come-true reminds us that whether any of us ever takes to the high seas, whether we journey to exotic lands or spend our entire lives in one neighborhood, we all are traveling this world in a vessel of our own making.

Gordon didn't build his boat entirely from scratch -- he bought an empty hull and then spent five years building it out into a vessel worthy of circumnavigating the globe. That's kind of the way it is for all of us: at birth we start out with a vessel, our body, that isn't capable of traveling on its own. But after some time, effort, and care, we build ourselves into self-sufficient vehicles that can go just about anywhere and do just about anything we care to do.

He also didn't build the boat alone. Two years ago when he was diagnosed with cancer, Gordon nearly gave up on his dream. He put the unfinished boat up for sale, and the first potential buyer who showed up not only convinced him to keep going, he also volunteered to help.

As all sailors know, the boat may be ready at the moment, but it's going to need constant maintenance, nearly all of it preventive. The same person who built the boat, in this case, is going to have to keep rebuilding it constantly during the voyage. So, too with the rest of us and our own vessels.

Gordon's sailboat may only have needed five years to get ready for its voyage, but it's taken him an entire lifetime (so far) to prepare: not just all the years since he first got the idea as a boy, but the 12 years it took before the thought first occurred to him. And for all of us, whether we are conscious of it or not, a lifetime of experience goes into our every thought or action. And those thoughts and actions then create our future experiences. The Amnesty's voyage has barely begun, and it's going to take many more of those thoughts and actions to get her around the world and home again.

Congratulations, Gordon, and bon voyage! We look forward to hearing from you during your travels.

In this week's edition. . .

We'll be setting sail in this week's edition, following the inspiration of Celeb-Reiki Gordon Brown, a Reiki Master and cancer survivor from Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. Plus we'll have more on Celeb-Reikies in the news, and updates on our Global Reiki Census and new Reiki Events Calendar.

All that and more, coming your way on Saturday.

A Celeb-Reiki roundup

We have so many Celeb-Reikies this week that they get their own Reiki Roundup!

Here in the United States, as you may have heard, people have been getting together and shouting at each other for the past couple of months at "town hall" meetings about reforming our healthcare system, and much of the shouting has had little to do with health issues. One of the people who showed up and spoke -- calmly -- at an atypically civil town hall meeting in Sag Harbor, New York, was designer and integrative healthcare advocate Donna Karan. The Urban Zen founder kept her remarks on-topic and on point. "We want to care for the patient, not the disease," she said.

Speaking of health and care, Celeb-Reikies Dr. Mehmet Oz and his wife, Reiki Master Lisa Oz, are under the great bright spotlight of television every weekday, now that "The Dr. Oz Show" made its premiere September 14. We wish them the best with the show and hope they'll be doing a show about Reiki soon. They'll be traveling the country in a large "Highway to Health" bus with an enormous photo of Oz on the side, along with the slogan "Live. Right. Now." Oz invites people to flag down the bus if they have health questions or issues they'd like to talk about with him. (Hey, Dr. Oz! Over here! Let's talk about Reiki!)

We have no idea whether Japanese tennis player Kajisjita Reiki knows anything about the healing method that shares his name, but he's a Celeb-Reiki in any case.

Speaking of sports, the world's best-known Reiki-practicing athlete, Olympic-medal-winning cyclist Hayden Roulston of New Zealand, is in the headlines again, for two reasons. First, after his great performance in his first Tour de France this summer, Roulston has been picked up by the world's top team, Columbia HTC. And of more immediate interest, Roulston was just chosen to lead his country's team in next week's world cycling championships in Switzerland. What makes Roulston's accomplishments particularly notable to Reiki practitioners is that before he discovered Reiki just over three years ago, Roulston had just been forced to retire from cycling and all sports at age 25 due to a life-threatening heart condition.

Music we love to practice Reiki by: Missa Johnouichi

This week's featured artist is Missa Johnouichi. Click on the button to find out more. Thanks to iTunes for being a sponsor of The Reiki Digest! Remember, every purchase you make at iTunes by clicking on our links helps support this publication. (And you can listen to samples for free.)

Reiki Events Calendar update

So far we have a dozen practitioners in three countries who've been authorized to post their local events to our new global Reiki Events Calendar. The listings are free, and self-service.

Here's how to get authorization to post your events to the calendar:

Send an email to editor @ thereikidigest.com with the words "calendar request" as the subject line. We will need your name, address, telephone number, and email address. That information is for our files only -- you can decide what details to include in your listing. Please follow the format of the existing listings, and do not include any qualitative statements about the event or instructor (such as "this is the best little Reiki circle in Texas" or "this teacher is one of the leaders in the field" -- save that for your web site).

We also need volunteers to help update the calendar, so if you'd like to help, just follow those same instructions.

Please spread the word and let your Reiki colleagues know about this free community service. Thanks!

Global Reiki Census: Join the hundreds who've been counted

More than 300 Reiki practitioners have answered the call in our Global Reiki Census. Hooray! But we know they are only a tiny minority of the thousands, maybe millions, of people who practice this gentle yet powerful healing art.

So whether your Reiki practice is personal or professional, whether you'd like to keep your practice private or announce it to the world, please click here to stand up and be counted.

Thank you for helping us get a clearer picture of the global Reiki community, and thanks especially to all those who've answered the census so far.

The weekly waka

Oh, wildwood flowers!
Blooming in obscurity
Deep in the forest
Or on high mountain passes
Where no one will ever see.

By budouadana

(Waka wanted: If you'd like to contribute a waka to our regular series, check out these guidelines, write your waka, and email it to editor @ thereikidigest.com.)

This week's specials

Being grateful is an important element of the Reiki precepts and everyday Reiki practice, so it's fitting that every week we take a moment to thank our advertisers. They help make it possible for us to keep The Reiki Digest available at no charge. We also thank them for offering our readers such great deals. And we thank our readers as well, because when you patronize our advertisers by clicking on their ads here, you help support us, too.

Gaiam is offering 99-cent shipping through October 11, 2009:

Relax the Back's free shipping offer is good through September 25, 2009:

And for one week only, Sirius Satellite Radio is offering everyone an employee discount on their products:

At Hay House, you can get 20 percent off selected products:

Many thanks!

Bon voyage!

We're breaking a virtual bottle of Reiki-filled champagne over the 45-foot sailboat Amnesty out of Massachusetts, as she begins her maiden voyage under the command of her builder and captain, Reiki Master, cancer survivor, and Celeb-Reiki Gordon Brown. He'll be steering Amnesty along the east coast of the United States into the Caribbean to gather with a flotilla of other cancer survivors and their vessels. Some of those sailors plan to continue on a "victory lap" around the world to "raise awareness about cancer, to share success stories, to offer a shoulder for the tragedies, and salute our loved ones who have fallen to this terrible disease." We hope Gordon will report in for us from time to time with tales of his adventure sailing around the world in a boat he built himself.

Usui in Context: Christianity in mid-19th Century Japan

Dear readers,

Welcome to the second installment in our new series, Mikao Usui: In Context. When we published the first installment last month on the anniversary of Usui's birth, we hadn't planned to make it a series. But since so many readers have been asking for more of the same, and since our research has led us to some fascinating finds, we've decided to do an ongoing series on Japanese history and culture during Usui's lifetime (1865-1926).

Mikao Usui, of course, founded the practice now known around the world as Reiki back in the 1920s. Hawayo Takata, the Japanese-American woman who brought Reiki from Japan to the rest of the world, never met Usui, but studied with one of his students, Chujiro Hayashi. Over the years many Reiki students were taught that Usui was, among other things, a medical doctor, a university president, and a Christian. In recent decades, researchers have found that he was neither a doctor nor a university president, and he was Buddhist (although there is disagreement on what sect and whether he was a layman, or lay monk). Usui's memorial stone, erected by some of his students a year after his death in 1927, mentions that he had studied books from several religious traditions (including Christian scriptures, according to one translation). But some contemporary Reiki teachers claim that it was not possible for Usui to have known anything about Christianity, since it was officially outlawed in Japan for 284 years, from 1587 until 1871. But unofficially, Christianity -- sometimes disguised as or melded with Buddhism, Shinto, and Shugendo -- continued to be practiced in secret until it was safe for Christians, or as they were called in Japanese, Kirishitans, to reveal themselves once more. It turns out that the "revelation of believers" was a key event in Japanese history, and it happened long before the official ban was lifted: in April, 1865, just months before Usui was born.

For decades, Reiki students were told that the founder of our practice, Mikao Usui, was a Christian. Later, we discovered he was a Buddhist. But is it possible that he was both? Could he have been a secret Christian (Kakure Kirishitan), or at least familiar with Christian teachings? If that were the case, then the Catholic Church may have denounced one of its own when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned Reiki earlier this year. While we can never know for certain, it does seem clear that even if Usui hadn't been an ardent and persistent spiritual seeker, he would likely have encountered Christianity, forbidden though it was.

Although some historians believe that Christianity came to Japan as early as the year 199, it is generally thought to have been brought to Japan in 1548 by the Portuguese, who also introduced another foreign element: gunpowder. At first, it was thought to be a religion from India, since the Portuguese missionaries had come via the Indian city of Goa along with some of their Indian converts.

16th Century Japanese Christians in Portuguese attire

(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Celebrating a Christian Mass in Japan - 16th/17th Century

(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

By 1579, there were an estimated 130,000 Christians in Japan, including dozens of daimyos (feudal lords). But in 1587, the first ban against Christianity was issued, and 10 years later, 26 Christians were executed by crucifixion (a common form of punishment in Japan at that time). Other executions followed during the next few years as Japan was unified under Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose clan would rule until 1868.

Ieyasu also issued ironclad orders cutting Japan off from all other countries, the only exception being Dutch traders, who were allowed only on a small manmade island in Nagasaki bay:

Dejima Island (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Japan's remaining Christians went underground in 1630, and their secret practice continued for generations. Meanwhile, they were outwardly Buddhist. They had little choice: after Ieyasu declared Buddhism the state religion, everyone in Japan was legally required to register with a Buddhist temple annually. In order for Japanese Christians to keep their practice (and themselves) alive, they had to disguise it. Over the generations, it evolved, taking on more of the outward appearance of Buddhism.

For example, here is a statue of Maria Kannon, a melding of the Christian Virgin Mary and the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion:

(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

And here is a Buddha statue with a secret crucifix on its back:


Photo by Chris 73. Some rights reserved.

(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

After Japan was opened to the rest of the world upon the arrival in 1853 of the "black ships," Western settlements, including churches, were established at Yokohama and Nagasaki. The Oura Cathedral, completed in 1864, is Japan's oldest church and the only western building designated a national treasure:

Old postcard image of Oura Church

(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

One day shortly after the Oura Church opened its doors, a group of peasants showed up on its steps and revealed themselves as Christians. In the weeks and months that followed, tens of thousands of others followed. Today that historic spot is marked by a statue of Mary -- but not Kannon -- although it does bear some resemblance to the Maria Kannon statue:

(Source: Mshades/Flickr -- Some Rights Reserved)

It's no surprise that such a dramatic story has itself been dramatized, first in the novel Silence by Shusaku Endo, and, coming in 2010, a Martin Scorsese movie based on that book.

Stay tuned for further installments in our series, Mikao Usui: In Context. And look for the rest of this week's edition of The Reiki Digest on Saturday.

The new Global Reiki Events Calendar

We're building a Global Reiki Events Calendar, and we need your help! The response to our call for local Reiki events listings has been overwhelming, with dozens of events from the Indian Himalayas to the U.K. to California submitted in just the first few days. So we need a more organized way to handle events listings, and we need it as soon as possible.

We've set up a shared calendar accessible to all (Thanks again, Google!), but we'll need to authorize each listing contributor individually to allow you access to post your events. We also need volunteers to help maintain the calendar. If you have an event you'd like to add, or if you'd like to help with the calendar, please email editor @ thereikidigest.com and request authorization to post Reiki events listings. We will need your name, address, telephone number, and email address.

We're also looking for one or more volunteers to copy in the information from the more than 30 events that were already listed this past week via comments. If you're the organizer, we ask you to contact us for authorization so that you can copy your own events into the calendar.

These listings are free.

Thanks for the great response so far!

And many thanks to Pamela Miles, who helped us work out some of the bugs and get the calendar started. You should be able to see the calendar below on most browsers, but we're still having some glitches, so click here if you don't see a calendar below:

Global Reiki Census tops 250 in second week!

Thanks to all who've responded to our call to stand up and be counted in the Global Reiki Census! More than 250 of you have submitted your information so far, and given the overwhelming response, we're now accepting submissions only via our online Global Reiki Census form.

It's a great response so far, but we know there are far more than 250 Reiki practitioners in the world. So if you haven't joined the head count so far, please click here to add yourself to our list.

You can choose whether to make your information public, and if you're not already a Reiki Digest subscriber, you can also opt in our mailing list if you wish.

The Reiki Roundup: September 11 edition

Eight years have now passed since that day in 2001, and life has gone on for the survivors. This week in our Reiki Roundup, we focus on a couple of hopeful notes.

First, she was 7 months pregnant when her husband died in the Twin Towers on 9/11, and now she's raising their son alone. She's also a Reiki practitioner. Elizabeth Turner did a lot of interviews in the past week or so, and she wrote about her own story for The Daily Mail under the headline: The boy who saved me.

Next, founded in the wake of 9/11, SPARK and its volunteers offer Reiki and other energy work to the public to help in dealing with stress and fear. I was happy to see a photo of one of my own students in this article about a recent SPARK event in New York City's Chinatown area. SPARK's work continues year-round.

Music we love to practice Reiki by. . .

This week we're enjoying Chinese and Japanese Koto Harp and Shakuhachi Flute Music: Click on the button to find out more. Thanks to iTunes for being a sponsor of The Reiki Digest!

The weekly waka

September 11, 2009

Bitter, wet winds lash

Against our windows, our hearts

Raindrops tap, like ghosts,

Carrying us back through time

To that distant sunny day.

(By Janet Dagley Dagley)

(Waka wanted: If you'd like to contribute a waka to our regular series, check out these guidelines, write your waka, and email it to editor @ thereikidigest.com.)

This week's specials

The Reiki Digest is a free online publication, thanks to our advertisers. We hope you will help support us by supporting them -- and taking advantage of some great deals at the same time.

This week's specials:

Introducing free Local Reiki events listings!

By popular demand, we're launching a new service to the global Reiki community: Free local Reiki events listings.

With thousands of readers in more than 150 countries, we know that local events are usually of interest only to those close enough to attend, so we've been trying to find a way to include local listings without having them take up the whole Digest. Please help us with this experiment and see if we've found a good solution.

Here's how it works: Post your local Reiki events listings as comments to this post on our web site, and that way all the listings will be available, and discoverable by search engines, without overwhelming the rest of our publication.

Please follow this format to make your listings easier for everyone to find:

Location: Country, city, state/province (if applicable)

Street address

Date/Time

Event title

Event description (information only, no qualitative statements*)

Event cost (if any)

Contact information for more information (email, telephone)

Link to more information online (if available)

*Qualitative statements are those claiming the speaker is exceptionally talented, the style of Reiki is better than others, or the Reiki circle is the biggest and best, etc. You are, of course, free to make such statements on your own web site.

We'll be setting up a separate listing post for each month, so if you have events scheduled for next month, wait until we get the October listings post up before submitting them.

These listings are do-it-yourself, so if you've got events scheduled, go ahead and tell the world about them here. While we will monitor listings to ensure they conform with our format, The Reiki Digest and our parent company, Healing Movement LLC, assume no liability for the accuracy of listings or any responsibility for the events themselves.

Thank you!

The Global Reiki Census: 150 and counting

Thanks to all of you who've responded so far to our call to stand up and be counted.

We're so pleased by the overwhelming response so far -- but we also know those who've responded so far are just a tiny minority of the number of Reiki practitioners worldwide.

So to make it easier for you (and for us), we've set up this handy online form for the Global Reiki Census. And we've added some questions, most of them optional, so that we can learn more about our community.

If you've already responded, we'll contact you by email to ask for more information soon. And if you haven't, please use the Global Reiki Census online form here.

Please pass this call along to your Reiki colleagues and students. Thanks!

Reiki Update Training Teleclass is sold out

If you're registered for our Reiki Update Training Teleclass beginning Tuesday, September 8, you'll receive class materials and instructions by email by Monday.

If you're not registered, it's too late -- the class is sold out. But we'll schedule another one before the year is out, so stay tuned for more information.

Whitney Houston: Celeb-Reiki?

You don't have to practice Reiki to become a Celeb-Reiki: you just need to be a celebrity with some connection, however tenuous, to Reiki. And that means Whitney Houston is this week's Celeb-Reiki, since a writer recommends her new CD as background music for Reiki sessions.

The Reiki Roundup

Lahore, Pakistan: While still relatively unknown in Pakistan, Reiki is starting to become more popular there, The News International reports.

The Huffington Post: A writer and Reiki practitioner approaching the end of his life writes one last letter in Life Lessons From a Dying Friend.

Canastota, New York: An alpaca is among the animals receiving Reiki in this newspaper feature.

Shreveport, Louisiana: The Best of Times, a publication for people ages 50 and over, includes Reiki in a feature on how complementary therapies can help those in that age group.

Cranston, Rhode Island: Is Reiki Master Fran Carroll's 24-year-old cat the oldest feline in Rhode Island?

Reiki hand positions widget

Just happened to find this handy free widget demonstrating basic Reiki hand positions:

Rest in peace

Reiki practitioner Lynn McCormick, 80 Omaha, Nebraska, August 17, 2009.

Reiki practitioner Julian Hughes, 36 Halifax, Nova Scotia, August 2009.

Click here to see all obituaries published in The Reiki Digest since 2006.

The weekly waka

Mockingbird

Humble mockingbird,
Merrily singing for all,
Master of music,
His own, that of other birds,
And even that of silence.

(By budouadana)

(Waka wanted: If you'd like to contribute a waka to our regular series, check out these guidelines, write your waka, and email it to editor @ thereikidigest.com.)

This week's specials

Our advertisers' specials this week are a veritable film festival!

First, please welcome our newest sponsor, Earth Cinema Circle:

And don't forget our other movie club, Spiritual Cinema Circle:



Hay House is offering a free two-hour workshop on the Abraham/Hicks teachings when you buy Esther and Jerry Hicks' new book The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships:



Speaking of the Law of Attraction, Hay House is also offering our readers a discount on Esther and Jerry Hicks' September 26 workshop in Toronto:

And you can get a discount on Louise L. Hay's You Can Heal Your Life: The Movie and Dr. Wayne Dyer's The Shift -- click on the ads to watch the free trailers:

For more special offers from our sponsors, click here. Thanks to our sponsors for their support, and thank you for supporting our sponsors!