Plant Spirit Reiki

Appendix

Plant connection checklist

Preparation

1 Check your attitude and actions: are you making conscious choices to help the environment and meet the plant as a friend? How do you show your gratitude and honour the plants you live with appropriately?

2 Heart Space not Head Space: ask reiki to flow and drop your awareness down from your head (mental space) into your heart (feeling) space. See, feel and experience through the heart.

Interacting with Plants and Nature

3 Awareness and Flow: be mindful of your feelings, how you feel in your physical body and what is going on for you mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Be conscious of the state of flow in your life. What is flowing or not flowing? What feels right to flow with? What feels right to stop?

4 Peripheral Vision: use your peripheral vision to notice which plants wish to work with you and help you. Allow a plant to choose you.

Meeting a Plant

5 First Impressions: how does the plant touch you? Note and observe your feelings, thoughts, memories, physical sensations and visuals.

6 Introduce yourself and start up conversation: tell the plant your name and your story.

7 Open your Senses: sit by the plant, allow reiki to flow, breathe and observe: How does the plant make you feel? Spend time watching how the plant grows and observe each and every characteristic. If it feels right touch, smell, listen to and taste the plant.

8 Take time to breathe: spend time breathing with the plant, offering your breath and receiving the plant’s oxygen.

9 Open your heart and RECEIVE: be still, listen, sense the plant and feel into the space between you. Place the plant into your heart. How does the plant feel? Notice sensations in your body, colours, emotions, thoughts and memories.

10 Offerings and giving thanks: show your gratitude for the plant’s willingness to work with you. Compliment the plant, be gentle and kind. Offer the plant reiki or something that feels appropriate.

Follow-up and inspired Action

11 Integration, Action and Honouring: take time to absorb your experience with the plant and let the energy settle. What wisdom does the plant hold for you and how can you honour it? Get creative: poetry, dance, song, painting, ceremony, elixir-making. Notice your dreams and other synchronicities, note your thoughts and feelings.

12 Maintain your Relationship and Keep Following the Flow: keep the plant in your awareness, feeling into your intuition about what is needed. Maintain your connection with the plant by sending reiki regularly or sitting with the plant.

Reiki Techniques

Gassho

Gassho in Japanese means “two hands coming together”. The gassho meditation is a useful tool to use before you start a treatment.

1 Sit quietly, keeping your spine as straight as possible.

2 Close your eyes and place your hands together in a prayer position in front of your chest.

3 Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Focus your attention on the point where the two middle fingers meet and forget everything else.

This is a simple meditation but will take practice. Try to relax as much as you can. As thoughts come into your mind, try not to give them any attention; just let them pass and bring your attention back to the point at which your fingers meet.

Joshin Kokyu Ho

This technique is part of the Hatsurei Ho technique, which helps magnify your energy. I like to use this part to focus my mind, feel centred and build energy.

1 Sit comfortably with your back straight and envisage drawing reiki energy in through your crown as you breathe in.

2 Pull the energy down from your crown into your tanden (a point a couple of fingers below your tummy button).

3 Keep the breath there for a few moments. Do not strain.

4 Visualize the breath permeating your whole body and then exhale and imagine the breath/energy releasing through your hands, fingers, feet and toes and expanding out into your surroundings.

5 Begin the cycle again and find your own rhythm.

6 Repeat for as long as required and then place your hands in gassho and give thanks.

Byosen Reikan Ho: Scanning—Sensing Imbalances with Your Hands

Scanning is a simple technique to feel for any imbalances in the energy field and will give you a good idea of which areas to focus on during a reiki session. This technique teaches you to feel the aura and chakras and sense the changes in frequency.

1 Begin with your hands in gassho, asking for reiki to flow through you. Hold in your heart the silent intention to begin Byosen scanning.

2 With your hands at the client’s crown, place your hands about 2–6 inches away from the body. Move your hands from the crown towards the feet and back again.

3 Keep doing this until you get a sense of the energy. You may feel spots that are cold, hot, spinning fast or slow, for example. You may feel tingling, tickling or numbness in your hands.

4 When you sense something that is different, pause over that area of the body and remain there until this sensation has passed.

5 Ask the person’s higher self, “Is there anything I need to know?” And ask them to communicate it to you in a way that you will understand.

6 At the end of the session, give thanks and sit in gassho.

Koki Ho—Method of Healing Using the Breath

You may find this technique comes quite naturally to you as you gain more experience in giving reiki treatments. It is useful for cases where hands-on treatment is not possible, in humans, animals and plants.

1 Ask reiki to flow in your usual way and become aware of the flow and radiance of reiki flowing within and around your own body.

2 Bring your attention to the area in need of treatment; relax, breathe naturally.

3 Generate heartfelt compassion for your client/plant.

4 As you breathe in pull the energy down into your tanden.

5 With lips pursed slightly, exhale gently, and as you do so, be aware of reiki flowing out with your breath, towards the area in need of treatment.

6 Feel the reiki flow; see it in your mind’s eye. At the same time feel compassion flowing from your heart.

7 You can also add the power symbol by visualizing the symbol as you inhale and exhale.

8 Repeat for as long as required and then place your hands in gassho and give thanks to complete the treatment.

List of Exercises and Meditations

Nature Attunement

Gassho Meditation in Nature

Self-Treatment in Nature