Meditation, breathing, clearing blockages
Mikao Usui made his connection to Reiki after three weeks of fasting and meditating. Fortunately, fasting isn’t deemed to be a general part of Reiki practice. Healthy as it is to have a fruit day once a week and generally look after our diet, it isn’t essential for Reiki. But meditating very much is.
Oh dear, some readers may be thinking. But those who already meditate will just smile approvingly. They know that meditation is the key to spiritual awareness. Buddha did it, Jesus too (he once retreated to the desert for 40 days). Basically every spiritual master since the beginning of time has done it. But how can we ordinary mortals do it? ‘I can’t meditate’ is probably the complaint most often heard on my Reiki courses. A lot of people struggle with meditation. And I know the feeling very well, as I struggled with it for almost 40 years.
So, before you give up, please let me assure you that the moment you use Reiki, the moment you feel a sensation in your palms and place them on someone, you are meditating. Reiki simply is meditation. When we give it, we don’t think, we experience. We move from doing to being. And the more we let go of our thoughts and ideas, the deeper our connection to Reiki will become.
In meditation we are free of the constraints of time – and space. We enter a new dimension. Some people experience this as expansion, some as lightness, some as colours or pure light.
As this dimension is beyond what we normally identify with, to reach it we try the opposite of what we are used to; that is, we try to achieve a state of mind that is free of thought. Philosopher René Descartes famously stated, ‘I think therefore I am.’ When we look at meditation, this statement turns out to be rather superficial. Because even when we don’t think, we still are. We still exist. Not as our everyday selves, but as something deeper.
But how do we get rid of our thoughts? In everyday life, we try so hard to remember things and to work things out, and so often the right thoughts just won’t appear. And when we finally give the brain a rest, we’re flooded with unwanted thoughts. We try to meditate – and the first thing that comes into our mind is, say, coffee. Where the hell did that come from? Anyway, the thought is there. And it takes us back to the supermarket where we normally do our shopping. Last time, the coffee was out of stock. Thinking about it, quite a few products have been out of stock recently. I wonder if there’s a problem with their supply chain. Maybe it’s the weather – it is very cold at the moment. Yesterday I stood at the bus stop for 15 minutes almost freezing to death. Why is the bus always late when I’m catching it?
Stop! What’s going on here? Am I losing my mind?
No. It’s simply going into monkey mode, to use the term of the Eastern meditation traditions, jumping from one thought to the next to the next. I find the best way to deal with this is simply to accept it. Yes, my mind is thinking. So I spend a moment with the thought. It’s there. It wants to be acknowledged. But after a few moments I feel I’ve spent enough time with it and allow it to leave. It has come from somewhere – now it can go somewhere. I tend to put it into a vehicle that takes it away – a cloud maybe, or a train. This can be whatever you fancy: just imagine it or visualize it, place your thought in it and let it move on.
Then I return to whatever meditation technique I’m using. I may be concentrating on my breath, or on the sensation of Reiki. I find that concentrating on Reiki is much easier than using other techniques, as there is already a strong focal point: the sensation in my palms. But that is only the start. I can now move from concentration to meditation.
To do this, you just have to go in the opposite direction, as it were. You feel the sensation in your hands. But what animates them? Where is the energy coming from? You can actually trace this back! You may feel Reiki flowing through your arms, your shoulders, your head – and trace it back to the crown chakra. Or you may not feel the flow physically, but start to sense that Reiki is, in fact, all around you. And deep inside you. Reiki is … everywhere. And by opening up to it, you begin to feel that you’re everywhere too. You may have a sense of oneness, vastness, expansion. You may start to feel calm, peaceful, free… You may see a light, or brightness.
Making this connection to deeper levels is the ultimate goal of Reiki. We use energy as a means to an end – and become aware of its source.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to my ultimate Reiki meditation.
You can go deeper and deeper every time you do this. Remember, Reiki works on different levels of the universe and you may be taken to different places at different times. There may even be moments when you feel you’re getting close to what Mikao Usui experienced in his moment of enlightenment…
The previous exercise is one I came up with myself. But there are meditation techniques in traditional Reiki too. And they are pleasantly simple…
This isn’t really a technique – it’s the classic Japanese meditation pose. Seiza means ‘proper sitting’. To sit in seiza, you kneel on the floor, resting your bottom on your heels, then turn your ankles outwards so the tops of your feet are on the floor and lower your bottom right down to the floor while keeping your back straight. In Japanese tradition, women keep their knees together and men separate them slightly. Your hands can be folded in your lap, rest palm-down on your thighs or be placed in a half-curl by your hips with your knuckles touching the floor.
This may sound simple, but I have never sat in seiza myself. My knees would kill me. Some people use a seiza bench in order not to sit directly on their ankles, but even that doesn’t work for me. Fortunately, seiza isn’t necessary. We are allowed to be comfortable in Reiki!
And yet there’s often a fine line between comfortable and casual, and a sloppy posture isn’t helpful either. The more alert we are and the straighter our spine, the more easily the ki can flow. So, by all means sit in seiza, or the lotus position, or simply cross-legged, if your physical disposition allows it. In all these cases, your two knees and your buttocks will form a ‘tripod’, and this is what is important.
If you are more comfortable sitting on a chair, make sure that your feet are placed on the floor (or, if you are too high up, on a cushion or stool), your sitting bones are firmly on the chair and your spine is straight. If you can, I would suggest sitting at the front of the chair and not leaning on the backrest, but this is up to you. You now have the tripod again: a stable base for meditation.
Now to meditation techniques. In Reiki, as usual, we start with the hands. Forming Gassho is very simple: holding our hands flat, we bring them together, palms and fingers touching, in what is universally known as the prayer position. But there is much more to it than initial observation suggests: it is a traditional way to greet someone, express gratitude and concentrate.
Literally, Gassho means ‘bringing the hands together’, and that is what we do: the left and right meet in the horizontal middle. We find it most comfortable holding them in front of our heart chakra, the vertical middle of our chakras. So we literally centre ourselves.
That is the physical act. Now comes the awareness.
Normally, we use our hands physically. We type or write or draw (or play with our mobile phones). We carry, we lift, we hold. Then we feel or sense something. We encounter a physical sensation. Often we use our hands independently of each other. Now we can’t – we have brought them together. We have moved away from work. We have moved away from everyday life. We are holding them still.
Looking at the hands in Gassho, we first thing we may realize is that we tend to hold them with the fingers pointing upwards. They are pointing away from the Earth. Away from our physical selves. They are pointing towards heaven.
Next we may realize that we have brought the two hands together. But what did we bring together? First, left and right. Our two halves.
Looking at our brain and imagining our hands being guided by it, being an extension of it, we may realize that we’ve brought the two sides of our being together: the left brain, our intellect, controlling how we function in the world, and the right brain, the centre of our intuition, emotions and spiritual awareness, where we find guidance and peace.
There is a common saying that when people appear slightly confused, ‘the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing’. In Gassho the hands do know. They are held together. They are in the same place.
Having brought our attention to the position of our hands in the centre between left and right (or, rather, transcending left and right), we can now look vertically. The heart chakra doesn’t just represent the centre of the chakra system but also the centre of the Three Diamonds system. Below is the Hara, the seat of Earth energy, connecting us with the level of form. Above is the third eye, the seat of the heaven energy, connecting us to the world of spirit.
So, by holding our hands in the Gassho position, we bring all aspects of our person into harmony. From this point, we can reach out. The Centre Diamond, the heart, is the place of connection, the place where we feel love, harmony and peace. We can now fully focus on being at one – with everybody and everything, and with our own true self.
Gassho
There are several versions of Gassho. You may also want to try moving your hands higher up, with the fingertips just below the brow chakra. It helps to focus on the third eye - and your connection to spirit.
Joshin Kokyu-Ho is deep abdominal breathing. If you practise yoga, it will be familiar to you; if not, it will feel strange. But you’ll soon get used to it! An amazing technique, it’s nonetheless the opposite of what we’re used to: rather than breathing into our chest, we breathe into our belly.
Between the stomach and the lungs we find a muscle called the diaphragm. It is attached to both stomach and lungs, which means that the movement of one affects the other. We utilize this in this exercise, where we move the stomach out and therefore pull the lungs down. This allows us to breathe into the full depth of the lungs.
A great exercise in itself, this can also be used to focus the mind, clear the meridians and strengthen and connect to the energy in the Hara. In Reiki, however, we go one step further and use the breath as a vehicle to open up to universal energy.
With experience, you will become aware of the energy slowly building up in your body. You should feel refreshed and more energetic throughout the day and may also be more grounded and centred.
When the original Reiki teachings became known to a wider audience, most of the above had not been practised. Nor had there been any energy cleansing rituals – and yet Reiki still worked. This confirms once again that Reiki is not about techniques.
Introducing energy cleansing, though, makes a lot of sense. Blockages in our energy system can occur all the time, triggered by factors such as stress, worry or anger, but also by an unhealthy diet or lifestyle, lack of sleep, etc. Energy cleansing helps to clear the blockages and lets the energy flow fast and freely. It brings us right into the moment.
The technique used here was introduced by Mikao Usui, but not invented by him. In fact it is widely used in martial arts.
Kenyoku-Ho means ‘dry bathing’. It sounds far more complicated than it actually is. You simply make a few swift movements through your energy body with the intention of clearing any blockages. Once you’re used to it, it will only take a few seconds to complete.
This is how it goes:
While making the movements, your hands may be touching your body slightly or may be kept off.
If you do the exercise quickly, you may find it easier to take a deep breath in at the beginning then breathe out slowly while you do all the dry brushing.
And yes, you do indeed cleanse the left side twice and the right only once – a concession to the Japanese tradition (or superstition) of avoiding anything that includes the number four. In Japanese, it is the same word as the one for death.
Kenyoku-Ho can also be used after a treatment or meditation to bring you back into the here and now. It is a great technique for grounding yourself.
Another technique, although not an original one, is the so-called Reiki shower. It works brilliantly when you’re tired or feel burdened by negative energy, for example at work, after a long day shopping or when watching the news on TV. You can also use it instead of Kenyoku-Ho before you give a Reiki treatment.
In many ascetic esoteric traditions, the monks will stand under an ice-cold waterfall – for 30 minutes. Even in winter. Personally, I can’t see myself doing this – even the English sea in August is too cold for me.
A great and more accessible modern take on this is simply to have a cold shower! I do this every morning for about 10 seconds, intending that it will clear my meridians and chakras and get rid of any negative energy. And it works – sometimes I have to rush out of the shower because I’ve just had a new idea. Standing under cold running water (even if only in agreeable doses) is a great way of seeing things more clearly.
Afterwards, of course, I have a nice warm relaxing shower.
Now it’s time to bring it all together. Put simply, Hatsurei-Ho, ‘purifying the energy’ or ‘purifying the spirit’, is a combination of the cleansing, breathing and Gassho that can deepen our connection to Reiki. In fact, it can help us get so deep that there is no boundary between us and Reiki and we become one with the universe.
There are several versions of this in Japan and it seems that many Reiki teachers have come up with their own versions too. This is the basic one that I use:
To start with, you may find it helpful to visualize the flow and expansion of Reiki as light. But after a while you’ll be able to let go of this and simply feel Reiki.