Paul’s Sabbatical Year
Last year I realized that 2018 would be my 40th year practicing Reiki. I’ve decided to take this year as a sabbatical from my usual work in the Reiki community.
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Why Do I Want To Help?
One reason I was so drawn to Reiki was that it promised a way of helping others. Of course I learned that Reiki was “first of all for myself,” but that did not mean that it wasn’t also for others or invalidate my initial motivation
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What’s in a Word…or Tracking Our Recent Reiki History through Key Words
I restate the obvious, the world of Reiki teaching and practice has expanded and changed amazingly over the past several years. A significant number of Masters have had as a value the faithful practice and teaching of what they received. Notably, Phyllis Furumoto as Mrs. Takata’s successor, and the greater number of Mrs. Takata’s other masters.
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What is Reiki?
How often have I given some answer to this question, usually short and in person. After over thirty years of practice I am still exploring the meaning of Reiki, and by Reiki, I mean the practice of Reiki, Usui Shiki Ryoho.
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The Usui System of Reiki: A Return to the Sacred
For those of us who knew Hawayo Takata and learned The Usui System of Reiki from her, she was the embodiment of what the Usui System was about. Now there are many of us who have practiced the system for 25 – 35 years in a disciplined and committed way. Out of this experience we are beginning to understand the breadth and depth of the practice.
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Reiki – The Energy, The System
by Paul Mitchell When Mrs. Takata used the work reiki, she was sometimes referring to the energy and sometimes referring to The Usui System of Reiki Healing. Often I and others do the same thing today. If we understand that there is difference, then it is no problem because we know from the context of the sentence which we are referring to. Let me talk a little about the difference.
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Quest for Healing II
When I was first doing Reiki, I spoke about it as natural healing or holistic healing. Healing, healing, this word kept coming up! What did it mean? I went to the dictionary and found that the root is from the Greek word meaning whole. Here I had a simple understanding: Reiki heals by making things whole again. This concept I found helpful. It gave me a direction to try to understand my experience of Reiki and some of the teachings of Mrs. Takata like: Reiki will go to the root of the problem.
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Reiki and Spirituality
One of the amazing things I love about the Reiki community is that we share an experience of healing, a hunger for healing, and a commitment to healing. We share a common doorway to the spiritual, and yet how we hold and understand our experience can be so different.
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Principles and Freedom
The concept of freedom raises interesting questions. How free are we really?
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Heart/Mind Connection: Finding Right Relationship
I remember how touched I was in 1997 when I first read the translation of the eulogy on Dr. Usui’s memorial stone. The text, talking about the Reiki method, says: “Its true purpose is to correct the heart/mind, keep the body fit, and live a happy life using the spiritual capabilities human beings were endowed with since birth.” My intuitive response to whether my heart/mind needed correcting was, yes. But what did that mean?
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The Wounded Healer
There are a number of books in my library that I have not read. I bought them because I was captured by the title. I have not read some of them because the titles are so clear that just living with the books has taught me many things. One of these is The Wounded Healer.
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