Four Aspects
Healing Practice
The basic practice of Usui Shiki Ryoho is self-treatment, the placement of the student’s hands on their own body daily for a few minutes or up to a full treatment which may take an hour or more. In addition, when the student is called to do so, it includes the treatment of family and friends and receiving treatments from someone else. The more practice the student engages in, the more obvious is the healing that takes place overall.
Personal Development
The practice of Reiki touches and nourishes the core of our being and encourages the student in their human development. It can begin with something as simple as becoming more sensitive to what the body needs nutritionally, causing a change of diet. Changes also happen through uncovering and healing repressed emotional trauma, awakening to personal innate gifts, deepening the capacity for nourishing relationships, or finding and developing work that is the truest expression of the student’s authentic self. All this is not without pain and discomfort but with Reiki, the student also has the ability to be deeply comforted and creates a deep trust in the process of life.
Spiritual Discipline
This expression refers to the common experience of a student when initiated into the practice. “I feel as if I have come home.” These students are not referring to a building but to a place within themselves called spirit, the nonphysical aspect of being human. We are often taught to dismiss nourishing this “home” and therefore come to Reiki practice disconnected or unconscious about the importance of our spirit self. The practice asks each student to choose several times a day between the “way I have been” and the “way that serves my whole self, spirit and physical body.” These decisions require inner discipline. The question of our meaning and purpose as human beings is addressed during our practice. What is it that ultimately brings happiness and fulfillment? This question is addressed by all the world’s religions, philosophies, and spiritual traditions. The practice of Usui Shiki Ryoho awakens in the student greater awareness and experience of their spiritual essence, guiding the unfolding of the authentic self. This question and others that arise in the student are addressed through daily life experiences and the stronger connection with one’s spirituality.
Mystic Order
For us at this time the definition of Mystic Order is a group of people who share a common practice that brings them, through experience, to a reality beyond the realm of the five senses. Though the practice of Reiki employs the sense of touch, the quality of that touch can take us into the realm of union and communion with self, others, and the essence of life. Students experience directly through practice the interconnectedness of being and awaken to the experience of a much greater reality beyond what is commonly known.