There are so many aspects of self-care that, despite us knowing they are good for us we either don’t do at all or we don’t do very consistently. These things aren’t rational.

Everyone who smokes knows that it is increasing their risk of certain illnesses yet they continue to smoke, when we don’t get enough sleep we know we would benefit from more hours in bed or if we eat too many takeaway dinners we know that isn’t the best food to keep our digestive system working at its best. Lots of things get in the way and make it harder for us to do these things that we ‘know’ are good for us. This is true even when we really want to and on days when we are doing our best to take good care of ourselves.

The challenge of self care

As with taking care of our physical body, many things can get in the way of us using our Reiki once we become a channel. This is one of the reasons why sharing clear and full explanations to students at each level of attunement can be so helpful to us. Understanding this can help us to develop a regular and committed practice. There is however another key thing which can really help us with our Reiki, but is also something that is relevant to learning more generally and that is to do with repetition, which I will come to in a little more detail shortly.

We may find ourselves getting angry or frustrated or feeling guilty about anything we perceive as lacking with our self-care. Instead it can be helpful to try to understand a little more about the nature of human beings as a species. In that way we really can start to treat our desire to take care of ourselves as something that we can continue to refine and develop and that it will always be a work in progress. I hope this article adds a little to that knowledge.
 

Today was the first day of my Reiki Master/Teacher re-training with Chyna Honey, author of Understanding Reiki; from self-care to energy medicine. On this day one of nine, it felt like we barely scratched the surface, at the same time as beginning to fill in some blanks that I hadn’t known were there. I feel so excited to be learning this last and final piece. Although, when I say final that isn’t really the case.

The process of learning Reiki, like many things, is a bit like learning to drive a car. At each of the levels we receive the information relevant to that level, a bit like taking lessons and passing your driving test. Then we go away and really learn how to become a driver through a process of practice and repetition. This helps to build our experience and along with it our confidence. As this is happening we gradually learn how to lift our eyes and our attention up from all the mechanics of what we need to do to get a car to start moving, to speed up, to slow down, to turn and of course to stop and start being able to consider our surroundings and other drivers in a much more comprehensive manner. It isn’t until we can do this part that we can start to hone our skill. I’m not sure that there will ever be an end point to that part of the learning.

I have been a Reiki teacher and, indeed, have taught Reiki, for nearly 15 years and I am still learning. Reiki has much to teach us, both directly about Reiki but also about what wellness really means and about self-care in a wider context. I often say to my clients that I truly believe that the practice of good self-care is a life-long journey. Life keeps happening so, as a human being, there will always be things that will challenge us. What is important is our commitment to ourselves, to keep working on it, to keep circling back when we have slipped a little, to catch those slips sooner and, maybe most importantly, to not judge ourselves for those slips. If self-care was easy no one would take drugs, stay up too late, eat too much chocolate or berate themselves inside their own head. Reiki can help us both directly and indirectly on the road to better self-care and ultimately to better wellbeing.

One of the reasons that I have chosen to re-do my Reiki training is because I want to be able to teach people about Reiki in as pure a way as possible. So much has been added and misinformed over the years and there were times when I felt that my explanations for what Reiki was and wasn’t wouldn’t hold up to too much questioning. I no longer feel that. Whilst I can’t promise that I can answer every question that a student might ask me I wholeheartedly trust the explanations that I have. At each step of my more recent trainings I have found, over and over, moments of clarity, moments of relief and many moments of joy.

I hope Reiki brings to the students I teach even just a fraction of the many good things it has brought to me. I can’t wait to discover what happens as the next days of our training begin to unfold.

Yesterday I spent the day at Salisbury’s Personal Best Health Event. During the day I talked to many people about different aspects of the work that I do. It was great to see so many familiar faces: clients, Reiki students and people from my meditation classes as well as fellow practitioners. I was also very grateful to be joined by two of my Level Two Reiki students, Jen and Carol, for a while.

For those people I chatted to that I had never met before there was a wonderful curiosity in finding out more about Reiki, energy healing and meditation. It is a delight to share information with people on so many different levels and even better to give a few a little taste of how Reiki feels.

Many people who use Reiki still struggle to explain it well and one of the reasons why I am about to head back to California to do some more training is because the person I will be working with has done such an amazing job of defining exactly what Reiki is and what it does and doesn’t do.
 

I first wrote this article in 2017 and it popped back into my head on the first day of the New Year. I thought it was worth revisiting as, three years on, it seems just as relevant as we head into a new year as well as a new decade.

At the start of each year it is common for thoughts to turn to making changes and setting goals. ‘NOW’, we decide, is finally the time to get fit, lose weight or start looking for a new job. We may launch into setting New Year’s resolutions  with perhaps a tendency to aim high, (an attempt to kick start ourselves off the back of overindulgence perhaps?), and then we, more often than not, fall off the wagon pretty quickly. Some people may consciously decide not to set any resolutions yet still feel a vague sense of needing to get started on ‘something’.

But sometimes we may just not have that ‘New Year feeling’ yet....