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Tag: Reiki Energy

Aug 22, 2023

Is Energy Healing a Bad Idea?

By Steve Gooch blog, Personal Growth, Reiki & Subtle Energy, Spiritual Growth

When I first came across a couple of videos on YouTube from 2012 and 2014 of the Indian mystic and entrepreneur Sadhguru criticising the practice of energy healing, I had to smile. What he had to say surprised me and delighted me. Here was a well-known spiritual teacher, going public and criticising the practice of energy healing. I’m a teacher of Reiki. From time to time, I also give other people Reiki treatments. And I loved what Sadhguru had to say. As a teacher of Reiki not only do I stand by Sadhguru’s words but promote the same views in my Reiki workshops. Sadly, those YouTube videos were deleted some time ago, but not before I had written down exactly what he had to say. This is a composite of the two videos: “(Energy healers) meddling with another person’s life process without knowing the whole of it is irresponsible… Any kind of meddling with other people’s energies is very juvenile. It’s coming out of a certain immaturity and a certain egoistic state of wanting to play God… Any problem in the body or in the mind is coming up only as an indication of a deeper situation… All chronic illnesses are like this. They’re just indicators of a deeper problem which exists. If you erase the indicator, it will find expression in some other way. They are only erasing the effect. They are unable to remove the cause. Just manipulating energies and erasing the effect is not good for you in the deeper sense of life. And for many people, their disease is not a curse. All this healing is a very juvenile thing.” (Sadghuru, 2012/2014) I totally love that! Why? You might think that doesn’t square with my work as a Reiki teacher and practitioner. Let me tell you, because Sadhguru’s comments don’t in any way contradict the basic philosophy of the system of Reiki and the mechanics of how the system works. When I’m teaching a Reiki class, I make it clear to my students that I am not going to be teaching them how to be healers. I also tell them that I am not a healer, have no aspirations to ever be one, and that I absolutely do not like to be referred to as a healer. I have never healed anyone. I have, however, facilitated many healings and seen incredible and often miraculous healings take place over the years. My role in that was not to ‘make something happen’ or to ‘fix a problem’ but to be a neutral observer and witness of events. My role was to simply be still, to flow, and to merge with the energy. To become one with it. You see, the core teaching of the Reiki system is that you cannot ‘give’ someone Reiki. We all know this from our 1st Degree training. It’s one of the most basic teachings of the system. Reiki is drawn in by the person in need of healing, through the practitioner, who is just a channel or conduit for the energy. In twenty-five years of teaching and practicing Reiki, I have never once ‘given’ someone Reiki. And this is as it should be. If it were possible to push Reiki into someone, to make them take it based on my own limited understanding of their energetic needs, I would probably be best to abandon the practice and do something much more socially responsible, like get my ego in check. Thankfully, as we all also know from our 1st Degree training, Reiki is an intelligent energy and knows exactly where to go and what to do without any input from the practitioner. As I tell my students, in a sense, once their hands are on the client, the treatment process is really none of their business, at least in terms of the healing that is taking place, which can often be happening on very subtle and imperceptible levels of being. I ask them to keep out of the way and let the energy do what it needs to do. They don’t need to guide it, try to manipulate it, force it or do anything else that comes from a ‘doing mode’ perspective. The more we can just ‘be’ with the process and embody the qualities of an empty channel, which means staying in a meditative state of awareness during the treatment process, the better the treatment will be for our client. When we can just ‘be’ with the process, with the treatment, we start to embody the true nature of the universe, we start to connect to the true nature of reality, and this can have a profound healing effect on those around us. All of this goes right to the root of what Sadhguru was saying. To call oneself a healer is inaccurate. Not even Jesus, as far as we know, referred to himself in this way. A Reiki practitioner is not healing anyone. This was summed up beautifully by Bodo Baginski and Shalila Sharamon in their book Reiki Universal Life Energy: “… do not be disappointed if your expectations are not fulfilled immediately. With Reiki, nothing is to be achieved by pure willpower. Our egos have to take second place instead, which is not bad for our development. As Reiki channels, we do not do the healing ourselves but are simply neutral observers and witnesses of events. For this reason, we should never disapprove of a patient’s symptoms. It is not our task to fight against an illness but to pass on Reiki energy and await the results, which will always be the best ones possible.” (Baginski and Sharmon, 1988) As a practitioner of Reiki, we don’t necessarily know what the true problem is with our client. We may know the symptoms, but can we say for certain that we know the original cause of the problem? Almost certainly not! What happens when we give a Reiki treatment, and this is a unique aspect of the Reiki system as far as
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Aug 16, 2023

The Most Powerful Healing Technique

By Steve Gooch blog, Personal Growth, Reiki & Subtle Energy, Spiritual Growth

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got tired of the endless claims on the internet about which is the most powerful healing technique. Is it Pranic Healing? Is it Reiki? Is it Vortex Healing? So many claims and so many different healing modalities out there and frankly, from my experience, all the hype, and the question itself, is total bullshit. Because it’s not about which is the most powerful. That’s just ego. In reality, the question should be about whether the healing modality is a good fit for the healing required and whether it delivers the results. And if it does, that STILL doesn’t make it the most powerful. It makes it the appropriate intervention in that particular case. And what does the concept of ‘most powerful’ even mean? This is ego on a rampage. ‘Power’ is a perceptual concept and is reliant on many variables and not all of them are related. The system I know best is Reiki. I’ve been teaching it for 25 years and have written two books on the subject (you can find them here: Mindfulness Meditation & The Art of Reiki and Reiki Jin Kei Do: The Way of Compassion & Wisdom) and I think it’s a pretty powerful intervention for some people. For some, it’s a waste of their time and money, because other things serve them better. I don’t know about Pranic Healing. I know lots of ex-Pranic Healers who wouldn’t touch that system again with a barge pole. Why? I’ve no idea and it’s never interested me to find out. I also know nothing whatsoever about Vortex Healing or for that matter any other healing modality. Reiki is my thing and I’m happy to stick to that. It does what I need it to do for me personally as a spiritual development practice. What I do know, from years of experience is that there is one system of healing and more importantly, spiritual development, that is significantly better and more powerful than Reiki. When I say, ‘more powerful’, I mean in terms of the specific mechanism of how the energy in Reiki works and it’s the antithesis of how energy works in all other energy healing methods (as far as I can tell). That system is called Buddho. Buddho is the original esoteric Buddhist practice from which modern secular Reiki developed. When a practitioner works with Reiki, he or she is calling on the energy that manifests within the Buddho system. Reiki is just a conduit for Buddho. It makes sense then that Buddho without the mediating device of Reiki, is more powerful than when Reiki is the filter through which the energy passes. I’ve taught Reiki to 1000-plus people over the years and probably Buddho to only a couple of hundred or so, but those who have taken Buddho training have all said that they prefer working with Buddho, rather than Reiki. Why? It gets results when Reiki doesn’t. That’s not to say that Buddho is somehow better than Reiki. Each healing case requires its own specific form of intervention. Sometimes Reiki is the thing, sometimes Buddho. But regardless, Buddho does get to the root of the problem quicker, more decisively, and more powerfully. One of my students once said that Reiki starts out very gently and then goes on increasing until it becomes extremely powerful. It’s like there is a gentle flow to it as it builds and builds. They said that Buddho on the other hand, is like a flash of lightning; it’s full power instantly and very fast. This is true. This is how Buddho works. I don’t know about other healing systems. The comparison between them and Reiki is pointless because they work on a different principle. It’s like comparing a plane to a helicopter. But Buddho and Reiki are of the same order. Buddho is before and after modern Reiki. It’s its origins and it’s the destination that Reiki leads to. For me, working with either Reiki or Buddho is primarily about my own personal spiritual journey. I’m not a fan of practicing energy healing and avoid it whenever I can, passing potential clients on to my own students. I just find the practice boring, though I’m always delighted when someone finds that their problem is resolved or alleviated because of a treatment I’d given them. If I do find myself giving a Reiki treatment, I tend to blend Buddho techniques in with Reiki. The two systems are essentially one in any case, so there’s seamless compatibility. Moving in and out of Reiki/Buddho techniques in a state of flow is the best of energy healing it seems to me. I think Reiki has a lot more potential than just energy healing though. And Buddho even more so. They both point in the same direction, but Buddho is the rocket booster that Reiki lacks. Buddho is a method straight out of Highest Yoga Tantra of Tibet (the Reiki fundamentalists will of course repeat their tired mantra that ‘everything Reiki comes from Japan’. No, it doesn’t and Buddho is the proof of that). It’s an expression of Mantrayana and thus an amazing tool of personal liberation. This is the system that Usui (the founder of the system of Reiki) accessed in formulating his contemporary understanding which we know of as Reiki. If you haven’t learned Buddho, I suggest you do. You’ll need to find yourself a teacher of Reiki Jin Kei Do because the Buddho teachings are held exclusively within that tradition. Or you could just go straight to my courses page and check out whether I’m running any Buddho classes soon. You can find it here: Courses. Buddho is a system however that is for the committed and serious spiritual seeker. It requires dedication and practice of the teachings. If you want to know what the most powerful healing technique is, then it has to be Buddho. The Highest Yoga Tantric practices of Tibet, pretty much top everything else, especially Western New Age methods.
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Sadhguru Nov 12, 2021

Why You Should be Wary of Energy Healing

By Steve Gooch blog, Personal Growth, Reiki & Subtle Energy, Spiritual Growth

The following piece originally appeared on a previous blog and is republished here as a prelude to a chapter of my book Mindfulness Meditation and the Art of Reiki, which explores the same topic in greater depth. It is a subject that genuinely deserves debate within the energy healing community. In the following video, Indian mystic, Sadhguru warns against the practice of energy healing. As a Reiki Master of 25 years, who has taught hundreds of students in different countries, I fully endorse what Sadhguru is saying. If you’re exploring whether Reiki itself is harmful or destabilising, I address that question directly in detail in this guide to whether Reiki is harmful. “Why would someone involved in energy healing, agree that energy healing is bad?” First, here is what Sadhguru had to say: If you are a Reiki practitioner or a Reiki Master, no doubt your hackles are up. They shouldn’t be. Sadhguru doesn’t say anything that contradicts the philosophy and tenets of the Reiki system. When I teach a Reiki class, I always make it clear to my students, that what I’m NOT doing is teaching them to be healers. They may well end up facilitating many healings, but they themselves won’t be healing anybody. I’ve facilitated many healings in the 25 years since I learned Reiki; physical healings, mental and emotional healings, and even environmental healings. But I’m not a healer and have no desire to be one. In the video, Sadhguru said: “All chronic illnesses are an indicator of a deeper problem that exists. If you erase the indicator it will find expression in some other way.” As an energy healer, you have no way of knowing what that deeper problem may be, or where it is located within the energetic matrix or physical body of the human being. Some believe that they can access this information and target the original cause. Mostly this is an expression of the ego because they can’t. The information pinpointing the original cause is certainly out there in the universal energy field (UEF) and within the energetic matrix of the human being. This information, however, when accessed by the energy healer, is filtered through the human mind and is subject to various influences: the perceptions of the ego, obscurations caused by our own imperfections, sensory data filtering as well as cultural, religious and time-specific influences. This all renders the originally pure information as potentially inaccurate or entirely wrong. Most people, most energy healers, do not have the spiritual connectivity, or spiritual awareness to read this information accurately, to know that it is being corrupted by themselves. Consequently, energy is manipulated, eradicated, replaced, basically fucked about with, by people who simply do not know what they are doing. In Reiki Jin Kei Do, there is an acknowledgment that the energy of Reiki is essentially an intelligent energetic life force. It knows, better than we do, what is required in a healing context. As a practitioner, therefore, it is important to allow this energy to do what is required without our limited conscious mind having any input because we simply do not know what is required to effect successful healing. So we ‘step the mind back’ out of the healing process. By engaging in meditation practice, called The Six Point Meditation we relinquish any conscious engagement in the healing process, and allow the energy to do whatever is required. The more we can remove our conscious intention to do this or do that in terms of healing, the more we allow the energy to do what is necessary. One of the problems we have as human beings is that we think we understand the nature of healing: There is a problem, let’s remove the problem, and healing is achieved. This is not always the case. We need to broaden our conception of what we mean by healing. Sometimes healing is not about removing the problem but allowing the problem to unfold. To allow it to teach us whatever is to be learned from the experience. Sometimes healing is about learning to lead a meaningful and happy, productive existence within the context of the problem. If we can do this, then the problem ceases to be a problem, and becomes a trigger for positive growth, for beneficial outcomes to manifest. So in Reiki, we don’t rip out the negative energy and replace it with positive energy. We encourage the transformation of this so-called negative energy, this health issue, to transform and take on a more positive aspect, by stepping our conscious minds out of the way and allowing to be, what is meant to be. To assume we understand what healing means; to assume we know how to fix a problem at its deepest pre-manifestation state is naive and childish. This is why Reiki is so dominant in the energy healing field. It has a much more sophisticated understanding of health and healing than other energy healing practices. If you want to heal the world, you start by being. You limit your amount of doing. Just being is very powerful. At its highest level, there is no contradiction between the words of Sadhguru, and the practice of Reiki when it is carried out correctly and in accordance with the foundations of the practice. Postscript: The original videos from which I quoted Sadhguru have been deleted from YouTube (unfortunately they are also referenced in my upcoming book). The video here presents some of the opinions that Sadhguru voiced in relation to the practice of energy healing, but not all.

The chakra system illustration Oct 12, 2021

The Ultimate Guide to the Chakra System

By Steve Gooch blog, Personal Growth, Reiki & Subtle Energy, Spiritual Growth

In some of my classes when the subject of the development of intuition within a spiritual practice comes up, I tell a story of when I was giving someone a Reiki/Buddho treatment and upon opening my eyes I could see all seven chakras spinning over the body of my client in the conventionally accepted colours that they are associated with. The question that arises from this experience is, why was I perceiving the chakras in this way, and why was I seeing specifically seven chakras and not some other number? I have no cultural or religious history to inform my understanding or perception of the human energy field. So where did this perception come from? My guess is that it was the product of spending too many years bumming around the New Age where I was picking up spiritual concepts based on the flotsam and jetsam that the New Age throws out after its finished raiding various spiritual traditions for their treasures. Sadly, the commonly known New Age version of the chakra system has very little to do with the original Hindu conception of them. The well-known seven chakra system is so pervasive now that even those who are not even that spiritually inclined, seem to have heard of it. It has developed over the years a fixed set of associations such as certain colours, crystals, attributes, even scents, and the Islamic names of God. It’s not meant to be this way. There are other ways of relating to the bio-field without recourse to thinking about chakras at all but even within the realm of the chakra-orientated, there needs to be a re-assessment of what it is we are actually dealing with here. The commonly understood version of the chakras in the West is based on the concepts of kundalini yoga and was first discussed in a 1919 book called The Serpent Power by the Englishman Arthur Avalon. Avalon’s books contained his own understandings of tantra, kundalini, and the chakras based on his translations of older Hindu texts. It is not very accurate in many of its details. Chakras or ‘channel wheels’ or ‘energy wheels’ as they are sometimes called, have associations with different parts of the body and are the interface between the physical and non-physical aspects of the human anatomy. Chakras play an important role in Tibetan Buddhism as well as in Hinduism. In the Tibetan Buddhist understanding of the chakra system, there are some major differences between the Buddhist and Hindu orientations to them. A Tibetan Buddhist would not commit himself to a static number of chakras as if they are inherently fixed and immutable. In the Tibetan system, depending on the practice you are engaged in, there could be four, five, seven, or ten chakras. Three of these chakras appear in all versions of the system, whilst the others tend to appear only when the practitioner is engaged in higher yogic practices such as Tummo (the practice of generating the inner furnace) or Completion Stage practices (where the subtle winds of the body are brought into the central channel to realise the state of the clear light of bliss and emptiness which ultimately leads to the realisation of enlightenment). The chakras are junction points for the three main energy channels that run along the spine: the central channel and the left and right channels which connect up the 72,000 nadis (streams of energy), allowing for a free flow of vital life-force through them. The classic five-chakra system in Buddhism was explained by HE Zasep Rinpoche whilst discussing the importance of the subtle body in healing practices: “We have crown chakra, we have throat chakra, heart chakra, navel chakra, and secret chakra. Five main chakras. These chakras all have different names. Crown chakra is called the ‘chakra of divine bliss.’ Throat chakra is the ‘chakra of enjoyment.’ Heart chakra is the ‘chakra of Dharma’ — or understanding. Navel chakra is the ‘chakra of manifestation’ or emanation. The secret chakra is the ‘chakra of holding bliss.” The three most important chakras are the crown, throat, and heart which are touched in devotional practices to the Buddha. The secret chakra is mostly limited to practices of Highest Yoga Tantra and the other two (or five, depending on the system) only referenced in very specialised practices. Reginald Ray had this to say in relation to the chakra system: “According to tantra, Enlightenment is fundamentally and originally present in the body. By putting one’s awareness in the body you find that the further down you go the more primordial, unconditioned, and unmanifest is the energy you encounter. The chakras begin at the perineum, which is the most primordial level of awareness, and as you go upwards they are more connected with expression. At the navel there is a sense of the earth, stability, and equanimity; at the heart is a feeling of warmth and compassion; the throat is about communication, expression, and connection; and the head is less a conceptual centre than a place where the energy reaches a crescendo. So the different chakras have very different feels.” The first three chakras are important as they relate to the body, speech, and mind. The crown chakra has a relationship to the body and is associated with activity in the physical world. The throat chakra is related to speech and more subtle activity such as in dreams. The heart chakra relates to the mind, centred on the heart (not the head where the brain sits). Working with the energy of these chakras is not something that is generally taught to outsiders within the Buddhist tradition because of the lack of understanding of their true nature and the inability of most to be able to relate to the chakras in a much more naked way than they would normally be used to. When working with the chakras we are essentially removing the coverings of our energy system to meet that powerful energy in a very direct way. When the ego is stripped
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