First off I wanted to say sorry it taken me so long to post this week, Donyo and I have been looking after our neighbor’s kids, because their father passed away this week and they needed to get away a bit and have some respite.

Do you need to Know the Why?

When it comes to Reiki clearing is it important to know whether what you are experiencing is directly related to your reiki healing path, or some other karma manifesting?

I think this is a very interesting question and idea to contemplate. What do you think?

Personally, I think the answer is not a simple one. For me, one of the greatest things about reiki training is that it “just works”. You do not need to be gifted in analysis of psychological patterning. You just need to stay the course. You just need to “hang in there”. Reiki heals whether you understand it or not.

But, I am also a great fan of self awareness. Knowing thy self. And I know from personal experience that the better I understand my own mental habits and tendencies the more lasting the healing process.

I put it to you that reiki, to be a complete healing path, needs to consist of a harmony between the actual hands on healing with Rei-ki and the gentle, but focussed and consistent contemplation and practice of the Reiki ideals. That is to suggest that it is not enough to merely practice reiki healing, blindly, without any “mind training”.

It is not your fault

Interestingly for alot of us western Reiki people we get trapped between not enough self responsibility and too much. For most of us we take on too much blame when it comes to things like clearing symptoms.

We get lots of guilt.

Perhaps this is our cultural inheritance.. perhaps part of a “collective unconscious” bubbling to the surface.

I for one think this is a good way of thinking about it. We all share a strong underlying expectation based on a world view that is steeped in early Christian notions that anything bad that happens to us ultimately can be traced back to when we misbehaved and were kicked out of the garden of eden. (I know I am grossly over simplifying..)

Pure in Essence

But, the fact remains that we seem to have great difficulty accepting the notion that we are inherently perfect beings (or at the very least have the seed of perfection within us) and that pure nature is merely covered over.

We seem to struggle with the idea that when we run counter to our “healing” path (now or long ago in the past) we have simply lost ground against our not-so-helpful habits which have “swayed” us. These “habits” have influenced us. And, so, the “us” remains pure. Just influenced. But, we struggle to balance this idea, without losing the sense of self-responsibility, and start to think the fault lies elsewhere.

Balance in Healing

This balancing act is particularly hard when it comes to clearing symptoms. How do we accept responsibility for what is happening, without becoming demoralized, without letting guilt “sway” us?

One of the original Reiki Blogger posts on clearing symptoms we talked about an example of a friend of mine whose mother was violently ill after her first Reiki session. In the post I was critical of the practitioner and said they should have been more sensitive to how things were going and either made the session shorter or focussed more on grounding (giving reiki to her feet). At least the practitioner should have asked along the way “how are you feeling” I wrote.

I think in that case those points made sense. But, I think it is also important to consider the situation where the clearing symptoms are something that really does need to be gone through if the energy block is going to be gotten past, and the person make progress on their healing path.

One reader commented in that post that she had experienced a situation where someone threw up the very second she placed her hands on them.

First thing I thought when I read that was “gee that is pretty full on”. And then I started to wonder how the practitioner felt about that happening and how they coped with that situation. Because, this idea of dealing with clearing symptoms is not only relevant for the practitioner as it relates to their own personal healing path, it also relates to how they are going to cope with other people’s clearing and healing process.

Truth in Clearing

One thing that will always be the same when it comes to clearing, is that the clearing is always about truth. It is always about the clear, open and honest nature coming out more and more.

It seems “hard” because we feel very vulnerable during a period of intense “clearing”.

The old ways of “coping” with the world are no longer able to help us.. we feel like a fraud when we try to use them. But, like a butterfly emerging from the cocoon we have not quite found our flight yet. We are in that transition period.

Tips for navigating intense clearing symptoms

Okay smarty pants, I hear you say, so what can I do? And my answer is going to be a sincere one that I do not have all answers, I do not even have most of them.. but I can humbly try to offer a few things that have worked for my wife and I when we have been through (and we have been through a bit) intense clearing periods..

1. Do not take it personally

Obviously we talked alot about this above, but, please do not take it personally that you are experiencing clearing symptoms. If for no other reason than it does not help. I always try to remind myself that the whole idea of a “path” is that I am not expected to already be at the end of it! If we were already perfect, we would already be perfect. So, do not worry about it. Just do it. (geez sorry for sounding all pep-talk)

2. Drink lots of water

Drinking water seems to help.

3. Cut down on your social life

When you are feeling vulnerable it may be wise to be a little less involved socially. Give yourself some time. Do not put yourself under too much pressure. And especially socially, where you have to use energy to relate and give to people. Try to keep your energy inside your body as much as possible while you are going clearing related to reiki healing.

It is an excellent opportunity, because of the heightened sensitivity with your personally energy, to see your energy flow. How your energy goes out to things, and how when you do not maintain your energy presence in your Hara you lose your center, and your security/power.

This is all very hard, if you have to so lots of socializing. I know this is not all that realistic for most of us who have to go to work. But, it is just a suggestion, and where possible (say the evenings and weekend) it might be a good idea just for a little while.

4. Keep practising

If you are going through a period of intense clearing it is really helpful to keep practicing. Keep giving yourself treatments, keep giving people treatments, keep receiving treatments, keep contemplating the reiki ideals morning and night.

It may be tempting to completely throw the practice out the window. And justify it to yourself by saying “oh i just really need to do some earthly normal things for a while”. And that is true. No argument here. Number 8 in fact is that point exactly. But, you need to stick at your practice, if you want to make the healing stick. Otherwise you are training your mind to know that all it needs to do is push you hard enough, and you will throw in the towel.

5. Find a friend to talk to

Having a friend who is a good listener. Who can just let you share your experiences without too much comments and opinion, is really helpful if you can find one. And, if you cannot, you can chat to me, feel free to send me an email.

6. But, keep your own counsel

You are the person that understands you the best. Never give up that wisdom to someone else. Especially during clearing times. This is the time when the path is a personal path. You need to go through it and you need to learn from it.

Accept others support, and use that support. But, be self reliant. Do not lean emotionally on others. No one, although ever well intentioned, has the “answers”. They rest within your own heart.

7. Pray

Ask the Universe to be gentle with you. Set the intention that your healing will be gentle. I will tell you a funny story. When I was first starting to practice Reiki, about 6-7 years ago, I was about 22-23 years old. I was a young man, full of beans, and I wanted to really get stuck into healing my energy. I do not know if you know the movie “fight club” with edward norton and brad pitt. But, being a young man and thinking I was pretty tough, this movie quite appealed to me at the time (also because I really connected with the self-sabotage theme which ran through the story), well there is a line where edward norton (i think) says “i want you to hit me as hard as you can”. That so appealed to me that for a time it became my mantra with healing. I almost taunted the universe to really give it to me, let me heal everything all at once, to hit me as hard as it could. Well.. it did. And, I was a sorry boy.

8. Lots of grounding helps

Go walking, do gardening. Get your feet dirty. Sit in the rain. Anything that will connect you physically with nature seems to help to ground clearing.

This too will pass

The last piece of useless advice I could offer to you during a period of intense clearing (and lets hope not many of you have to have “intense” clearing periods at all!) is that this too will pass.

Just hang in there. The only unchanging thing is that everything changes. (So, if you are having a tough time, that by law of nature, must also change..)