One of the dilemmas we face as Reiki healers is what to say and what not to say to our clients.

Here are 10 tips that hopefully might help you navigate these murky waters a little easily.

1. Do not offer advice

You do not need, nor perhaps should you try to solve your clients problems or questions for them. Insights and “ah-ha” moments come from inner inspiration. From the persons own innate wisdom. We cannot “give” anyone the answers. My advice would be to study and learn as much as you can, increase your own understanding, so that if someone asks you a question you can give them good information, but, never an action plan.

2. Active Listening

What we can do, while not giving someone answers or tell them what action to follow, is to support them. We can do this by having strong attention and concentration when we are listening to them.

We need to be there with the person. Not off on lunch plans, or thinking about whether we need to buy more carrots. We need to be present and actively listening to the person.

And the active part of active listening is the concentration we put into processing what the person is saying, following and identifying the important themes.

3. Mindfulness

Mindfulness is almost the same thing as the active part of active listening. Except in the case of mindfulness it is a hovering inner attention energy that allows you to become aware of your own reactions and prejudices to what is being said. And, therefore (hopefully) better able to maintain a professional, objective and loving atmosphere.

4. Paraphrase

One very helpful tool to facilitate the person coming up with their own action plan is to paraphrase. Using both mindfulness and active listening you reflect back to the person an objective summary of the key points they have covered when talking to you.

5. Comfortable Silence

To help someone to come to their own natural conclusions, it is very good to become more and more comfortable with silence.

Silence gives the person space.

Space to think. Space to feel. Space to experience their own reality. It is most effective (allowing silence to happen, if it does) when we are able to maintain a loving atmosphere within ourselves. Which, thankfully for Reiki people is not so difficult. We just need to keep the energy (Reiki energy) flowing. Simply returning our minds to Reiki.

6. Understand yourself and your biases

It is tempting to want to “help” someone get clearer about their issue. Offer our “two pennies” worth. And, this only becomes more challenging as our intuition grows stronger and stronger.

We should always believe in our own feelings (as part of training in intuition), but this should be tempered so that we do not feel so confident as to tell other people what to do. We need to trust others inner wisdom and the wisdom of the universe.. even when our intuition may be telling us their are making a mistake.

7. Be down to earth

Having said that though, I also think it is important for us to be down to earth. To live in the “real world”. If someone comes to you and says they are going to leave their husband, kids, job and everything they previously held dear and were responsible to in life, to go and live on an ashram in india, I think we need to feel it is okay to say “You Idiot”.

Not everything is okay. Particularly when people get caught up in the “magic” and romance of a spiritual path. I think it is our responsibility to be clear and down to earth.

8. Always finish sessions with grounding

Personally, I find that if a session ends with 5-10 minutes of giving Reiki to the persons feet, rather than say, the heart chakra, the person finds themselves more grounded at the end of the session.

All emotionally charged subjects are easier to cope with, and are reflected more clearly upon, when our energy is grounded.

9. Go slowly with sessions

Reiki is a gentle healing energy. It is not designed to clear away a persons energy blocks quickly. It is far more effective when done slowly over a period of time. (Which is why self-treatment is great..)

Taking it slow, for example like having a break between Reiki 1 and 2 of at least 3 months, makes it easier for the person to remain grounded.

10. Let them decide the action plan

The most important point in dealing with client issues that may arise during reiki training and healing is to let the person decide their own action plan. We should never decide for the person, nor should we allow ourselves to be coaxed into providing the person with an action plan.

We should actively listen to the person, remaining mindful of our own biases, paraphrase the key points for the person, be comfortable with silence and not feel that we need to offer opinions or talk, always remain grounded and down to earth ourselves, use grounding hand positions in our sessions to facilitate the grounding of our clients, always take the healing process slowly and encourage our clients to do the same, and always always let the person decide their own action plan.