0:00
0006 (sigh)
In some countries like Australia for instance Reiki has entered into the academic scene and in the US also and Reiki masters have gone to adult education courses and given 1st degree, 2nd degree and I believe sometimes even the master level. And they have had to fit into an academic kind of course structures, so 3 hours once a week for several weeks, so they have tried to change the form of teaching to match the academia and they also…. The students don’t come because they’re called to come, they come because they want to have credits in whatever field they are given credits for a Reiki class.
1:10
So it really changes the motivation of the student, what the student receives and for a lot of people it seems to authenticate or validate Reiki as a recognized therapy of sorts, I don’t know how to say this. But when I think about globalisation, this term that I learned and how the effective globalisation actually usually distills and sometimes dilutes the very essence of the practice that is being globalized then I would say that this is at the edge of benefit for the system itself.
2:10

2:10
So if there were… if this became an accepted practice, I would say, or an accepted way of teaching Reiki then it changes the whole foundation, principles of a Reiki class. And I don’t support it actually.
0230 (räusper)
I think that some people have done really good work in this area, have made up for the discrepancies of time and motivation questions that I have. But I have spoken to some students that have taken it through a kind of academic setting and they weren’t happy with it, particularly. But then I would get those students. The ones that are happy with it are practicing Reiki and they probably won’t go to any other person to question the kind of Reiki that they received.
3:13

3:13
So I have to hold it in my big self as another option for people to come to Reiki. That this is okay and that if Reiki students come to it through a senior citizen class or an adult education class or whatever, that this is okay. That’s the way that they’ve come to Reiki. However I wouldn’t want this to become the only practice or the only way that a master presents Reiki because for me at that point then the master has changed their focus and their priorities about Reiki as a folk-art. And this for me is damaging to the system itself that they are practicing, not just to my system or the system I practice but to the 0413 ähm… 0419 (mumbles) …
4:23
… but to the actual form they themselves received. So that’s one way of putting it. There is another… there are other programs actually, some of which I tried to start myself, that have to do with educating Reiki practitioners. And I use the word practitioner because this is what I would call people who are practice… public practitioners. So differentiating the two, if you’re a folk-art-practitioner then you treat family and friends and the people who come to you for Reiki treatments are usually known by you or they are known by somebody that you know, it’s like that. And often times folk-art-practitioners don’t have a regular set fee, they don’t have an office where you come to, they give treatments in their home or maybe in the other person’s home.
5:31

5:31
If you’re a public practitioner then you take on the responsibility and the kind of practice that any public practitioner of any profession would do, so you have an office, you don’t treat your family and friends unless it’s a special occasion, you treat people “off the street” we say, you have a regular fee structure, you take notes while.. when you do your treatments, so you have a legal notes, you have a locked file and so on and so on and so on. You pay taxes and all of that.
6:13
So I have always dreamed of having a school for public practitioners for this system alone, because I can’t speak or train for other systems because they have other priorities. For me there are always the obvious courses that, you know, people would have to take to be a public practitioner. Because the courses I teach 1st and 2nd degree and the masters’ degree are a folk-art-practice. They are not a public practice. So it’s like business-courses of how to do your accounting, how to register your business in your own state or country, how to trademark if you need to, the title of your clinic or your office, how to … what you need to do to legally take notes, what has to be there, do you have to ask people to sign a disclosure statement and so on…
7:20

7:20
…obviously anatomy and physiology, some courses on disease recog…. disease and condition recognition according to allopathic medicine. And in Germany, which is the first program that I tried to organize to accompany the Heilpraktiker-Programm there, I really loved it that a lot of the Heilpraktiker-Progamm were… was devoted to practitioners’ learning characteristics of a certain disease so that they wouldn’t treat it. I thought this was wonderful, very German and very brilliant actually. Because on the other hand Heilpraktikers and Reiki practitioners weren’t given the authority to diagnose, only the allopathic can diagnose. And this was great because it just gave people this understanding in kind of a backward way, I like that actually a lot.
8:32
And psychological training, lots of hours of hands on treatment, not only given but received. For me, what I would want the practitioner to have is at least an equal number of hours of treatments given and received, both. Because I feel like as a practitioner, if you haven’t experienced the receiving of Reiki treatments and you haven’t paid for those treatments, there’s no way that you can ask or be confident about asking other people to pay for Reiki treatments and, you know, coming to you.
9:17

9:17
There would be a training about relationship between other professionals. Many Reiki people that I know have issues around allopathic medicine and some times other kinds of healing practices. I don’t like to use the words complementary or alternative because for me neither one of them actually fit. It feels like they become sort of secondary. And actually it’s up to the person who’s being treated whether or not they make Reiki their primary care or their secondary care…..
10:03
So, when I talk to people who are offering complementary care, like for cancer patients, for instance, I try to talk to them about what their sense is of this word “complementary”. And I guess for me though I don’t like it, it’s a step in the right direction, but I rather get to the direction, which is to have Reiki seen as a genuine possibility/choice, a genuine option, for people for all conditions. And that acupuncture is a genuine option and choice for all conditions and so on. So that the allopathic medicine doesn’t necessarily have the first row seat. Now, it takes a lot… because it takes a lot of courage for people who have things that are actually not life threatening to go to what is now called “complementary therapy”.
11:20

11:20
When complementary therapy is used as a primary therapy it means that allopathic medicine has said: “There is nothing we can do for you”. Right? So people go to the last chance kind of thing. And you know that puts a lot of pressure on the practice actually to deliver whatever that expected result is. So when the expected result isn’t delivered then it becomes not a viable option. But what’s true, in every case, including in allopathic medicine, is that we die, as human beings and… as my dad said, who was a general practitioner MD in the US, he said “well, you know, I do the best I can and the people who should die often don’t and the people who shouldn’t die because of the care they are being given and the condition of their body, they do die. So I don’t feel like I have any control over whether or not the person is going to die. I know that I can do my best and that’s all I can do.” And I really appreciated this. It is one of the things… one of the conversations that I have had with him that was very fruitful for me and my own practice.
12:51:
So a practitioner-program for me is really different and could be academic in some sense 1258 but differing
1301 (räusper)
but adopting the academic say for a social worker or a nurse practitioner or something to Reiki and I think that it is very, very important that people who are designing these programs don’t… don’t assume that Reiki practitioners do not need the practice. And they…. that they don’t need the hours spent because I feel that what’s very important like a doctorate in psychology, for instance, they have to go through their own term of psychological therapy and I know a doctorate student who never completed this piece so he never got his doctorate.
13:57

13:57
And I was really praying that he would go through this psychological therapy because you don’t… you can’t sit in that seat if you haven’t sat in this seat. That is just a human … I feel like it’s really an important human condition.

14:26
I would like to see, actually, each school of Reiki have their own public practice program. That would be the ideal for me. Because I don’t believe that I could mentor and instruct students from another system because I would always be running up against disrespecting their practice because of the times where the practice is not the same. And… I don’t feel like I want to be in that situation and it puts me in an unresolvable position.
15:11