How to Tell if Reiki Energy is Flowing

Have you ever had the experience of not being able to feel the Reiki flowing through your hands after becoming Reiki attuned? Do you wonder or worry that it isn’t working? Do you worry that you do not feel the Reiki flowing through your hands. Do you wonder if you are somehow not a good conductor of the Reiki, or if you are doing something wrong?

Well, don’t worry! With consistent practice and time, you will begin to notice changes that signify for you that the Reiki is flowing!

Here are some considerations to remember while you practice:

1. Did you receive reiju (an attunement) during your Reiki learning?

This may sound obvious, but, the only way to have Reiki flow from your hands is to receive reiju from a Reiki Master Teacher. Reiki cannot flow through you from simply reading about it in a book or watching a video about it. You must go through an attunement process. Ask your teacher for the history of her lineage. Ask her to share what her attunement experience was like. She should have a clearly outlined story to share about that experience. For many attunement processes there is a lovely ritual created around the process. If your master teacher cannot tell you who her master teacher was, and the lineage of teachers before her, or is vague about her attunement experience, or does not offer an attunement as part of your learning… count that as a red flag and find another Reiki master who can be specific with you.

2. Be patient with the experience.

Reiki flows and fluctuates at many different levels of heat, from cold to burning hot. Sometimes you need to lay your hands on a body part for several minutes before you begin to notice temperature changes. Sometimes these changes are subtle, sometimes they grow gently like a wave of heat. It can take up to 20 minutes for the heat to peak to its warmest level under your hands. This is due to something called byosen – a Japanese word for toxcicity. It’s not the kind of toxicity you think of from poison, rather it’s the imbalance of energetic, mental, emotional and physical “crud” that builds up in the body. We come to a deep understanding of byosen in our Shoden Reiki class via the Japanese tradition that I teach. And, Arjava Petter, one of my Reiki Master Teachers, wrote a wonderful book titled This Is Reiki that describes it perfectly. I make it required reading in all my level one classes!

3. Give it time and get feedback. 

I once had a Reiki student who took Levels One through Master with me and only started feeling the Reiki flowing through her hands after she completed Mastership. She had to learn to trust herself that the Reiki was flowing at first. The way she did this was to get feedback from whomever she placed her hands on. People would tell her how relaxed they felt, or how warm her hands were, and although she could not feel it at first, she acknowledged the feedback as truth and slowly began to experience things over time in her own hands.

4. Practice on yourself, every day.

This will help you become intimately connected with the understanding of how the Reiki flows through you. Maybe you feel calm at the end of your self-treatment. Maybe you feel peace. Maybe you begin to notice energy flowing through different parts of your body while you place your Reiki hands on yourself. It may take a while before you notice how the Reiki flows for you. This is okay. Learn to trust and have patience. This is a great gift that Reiki brings us- trust and patience.

5. Receive reiju again, as often as possible.

It has been widely reported by my master teachers (and my own personal experience) that receiving reiju multiple times helps to connect the body deeply with the Reiki energy. For example, when I learned Jikiden Reiki, I was already a Western Usui Reiki Master with the Reiki flowing strongly through my hands. Each day in my five-day Jikiden seminar, we received reiju from four different masters for a total of 20 attunements! It was amazing to feel the Reiki entering my head and hands each time someone gave me reiju. If you cannot take a class again (I strongly encourage people to re-take classes – it is always worth re-learning information) find a Reiki Share in your area that offers attunements to already attuned folks. In this way you can experience the energy again and again and again.

6.Trust yourself.

The mind, specifically the ego, likes to place doubt in our heads. We worry that we aren’t placing our hands correctly or that we aren’t holding them in the right spot or we aren’t holding them long enough. Tell your thoughts to be quiet for a while and simply listen to the sensations, however slight, in your hands. Don’t criticize yourself if they aren’t strong at first, or even if you feel nothing at all. Simply focus on breathing in and out, relax your body- and place your hands. Trust that the Reiki is flowing.

Do you practice Reiki? Leave a comment below!