massage therapy journal

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Accessing Proper Training

The challenge of finding reliable reiki training can be a bit daunting. But the best way to locate reiki teachers in your area (remember they area referred to as reiki master teachers), is to contact one of at least two professional reiki organizations in the United States who are member organizations with lists of potential teachers in your area: The International Association of Reiki Practitoners (IARP) at www.iarp.org or the International Center for Reiki Training and Vision publications at www.reiki.org. You can also check for any reiki continuing education opportunities in your area through AMTA ’s Learn `N Earn Continuing Education Calendar at www.amtamassage.org/cont_edu.html, or try asking other practitioners you know who have reiki training where they received it and what its strengths and limitations were. You can also contact the author, Cynthia Piltch, at capiltch@aol.com. Before enrolling in a class, it’s advisable to meet your potential teacher and get a reiki treatment from her or him. Assess how comfortable you feel with the person and whether you can imagine learning with him/her as your guide. You also should interview potential teachers about their level of experience (e.g., number of years practicing reiki, number of years teaching reiki, number of students taught, number of current reiki clients) and how often they practice self-reiki. If they practice less than daily, inquire why, since practice is so important to maximizing reiki effectiveness.

How do Reiki & Massage Compare?

Both reiki & massage:

  • have long histories.
  • are high-touch/ low-tech and involve the laying on of hands (although reiki can also be done above the body).
  • are complementary to conventional medicine.
  • require training.
  • involve similar levels of time (usually one hour treatments) and money ($50 to $100 per session, depending on the location and experience of practitioner) for clients to receive therapy.

Despite these similarities, the two modalities have several differences including:

  • massage focuses on healing soft tissue while reiki focuses on the human energy system as a whole (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual).
  • massage involves a variety of strokes, while reiki uses a gentle pattern of holding, much like the passive body work that some massage therapists do.
  • massage has had substantially more research done than reiki to support its efficacy.
  • massage is substantially more regulated than reiki in the United States and requires at least 500 hours of classroom training for certification, while reiki requires only one to several days of classroom instruction to be certified (by the reiki teacher) as a reiki practitioner.
  • massage involves clients getting undressed for therapy, while reiki is done fully clothed.
  • the massage profession is increasingly organized and regulated in this country, while the reiki profession is individualistic and unregulated.

How it Started

A variety of interpretations of reiki history exist. The following are commonly agreed-upon facts; however, alternative interpretations may exist. Reiki is a Japanese term with several translations, the most common of which is “universal healing energy.” Reiki is a gentle, hands-on (or slightly above the body) energetic balancing modality. Classes teach that Mikao Usui—a Japanese educator in the 1800s who is considered the father of reiki—discovered the key symbols of reiki during a 21-day meditation retreat on a mountain in Japan. Subsequently, he went on to use reiki to help many people with hands-on healing sessions and to train other reiki practitioners. Usui is considered the first reiki master and he is thought to have trained several others, including a naval officer named Chujiro Hayashi, who upon Usui’s death, succeeded him in leading reiki in Japan. Hawayo Takata— who lived in Hawaii and traveled to Japan for health care—eventually received reiki master training from Hayashi, and is credited with bringing reiki to the United States. Before her death in 1980, she reportedly trained 22 reiki masters, a term used to refer to someone who had met the level of learning and practice necessary to teach/initiate others to reiki. Since reiki has an oral tradition (Takata did not allow students to take notes), there was probably great variation in the details understood by various masters. After Takata’s death, reiki leadership in the United States did not rest with one reiki master. Instead, two protégés of Takata’s—Barbara Weber Ray and Phyllis Lei Furumoto—claimed authority and developed different branches of Usui reiki. Since then, numerous other schools of reiki have emerged (e.g., Kahuna and Radiance), which inevitably has led to more variation in its practice.*

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