Reiki teaching: supporting your students
One of the things that we hear about quite a lot from people who come to Reiki Evolution, having taken a Reiki course before with a different teacher, is that they were never able to get in touch with their previous teacher to ask questions or ask for advice. They felt left out on a limb.
Either the teacher never got back to them, or the student had the impression that the teacher was ‘too busy’, or the student felt intimidated and didn’t want to ‘bother’ their Reiki teacher.
That’s not very good, is it?
So in this blog I thought I would talk a bit about the different ways that we can support our students.
Decent course materials and training
The first way that we can help our students to have a great Reiki experience is to make sure that we deal with the common questions that students ask, on our live courses and in our course materials.
When I first started to teach Reiki my students had a lot of questions, and what I did was to remember what a student had asked and make sure that I provided the answer to that question the next time I ran that course, so that over time my courses because more and more helpful, and my course materials because more and more comprehensive.
Over time, I found that the number of questions I received reduced because I was answering them all in advance!
Be happy to help
Make it clear to students that you are happy to answer any questions that they might have, once they have completed their training. Have a state of mind of being friendly, open and supportive and your students will pick up on that.
I tell people that the only stupid question is the question that you do not ask, where you still have this need to have something explained to you, running round your head. That would be the stupid thing!
Now that does not mean that you have to be the source of all Reiki knowledge, on tap, available 24/7. You don’t want students asking you questions that are right there in their manual. You can refer them to sources of information, like sections of your manual, or blog posts that you have written, or give them links to web sites etc.
And not all questions are answerable anyway, or the answer might be “who knows?” or “who knows, and it doesn’t really matter anyway”
Remember that you are not the source of all Reiki wisdom that your students need to consult for answers about everything: we should not encourage students to be dependent on us as teachers.
You initiate them and they set out on their own journey of discovery and experimentation.
But having said that, you should do what you can to point them in the right direction and keep them focused on the important aspects of Reiki.
Reiki shares
At their most basic, Reiki shares are Reiki get-togethers where you meet other Reiki people and swap Reiki treatments. If there are a fair number of people attending, everyone takes a turn on the treatment table and can end up being treated by multiple practitioners: you might have one person sitting at the head of the table, someone by your ankles and people on either side of the table too.
Receiving a Reiki treatments from lots of people at the same time is an *amazing* experience!
Highly recommended.
Sometimes the Reiki share host (it doesn’t have to be a Reiki Master but often is) will talk people though some energy exercises (for example kenyoku followed by Joshin Kokkyu ho) and give attunements (or ideally Reiju empowerments) to everyone present.
If there are several Reiki Masters present, they could ‘share out’ the empowerments and do a few each. This is ideal if there are new Reiki Masters there who want to practise giving empowerments to people.
Sometimes there might be a further guided meditation or a group distant healing session or a chat about people’s experiences when treating other people, say.
You can do what you like.
Set a particular date, say the first Thursday in the month at 7.30pm, or the second Saturday at 2pm, and see what happens.
Reiki practice days
This is a variation on a Reiki share where people have the opportunity to give and receive full Reiki treatments, in pairs, while under the supervision of a Reiki teacher, and is ideal for people who have taken a First Degree course, say, and who haven’t had too much of a chance to treat other people, or people who learned Reiki some time ago and now want to get going properly and build their confidence.
The day could again start with some energy exercises and empowerments, and could include a question-and-answer session.
Online support networks
I am a great believer in students providing support to each other, rather than feeling that they have to be dependent on their teacher. Everyone has useful experience that they can share with each other. The Reiki teacher does not know everything, after all.
There are different ways of providing such support, some simpler than others, for example:
A Yahoo! Group — click here for info
A NING site — click here for info
A Facebook group — click here for info
In all these examples, students are able to talk to each other, whether that is through swapping email messages with the whole group (Yahoo!), chatting one-to-one or posting videos and images.
Groups like this can build a tremendous sense of community and you can be sure that if one person posts a question, there will be many other students who were wondering about that too, but didn’t ask!
People will share their successes, their amazement, their awe and enthusiasm and the interesting things that have happened to them and to the people they treated. Some will talk about the changes the have noticed within themselves since starting to use Reiki regularly and how they precepts have altered the way they behave and feel about things and changed in the way respond to others.
Highly recommended.
And while to begin with, if you are just starting out as a teacher, you might only have a handful of students subscribed (and tumbleweed blowing through your chat rooms!) it won’t be too long before the numbers build up and you’ll have on hand a wealth of knowledge and experience that new students can draw upon.
Need some advice about running Reiki courses?
This is the book I really wish had been available when I started running Reiki courses in 1997. And it would have helped me greatly in my journey as a Reiki teacher thereafter.
You’ll find a wealth of advice about how to set up and run your Reiki courses: read articles about planning and structuring your courses; find out how to explain things to students in a way that honours their learning preferences and personality types; discover how to create top quality course materials and how to support your students long-term.
We look at the differences between ‘Western’ and Original Japanese Reiki and I explain how I created “Reiki Evolution” courses, which pass on the essence of Reiki’s original form. Read this book and you’ll know how to teach “Reiki Evolution” style: what to say, what to teach, and even how to teach Reiki in a ten-week ‘Evening Class’ format.
This book will be of interest to anyone who is about to start teaching Reiki, or to established Reiki teachers who are interested in enhancing the quality of their courses.
eBook available worldwide
http://www.reiki-evolution.co.uk/reiki-ebooks-pdf-downloads/
Book orders in the UK
http://www.reiki-evolution.co.uk/reiki-manuals-books/
Book orders in the USA
https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Reiki-Comprehensive-Running-Courses/dp/199988521X/
Taggart King
Photo credit: Anne Jacko
