Over three columns I have touched briefly on how Reiki spread to the West and on its history in Japan (see “The Background, and How the West Took It Up,” “How It Came Down to Us,” and “Jikiden Reiki and Kotodama“).
The Jikiden Reiki seminar ran from July 18 to 20, 2015. The historical background comes first in the curriculum, which is why I have spent time on it. The seminar totaled two and a half days, beginning on the afternoon of the first.
Six people attended the first part, on July 18 and 19; eight attended the second part on July 20. Between them they cover the first through third units of the first part and the first and second units of the second.
This time I want to take up more concretely what effects there were. There are two keywords: reiju and the mantras. As I noted last time, Reiki holds the idea of kotodama, so a great deal of Sanskrit and of language itself appears in it. One form this takes is the mantras. I will leave the specifics aside here.
Over the course of the seminar there is a ceremony, performed five times, in which you receive reiju from the teacher in order to become able to use Reiki.
As the characters suggest, it is a matter of receiving from the teacher what is needed for the body to become capable of Reiki. Depending on numbers — with six people receiving it, say — it takes about twenty minutes. It has two steps. In the first, the teacher recites a mantra and holds a hand above your head. In the second, again reciting, the teacher touches your hands.
That is all it takes to become able to use Reiki. It is remarkable, and what I felt was this: in the first step there had been something like a thin iron disc above my head, and by the end of the second it had lifted away entirely, leaving a flow from the head to the hands and a warmth in them.
Repeating the ceremony several times is said to make the flow easier to feel in the body. Personally, from the third time on I did not notice much difference.
We also did a Reiki circle, in which participants sit in a ring with the right hand up and the left hand down to feel the Reiki. My hands grew warm.
That alone made it possible to use Reiki, and we went on to learn a range of techniques. I want to write about what changed once I could use it.
Through July 2015, during the seminar period, I was running a campaign offering free tarot readings. Requests were coming in from all sorts of people, so I had been reading tarot more often than usual.
I have written before about this: when you read tarot from the position of knowing a great deal and showing the other person how much you know, you stop being able to see them. Conversely, when you set that knowledge aside and face each person with the awareness that you understand nothing about them, they come into view. If you proceed on the assumption that you know someone, they feel you are not listening and close up.
Two things matter for this. Having fresh eyes — that is, bringing the mind to neutral. And holding room inside yourself, a space in the mind, so that the other person feels safe enough to yield.
Being affected by the other person while keeping the mind neutral, and giving them space, takes a corresponding amount of energy. So I was often overtaken by fatigue after finishing a reading.
Once you can work with Reiki, there is a sense of energy flowing from the head to the hands on its own — a sense of the body as a single pipe. That becomes a wall, and the mind comes to neutral. Which means it is easier to find where you belong. Since you can return there instantly, even if the tarot takes you deep into someone else’s interior, you can come back to yourself without doing harm.
In other words, without making a deliberate effort to bring the mind to neutral, it happens naturally, and without spending energy.
Exactly the same holds for Rolfing. Even in sessions I was already giving, I can feel that far less energy is being spent. That makes a session easier to build. I had wondered how to keep from taking on a client’s negative energy, and it turns out that with this I no longer need to think about it.
We also learned that Reiki energy flows from above downward, and that even without touching a byosen — a place where the flow has stalled — putting a hand anywhere on the body shifts the flow toward it. We covered a method developed for breaking habits one wants to stop, a blood-exchange technique for easy detoxification, distance work, and more.
What is surprising is how accessible it is. I had assumed something spiritual, but it draws on Buddhism and Shintō, and has been simplified with the religious content stripped out, so it is easier to grasp than I expected. That simplicity is probably what carried it to the West.
Reiki asks only for your hands. I want to try things out and move ahead a step at a time.
Note, August 2026
At the center of this piece is a change: things stopped requiring effort.
Until then, keeping the mind neutral while reading tarot, and giving the other person space, took a corresponding amount of energy. I wrote that I was often overtaken by fatigue afterward. Once I could work with Reiki, that stopped being necessary. Without making a deliberate effort to bring the mind to neutral, it happened by itself.
Ten years later I would meet the same subject somewhere else.
Held up, or standing on your own
In the 2025 Advanced Training, neutral was the central theme. But the method offered there differs from the one here.
Shape the hand: let the client’s body form your hand. Find the back space: when awareness leans too far into the here and now the body contracts, so extend awareness into the space behind. And connect with the Hara. All of these concern how the practitioner places their own body.
The neutral in this piece comes about differently. There is a sense of energy flowing from the head to the hands on its own, the body as a single pipe. That becomes a wall, and the mind comes to neutral.
Something is at work, and so you are protected. You are held up by something arriving from outside.
What I received ten years later was a way of standing by one’s own placement. Put the support outside, or build the axis within. Both aim at a state that costs no effort, but they come about in different ways.
Two words that stood side by side
Something else in this piece stands out: neutral and space appear as a pair.
Having fresh eyes, that is, bringing the mind to neutral. And holding room inside yourself, a space in the mind, so the other person feels safe enough to yield. The two are set out together as what matters in reading tarot.
Ten years later, in the Advanced Training, they were a pair again. One of the three ways of cultivating neutral is sensing the space behind you.
And eight months before this piece, in the final interview of Phase II, Giovanni’s feedback contained the same word: that giving space to myself and to the client would make sessions easier to conduct.
Said in Germany in November 2014, written in Tokyo about tarot in July 2015, received in Tokyo as the subject of Rolfing in 2025. The same two words, three times, in three different settings.
What became of the question about negative energy
This piece also records a question: how to keep from taking on a client’s negative energy. Once I could work with Reiki, I no longer needed to think about it.
Ten years later the same question was given a different answer: Kind Indifference. Not getting caught up in the client’s experience, and at the same time watching over them with deep interest. Not shielding, but holding a distance.
Warding something off, and keeping a distance. The first assumes something is coming in. The second makes the question not whether anything comes in, but where you yourself are standing.