Although it’s very natural to me, I completely understand why people may have questions and reservations regarding distant healing. Although it’s an ancient concept, it has only become popularised recently due to the web allowing people to access healers in different places. Before the web you would only go to local people because if they lived in another country you were unlikely to know they existed. If you’re going to see a local healer anyway, you may as well get the healing done in person!
Basically Reiki healers do not ‘heal’ themselves, we are merely a conduit for the healing energy i.e. we have been trained and received ‘attunements’ to help us channel the healing energy more effectively from the universe/God/Allah/whoever to the person or situation that needs it. We can focus the energy.
There are three distinct levels of Reiki – 1, 2 and 3 (Master).
- Level one teaches you basic healing so you can heal yourself and friends and family in person.
- Level two is known as the practioner level as it teaches you 3 distinct sacred symbols which are believed to enhance one’s ability to focus the energy in distinct ways, including the distance symbol – Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen. As most healers believe that everything is made up of an interconnecting energy, it is logical to believe that this same energy can be channelled over great goegraphical distances. The distance symbol helps us to do this by focusing the energy.
- The Master Level (which I have received) gives you a 4th symbol which is thought to combine the other three. It also teaches you how to give attunements and therefore train others to use Reiki.
I should point out that it is thought that the symbols were actually developed as an addition to Mikao Usui’s original teaching (by him) to aide those students who were not as sensitive to feeling the energy, however, they are now accepted as a fundamental aspect of the practice.
I hope this begins to explain the theory behind distance treatments. Due to the belief of interconnecting energy, distance treatments are just as effective as those in person (depending on how relaxed the person is in their own home of course).
Whilst I cannot make any guarantees about the results of Reiki treatment, I have known it to have remarkable results, especially with emotional distress.