Monthly Archives: April 2025

Backs to Basics: The Reiki Precepts

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A client just told me that he felt so amazing after the last treatment, and it was so good that he wondered why he hadn’t explored this practice before, so he wanted to know more about reiki.

This makes me realise that I usually do blog posts about specific issues or topics, and I haven’t been explaining reiki more broadly. To do so, it’s really important to just go back to the basics.

Reiki is a spiritual practice developed by Mikao Usui in the early 1900s in Japan, which has since spread around the world, starting through Hawaii and the West Coast of North America, and it’s now practised all around the world, though is more popular in some places than others.

Usui established foundational precepts for reiki. The dictionary defines a ‘precept’ as ‘a general rule intended to regulate behaviour or thought’. The five precepts of reiki are:

For today only:

Do not anger.
Do not worry.
Be humble.
Be honest in your work.
Be compassionate to yourself and others.

Because they were in Japanese, they are sometimes worded in slightly different way. For example, instead of ‘be honest in your work’, some say ‘be true to your way and being’.

The hands-on healing practice that most people around the world know as reiki is only a part of the overall spiritual practice of reiki, which is founded on the precepts, and includes practices like meditation and chanting.

For me, a reiki treatment is facilitating a client to be in a healing space where they can be in touch with their true, higher self and their light. In this state of presence, you are naturally following the precepts: not angry, not fearful, humble, honest and compassionate. And if clients can touch that, or be in that space, they feel good.

For me, reiki is not that about something being wrong with you, or energy blockages or imbalances, or something wrong with your chakras. It basically all goes back to the precepts!

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given over 3,400 reiki treatments.

Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it does for them. Folks come from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

Do you need therapy or counselling?

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Clients often come to me with stress and anxiety, either generally, or in response to a particular situation. So, I often ask if they are seeing a counsellor or therapist. It’s part of my general philosophy about reiki, that a reiki treatment may be a tool that will help you in some way but that you will need a number of tools in your toolbox. One treatment is not going to magically solve a problem or issue. And furthermore, if the issue is primarily one of the mind or emotions, then I think the first place to start with is someone who specialises in these, just like if you are physically injured or sick, a medical doctor would be my first port of call.

I just came across this article in the Washington Post, ‘Not everyone needs therapy‘, by Emily Edlin, and it nudged me to think about how I word my question. As the article says:

‘People need therapy when their mental health symptoms are causing serious impairments in their daily functioning — in close relationships, work performance, sleep or social activities. For instance, if a person’s work stress overwhelms them to the point that they miss work and are subsequently at risk of losing their job.

They don’t need therapy when they are able to manage their symptoms well — if they feel stressed about their work but continue to perform well, have a supportive network of family and friends, engage in meaningful activities outside work and do not have significant levels of depression and anxiety.’

I think this is a good framework and that it is true that sometimes stress and anxiety don’t require therapy, but are a signal that you need to reflect and change the situation. And many of my clients already do some form of therapy, and are coming for a reiki treatment as an alternative way to support what they are already doing.

I’d also add that there are different kinds of therapy and counselling. A number of clients who have had prolonged terrible periods at work could benefit from, I believe, workplace counselling or coaching, as the problems really are specific to work. People who can’t get over a relationship break-up or are suffering from the loss of a loved one could benefit from counsellors that specialise in these areas – relationships, grief – to help them get through this time.

I can sense that sometimes clients just need to be able to talk about how they feel, and I think being able to pay someone, a professional, to listen to you and provide objective guidance, is a wonderful thing. Very occasionally, a client will want to tell me all about the problems they are facing and this tells me that a professional listener would be good for them, rather than telling their problems to friends or family … or a reiki practitioner.

Finally, a number of clients have said that they tried counselling but that it didn’t work. There are many types of counselling available, and it’s not a given that you’ll find the right therapist right away (just as I know that some clients will ‘click’ with other reiki practitioners better than with me). So, if it didn’t work once, it may mean that counselling is not for you, but it may also mean that it wasn’t the right counsellor or type of counselling.

In any case, the important thing is recognising that you want to feel better and that you are doing something about it. If this includes reiki, I’ll see you at your next treatment!

P.S. Some time after I wrote this blog post in March 2024, a client told me about what seems like a terrific service in Australia. It’s an Australian online-based program, so would be particularly useful for you if you’re comfortable with doing counselling online or can’t get to someone in person. Looking through their website, it looks like it has a lot to offer, no matter what your situation, and is inexpensive OR, with a doctor’s prescription, free. Check it out at www.thiswayup.org.au.

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given nearly 3,500 reiki treatments.
Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it does for them. Folks come from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

Extra benefits of a reiki treatment

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While the practice of reiki and reiki treatments may have a specific shape and form, I’ve been thinking this week about the extra benefits from coming to a reiki treatment, which aren’t about reiki itself.

While it’s hard to generalise about my reiki clients, I can say that everyone comes to support their well-being. So, a first benefit is about a positive mindset. The action of coming to a reiki treatment means that you have decided that you want to take care of yourself. You want to see what reiki will do for you in a positive way or you may hope that it will address a negative situation in your life, such as stress or anxiety, or even a physical issue.

I also think it’s very important to be able to identify how we are feeling and then to say how we want to feel. We’ve all heard stories about how some people won’t admit to themselves how they’re feeling and then that sadness or anger or stress erupts or turns into a bad situation. Moreover, if we’re not feeling at our best, it’s useful to think about how we are feeling when we are good in ourselves. How do you want to feel?

So, some reflection is accomplished, which I think is very positive. Then, reiki clients turn intentions into action by booking and coming in for an appointment. I think this is also a positive gesture. A main challenge for some of my clients is that they know what they need to do (e.g. make time for themselves, work less or think about work less) but they don’t do it. By deciding you want a treatment and coming in for one (and making the time), you are breaking indecision, inertia or a lack of motivation to doing something you want to do.

Basically what I’m saying is that before the reiki treatment has started, you’ve put yourself on a positive course to feeling better. There are other benefits, which could be said to be part of the treatment, but I think of as extra benefits. Being welcomed into a peaceful, quiet and non-judgemental space. Being invited to say your intentions for how you’d like to feel. Being listened to and seen. Listening to music, which I hope you find beautiful. A cup of tea, if you’d like one, and perhaps a different sort than you’re used to.

One of the biggest benefits, I think, is being able to be quiet, in a space all to yourself, with time for yourself, free of obligations of work and family and the need to think about problems and other people, time to not receive phone calls and not be connected to our smartphones. Some clients tell me they never take or get this quiet time for themselves.

So when I say that I think that a reiki treatment is beneficial for almost all of my clients, it is not just the reiki treatment itself, but also the extra benefits!

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given over 3,400 reiki treatments.

Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it does for them. Folks come from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.