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Originally Posted by NYER  Have another question - How do you guys feel about distance attunements? Or the Steve Murray DVD's (level 1/Level 2/Master attunement)?? Silly?? I don't plan on practicing, just on myself. |
Distance attunement is a very contentious one in the Reiki community. I have one of Steve Murray's books and I am a bit of a sceptic, must say. That said, how can we say distant healing works then say people can't receive reiju/attunement distantly?
Attunements are in fact a Western invention - that came about from Takata. Usui himself did not 'attune' anybody and the symbols are also thought to come from someone else, not Usui originally. He passed his students Reiju (a sort of blessing) every time they met - so it was a continuous, ongoing thing. I studied with Reiki Evolution and they pass Reiju to their students daily - so once you have Reiki I (and even when you're studying it) you can tune in, whenever you want, and receive Reiju. They have a rota of different masters doing it. I think the Stienes probably work in a similar way? The people I learned with have the best teaching materials I have seen - and they do 'live' Reiki and distant attunements.
I started out with a distant attunement in Western Reiki and it definitely 'worked', but things seemed to make more sense and flow 1000 times stronger only after I finally got round to a hands on reiju. Some people say avoid distant attunement because you don;t have the feedback and support you get from a good Reiki Master and that is also true. Although I was first attuned by a friend, so could call on her anytime I wanted with questions, not just at the time but months later - it still wasn't as good as live Reiki.
Of course you need no 'attunement' to practice hands on healing in various cultures, but many people who have worked as healers then, after years, had reiju/attunement, report that they also notice a massive increase in what they can do.
Usui's Reiki seems to have been less about palm healing anyway - more about spiritual development (a bit like martial arts training), so again, in that context, it would be very difficult to learn in isolation. Healing, symbols and hand positions are often the only real content of courses, but Reiki is far deeper than that. You can pick that up from Steve Murray's DVDs. But you'd be missing the point of Reiki.
Another point worth knowing from the get-go, is that if you fall in love with Reiki and want to practice it professionally at some future point (you never know!) many professional bodies and insurers won't recognise someone who was distantly attuned, as being a Reiki person.
NYER I do a bit of genealogy here in the UK so if you ever want some help with tracing your British ancestry, PM me and I'll help all I can! My 'real' lineage is Northern English, mainly Yorkshire (I actually live in the same village my great X 6 grandparents came to, in 1808 and in the same parish and next door to the parish where all my mum's ancestors came from literally back to the first page of the parish records - which puts us around the late 16thC and only not further as them records don't exist.... so this apple didn't fall far from the tree! My dad's ancestors, exotically, come from oooh 5-30 miles away!) All my ancestors are farmers, farm labourers, and/or dairymen right up til the 1940s. My brother and I are the first in my mum's line not to be born on a farm, literally again back to the 16thC. (Even then we had a lot of old farm buildings and a smallholding!) I love walking the fields round here and knowing that my ancestors have always been here.
I got a few Reiki lineages, including one via Hayashi, Takata, Furomoto etc. But my favourite lineage (from my Reiki II reiju) is this one. Suzuki san was, unbelievably, still alive recently (not sure if she's still with us as she was over 110 coupla years back!) She's a Buddhist nun and distant relative of Usui, one of a group of monks and nuns he taught pre 1922, and Hayashi and the naval students. She has taught one outsider, an Englishman called Chris Marsh. So there are some people around with this lineage:
Mikao Usui
Suzuki san
Chris Marsh
Taggart King
Martine Moorby
Me!
So lineages divide into Usui pre 1922, and post 1922, with most people in the West being in a post 1922 lineage. The pre 1922 lineages have only really been discovered in the West in the late 1990s.
Again NYER, one thing worth looking for when you shop around for a Master. If you research a bit first you can find someone who you will be comfortable with and their lineage may or may not be a clue as to where they're coming from. There's a lot of stuff out there that has nothing whatsoever to do with Reiki - crystals, angels, chakras, Atlantis, etc etc so a bit of caution is advisable! Any lineage and any 'branch' will work, though, no one is superior to any other - but some have accrued a bit more Western stuff in their evolution! You should be able to find a branch you personally feel happy with.
You could always go with the Steve Murray for now and save up for a live reiju/attunement, when the time is right. There's a saying that the right teacher appears at the right time, for everyone! You'll know them when you find them!