Diane Stein - Essential Reiki: A Complete Guide to an Ancient Healing Art

Other books by Diane Stein

A Womans I Ching

Healing with Flower and Gemstone Essences

Healing with Gemstones and Crystals

Psychic Healing with Spirit Guides and Angels

The Natural Remedy Book for Women

All Women Are Healers: A Comprehensive Guide to Natural Healing

The Goddess Celebrates: An Anthology of Womens Rituals

Casting the Circle: A Womens Book of Rituals

Natural Healing for Dogs and Cats

The Womens Spirituality Book

The Womens Book of Healing

Stroking the Python: Womens Psychic Lives

Text copyright 1995 by Diane Stein

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crossing Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Crossing Press and the Crossing Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stein, Diane, 1948
Essential Reiki: a complete guide to an ancient healing art/Diane Stein.
p. cm.
1. Reiki (Healing System) I. Title.

RZ403-R45S74 1995
615.852dc20 95-2643

eISBN: 978-0-307-78363-9

Illustrations by Ian Everard
Calligraphy by Carl Rohrs

v3.1

Many people have helped me make this book possible. First of all I thank Elaine Goldman Gill and John Gill, co-owners of The Crossing Press for their encouragement and willingness to publish what may be a controversial book. Teaching Elaine Reiki I, II, and II at the Mystical Dragon Bookstore in Carlsbad, California (Lammas, 1993), was one of the highpoints of this lifetime. I thank Richard Donovan for legal advice, Diana Acuna for alternate teaching techniques and symbol information, and Sasha Daucus for help locating rare books and for her constant encouragement. Jane Brown and Linda Page read and critiqued the manuscript, and Jane Brown and Carol Hunner provided important material on the Ki Exercises. Patty Callahan of Brigit Books, St. Petersburg, Florida and Joy Weaver of Treasures Bookstore, Tampa, Florida were also instrumental in book searches.

Laurel Steinhice and Suzanne Wagner were among the women who shared channeling sessions on Reiki with me over several years. Detong Cho Yin patiently explained Buddhism to me when I knew nothing about it and offered other information that proved vital to this book. I also thank the several people who gave me my own Reiki training, knowing that I would share everything I learned and would eventually write about it. They gave me training in traditional teaching to supplement my nontraditional methods, and others offered insight and even attunements at first meetings. Though they are unnamed I thank them all deeply.

I also wish to thank my many teaching Reiki IIIs, the students who are continuing to carry Reiki to as many people as wish to learn it at affordable prices. A few of the many include Jill Elizabeth Taylor, Anastasia Marie Zepp, Jane Brown, Sasha Daucus, Diana Acuna, Tom Oakley, Carolyn Taylor, Lisa Severn, and Liz Tarr. I thank them for their friendship and their work.

Healing and medicine are two very different disciplines and the law requires the following disclaimer: The information in this book is not medicine but healing, and does not constitute medical advice. In case of serious illness consult your practitioner of choice.

For Elaine Goldman Gill

To become a Reiki I, II or III practitioner requires receiving the attunements in person from a teacher who has also received the attunements and training. This book cannot be a substitute for that direct initiation process. After receiving the attunements, this book is a Reiki practitioners and teachers guide. It is the first book to put the full Reiki teaching into print for Western healers in a modern format, and possibly the first to do so anywhere since the ancient world.

In this time of change and crisis for people and the planet, healing is too desperately needed for it to be kept secret or exclusive any longer. Always have respect for the sacredness of the information that follows and for the Goddesss gift of Reiki. Use it only for the highest good of all, and use it freely for any who may choose to benefit by it. What you send out returns to you multiplied manyfold. Reiki is Universal Love.

Full Moon in Virgo
March 26, 1994

I first experienced hands-on healing at the 1983 Michigan Womens Music Festival, along with several other healing techniques. From that point on I knew I wanted to devote my life to healing. I wished that I were psychic and could learn to do the things other women seemed to do so easily. For the next five years I read every book I could find on the subjectthere werent many of them thenand experimented (mostly on myself) with what I had learned. I felt I was just beginning, but I was still working very hard at it and still wishing I could learn more and grow stronger. My healing did not seem powerful to me. I was also teaching others healing techniques, primarily crystals and gemstones and laying-on-of-hands, and seeking ways to make the learning easier and more powerful for others. I somehow felt that there was a piece of information missing, something that would increase the effectiveness of hands-on healing plus make it as easy and simple as I suspected it could and should be.

In August, 1987, (just before the Harmonic Convergence) I found the key but it seemed totally out of reach. At a metaphysical dinner and gathering I met two beautiful gay men. They watched me do a brief hands-on healing then asked me, Who taught you Reiki? I replied that I hadnt had Reiki training and didnt even know what it was. The men insisted that what I was doing was Reiki and asked to feel my hands. They both declared that my hands were hot and that was the mark of a Reiki healer. I wanted to know more.

Later when the two men gave me a full body Reiki healing session in my home, I knew that this was the simple healing system Id been looking for. I asked where I could find Reiki training and what it cost, and was appalled to learn that the initial Reiki training, Reiki I, cost at that time $150 and that there was only one woman in the city who could teach it. Reiki II cost $600, and Reiki III/Master-Teachers training, at $10,000 was seldom given, even if affordable to the seeker. No scholarships were possible. I was waitressing for a living at that time, and barely paying my rent. Reiki would have to wait.