Many of you reading this are, like me, engaged and invested in the realm of transformation and healing for yourself and others through a wide range of methods and practices. For me this is primarily through the system of Reiki. I want to encourage us to talk more openly about the fact that, even in our sincere intention to bring healing into the world, it is entirely possible for us to unknowingly duplicate systems of oppression and harm within our practices.
And let’s talk about the fact that there are pathways out of these systems. Pathways back into integrity with the practices we love. One of these pathways is to cultivate a trauma-informed lens within our practice.
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Where do we begin to explore a trauma-informed perspective for Reiki and other wellness practices? I believe we must begin with an honest assessment with our own identity in relationship to the history of these practices. For me in the practice of Reiki, this begins with looking at the fact that I am a white American woman practicing a Japanese spiritual art. A Japanese art which came to the US in the 1940’s just following the period of WWII, when Japanese American citizens—many here for generations—were subjected to imprisonment, seizure of property, and racist violence. A time when Japanese nationals in the US were subjected to years of internment. All in the name of national security. A time when these two cultures—the one that birthed me, and the one that birthed Reiki—were at great odds with each other. The results of that for Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals was oppression, violence, and generational trauma.
Further, Reiki came to the US through Hawai’i. At the time that Reiki was being introduced in Hawai’i by Hawayo Takata, Hawai’i was not yet formally a US state. Hawai’i was at that time caught in a sort of political limbo between 1894 when the sovereign Kingdom of Hawai’i was ceded as a US territory under duress and protest by Queen Lili’oukalani, and 1959 when Hawai’i was made a state along with Alaska. Hawai’i was ceded not because it was seen as a mutually beneficial political arrangement, but in order to prevent further violence on the people of Hawai’i.
It is into this historical moment and political landscape that Reiki came to us in the US—post WWII, post imprisonment of Japanese American people, and internment of Japanese nationals, and in the wake of the forced ceding of Hawai’i into the US.
All of that is carried inside of the history and legacy of Reiki, alongside the brilliance, the beauty and the healing of this practice. And all of this is carried through me, as a white American woman practicing this art.
So to me, a trauma-informed Reiki practice must begin here, with an acknowledgement of the generational trauma that is embedded in a certain way into this practice in America, and by extension into Europe and all of the other lands to which it has since spread. When I first began to come to terms with this as a budding Reiki practitioner, with a 12-year professional history of social justice leadership development, it was paralyzing. When I really began to acknowledge that my early Reiki training did not include an education about this history, did not include context for the Japanese origins of the practice, or perspectives that are more authentically Japanese rather than western in the understanding of what Reiki is, it was paralyzing. For a time, I began to feel that I could not continue to practice, that it was not in integrity for me to do so.
And yet Reiki had chosen me, and I had chosen Reiki, and I had already experienced profound transformation in my life from just those first couple of years of contact with this practice, and the communities of practice that I had been a part of. It did not truly feel like an option to let this work go. So I had to ask myself: “How can I come into integrity with this practice, as much as I can?” Knowing that I will always be imperfect, I will always make mistakes, knowing that there will still be others who believe that I am not entitled to this practice. And that to a certain extent, I don’t disagree with them.
How can I come into integrity with this practice, so that I can continue to take it into my life and share it with others?
The work that I have now developed on Cultivating a Trauma-Informed Reiki Practice is one of those ways. It’s part of the answer to that question, part of coming into integrity. At the end I’ll share about how you can access this work.
The other, and primary way that I am coming into integrity with my practice, was to shift my focus in Reiki to learn and practice as much as I can from the perspectives of the Japanese origins of the system. To learn more about where it came from, why it came to be, what historical and personal moments in the life of our founder Mikao Usui came together to bring this practice into form. Why the five elements of the system are what they are, and how they function within the system. And what more is there that we don’t see through a western lens?
Over the last 5 years, this has been the focus of my studies and my practice, and it’s brought me to some amazing places. It’s led me to new Reiki teachers and beloved communities of practice with like-minded practitioners. Has led me to study Shingon Buddhism with temples in Portland and Seattle. And it’s led me to cultivate the courage to finally create a class on trauma-informed Reiki, to share the pieces I’ve learned over the years about the ways that trauma lives in our bodies, and through our generations, through our DNA. How it shows up in all aspects of our life, including on the Reiki table. To embrace the fact that Reiki can be a profoundly healing and beautiful practice to incorporate into our lives, and into the treatment of trauma if we are in need of that. Yet it can also be a place that exacerbates that very trauma inside of ourselves and others. It can be a place where oppressive systems are duplicated. It can be a place where we just don’t yet know how to hold a comprehensive space of safety because we cannot fully understand what each and every individual needs for safety, and we haven’t yet learned protocols to account for that. It can be all of these things.
I’ve been feeling called over these last couple of years to share what I’ve experienced and learned about how to cultivate a trauma-informed space, a space of healing that generates, as much as we can, a sensation of safety, consent and the ability to for others to control their own experience. And by creating this sort of container through shifts in our protocols, practices and mindsets, we can ensure that we’re doing our very best to create safety for everyone who comes through our door, whether or not we know what they are carrying on a given day. We don’t have to know. We just have to hold ourselves in compassion for those times when we did not know any better. Compassion for everyone who walks through our door. And be wiling to risk making mistakes, willing to take responsibility for those mistakes in service of greater healing and transformation.
I’ve had many experiences in my 8-year journey as a Reiki practitioner and teacher when I did not know better. And I made mistakes that caused harm. I have had times of feeling great shame for those moments and those mistakes. Just as my uncertainty with how to hold the complex history of Reiki and my relationship to it threatened to shut down my ability to practice, so too did that shame.
It’s that, perhaps more that anything else, that inspires me to share what I know with you, as imperfect as it is. Because I know the incapacitating power of shame. The incapacitating power of believing that our mistakes define us. The belief that we cannot recover from them, and that we certainly can’t talk about them in public.
So I want to talk to you about my mistakes, to share what I have learned from them and from the studies they have prompted. To share protocols, practices and mindsets that I experience will make us better, will help us to shift our culture even more strongly to a culture of healing and empowerment. I believe there is not a person reading this who does not wish to create a container of safety, consent and personal empowerment for everyone who walks through our door. I believe these practices will help us get there, and to stand in even more integrity in that desire.
So let us begin.
As a starting point I’ve created a self-assessment that I invite you to take, which will begin to reveal the nature of these shifts. It will help you to see where you are already incorporating practices that are trauma-informed, and places where you can shift and develop them further. And if this topic sparks something for you and you’d like to take it deeper, consider joining me for a class on Cultivating a Trauma-Informed Reiki Practice. You can learn more here.
No matter where you are in this journey, may you be deeply provisioned for it.