What Makes My Reiki Classes Different
If you’ve encountered Reiki before - received a session, taken a class, or simply read about it - what you’ve most likely encountered is Western Reiki. A system involving hand positions, chakras, and a structured attunement ceremony. A practice focused primarily on treating others.
This is not what I currently teach.
Two Different Systems
Usui Reiki Ryoho - the system I currently teach - is the original Japanese form of Reiki as developed by Mikao Usui in 1922. It looks quite different to what Western Reiki has become over the past hundred years.
The differences run deep.
Western Reiki was adapted for Western audiences from the 1940s onwards. In that adaptation, several things were added that were never part of the original system - most notably the chakra framework from the Indian tradition, which doesn’t appear in Japanese Reiki at all. The attunement became a formalised once-in-a-lifetime ceremony for each level, rather than the ongoing blessing Usui himself offered. And the focus shifted from inner development to outward healing - from being Reiki to doing Reiki.
I know this system well. Before returning to the traditional Japanese approach, I taught within several Western lineages including Tanran Reiki and various ICRT streams - Holy Fire, Karuna, Animal Reiki. I understand what they offer and why people are drawn to them.
But I kept finding myself drawn back to the source.
Being Reiki, Not Doing Reiki
The central distinction I return to again and again is this: traditional Japanese Reiki is primarily a practice of personal spiritual development. Healing others is not the goal - it is a natural byproduct of your own deepening practice and presence.
Mikao Usui’s intention was Anshin Ritsumei - a state of inner peace and spiritual clarity from which all action flows naturally. The precepts, the daily self-practice, the meditation and breath work - all of these point inward first.
When you are truly settled in your own practice, healing presence arises naturally. Not as something you do to someone, but as something you are, that others can draw from.
This is a very different orientation to showing up with a technique and applying it.
What This Looks Like in My Classes
In my Shoden class you will not learn chakra assessment, long hand position sequences, or how to run a formal treatment on another person. You will receive Reiju - an ongoing spiritual blessing rather than a ceremonial once-off attunement - and you will learn the foundations of a daily self-practice that is genuinely simple and genuinely sustainable.
The precepts are central. The breath practices are central. Learning to place your hands on your own body and return to what is already present - that is central.
Everything else grows from that ground.
If you feel drawn to explore Reiki, I offer Shoden - the first level - several times a year in Coomba Park on the NSW Mid North Coast.
