Decolonizing Reiki
A student asked me on Thursday if I was going to teach a Reiki L2 and another student asked me two days later. I have taken almost a year off from doing Reiki Attunements. I’ve taken this break because I’ve felt called to explore the ways that my whiteness may negatively impact and take away from the tradition rather than adding to it. I’ve been sitting with: what it means to decolonize Reiki? I let her know this and she was understanding…I also let her know if I’m going to in the future.
So, I have been spending the past months learning more about decolonizing reiki and getting even more clarity on my own energy practices.
From the beginning, I’ve felt like Reiki was the energy language of my teachers and that my expression of energy has been influenced by their guidance, though in many ways, it has been different from the start. My first portal into understanding subtle energies was through spontaneous energy exchanges with trees. For years I wasn’t interested in doing reiki with people and did not feel particularly invested in Reiki as a practice. Then my teachers said that what I was doing with the trees IS reiki.
I have always had very deep, trance like meditations. These meditative experiences are where I feel my understanding of the subtle realms has happened. These self-revelatory meditations inform my teaching and my energy practices more than anything else. This being the case, you might ask why I have called what I do reiki. For two reasons, one because it’s a name people understand and two, because it’s what I’ve had the most ‘formal’ training in.
It feels important to honor that western ‘reiki’ is a large part of my energetic lineage. But what does that even mean? Do I even know the “true” lineage of Reiki and is this a lineage that I should find myself at the offering end of?
I have been on a deep dive to explore:
How can I best sit with my discomfort around being the stereotypical incense burning, white woman teaching students about reiki/usui with no deep connection to the Japanese roots? I want to sit with this so that I can learn and grow and try to do no harm (or at least much less harm).
Do I really believe that people need to be attuned to use/feel reiki energy?
Why do I only know 3 Japanese Reiki practitioners but tons of white ones? (What lead to this being a practice for affluent white ppl)
What is the history of energetic palm healing in Japan – how does Usui fit in and who has been left out in the retelling of the origination story. (Healing and folk medicine were often under the purview of women – were there no women practicing at this time or before?)
What changes in Western Reiki may have been made to either: a) make it more appealing to white new age people and/or to b) make money?
How do I feel about the weekend workshop format for attunements? Often in traditional healing practices, people apprenticed for years or decades before they claimed any sort of relationship, never mind mastery.
What are my thoughts on people calling themselves “reiki masters” just because they’ve paid to take a course?
Where does Shinto fit into Japanese energy healing?
How can I authentically practice and explore energy healing without appropriating from any culture?
I have an authentic personal relationship with energy – how do I teach from this without erasing reiki? (So many westerners have appropriated in this way, claiming something as their own with no nod to the true origins.)
Why the eff am I practicing a Japanese energy healing modality?
This is my short list of questions 😊 I’m not at the end of my learning – at all. Where have I landed? For now, I’m not teaching Reiki Attunements. (I am not saying that no one should teach attunements or that white people shouldn’t practice reiki. My white women teachers have been exploring reiki for over 20 years and have deep and meaningful practices. And I’m still receiving Reiki from my teachers and occasionally offering it w.o any money exchange.)
I am diving into a few more books on the origin and history of reiki, taking a course and reading more about cultural appropriation.
I have pondered if I should let go of any practice that is not directly tied to my ancestral blood lineage (this question came up when I started exploring plant spirit medicine). Buh-bye reiki, bye bye yoga. And, okay I am not opposed to doing that for a while. And, also, I am a super mix of ethnicities. I am definitely having an interesting time walking a line of respect for lineage and traditions and also longing to have a tradition that is available to me as a birth right. (And there are the practical, literal things for me to figure out: If I’m 25% Irish can I be part of Celtic traditions? Can I only practice a tradition if it was practiced by my parents? Or Grandparents? How do I figure this ooooout?)
Something else that pops up for me as interesting is that I truly believe that energetic healing and spiritual awakening are the birthrights of all people. That being said, I don’t believe that this means that all the paths leading to healing and awakening automatically belong to me. I have loads of white European heritage, haven’t my ancestors done this enough already - Assumed that everything was theirs for the taking, for the money making? Would it actually be more healing to the world if I let the obviously “not my ancestry” practices go?
And then I guess the question becomes, if we’re not willing to let it go, if we don’t have a tradition of our own, or if we are in love with another culture’s practice, how do we explore and practice the various world traditions with the least amount of harm to those whose blood ancestors brought them into being?
Feel free to LMK your thoughts. This isn’t straightforward for me, there’s lots to think about and learn. I’m happy to be in convo around any of this and/or share what I’ve learned - AAAAND, sometimes it’s also important for people to frame their own questions and go looking for the answers.