I had been working in Dentistry, and then in the Civil Service, and was at a very low ebb in my life when I discovered Reiki (or it discovered me). I had always been interested in complementary medicine, and I was on the mailing list of a healing centre 20 miles away which would send out a magazine a coupld of times a year. Usually I would flick through the magazine, find it vaguely interesting, and then get rid of it. This time I noticed the Reiki adverts, didn't have the faintest idea what it was, but I put the magazine to one side, came back to it a few days later, read the adverts again.

Then I was walking along our local high street and I saw a display of books about complementary medicine in the window of a bookshop. In the middle of their display was their one copy of a book about Reiki, which I bought, I read the book and suddenly I was on the telephone booking up my Reiki1 attunement, wondering what on earth I was doing, thinking that I was just being gullible (again!) and that I was forking out money on a load of new age nonsense.

On the day of the course I was sitting there like a lemon with my eyes closed, being attuned, wondering what on earth this woman was doing behind me, and then I was amazed to find that my hands started to tingle whenever they got near other people, and the other people on the course said that my hands were boiling hot - which was ridiculous because I had always been a cold-handed person! Over the next few weeks I had emotional ups and downs, a three-week cold, and was seeing everything around me in 'technicolor'.

Because I was quite sceptical I practiced on as many people as I could get my hands on, and was amazed by what Reiki was doing to these people: getting rid of the pain of sports injuries and long-term back pain, for example. I thought 'good grief, what is going on here?' I knew that Reiki was definitely what I wanted to do, so I went through the levels quite quickly, started giving treatments from rooms in/above some Health Food shops, and after a while I started running courses.

I was in the right time and the right place because I ended up being taught the techniques that were coming to the West from Hiroshi Doi quite soon after the Canadian conference organised by Rick Rivard et al, and I came into contact with Chris Marsh, who was spending time in Japan with a group of surviving students of Usui Sensei. I trained with and stayed in contact with Chris for a several years and I toured the UK, and Europe, passing on these methods to other Reiki teachers.

Here in the UK I now have a team of teachers who are teaching my style of Reiki courses, with a fairly sizeable web site that provides a lot of resources to help people with their Reiki: loads of articles that I have written about Reiki, self-help guides, leaflet templates, Japanese style Reiki certificate templates, audio CDs, MP3s, Reiki manuals for all the levels which can be downloaded or ordered in a professionally printed format. My approach is to share everything that I know and make good quality materials available to anyone who wants to use them. Anyone who is interested in seeing what we have to offer can go here: http://www.reiki-evolution.co.uk

I focus on home study courses now, teaching people all over the world one-to-one. I know that home study courses for Reiki have a bad reputation in some quarters, but if they are done properly, with excellent course materials, ongoing support from the teacher, breaking the course down into manageable chunks where, in the way that we do it, the student reads parts of the manual, listens to traks on our audio CDs, and then does practical energy work, giving the teacher feedback at each stage of the course, then home study has many advantages over live training, not least of which is almost unlimited practice time!

I don't think it matters too much, actually. What's more important to me is not so much how you define that particular word, but how you experience the energy for yourself, the difference that it makes to you and the people around you. Usui seems to have referred to his system as a ‘Method to Achieve Personal Perfection’, and that emphasises what is very important to me and the way that I teach Reiki: Reiki basically as a system that you use for personal and spiritual development, rather than a treatment system that you use on other people.

I think that we are creating a 'healing space' for the recipient to draw what they need through us to where they need it. I do not think that we are healers or have the power to heal. I see us a necessary bystanders in the process. But I do think that we can do things to make treatments more effective though, mainly by working intuitively, where we can learn (for example by practising Reiji ho) to work in partnership with the energy, allowing it to guide us in terms of the best places to place our hands for that client at that moment; we can also allow the energy/our intuition to guide us in terms of what aspect of the energy (if any) we emphasise from one moment to another (which symbol, which kotodama etc).

I do not think that attunements or empowerments connect the student to anything that they weren't connected to already. I believe that these rituals allow the student to notice or recognise something that is already there and has always been there. Rather ike the situation where you visit someone, go into their lounge, and they say to you "can you hear that high-pitched noise?". You say no but after a while, by changing your focus, by focusing your attention in a particular way, you start to notice the noise, a noise which was there from the moment you walked into the room, but it took you a while before you could 'tune in' to it.

That's not something that I am particularly interested in or focus on, though I know that it is something that many Reiki people do and believe in. So I am not going to denigrate something that I haven't done very much with myself. Certainly I believe that Reiki can be used to alter our perceptions of a situation or event in a positive way.

Within the rainbow or spectrum of complementary therapies, Reiki is probably at the 'woo woo end' of the spectrum ("harmless nonsense") as far as the medical establishment is concerned, and given that a lot of Doctors find it very difficult to accept that even things like Acupuncture work, I think it will probably take a long time before Reiki is accepted as a valid approach. I will be happy to be proved wrong about this. But my focus is very much on Reiki as a personal practice, not Reiki as a treatment method (though we do teach a complete treatment method on our courses) so I am content to just 'be' with Reiki rather than take steps to persuade other people of its efficacy as a treatment method.

If someone has just been knocked down by a car in front of you, do you refrain from sending any Reiki because you can't drag them into the sitting position to sign a consent form? No, you would in a very human and compassionate way send Reiki to them with the intention that the energy should do whatever is right for that person, so, rather like prayer, you are offering up something to that person, not forcing them to receive it. If they don't want it, they won't receive it. IMO you are not imposing Reiki on someone when sending distant healing to someone who has not requested it, you are making it available to them to use as they see fit... so I don't think that permission is important. [/b]

[/color=blue]Reiki is with me always, guiding me and enveloping me. It is a reassuring friend. It helps me to be creative and intuitive, it brings me peace and fulfilment.

I can only base my comments on what has been happening in the UK, where I have been an outspoken critic of attempts to establish rules for the voluntary regulation of Reiki. Standards have been put together that are really a nonsense, with requirements plucked out of thin air, with very little support from Reiki practitioners, requirements created on the basis that they might look quite good from the point of view of an outsider who knows nothing about Reiki. Certainly in the UK there seems to be very little common sense, and the regulation process seems to be going nowhere, which I think is a good thing. Voluntary self-regulation here has been touted as a way of protecting the public, while not a shred of evidence has ever been put forward to demonstrate that the current situation has harmed people.

I think that tolerance of other Reiki styles is very important. I understand that there is always a tendency for people to belileve that the way that they were taught is the best way, and that people who do things differently are probably wrong, but Reiki accommodates many different ways fo working, and different styles suit different people, and we should try to be content with the way that suits us, rather than trying to denigrate another person's approach. So while I prefer a simple and uncluttered approach to Reiki, based on intuition, that doesn't mean that it is wrong to use rituals or set hand positions. I believe that intuitive working is a very effective way to work, but I do allow that there will be people who disagree with me. And while I believe an 'empty' style is a good style, at the same time the universe (wanting to have a good laugh at me) helped me to develop "Five Element Reiki" which uses quite a structured system, symbols, visual constructs etc, quite different from my basic approach to Reiki! Different approaches suit different people.

I noticed recently that there are some people out there who are saying that only attunements connect people to Reiki, and that anyone who has received Reiju empowerments does not have Reiki. Of course this is nonsense, just complete nonsense, and these comments are being made most likely for 'political' reasons, and it would be nice if there was more tolerance of or acceptance of different styles of working.

Reiki is viral. People learn it, their friends and family members see the positive changes that it brings into that person's life, they see that Reiki isn't something weird but is positive, simple and benefical, and they may receive some of those benefits when they receive Reiki treatments. Some of these friends and relatives may choose to learn Reiki for themselves, and so they cycle continues. Reiki brings peace to people, and long may that continue.