At Energetic Ecology, we blend years of learning, study, practice, and culturally-passed down teachings to provide you with the most authentic, culturally relevant, and universally accessible Reiki program possible.
History of Practitioners
In this course, we will apply a critical lens to the Western Reiki Model narrative, adding vital cultural context to the history of Reiki in Japan that goes beyond Mikao Usui. You will understand Reiki not only as a cultural practice but a legitimate form of medicine from the Japanese perspective.
Energetic Cosmologies
Learn about the culturally relevant energetic systems that cultivate an understanding of how energy flows through the human body from a Japanese perspective. We will learn about traditional elemental frameworks, as well as frameworks that have been adopted & adapted over hundreds of years.
Energy Cultivation
Practice energy cultivation alongside pre-recorded audio to begin your energy journey, utilizing traditional exercises and techniques. We will also spend time discussing and practicing other foundational skills for energy healing, including: channeling, transforming, and directing.
Healthy Energetic Pathways
Learn about Japanese elemental frameworks for understanding how energy flows through the body, as well as how to restore balance and promote harmony amongst the elements for health & vitality.
Reiki for Ourselves & Others
We will discuss various practices and helpful frameworks for personal healing sessions and client work. Body-scanning helps us understand the body better, and energetic hygiene keeps us and our clients safe throughout sessions where energy exchange is inevitable.
Cultivating the Kami Spirit
In striving to become more like kami (gods/spirits), we can choose to engage in a number of traditional practices that help to purify the body, mind, and spirit. We will discuss many of these traditional practices.
This course is for you if:
- You are energetically curious and would like to begin your own personal energy healing practice. Maybe someday you would like to offer energy healing to others, but for now you just want to do some exploration, and would like to learn about Traditional Japanese Healing Arts.
- You are a new or established practitioner who was taught/trained under the Western Reiki Model, and are looking to apply a critical consciousness perspective on the complexities of race, cultural appropriation, and healing modalities.
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You are a new or established practitioner who wants to learn more about Japanese culture, and would like to have a greater breadth of knowledge of the traditions that Western Reiki draws from, getting to the roots of the practice and how to be a carrier of this tradition with integrity and accountability.
Example Curriculum
A.B.
"Marika knows her sh*t in the best way possible. I seriously appreciate how inclusive, mindful, thoughtful, and respectful her course was for both students and the practice of Reiki. This is the reason why I chose her and her course to begin this study, and will continue to be looking here for my future work".
Joshua S.
"I am so grateful for the wisdom and resources Marika shared in the Reiki for Beginners course. As someone who studies energy healing, but was missing the background of a more typical reiki workshop, I learned so much. I plan to return to the course content and dig into the supplemental resources as I continue my learning - thank you for everything!"
Anonymous
"I've been interested in learning more about reiki since my first reiki session earlier this year. Marika's course was just the right fit. The virtual format was great as it allowed for alot of flexibility and I felt I could go through the content at my own pace in between virtual sessions. But the highlight was Marika's deep knowledge of the content and her ability to share the historical and nuanced elements of reiki that only comes from a first hand understanding and deep respect for Japanese culture".
What is Reiki?
Reiki is a healing practice that has been passed down by the Japanese people for hundreds of generations. Perhaps one of the most ancient forms of medicine, Reiki is the practice of cultivating energy within one's body and directing that energy for the purposes of healing. While other East Asian practices such as Qi Gong, Tai Chi, or Yoga focus on the movement of energy throughout the body, Reiki is a folk medicine practice that directs energy (known as "ki") through the palms of the hands to promote vitality, regeneration, and harmony within the body.
How does Reiki work?
From an East Asian context, the existence of energy is a cultural understanding - what animates our world is a universal form of energy, called "Ki" in Japanese, or "Qi" in Chinese. This universal energy is present in all living things, with varying levels of complexity. From a Shinto perspective, the character and quality of this energy is manifested through the 4 Elemental Energies - Earth, Water, Fire, and Air - with the 5th ineffable element of Spirit.
Through the practice of energy cultivation, we can begin to utilize these different energies to help restore balance to the body.
What are the benefits of Reiki?
Both Reiki treatments and energy cultivation practices have many benefits, however, because Reiki is a folk healing practice from East Asia, the benefits of the practice are often not recognized as "legitimate" from the perspective of Western health professionals. Benefits may include:
- A deep sense of calm and peace
- Nervous system regulation, and/or nervous system repair when Reiki is used over time
- Reduced inflammation throughout various systems of the body
- Increased circulation and greater flow of Ki (Qi) throughout the body, which helps make one less vulnerable to illness and disease
- Restored connection to one's heart & soul, refreshing one's sense of purpose and vigor for life
- Reiki can assist with more intangible causes of dis-ease and discontent, such as familial, generational, and ancestral trauma, and other energies that are present within one's field
- Reiki is an incredible supportive therapeutic modality to help amplify other medicine practices, including Western allopathic medicine, talk therapy, somatic therapy, and more
- Reiki and consistent Energy Cultivation Practice can result in an increase in overall energy accessed by the body and general vitality
Further Inquiry & Resources
- "What is Reiki? Insights from a Japanese-American Practitioner" by article Marika Clymer. This article discusses in-depth what Reiki is, the cultural contexts from which it emerged, and more nuanced discussions about the disparity between the Western Reiki Model and Traditional Japanese Energetic Healing Arts.
- The Energetic Ecology Website
What is Western Reiki? And is it different from Traditional Reiki?
Western Reiki is a form of Reiki that was originally taught by Hawayo Takata in the United States in the 1970's. From those original trainings, thousands if not millions of practitioners have now been trained in a specific form of Reiki we (as Japanese people) like to refer to as The Western Reiki Model. While Western Reiki's founder, US-born Japanese-American Sensei Hawayo Takata, learned Reiki in Japan itself, she also changed the practice significantly in her process of teaching it. Unfortunately, because of these changes (and the subsequent changes that primarily White American practitioners have added), Western Reiki does not closely resemble more traditional forms of the energy healing practice in Japan. These are things we explore in depth in our Complete Reiki Program.
While there is no one "true" form of Reiki (as it is a folk practice, as in a practice that is integrated into the culture with many familial and regional variations), Western Reiki is fundamentally in contradiction with many of the core principles of Japanese energy healing as a whole.
These core principles which we explore in depth in the program include:
- Fundamental worldviews regarding the existence of Universal Energy, and the spiritual beliefs that reinforce this understanding
- The multiplicity of ways to practice energy cultivation and Reiki (energy healing)
- Energetic frameworks tied to cultural worldviews regarding animism and elemental spirits
- How health is evaluated and illness & dis-ease are perceived from a traditional Japanese perspective
- And more!