Friday, January 25, 2013

You Can't "Sell" Reiki


Photo by Marlan Warren (copyright protected)


A friend recently suggested I "sell" Reiki with an "elevator pitch" (you're in an elevator and only have 1 or 2 floors to tell someone how great your service is). I quoted Reiki Master Eileen Dey (author of Touching the World through Reiki):

"You can't sell Reiki. You can share it."

We bring new people into Reiki's Light through attraction rather than promotion. Although I must admit, now that I think about it, that Reiki found me and not the other way around. And the circumstances did involve promotion.

In 1984, when I married my then-husband, Polish filmmaker Pawel Kuczynski, I was unwittingly on the verge of fighting a chronic illness which would not be accurately diagnosed for years. Pawel didn't know I was sick until after our marriage, but he did know that I had been studying with a Kundalini meditation teacher, Dr. Linda Garbett, in San Diego, and that she had encouraged me to serve others in the future with intuitive healing and counseling.

I don't remember how my then-husband met Joyce Morris, the 44th Reiki Master in the true Usui Shiki Ryoho lineage who ran the now-extinct Los Angeles Reiki Center. It might have been at one of those New Age Health Expos which we liked to attend in search of healing and enlightenment. I do remember Pawel explaining that he'd made a deal with Reiki Master/Teacher Morris to make a "promo video" for her Center in exchange for money and Reiki certification for us.

So looking back, I do see now that "promo" was necessary to the Center for its survival. However, attraction was the key. Pawel's video became a small documentary about the origins of Reiki (it had interviews with an older couple who knew Mrs. Tanaka--the woman who brought Reiki to the U.S. and ignited its popularity here), students, and those people who had been through the Center's training but were now part of its entourage.

My favorite line in the film is at the end when one of the Center's devotees says, "I don't know what it is, but I feel better doing it so I'm going to keep on doing it."

Cause and Effect. Does it work? Yes. For me, that's the bottom line.

Recently I offered to treat a young colleague when she mentioned that she'd recently suffered pain in her leg so severe she was limping. One minute she was fine, and the next she had this awful pain like a pulled muscle. But a doctor's exam showed nothing. Not even a blood clot.

That's where Reiki could step in (so to speak).

I gave her a full 1-hour Reiki session, and then spent extra time on the afflicted leg. Afterward, she got off the massage table, we had tea and she said it felt somewhat better. As a Reiki practitioner, I've learned not to be so concerned with immediate results so I didn't worry that she didn't feel that much better.

The next day she texted me:  "The pain in my leg is gone."

I could not say before the session that I knew what caused the problem, but during the session, the blockages in certain chakras became clear to me. Her head wasn't blocked so much as in "overdrive" with worry and stress. Her throat chakra was somewhat blocked because she wasn't speaking her truth freely. And so on. The process of sending Universal Energy to each chakra point loosened the toxins there and flushed them out. This is what we mean by "balancing."

So many times our aches and pains reflect our trauma, our holding back, our neurotic means of dealing with stress. It seems incredible that her leg pain could suddenly vanish as suddenly as it had arrived--but that's exactly what happened.

Attraction or Promotion? Which do you prefer when making your choices? I'm listening.

Oh and one more thing: Yelp hides most of my Five Star reviews. And in case you are curious, here's what the most recent review from this lovely person says:

This was my first experience with Reiki. I had read much about it and was interested in learning more. I found Marlan through a Google search and wasn't sure what to expect but I was more than pleasantly surprised -- Marlan is an amazing Reiki healer; I experienced many changes after just a couple of sessions and after taking a Reiki I class with Marlan, can do self-healing which has proved to be most effective.  Also, Marlan's beautiful cat, Nadia, is right there as well; the Reiki cat.  I would and have recommended Marlan to a number of people.  Oh and she also does Reiki healing for animals...very cool.  A++




3 comments:

  1. Referrals are good. Ask (your) clients to write down their success story re. Reiki. Why are they so happy with it ( you )? Let them explain. Publish in text, video or both. People need a soft push in the right direction, that's not selling, that's helping them. And they -will- thank you for it, at the end of the day.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Nilo. Yes, I get my clients mostly through referrals and have excellent reviews from happy clients on Yelp.com, as well as the Light Hands Reiki Studio website. Yelp for some reason "filters" the reviews on my L.A. page, meaning people have to scroll down and click on "Filtered Reviews" but they did leave this one up on the San Diego Yelp page: http://www.yelp.com/biz/light-hands-reiki-studio-san-diego-2

      Your support is so helpful. I appreciate it.

      Delete
  2. This just in from M. Mbye who said she couldn't figure out how to post a comment on this blog so she sent it to our FB page: "Very well written! I wish to make a comment on the selling of Reiki. I've heard that someone have to give you at least something for Reiki..in the old days it could be "even" an egg. You are giving something so something has to come in return.

    And my Reply:
    .
    Yes, that's true, Myra. Exactly right. I hope this doesn't give you the impression that Reiki has to be always "given away" when in the context of a professional Reiki healer and someone asking for a session. The reason for needing some form of "payment" is that money is a form of energy. So there's an exchange of energy and it's balanced in that professional sense. We live in a world where money is necessary for our survival, and most of us must work for that money. Therefore a professional Reiki healer would be correct in asking for some form of payment.

    ReplyDelete

About Me

My photo
Marlan Warren is a journalist, novelist, editor, playwright, screenwriter, blogger, website designer, and publicist. She is the author of the fictionalized memoir, Roadmaps for the Sexually Challenged: All’s Not Fair in Love or War and the AIDS memoir, Rowing on a Corner. She reviews for Midwest Book Review. Marlan is also a filmmaker.