This is a bit of a trick question. The answers depend on your intention.

If your intention is to run a business then yes, you need training.

However, what if you haven’t studied Reiki but you want to help a hurting friend, or a grieving loved one? What if you don’t want to be in business, just the business of being a good friend? For that, the answer is simple: No, you do not have to be trained or attuned.

Reiki, which originated in Japan in the late 19th Century, is a fairly recent iteration of what humans have already known throughout our history — that love and caring attention and intention heals.

Recently a client asked me how he could help his grieving spouse as her father transitions from this life. “How can I send healing energy to someone whose heart is feeling a lot of pain? I can’t fix this, but I know there are things I can do,” he said.

Here is my answer, with specifics. I’m sharing it in the hopes it could help more people as we find ourselves on the precipice of difficult contractions and shifts in our respective worlds:

“Absolutely, there are things you can do.

I am so sorry to hear this, especially at a time when families can’t gather like normal.

So, you are absolutely correct, you do not have to be attuned or trained in Reiki, or be some sort of special class of magical wizard to have a loving, energetic effect on a person or situation. In fact, you are quite powerful exactly as you are! Your thoughts and feelings affect the physical realm that surrounds us.

Therefore, if you simply send loving thoughts and intentions to all involved, those thoughts and loving intentions will collect around each of them, creating a space (like a force field) inside which they can feel safe and comfortable to let their own emotions be safely expressed and honored. This is what is meant by, “holding space”.

The best way I know to create this phenomenon is to visualize, just like how little kids play using their imaginations! You can visualize the love and care you have for your family as a beam of light that is radiating outward from your heart, as though your heart is a beautiful lamp. In Reiki we call this “beaming.” (Careful not to imagine your heart as a broken-open thing, expelling all its energy to them, because your body will actually follow suit on that image and you could become drained.).

Picture this beam of light being able to bend and morph, wrapping itself around them. If you are not in the same room with them or even the same town, that’s okay! You are affecting change and energy in the quantum realm, not the physical realm, so the rules of not being able to touch something that’s out of your fingertip reach do not apply.”

This is something that anyone can do, even people who haven’t studied Reiki. Try it! 🙂