My Reiki 1 and 2 Attunements
Diary entry 7
(Diary entries are intended to be read in order)
My dad had had a girlfriend when I was little named…Julie 
. Given my dad’s nature, he and Julie inevitably broke up. Julie went off to live her life and basically did something similar to what I’m doing—she went to New York City to devote herself to therapy and getting herself and her life in order. In this process, she was drawn to a form of energy healing. She attended a school for energy healing and became the only genuinely peaceful and happy person I have ever seen in my life. Moreover, she had qualities and interpersonal skills that I looked up to, admired and aspired to. It also helped that she was more similar to me than anyone in my immediate or extended family, and, like me, she had never managed to find a working relationship with a man, albeit for a completely different reason; she was single and not just happy, but joyful and full of love. I have often wished that she had not disappeared almost entirely from my life throughout my 20’s and 30’s; she could have helped me immeasurably, altering the course and events of my life.
Anyway, I basically wanted to be like Julie—I should be so lucky to be that content with myself and with my life as a single woman, when I had always known at a profound level in my heart and soul that I had been created to love and tend to a husband and a family. Thus, it was basically via Julie that I was initially drawn to energy healing. I saw her and how natural she was interacting with people and how content she was with herself and I wanted to do energy healing, like she did, so that I could let my love flow and become free and joyful, like her, even in the lack of living my life purpose.
Last summer I looked into energy healing schools and quickly found out I could neither afford the time, nor the money required. At that time, I had no idea what reiki was. I had the impression that it must be some inferior form of energy healing, since learning it didn’t require a special school or four years of my life at $10,000 a year. However, at roughly $400 for a 2-day reiki level 1 and 2 class, reiki fell into my accepted price and time range, thus, I took it.
At the beginning of December, 2008, I attended a reiki level 1 attunement class on a Saturday, and a level 2 attunement class on the day after, Sunday. That weekend was a transformational experience for me. Not only did it open up the world of energy healing and reiki to me, but it put me in touch with a “me” I had never experienced before—a joyful, more sociable, free and natural me, a me that could feel love and a me that felt like she had finally found a field that she actually felt natural and competent in and people that she could fit in just a little better with.
In my opinion, the only noteworthy event of the class, and, in fact, the only element of the reiki class I have intended to share in this article, is the attunement. The reiki attunement is the essence of the class. The reiki attunement is a process which permanently opens the recipient or student up to the reiki energy flow, and once opened to this flow, one can call on it at will and practice reiki on oneself or others, animals and even situations. The following is a concise definition of a reiki attunement from this site:
What is a Reiki attunement?
This is the process whereby the RM passes on to the initiate the ability to channel the Reiki energy. Without such an attunement whatever healing modality is practiced is not Reiki. Normally an attunement comes with instruction in the various techniques involved in practicing Reiki. However, nowadays this need not be the case, especially with reputed “distance attunements”.
They say that every person has a different experience of the attunement, and some experiences can be quite uplifting or unearthly. My personal experiences of the attunements (and classes) follow:
The Reiki 1 Class
I walked into the seminar room as I would have walked into any room full of complete strangers: unsure of my social footing, unsure of myself, and looking out at all the happy, socializing foreigners from a solidly protected and sealed-off sanctuary of speechless silence and of mute observation deep within myself. As natural as my breath, by virtue of their mere presence in my awareness at that moment, I emotionally scanned the group to achieve an understanding of each individual and for my own personal reference; who might I feel comfortable with, who might I not? I chose my seat then, accordingly, next to those I thought I would feel most comfortable with.
I took a seat in the semi-circle that was being formed around the teachers and the class began. To my dismay, the teachers asked us to introduce ourselves before the group, giving our names, jobs, places of residence, a little background and why we are learning reiki. As usual, I was totally removed from what the people preceding me were saying, as all the slow little brain cells in my head were frantically scurrying around in panic mode, trying to put together the words for my own introduction and piece together what I would say and then remember all the pieces and the order to say them in. Meanwhile, my heart began beating faster and faster and I began to shake as I sat there. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, afflicted with this charge of having to speak in front of these strangers, who were, themselves, nonetheless speaking perfectly naturally, smiling and pleased to be the center of attention for a moment, with no panic in sight.
I survived the ordeal, but I felt as I always do: awkward, socially inept, nearly voiceless, having made a fool of myself and having forgotten to say certain things. I did explain, however, that I was in New York City for therapy and healing (and reiki) because I had suffered an emotional breakdown in the summer (2008).
We began our attunements with our teachers (they were a husband-wife team) instructing us in a meditation with meditation music playing. The class and the teachers meditated for 5-10 minutes. Something about the setting enabled me to go quite deep in my meditation and I felt very peaceful, calm and deep. After the meditation time had passed, as the students remained in meditation, the teachers got up and began to go around to each student to perform the attunement itself, which seemed to be passing on of some healing energy (I don’t know exactly, since I haven’t taken the more advanced reiki classes yet).
My personal experience of this reiki 1 attunement was not earth-shattering. As I sat meditating with my eyes closed waiting for the teachers to come to me, I felt anxious about what would happen when they got to me. Then I felt them at the people next to me. I felt intense heat from them and as they drew near to me, and then in front of me, the silhouette of them that formed in the vision of my closed eyes was that of a bright white light. I knew this was a good, something real, but intangible, was happening and I was happy about it, but, like I said, it wasn’t earth-shattering.
After the teachers had finished, we all came out of our meditation and, God help me, the teachers asked us to go around the room taking turns describing our experience of the attunement. So, once again I had my heart in my throat. “At least I have an experience to describe,” I thought. But it’s still not easy speaking with your heart in your throat. Like the first time, I also survived this, but I was a shaking, nervous wreck each time, and that was audible in my trembling and timid voice.
Attunement Aftermath
I can’t really describe well the nature and the intensity of the sensations I was feeling in my body after the attunement. The class was dismissed for lunch and I went to lunch with a small group from the class, as a wealthy man who was taking the class with his daughter offered to buy all of us lunch . While we were at the restaurant waiting for the food, I was overcome with physical experiences so potent that I couldn’t function. First of all, my whole body was “tingling” profusely. I had experienced the inner tingling of energy moving in me before, from EFT and yoga, but this tingling was intense and thorough, over my whole body. I was physically shaky, but not from nerves. I was exceedingly light-headed and dizzy. I had a feeling of being intensely “buzzed,” or very spaced out (as when you drink too much and become very dizzy, disoriented and light-headed and cannot focus your eyes or your mind).
I asked the others if they felt anything, but they didn’t. I was a little surprised by the teachers’ responses when I asked them about it. One suggested I was catching a cold, the other suggested I was too hot; very strange, considering even I knew it was a direct result of the attunement.
The Reiki 2 Class
Saturday night, after the reiki 1 class, I went home and got a good night’s sleep. Everyone returned early the next day for the reiki 2 class. This time, however, others had finally reported feeling effects of the previous day’s attunement. One girl reported having a migraine, the likes of which she was not accustomed to. Another girl returned with a cold. None reported the physical sensations I had “been high” on since the day before, and I never got ill in any way either. I was certainly fortunate to have the experience of it that I had, because it was really a wonderful sensation, as long as you’re not driving 
.
Once again, we all had to take our turn in describing how our night was after experiencing the attunement. With the success and downright fun and delight of my personal experience, I was opening up, becoming less afraid to speak and more natural in front of the strangers. There was a feeling developing amidst us from the energy healing which I felt opening me up, making me feel as if I might fit in, or at least making me feel it was safe for me to be more natural there.
Reiki 2 Attunement
For me, the delight of the reiki 2 attunement began even before the attunement began, but even during the meditation. We sat, as before, in meditation to some meditation music of the teachers. I went into a profound meditation, it was wonderful. As I was meditating, however, I began to see a golden light shining in the periphery of my left eye. The golden light was spherical, with halos, as radiate from bright lights, and just entering my line of vision at my left eye. It would move further into my line of vision, appearing as if someone were holding an illuminated light bulb in front of my eyes and moving it slowly back and forth before my closed eyes. There were several times I believed that the teachers were not sitting in meditation, but that they were passing in front of me, somehow creating this light effect before my eyes. I was bewildered and puzzled by this light.
After the meditation, I opened my eyes and I, shy and insecure as I was, spoke up and asked the teachers if they had been sitting in their seats this whole time, to which they responded yes.
My deep meditation and peculiar vision of light continued while the teachers were going around giving attunements to each student. Not only did this vision continue, it developed. In my meditation, as the teachers were circulating among us, the golden light I saw shining in the periphery of my left eye continued and I began to feel real heat on my face where I saw the light shining. I was dead certain someone had opened the curtains and there was sun shining on my face. I sat with a smile on my face, as if basking in the warmth and light of the sun. Several times I opened my eyes to find the sunlight, but there was no sun on that cloudy, windy day, and the shades were drawn closed. I marveled at how this was possible. I felt heat on my face as real and as strong as the heat we feel on our face from the sun. I had determined that it was bad for me to keep peering out from my meditation to look for the sun, so instead of opening my eyes, in my continued disbelief, I would take my hand up as I sat in my meditation and I would pass my hand in front of my eyes to determine an outside source for my vision and for the heat. Amazingly, when I would pass my hand in front of my eyes, no shadows would come before my sight as I sat with eyes closed, and the flow of heat was not interrupted. Somehow, I was seeing and feeling inside myself a source of light and heat that was not in the outside world! Now this was fun!! I didn’t ever want to come out of that meditation! I was beside myself with delight and excitement and couldn’t wait to tell the class what I had experienced! )
When the time came for me to tell my story, I know I was smiling and beaming through the whole thing! Some others seemed to have possibly more interesting experiences than I had, but I loved my experience and I was overjoyed with it!
Weekend Conclusion
By the end of the day on Sunday, I had already gone through an enormous transformation. I was so open that when it came time for us to all leave, I was crying 
. I had such a wonderful and altering experience with the others and with the attunements that it was as if a long time had passed in the course of two days and I had emerged a different person, and I couldn’t imagine it would even be possible for me to become how I had been just 2 days before. Towards the end, the teachers were discussing the changes that had occurred in people over the weekend and the vote in the class was unanimous; I was the one who had transformed the most, and I was so embarrassed as all “the strangers” looked at me with such approval and acceptance, that I smiled more widely than one would think I was capable of and I began to cry…again.
As I was packing my things to leave (with tears in my eyes), a girl from the class came over to me and offered to help me in my endeavors to heal myself and get my life back on track. She told me that, from what I said in my introduction (despite how shaky and bad I thought it was) she was amazed and impressed that I had come as far as I had, that I was there seeking healing in reiki, and that she thought I had a lot of courage and determination to be where I was.
All in all, this was the best $400 I have ever spent in my life and the experience I had that weekend will go down in my history as one of the best and most positive and transformational experiences of my life.