What I Actually Do in the Ten Minutes Before a Training Day Starts

There is no incense before a training day, and no five minutes of meditation to find my centre. Ten minutes before six students arrive, I am doing something far more ordinary: counting chairs, checking that a video link actually connects, and making sure there is a manual at every seat.

The list before anything else

A training day for up to six people means six of everything, checked twice. I walk the room and count chairs, then check that the fan or the air conditioning will not drown out anyone joining from home rather than from Canggu. If someone is learning online, I test that link myself a few minutes before, rather than trust that it worked the last time. Two things have to be true before anyone sits down: a manual waiting at every seat, and a working connection for whoever is not in the room. Water goes out, pens go out, and my own phone goes face down and silent before the first person arrives, not after. None of this is taught from a recording and no attunement here is automated, so part of the ten minutes is simply confirming that the room, or the screen, is ready for something that only happens live, once, with me actually in it.

Settling my own mind, not the room's

None of this is mystical, and I would rather say that plainly than let anyone imagine otherwise. Before a group arrives I need my own system settled, because the tone in a room tends to follow whoever is holding it. If I walk in distracted, six people notice within the first minute, whether or not anyone says so out loud. So before the door opens I sit for a short while, breathe slowly, and let my shoulders drop from wherever they have crept up to overnight. It is closer to what any teacher does before a difficult class than to anything esoteric. I am not clearing a room or an aura. I am getting my own head quiet enough that there is space in it for six other people's, which is a far more ordinary kind of work than it sounds, and it takes longer some mornings than others.

Taking stock of who is walking in

Once that is done I run through who is actually walking in, in the room or on the screen, and where each person is in the training. I teach in English and German, so part of this check is simply making sure I am about to speak the right one to the right group. Reiki training moves through levels one to Master Teacher, and the symbols are part of the course from Level 1 onward, so a student returning for Level 2 is building on what they already carry rather than starting from nothing. For anyone coming to a first attunement, I want to have already said, plainly, that feeling nothing during it is normal. People sometimes arrive expecting a jolt and get stillness instead, and that is worth saying before the day begins rather than after someone leaves quietly disappointed with themselves. There is more on what that moment actually feels like in preparing for a Reiki attunement.

Why six is the ceiling, not a target

I teach Reiki training from Level 1 to Master Teacher in groups of no more than six, and often it is one person at a time. That ceiling is not a marketing decision. With six people in a room I can see who is restless, who has a question they have not asked yet, and who needs the pace slowed down, and none of that is visible once a group gets much bigger. A manual, an attunement and support afterwards are part of every level no matter how many people are in the room, but the ten minutes before only do their job when the group stays small enough for me to actually see everyone in it. Training runs in English or German, in Canggu or live online, and the dates are set around whoever is coming rather than around a fixed calendar, because there is no advertised date to work around in the first place. The ten minutes before we start are where I make sure I am ready to give each of those six people my actual attention, not a divided one.