What I tell students who arrive sceptical

Most people who sign up to train with me start with a disclaimer. I don't really believe in this. I'm only here because a friend dragged me along. I read that this is basically nothing, scientifically speaking. I've heard some version of that sentence from nearly every student I've taught, and I've come to think it's a good sign, not a problem to talk someone out of.

The ones who cross their arms

A woman arrives for level one with her arms folded and her expectations low. She used to run a department, or a household, or both. She has sat through enough consultants and coaches promising results to be wary of anyone who sounds too sure of themselves. She wants to know what this actually is before she decides what she thinks of it.

I like teaching that person. She is not going to take my word for something just because I said it with a straight face. She checks. She asks why. If something doesn't add up for her, she says so, and I would rather have that in the room than polite agreement.

Why I would rather you doubt me than believe a story

Reiki has picked up a fair amount of decoration over the decades that has nothing to do with what it actually is. Some of it is harmless. Some of it gets in the way of a student trusting her own experience, because she is busy trying to feel something she read about instead of noticing what is actually happening.

I don't claim a mechanism for how Reiki works, and I'm not going to invent one to satisfy a sceptical student either. No frequencies, no quantum explanations. What I can tell her honestly is what it is for: rest, and a nervous system that has been running hot for a long time. That's a claim she can test for herself in an hour, rather than one she has to take on faith.

The history helps here too. A lot of what gets taught about Reiki, including the chakra system most Western schools use, is newer and more ordinary than the story suggests, and I write about where it actually comes from in Where Usui Reiki actually comes from. Sceptical students tend to relax once they hear the honest version. It's less romantic than the myth, and somehow more convincing.

What I tell them before we start

Before a first attunement, I say plainly that feeling nothing is normal. Some people feel warmth or a pulling sensation. Plenty feel nothing at all and it works exactly the same. I would rather set that expectation early than have someone spend her first session waiting for a sign that isn't coming, and then decide the whole thing failed because of it. I've written more about what to expect in Preparing for an attunement, and I send it to every new student before we meet.

I also say, early and clearly, that this is not a treatment for any medical condition and it does not diagnose anything. That's not a disclaimer I'm hiding behind. It's the truth, and a sceptical student generally trusts a teacher more once she has heard where the edges are, not less.

Scepticism makes a better practitioner

Most of my students are training for a second act. She has already built a career, raised a family, or both, and she is looking at what comes next with the same seriousness she brought to everything before it. That kind of student doesn't want to be swept up. She wants to understand what she is learning well enough to teach it to someone else one day.

The ones who arrived doubtful are, without exception, the ones who ask the best questions by the end of the course. Doubt, in this context, isn't the opposite of taking it seriously. It's what taking it seriously looks like at the start. If that's where you are, training is built for exactly that kind of student, in Canggu or live online.