Review: The Reiki Handbook

The Reiki Handbook, by Larry Arnold and Sandy Nevius

This book was originally written in 1982, relatively early in the development of Reiki as taught by Hawayo Takata. Larry and Sandy were students of Virgina Samdahl, one of Takata's masters. As they say in the preface

During that time in which a deep respect and friendship developed with this dynamic lady of simple sincerity and unassailable conviction in the validity and value of the Reiki system, there was also fostered the idea of a thorough manual that could assist the student of Reiki to more easily learn -- and subsequently apply more effectively -- this very ancient yet only recently rediscovered art of natural healing.

The first thing we find in the book is the Reiki History, nearly identical to the story that Fran Brown told to my Reiki I class many years ago. The world has since learned that this history is incomplete, but the stories still have value in the ideas they convey. With that out of the way, let us look at the rest of this fine book.

This book appears to be written to use as teaching material in a Reiki class. There are long sections where the reader is invited to write notes, presented as a break in class time for discussion and note taking.

Early in the book are a sequence of moral discussions around Reiki practice. The who to treat discussion is very good, as is the discussion of whether to charge (or not) for Reiki treatments. That discussion ends with noticing that what a healer charges for is their time, since the energy is free. In the how to treat section they discuss a technique I've never heard of, the reiki finish which we're instructed to do at the end of a session.

An interesting section is the glossary of ailments which goes over a number of conditions, and gives "recipes" of how to perform Reiki treatment on each ailment. I understand that Hayashi's contribution to Reiki was a set of highly organized and regimented treatments, including the sequence of precise hand positions to use. What we see in this book is likely directly from Hayashi's teaching. The basic rule appears to be for a phyisical ailment, to treat the area the ailment is located.

One thing of note is the lack of discussing the chakra system in this book, except for one page in the appendices. Since Reiki springs from Japan, while the chakra concept springs from the Hindu and Tibetan traditions, it is unnatural to combine the chakras with Reiki teaching. They come from very different cultural backgrounds. It's a kind of apples and oranges mix.

Yet, in truth, the chakras are part of the human energy system regardless of whether the Chinese or Japanese recognized them or not. In a way the act of later Reiki teachers to talk of the Chakra system while teaching Reiki is only natural, it's all part of the energy system, the Chinese and Japanese and Hindu's simply had different words and organizing principles to describe what they saw.