Your hands have been used hundreds of thousands of times throughout your lifetime. You've held loving hands, shaken unfamiliar hands, clapped your hands, and may have found yourself bringing your hands together in a heart felt intention for your life and for those around you. Your hands have been used for work, for play, for silly shadows on walls, and for family ties. Your hands are a gift to you and to everyone around you, yet you've probably never seen them that way. Everyone you have touched in compassion, held in comfort, or wiped tears away for a better day, has magically gifted a unique part of you to them.
Your hands are intuitive tools given to support you in your life. When you were a child, and you scraped a knee, your hands naturally went to the site of the wound to offer comfort. During lazy play, I'm sure you also remember laying on the grass with your hands resting behind your head, while peering up at the clouds, looking for hidden shapes, animals, faces or anything that might spring through your curious imagination. Perhaps you also found yourself resting your chin in your hands while propping your elbows on your desk, to support yourself, as a teacher shared new concepts with you. Let's face it, there are things we just naturally do with our hands, starting from the moment we are born. The use of our hands is so natural, we hardly even think about it. How many of us talk with our hands and give no mind to it at all? Well . . . that's because I believe the hands are all about the heart.
Yes, your hands are a gift, yet have you considered that your hands can also be used as a tool for self-healing? You may already unknowingly be using your hands for healing, just like when you were a child. For instance, where do your hands find themselves when you have a headache, or shoulder tension? More than likely you place your hands in the area of tension. With Heart Centered Reiki Energy Healing, there are soothing hand positions that anyone can learn to invite healing on many levels. These hand positions are based on the original Reiki by Dr. Usui, the founder of Reiki.
When I first learned the Reiki hand positions for healing, I found them quite powerful and comforting, yet as I sat down to write my online course, Heart Centered Reiki, I intuitively felt that something was missing. As I meditated on each hand position, I suddenly heard words within my heart that seemed to flow in for each hand position. It brought the experience of the hand positions to a whole new level, and as a result, each hand position now has a mantra associated with it. Mantras or affirmations are merely positive words that can bring more meaning to the hand position as you implement them. In the diagram associated with this blog, you will notice the first hand position where the hands are held over the eyes. Let's do an exercise together to demonstrate how the hand positions and mantras work perfectly together.
Personal Exercise - First Position - First get in a comfortable position, and let your hands rest gently over the eyes. Feel the warmth and comfort offered, as you shut out the visual stimuli around you. Practice breathing slowly, inhaling and exhaling, allowing your entire face to rest. When you feel completely relaxed, you can then invite the associated mantra into the healing exercise. Think about the mantra or say it aloud. Whatever feels comfortable or natural to you, do that. You may repeat the mantra several times over a period of several minutes. As a side note, you may feel impressed to hold each hand position for different lengths of time. Some areas of your body may require more time to relax. For now, let's continue to focus on the first position where you hands are simply resting over your eyes.
The mantra associated with the first position is, "I Trust." Imagine walking around in life with no physical vision, filtering out your physical view of the world. Sometimes the physical eyes must close, in order to awaken the spiritual eye or third eye which is also your intuitive eye. As you hold this position and focus on the associated mantra, "I Trust," simply take it further and ask yourself, "What do I trust?" Tune into the question in silence and listen to the answers that come flowing in. If the question, "What do I trust?" seems too difficult to answer, you can ask yourself, "What am I willing to trust?" Allow some possibilities to flow in and to make it easier, just start with one thing like, "I am willing to trust that these hand positions can benefit me as I practice them daily."
There are many ways you can expand the use of the mantras and hand positions to go deeper into yourself for healing. Once the awareness comes in, you have then opened up a new pathway for healing. Each hand position is an opportunity to connect with the various parts of your body that may hold tension, stress, or energy blockages. You may notice when you first place your hands in an area it will feel tense, cold, hard or lack flexibility. As you rest your hands in each area, allowing the comforting energy to flow through them, change will result. Through the intentions of your heart for healing, you will find that the areas will soften, reducing stress, not just physically but emotionally and mentally.
I challenge you to practice just one "Reiki Hand Position" per week to see what a difference it can make in your life. To learn more about how to heal yourself you can enroll in our healing course, for certification for Reiki energy healing - Heart Centered Reiki. https://courses.heartcenteredreiki.org/