What Reiki training is
Reiki is a hands-on practice that began in Japan in the early 1920s with Mikao Usui. A practitioner rests their hands on or just above the body, in a set sequence, while the person receiving lies still and fully clothed. Training teaches you to do that yourself: the hand positions, how a session runs, and how to keep a daily practice.
Most people come to it after receiving sessions and wanting to go further. Some only ever practice on themselves. Others go on to offer sessions to friends, family or clients. Either is a normal reason to start.
How Reiki is taught: the levels
Usui Reiki, the most widespread form, is taught in stages. Names and details vary between teachers, but the outline is usually the same:
- Level 1 (Shoden in Japanese): treating yourself, the basic hand positions, and simple sessions for people close to you. No experience needed.
- Level 2 (Okuden): more structured sessions for other people, and the symbols most lineages introduce at this stage.
- Master level (Shinpiden): deepening your own practice and, in many lineages, learning to teach and pass on the attunements.
Many teachers ask for time between levels so that the practice settles before the next step. Ask Monica which levels her next training covers and what she expects between them.
What an attunement is
Each level includes an attunement, sometimes called an initiation: a short, quiet ritual in which the teacher passes Reiki on to the student. You sit with your eyes closed while the teacher moves around you. It takes a few minutes. What people feel during it varies a great deal, from warmth or tingling to nothing in particular, and none of those responses means it did or did not work.
What a Reiki certificate means
A Reiki certificate is issued by your teacher and shows the level you completed and, usually, the lineage it comes from. It is not a license from a government or a medical board, so its value rests on who taught you and how. That is worth knowing before you compare trainings, especially short online ones.
Training with Monica in Mindo
Monica teaches Reiki at Portal de Paz, where she also gives individual Reiki sessions and leads yoga, sound baths and cacao ceremonies. Her trainings run over three or four days in person, so you learn the hand positions with someone correcting them rather than from a video.
As Monica describes her Reiki course on siddhahealings.com, students receive the Level 1, Level 2 and Master attunements and finish certified as Reiki Masters. Along the way it covers the history of Usui Reiki, the chakras, the traditional hand positions, distance Reiki, a daily self-Reiki practice and the ethics of working with clients, with hands-on practice giving and receiving. Ask her which of these each training in Mindo covers.
Mindo is about two hours by road from Quito, and the town has plenty of places to stay within walking distance of the space. Coming for a training is an easy reason to spend a few days in the cloud forest.
Upcoming dates appear on the Retreats & trainings page as soon as Monica sets them. You can also message her from this page.
Before you sign up
Questions worth asking any Reiki teacher, Monica included:
- Which level does this training cover, and which lineage does it come from?
- How many hours of practice are included, and do we practice on each other?
- What does the certificate say, and what support is there after the course?
- What does it cost, and what is included?
