One of the techniques available to Reiki practitioners is “Strengthening your Light with Reiki.” When you strengthen your light with Reiki, your personal energy and your light are stronger. Reiki can help you strengthen your light internally, and it can surround your body with Reiki light, which gives you an additional source of pure life force energy to rely upon. When you have outside help, it takes less effort to stay centered and to act on your own inner guidance, regardless of your life circumstances.

Creating a consistent practice of strengthening your light has many benefits. Surrounding yourself with the light of Reiki increases your intuition and spiritual guidance, and it improves your clarity of mind, which makes it easier to see your life and priorities. It can make it easier to manage your feelings so you are more capable of thoughtful decisions. You can place your intentions into the field of Reiki light around you to help you manifest your goals.

A field of Reiki light within and around you can offer you spiritual, mental, and emotional protection from “less than light” energies. At the recent seven-day Karuna Reiki® retreat in New York, Reiki Master Teacher Michael Baird, explained it this way: “When you have Reiki light all around you, any dark or less than light energy that comes toward you will enter the field of light. The energy will choose to transform into the light, or it will turn and go the other way. A dark energy cannot withstand the light of Reiki.”

Strengthening your light is also an important part of preparing yourself before a Reiki treatment and before giving Reiki attunements. Instructions for strengthening your light as part of your personal preparations before Reiki activities are taught in all of the Reiki I and II, ART/Master, and Karuna Reiki® manuals written by William Lee Rand.

Many Reiki practitioners are naturally empathic and intuitive people. Strengthening your light with Reiki can also help you manage your empathy. When you strengthen your light with Reiki, it places an external field of divine light around you that can absorb the various changes in vibrations you encounter in your daily life at work, home, or any other place you may go. This allows your inner light to stay strong and constant, unaffected by your environment or by other people’s energy and feelings.

The health of your chakras can influence your perceptions about your life and your world. Your chakras receive information for you and they need to be balanced and full. When the colors of your chakras—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet —and the light within you are full and bright, you harmonize with the divine colors of the earth and of creation. If the light and color in your chakras is dim, it is more difficult to receive accurate information through them.

Strengthen your light with Reiki

This is the technique taught by William Rand as part of the practitioner’s personal preparation prior to giving a Reiki treatment or attunement. I also use this practice in my daily life when I am in situations where I need quick protection for my empathy.

• Draw the Tibetan Master symbol, Usui Master symbol, and the Power symbol on your palm chakras. Draw a large Power symbol down the front of your body.
• Draw a Power symbol on each of your chakras, starting with the root chakra and ending with the crown chakra.

I have a longer version of this technique that I use during meditation. I call it my Reiki light infusion technique. I use this technique often to infuse divine light into my body and to surround my body with an entire field of Reiki light. I clear and fill my chakras with the divine light of their individual colors. I then blend the light of the earth and the light of God with my own heart light. Finally, I speak the Five Reiki Ideals and my intention for the day into the field of light. The steps:

• Activate all the Reiki symbols you are attuned to into your hands.
• Draw a Power symbol over the front of your body and on each chakra, starting with the root chakra. Draw a Power symbol over the mouth of God chakra at the base of your skull.
• Draw a Power symbol in front of you, on the each side, above you, and below you. Repeat with the Usui Master symbol.
• Draw all the symbols you are attuned to in front of you.
• Give yourself Reiki. Start by placing both hands on your root chakra. Ask for the light of the divine color of red to fill your root chakra. Working up the body, repeat this for each chakra in turn, increasing the divine light of each chakra with its color—orange (sacral), yellow (solar plexus), green (heart), blue (throat), indigo (brow), and violet (crown).
• Place your hands on your heart and intend that the divine light in your heart grows and fills your body.
• Send the light from your heart out through your feet into the earth. Ask the divine light from the heart of the earth to blend with your light and travel back up through your feet and into your heart.
• Send the light from your heart out through your crown chakra into the universe. Ask for the light from the heart of God to blend with your light and travel back down through the crown chakra into your heart.
• You have now increased the divine light and color within you, and placed a field of Reiki light around you. You have blended the light of the earth and the light of God with your own heart light.
• Now speak the Five Reiki Ideals into this field of light. “Just for today, I will not anger. Just for today, I will not worry. I am filled with gratitude. I devote myself to my work, and I am kind to people.”
• Speak an intention that you would like fulfilled into the field of Reiki light around you. Know that the Reiki light supports your intention and can help you manifest your goals.
• Seal this light infusion by drawing another Power symbol over the front of your body.

I also use the Reiki light infusion technique for my clients during Reiki treatments. They often come for a treatment with their personal light dim and depleted and they may feel tired, dull, and unable to manifest their goals. When I use this technique for my clients, I begin with a standard Reiki treatment and include this at the end. They leave feeling more vital, creative, and grounded. A recent client who was in the process of divorce realized after her treatment that she was ready and capable of beginning her own Reiki practice. When I last spoke with her, she had found a location to practice, had started creating her business materials, and had found a community of healers close to her that had welcomed her with open arms into their group. She now feels as if she has the creativity and the ability to thrive with her Reiki practice!

When I do distant Reiki, I strengthen my light inside and out and create a “light suit” around me. I am also a shamanic practitioner, and I use the Reiki Distant Healing symbol to travel on all of my journeys to the enlightened realms. I have recently discovered that my personal energy often literally travels to the places that I envision in my journeys and in my distant treatments. When I send distant Reiki, or work on clients over the phone, it is as if I am in the room with the client, and the light suit protects me from the change in vibration that occurs when my energy body shifts from one place to another. The light suit also keeps my energy whole when I travel in the enlightened spirit realms.

Reiki practitioners often pray and ask to be more open, compassionate, sensitive, connected, intuitive, and to have heightened senses and perceptions. We invite spiritual guidance into our lives and ask to be able to communicate with enlightened beings, and we ask to live from our hearts. The more we ask for these qualities, the more capable and open we become, which is a wonderful life experience. However, this can also open us to negative energy as well.

Negative energy can be very dark. Surrounding yourself with Reiki light generates a field of protection around you. The light will illuminate any dark energy that comes toward you. The Reiki light heals and transforms dark or less than light energy, because the light will always illuminate the dark.

A high percentage of my students and clients are very empathic. At least several students speak of this in every one of my Reiki workshops. One of the challenges they often encounter is how to be in groups of people and not let the various feelings of other people affect them. They struggle with their ability to turn their empathy on and off and sometimes need to stay away from group activities because of it.

In our daily lives as we watch television, listen to the radio and the news, we pick up on the world issues around us. If our empathy and intuition is on and our senses are heightened, we can often feel all the various human emotions around us. We can feel the joy, sorrow, triumph, grief, creativity, and the caring and the pain within people and the world. It can be very difficult to stay in our own joy and center when we are feeling the feelings of the world.

The grocery store is an easy example of the benefit of surrounding yourself with Reiki light. People in the grocery store are often in a hurry and stressed, they may not have the money to buy what they need, perhaps they are frustrated by shopping with their children, etc. An empathic person can walk into the store and pick up all of the issues trailing throughout the store. (My hands often activate in a grocery store line, and I wonder who needs the Reiki!) Surrounding yourself with Reiki light can give you an external field of light that can absorb the fluctuating energies around you, and your internal light can stay constant and strong.

Prior to my Reiki attunements, I was afraid to do energy work on people, because I knew that if they were in physical or emotional pain I would feel their pain as my own. Reiki attunements changed that for me. Now I have the benefits of my empathy, in that I can hear my clients and students with heightened perceptions, but I do not feel them internally or personally. The light of Reiki surrounds me inside and out, and I can listen and hear people more effectively because of my intuition and empathy. My empathy is no longer a liability, but a blessing.

When your internal light is strong and healthy, you are creative, peaceful, capable and centered, even if your personal life is challenging. Strengthening your light with Reiki helps your divine light shine and surrounds you with an outside source of energy that can protect and heal you. Reiki light fills you with life force energy, illuminates the world around you, and allows you to walk through your daily life protected and with your intuition, empathy and heightened perceptions intact.

Colleen Benelli can be reached by email at colleen@reikilifestyle.com, by phone at 503.912.0664, on her website at www.reikilifestyle.wpengine.com, or on her Facebook page, Reiki Lifestyle-Colleen Benelli. Join Colleen’s monthly ReikiChat™ conversation, www.reikichat.com.