INNER LIGHT – A REIKI NEWSLETTER FOR REIKI PEOPLE
Volume 5 – Issue 1
Welcome to another year of Reiki Newsletters. This month the theme is ‘challenges’ and we will start with a new venture – a podcast called Simply – Reiki With Heart. This series will consist of short meditations that can be slotted in at any time in your day or evening. Designed to be simple and to build on meditation exercises with which you are already familiar. The January podcast is on the theme of Jôshin Kokyû Hô
Please feel free to share this with anyone you feel may benefit from these short meditations.
THE SWEET SPOT
Let’s start off the new year with a little challenge …. or maybe its a big challenge…
As a trainer, I am always looking for ways to enable people to excel in their learning. Too easy means boring, too hard means frustration. I need to help each person hit their “sweet spot”.
It is about reaching just beyond the comfort zone, challenging people to stretch themselves just a little.
Watching the Edinburgh Tattoo for my annual drumming fix from The Secret Drum Corps, I was also taken by other groups appearing and the accuracy of their displays which they have practised over and over again. They become amazingly accurate in their performances. But each year The Secret Drum Corps come back with a different routine that is still amazing.
Professor Robert Wilson, a professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Arizona, suggest that we alter our mindset about ‘achieving’. Simple tasks don’t challenge and often lead to routines that fail to help people learn. If you only learned Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on an instrument, your playing will never improve. He suggests the “sweet spot” for success is 15% challenge.
If you have been practising Reiki for years, drop into Beginner’s Mind. Become curious. What can you do to challenge your well-honed routines?
A simple 15% sweet spot in meditation is to observe the pause between the in-breath and the out-breath. Yes, it sounds simple, but try it. Try not to alter your breathing, don’t hold your breath after the in-breath or out-breath – just be curious about what happens between the in-breath and the out-breath. What difference does it make in your meditation practice? The ‘sweet spot’ is just the best place to be for mindful developments.
In a recent CPD course on Karma, my trainer challenged me after my final assignment to sit in silence for 10 minutes each day. No music, no listening for sounds, no counting the breaths, not looking for the pause, no following thoughts. Just sit in silence.
Hmmmm…. I am as yet no where near leaving my comfort zone let alone getting into the ‘sweet spot’. “Such a simple exercise”, he told me – “try it!” I pass on the recommendation if you are looking for a challenge greater than noticing the pause.
VISUALISING THE FUTURE
Hal Elrod in his book The Miracle Morning suggests that we start a visualisation practice as a daily ritual. Bernadette Russell suggests that we try and imagine an ideal future – and she admits that in this troubled world it takes great courage to think about a brighter world.
The Tomorrowland Project is part of her work to inspire people to think about a better future, to show there are positive stories to tell, not just those of disaster.
People sometimes feel that it is difficult to visualise the future because we have memories of the past and it becomes difficult to override any upsetting memories.
Shomit Mitter suggests that the challenge is to keep reminding ourselves that the past is an illusion and really doesn’t exist anywhere except in our brains. Also the future doesn’t exist anywhere either. But it can be imagined.
If we consider the Gokai, it is telling us that we need not worry because that is in the future and doesn’t exist. To visualise a better future is not worrying – it is about suggesting that there is a better way, and the more people that imagine a better future and join in enabling the vibrational quality of the world to improve the better.
Let’s accept these challenges to participate in improving the vibrational quality of this beautiful planet on which we live and love. We are not alone. We join with the many millions who daily contemplate a future that is better than what we have today.
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