Bridging Worlds: Science, Spirit & Jikiden Reiki

In Episode 33 of The Intuitive Health Podcast, Dr Anthony sits down with Dr Gemma Newman, a senior partner in a family medical practice, with over 20 years' experience, to explore Jikiden Reiki.

The term Jikiden itself means "directly passed down" in Japanese and maintains the original teachings of Mikao Usui Sensei, who discovered this universal life force energy on Mount Kurama. Jikiden Reiki utilises the Reiju process to transmit energy, distinguishing it from Western Reiki. This simple healing system is accessible to anyone once trained, focusing on humility with "Shihan" (teachers) rather than "masters". 

Together, Dr Anthony and Dr Newman share their respective journeys with medicine and energy healing, bridging the gap between science and holistic healing. 

Dr Anthony Rafferty is a doctor, reiki healer, shaman and intuitive healer based in Dublin, Ireland. Throughout this podcast series, Dr Anthony bridges the gap between science and holistic healing by combining evidence-based Western medicine with nutrition advice, lifestyle guidance and traditional energy practices.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and share it on Apple or Spotify. Visit the Intuitive Health website to book a healing session.

Transcript

Welcome to the Intuitive Health podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anthony Rafferty, medical doctor, PhD, Reiki, and shamanic intuitive healer. I'm here to bring you on a journey of holistic healing that explores the science of the physical body combined with mental and emotional well-being, energetic, and spiritual health. And I am beyond excited today to have Dr. Gemma Newman here with us. And um Gemma is an absolutely incredible soul. I'm so I'd have this conversation. Uh, but Gemma is a GP with over 20 years experience uh, working in Surrey over in the UK. And, uh, Gemma is an ambassador for the plant-based health professionals and is a member of the British Society for Lifestyle Medicine. And personally, while I went on a journey with my gut microbiome health, I learned so much about nutrition uh, from Gemma's amazing book, The Plantpowered Doctor. And in 2023, Gemma also released a book, Get Well Stage. Well, but today we're here to explore a whole other side of Gemma, which I have had the absolute privilege of experiencing uh which is the amazing energetic aspect of your being as a jicadin um Reiki I suppose would you call it a master? I don't even know um if within that lineage there are masters. Is there like I'm just so excited to talk about all things Reiki and energy. And first of all, welcome Gemma.

**** Thank you Tony. I love your enthusiasm and I love you and I'm so happy to be here with you.

Oh Gemma, it is so amazing. So just to give the listeners a bit of a background so people will be aware from the podcast, I'm obsessed with energy. It's how I work. Um everything is intuitive with regard to how I kind of go on a journey with people. And my journey started off with an awakening that came from a Reiki attunement and I went on and trained to be a raiki master through all the different levels um of uh very specific lineages of raiki and then I started all my shamanic training and you know a couple of months ago I had this beautiful email from you saying that you were doing jikodin um raiki ray shoes which is a little bit different to what I'd done previously and I jumped at the opportunity to come over with some of my very close soul friends um to do some work with you And it was such a powerful and amazing couple of days. And you know, like I feel like I'm so excited. I want to talk to you about all of it. But can you introduce kind of um how you got into Raiki, what Raiki even is, and the specific lineage of Raiki that you work with because uh I learned so much from you. It was very different from what I'd actually originally trained in. Um and the stories you told and everything that you discussed was just so powerful. So I was so keen for the listeners to be able to learn from you.

**** So jikodin is basically Japanese for directly passed down and it's a way to differentiate all the different forms of raiki from the raiki that is most similar to how it was taught when it was created. Um now that's not to say that energy was created by a sui sensei back in the 1920s and 30s. Uh this is universal life force. energy which has always existed. But it's quite unique that an individual in human history was able to figure out a way to help people who hadn't been on an enlightenment journey to tap into that energy and give it to others for the purposes of healing.

**** Oh my god, I love it. I absolutely love it. And and I even just your mention there of this universal life force energy to be able to tap into that and um to call it through the body to be able to deliver it to people um to assist with their healing journeys is just so incredibly powerful. And so tell me a little bit about how you ended up finding your way into it. I always love talking to doctors that um find their way into energy and how much it can complement um our understanding of just how how many different facets of who we are need to be included in here. feeling really.

**** Yeah, I agree. So for me it was I guess a combination of different things. I always really connected with the idea of helping people to feel better. Obviously that's why I went into medicine to help people. Um I also looking back on it as a young child I had this very strong sense that there was more to life than what we currently can see. I had what you would call um I guess sort of out of body experiences as a young child which then allowed me an awareness uh that I was more than my physical body. And I also very deeply connected to faith. Um so I decided to go along to church on my own when I was about 11. And I used to go every week because I really enjoyed the ritual of it. I enjoyed the the way that the prayers were conducted. It gave me some time to myself to think and to pray and to be. And I continued my fascination with religion. I studied Islam and Judaism when I was doing my A levels before I went to medical school. I've always been interested in psychology as well. So, I learned different psychology techniques to help people feel better. And I also have just been sort of fascinated with the idea of of cultures as well. So, I lived in India for a spell when I was a younger child and so I understood the concepts of things like chakras and then I learned a bit about Chinese medicine and the meridians. system and I realized that there were some similarities between these ideas of things like prana and chi and ki. So it just got me really interested and I did um gravitate to jikodin raiki because it is the form of teaching that is closest to what sensei was teaching uh back in the uh 1920s and 1930s. Uh it has changed the least. Um and there's lots of interesting history around that, but essentially it's as it was taught to Hayashi Sensei uh and the way that he taught it back in the 1930s. And it's a simply sort of very it's a very simple healing system. So once you understand it, anybody can do it. Anybody can um just put their hands on people and start to to give this beautiful energy. And there's no real rules around being able to do it. Um it's just so simple and beautiful. Uh and that's what I loved about it.

**** Yeah. Oh, I it's so lovely to hear you talk about all the different facets of kind of the journey you've gone on with your medical training on the physical body, with the mind um and the psychology techniques that you use and with energy and with spirituality. And what I find in my the clients I work with, it's all those different facets that make us up. Um and it's so h it's just so lovely to hear you kind of uh exploring and do you know it's so funny because I find with a lot of this stuff it's the interest um that we have as as people who want to to help people as the empathic side of us that kind of draws us into all these different spaces without even realizing and then when we kind of reach a destination we're like oh my god look at all these skills that I've acquired unknowingly like in this kind of pursuit to to help people in a really holistic way.

**** Yeah. Yeah. It's Interesting, isn't it? All the different things that you learn along the way. And I think when your intention is one of giving and your intention is one to to help other people feel good in themselves, then whatever path you choose is going to be the right one. Um, you know, for you in your journey, it's been really fascinating for me to learn.

Uh, but for me, you know, when I when I learned about this form of Reiki and then I started to practice it six years ago and then I deepened my practice and then I would began to teach it just sort of went from strength to strength and you know it just feels yeah it's one of those things that initially I was actually quite reluctant to share online because I was worried about external judgment especially because I'd been an author and I had to speak quite um authoritatively on a number of sort of topics around nutrition and wellness and talk about studies and evidence-based medicine and then for me to pivot towards energy healing um I was worried about my credibility. Uh so it took me it took me a while to decide that that wasn't as important to me as just being able to give this beautiful gift because

**** yeah,

it works and it's beautiful and it's part of what I do and who I am. So yes, but it felt very freeing when I decided to start talking about it.

Oh, you know, I'll never forget actually it really really resonated with me because I've been following you on Instagram for years obviously for my own interests. in the benefits of plant-based diets and the gut microbiome. And you know, I like you speak so clearly and communicate quite dense information in a really beautiful kind of uh very clear way and I had always loved following you because you radiate a beautiful energy yourself. And then I will never forget there was one clip that showed up from your Instagram feed about Jick in Raiki and I was like, "Oh, My god, I was like, I love her even more now. So, actually when when you showed your most authentic light, I was like, this is fabulous cuz you were speaking to me on such a deeper level, you know, I was like, there's other doctors out there that have an interest in this. And I listened to the podcast recording that you'd done some time ago.

**** Yeah.

With regard to it. And so, it was always on my radar and like I I just love that you're kind of uh communicating this and I I can understand like I don't have that much of a following I suppose on Instagram and it's always a place I just like to share kind of things um that interest me and bits and pieces rather than kind of a a cultivated space um uh but even in that there is an apprehension in the back of my mind about sharing certain things because uh you do have your medical background and it's all very logical and science-based but actually I work so much within the space of energy now that's intuitively driven that it's almost like well where do I fit where where do you fit like it's almost like fit fallen between the stools in some senses you know

**** it is and I think that's our purpose Tony I think that's our purpose is to try to bridge the two worlds and help people to be able to come to this kind of wisdom from both sides because I well I really resonated with the story of Dr. Hayashi Sensei the one who uh was the doctor in the in the Navy in Japan and was able to actually set up a treatment center in Kyoto and he was very much bridging those two worlds too working as a doctor in Japan and then learning how to do Raiki and then deciding to pivot his practice to that. It really resonated with me because I thought you know this is somebody who was actually the father of spreading uh raiki across the world because he was the one that obviously taught uh Hawaii Takarta in in Hawaii, which is how the western world even knew about the word raiki at all. Uh so he was very much in that energy of being able to and wanting to spread the word globally. Obviously that didn't happen in the way that he probably would have wanted at the time because of the outbreak of World War II and a lot of the issues around sharing energetic healing practices in Japan from that point forward. But that was his original intention and I think that that's really what people like you and I do in the world as well. We try to make this kind of wisdom a bit more digestible and a bit more understandable to the people who would otherwise not know about it or would have even perhaps discarded it.

**** Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think uh that's one thing I definitely have come to realize. It's like um uh I think when you start working with with energy medicine and you remember the wisdom associated with with it through kind of your meditation and your your healing sessions. There is a responsibility there to be able to to share that wisdom and knowledge and I think I feel incred incredibly privileged actually to be um trained in medicine and to be able to do this work as well. Like you say this beautiful bridge that actually people can trust you because of the education background that you have and the wisdom and the knowledge you hold with these things too. But there are also I do think uh things that are happening in the universe that we haven't quite been able to explain yet. Um and the magic of energy is just so so powerful.

**** Well, you know, I think the reason we can't explain it is because I don't think um I don't think we've figured it out. You know, it's like what's it like? It's like ants trying to understand Bitcoin. We think we're so clever.

Oh my god, I love it. Yes. The thing chaty can't tell. can't give us the answer.

Yeah, exactly. But you know, I think the missing equation that that physics is is lacking is is love. That's the missing equation. Because, you know, Chio sensei, who founded the Jikiden Reiki lineage said that that's what Reiki was, that Reiki was love. And I think that she was right. You know, she was she was a a Japanese lady who cared for her family and her friends and her local people through Reiki, but she had that kind of wisdom already instilled in her because she was doing it all the time. And you know, love isn't just an emotion. It's the universal force behind the geometry of creation. It's it's what allows, you know, attraction between atoms and the formation of coalent bonds. And it's the same love that also, you know, allows empathy between human minds. And I think people just people we haven't figured out a way to include love in the equation of of uh of creation. But I think that's definitely what's missing.

**** Oh, absolutely. And I suppose when I came to do my training with you, we spoke about this with regard to like the electromagnetic field of the heart and the capacity of the myioytes in the heart to generate their own electricity.

Yeah.

And like even from a scientific perspective, it's so powerful when you think about the capacity of what the heart can actually do on an electrical and energetic level.

Well, it's mind-blowing. And people just take it for granted that that our hearts beat. But those myasytes are making their own electricity. Our bodies make make light. We are literally light beings. We make light through our metabolic processes. You know, I just think there's so much that we don't see with the with our eyes that we can feel with our hearts. And um you know, you just have to look at the coherence of the universe, all the the fractals of nature and the sacred geometry and the efficiency of natural systems. It seems so obvious to me that, you know, the universe didn't emerge from chaos, but intention. Um, yeah. And you can call it whatever you like. I think obviously people have different feelings when it comes to words like God or source or energy or love. Um, but it's something that is, I think, far beyond our comprehension in terms of its awesome um scale and the love that is require. to create such a coherent universe.

**** Oh yeah, that's a really so powerful and I love even talking about it. You know, uh on my journey through my Buddhist practice, one of the most transformative meditative practices that I learned was the metab which is the loving kindness meditation and it was all about cultivating through meditation this love in your heart and imagine it uh radiating out onto the people that you love the most. most. And you kind of go through these different stages in the meditation where you get down to the point where you're projecting this love onto people you don't know or people that are causing you distress. And it's almost like training your energy um and this kind of cultivation of this pure love in your heart and projecting it onto people that you don't know and and are causing you distress. Like it was such an incredibly powerful practice. And you know when I started learning how to do Reiki When you actually go on a journey with that and you think, "Oh my god, so many of these spiritual teachings are very very similar and aligned um with kind of the core belief structures uh although they might differ on the surface actually the energy and the central focus being on love and heart-centered. Yeah. Um approach life is so powerful, isn't it?"

**** It is and I think that's actually what we um as a society are often missing when it comes to psychotherapy and even mindfulness practices. is it's missing the the kindness element. Um and I think sometimes you can get into something like mindfulness or even meditation and if you're missing the sense that we are all connected and united in terms of our creation by a loving being, it's actually even possible to I think in some cases increase certain narcissistic or selfish tendencies because again you're really focusing a lot more on self when you begin a lot of these practices. So, I think really focusing on on our connectedness is a way to avoid that outcome and to actually get the most out of any kind of wellness practice that you have. And that you you stated it so beautifully.

**** Oh, that's gorgeous, Gemma. That's really gorgeous. And that's the thing, isn't it, about that recognition and even to just um extend it beyond kind of uh kind of interpersonal energetic connections, but our connection to the landm plants. Like I'm convinced that my cat speaks English. Like he's a magical little cat. But do you know basic things and little You're a little Rosie as well. She's like a little gift to the world, isn't she? She

is.

But on an energetic level, it is just so powerful when we realize that actually we are just on the dayto-day just exchanging energy with everything in our surrounding.

**** Yeah.

And like to even just go out and put your feet on the ground and I know we laugh. We're like go hug a tree. But oh my god, the joy that it brings me and my clients when I'm like go and just connect

with pure energy.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah. Absolutely. And that's one of the most powerful things. And these things are free. This is the other thing that I think is just so wonderful. You don't have to pay a big amount of money for these expensive biohacks or apps or, you know, programs. You can literally connect with nature. Touch the ground with your feet. Breathe. breathe in a forest. Get those fights in your lungs. Help your immune system. Create those natural killer cells so that you can, you know, have a really well functioning immune system. Feed yourself with nourishing living foods. Um, aim to think loving thoughts, which is always hard to do, especially when you're going through suffering. You know, it's it's interesting thinking about, you know, how we can come to this kind of heart coherence because the world is so full of suffering. I think That's one of the things that I think people really struggle with. And I often think about you mentioned uh your your Buddhist meditation. I often think about uh Juan Yin or Senu cannon in Japanese that you know bodhisatta that was essentially born from a mida Buddha's tears of compassion for the suffering of the world. So we can create something loving and beautiful from that recognition that there is you know a lot of suffering and the reason that she is depicted as a a bodhisattva is because she didn't want to go to the pure land until every single being uh had also been able to attain enlightenment and love and was no longer suffering. So I think that's something that we can really reflect on in our own lives and in our own hearts. You know, let's bring other people with us if we can.

**** Yeah. Oh, I absolutely love that. Especially with the challenges that are going on globally at the moment. I like it's so beautiful to hear you say that and this is what I've been saying to some of my clients as well because the energy is dense collectively at the moment and you know I myself as an energy healer the fatigue has been unreal the last few weeks as all of these things are ramping up globally and you know this is literally the essence of kind of what I've been having with regard to the discussions around these things is there's a collective energy at the moment and you know uh just tuning into your heart and recognizing that we're all connected

**** and the love that you can generate and spread has it has a a measurable uh positive impact.

It really is and I think that that's such a hard thing to do is to bring yourself back into coherence and that sort of that loving vibration as it were when you know there's lots as you say I like the way that you've phrased it as dense because it does feel like that. But the beauty of obviously aiming to live in in more expansive emotions is that they are also something that you can actually share and and sort of almost I wouldn't say it's catching us necessarily, but you can definitely feel the energy shifting, you know, when you you come at a situation with a loving attitude. Um it definitely helps other people around you and they can feel that.

**** Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know it it just reminded me um of the training when we were doing it. You could actually when we were working with our hands on each other, you can actually feel the energetic shifts and people talk about these kind of densities or stagnancies they had in their body that just become filled with light.

So, I I'd love just to give people a bit of a of of a background because we're kind of talking um a little bit about all these beautiful key um people on the journey with kind of where Jikiden came from and kind of this kind of uh life force energy that we channel and the connection with the heart and so we're kind of putting all the pieces together on our on our discussion but I'd love for you to tell us because I was fascinated about this when you were talking to us during our training with regard to how did Macaui um actually begin to channel the Reiki energy and this story I just loved it when you when you told us and you're so passionate I was like this is brilliant.

**** How did how did Reiki come to be? Essentially,

how did it happen? Well, I mean it was it was an accidental discovery on his road to trying to achieve uh enlightenment. So here was a man he's born it was 1865 in Japan. He had a very varied career and he worked in in many different um disciplines. He was even private secretary to a very famous politician in Japan back in the day. and he went through what you'd call a personal crisis. Um, he launched a business. He went bankrupt. And I guess you'd say perhaps it was his own dark night of the soul. He was starting to think about his purpose, why he was on this earth. And he had been exposed to lots of different cultures through his work, but he grew up in a Shinto tradition, uh, which is essentially the Japanese, um, way of thinking about our connection to nature and All of the spoken word and the kangji characters, traditional kangji characters are written and formed by um allegory which is kind of related to the natural world. So the the Japanese very much recognized their connection with that. But he also was um in a culture where they they revered senukan the who we just spoke about the goddess of compassion and and whether you're Buddhist or Christian or didn't have a faith every Everybody in Japan was Shinto and everybody loved Senukan. So there were these ideas, you know, that he grew up with and he um he decided after his struggles in business that he would go and spend time in a Zen uh monastery uh Zen Buddhism uh which he didn't grow up with Zen Buddhist monasteries um but he was u growing up in a tradition of um of that kind of um environment. There was a different form of Buddhism that he grew up with. I think it was pure land Buddhism. Anyway, in a Zen monastery, any faith can go there and meditate and just be. So, he decided that that's what he would do. So, he went to the monastery and he lived there for I think three years meditating and praying daily. And his uh his own master um he went to his his master and said, "Oh, you know, I'm not enlightened yet. What am I supposed to do now?" And it although It sounds strange. Um, it it makes sense in the tradition. The uh the uh the Zen monk suggested that he go to Mount Kurama nearby and go to one of the shrines there and meditate and fast until death because it was their belief that he may not achieve enlightenment in this lifetime but that if he was to meditate and fast to death that he would be reincarnated and it would be possible for him to achieve enlightenment in his next lifetime. So that's what he went up Mount Kurama to do to die and to meditate and to fast and then dying would be the the natural outcome but it was the meditating and the fasting that was the intention. So off he went up the mountain and after about 20 21 days of this he had this sudden lightning bolt strike in his brain and an incredible feeling of love and and peace and compassion and ecstasy came over him and he realized that he had actually achieved this enlightened state once he regained consciousness. Um, Angie and Riome uh which is what he'd been aiming for and he was so excited he returned to the physical world and ran excitedly down the mountain and on Mount Kurama there's an awful lot of huge ancient trees and big tree trunks and tree roots coming out from the ground and it's quite possible possible that he tripped over one of those tree roots or it may have been a rock. Not sure, but he ended up going back to reality with a giant thud because he tripped over something and ripped off his toenail. And he went to grab his toenail and he realized that having grabbed it, the bleeding stopped very quickly and the pain subsided very quickly and that something unusual had happened. He'd actually achieved a healing state. And so he was very confused by the this and carried on his journey to his Zen master. And on the way down, he came across a family with a young girl who had a horrendous toothache. So he touched his hand to her jaw and her toothache disappeared. And he began to realize that he'd actually stumbled upon something really special. So he went back to his um his uh his Zen master and explained and he was simply told, "You you can't keep this gift for yourself. You have to now try to figure out a way to share this with others. And it's really quite remarkable that just two months later, he began to to not only share this with everybody, but figure out a way that he could actually help other people to access that same energy. And he must have been spending many years prior to that studying and being aware of different religious philosophies and and ways of being for him to so quickly have come up with this way of being able to to share this beautiful energy with others. And I I I just absolutely love that story. So he he kept on teaching in seminars across Japan. And one of his students was uh Dr. Hayashi Sensei, Chajiro Hayashi Sensei, who happened to be a very high up senior official in the in the Japanese Navy. Um and yeah, and that's where the story continues if you wanted me to share that bit as well. But that's that's beginning of Reiki. That's how it began.

**** It's so fascinating. Like I just love it. I just absolutely love it. And this is the thing like with some of the work that we do as energy healers or channeling this energy. It's profound how the energy works for some people resolving pain, helping to like quicken um healing in certain conditions. It just blows my mind what I see in the practice every day. Okay.

Yeah.

But what I'd love to kind of explore um is so you talked about um Macau Yui being able to transmit this energy to other people. So you know when I spoke initially at the very beginning of the podcast uh I was talking about going for Reiki attunements and in the more western style I suppose Reiki um traditions that I train remained in uh the energy was passed on from one person to the next from a master onto the student with an attunement. Um and it's believed that like the chakras are open, the energy symbols are put into different parts of the body and that you can then channel the energy. But what was fascinating to me was actually through the jickedin um tradition, it's the energy is kind of passed on through a specific process called a rayu, isn't it?

**** Yes. Raum. And I'd love for for you to kind of uh speak into like how is it passed down and you know obviously I've done some work in the western tradition now I've trained with jikodin raiki with yourself um how do they even differ uh in how it's passed down and things like that. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

So um the reason that western raiki uh exists is because of a wonderful woman in Japan who was a a Japanese American and she um she practiced and she she actually learned from Dr. Chajira Hayashi Sensei when he came over from Japan to Hawaii to teach um about 350 people over in Hawaii just before the Second World War in the 1930s. And what happened after the Second World War is the attacks obviously with the atomic bomb um and Pearl Harbor attacks were being planned. Um it was a time of great transition and great fear and also a time where especially after the second world war it was a huge psychological um well not even just psychological uh infrastructure hit for Japan um how the second world war ended uh they called it the Pacific war and they were so convinced that they were going to win because the Maji emperor at the time was considered um to be almost godlike in terms of his ability to make decisions and his connection with the divine And so the Japanese people I think there was such a huge cultural shift after the second world war when he had to admit that he was wrong and that they were defeated. It was just it was you know an basically when the US forces came in after the second world war and essentially took over a lot of these um sort of Japanese traditional healing methods were no longer able to be shared. And in Hawaii the Japanese uh community there you can imagine it would have been impossible to share original style Raike in Hawaii after the Second World War. So, it was shut down and she couldn't teach for many years and even when she did start teaching again um maybe I think in the late 1970s just before she died she had to change it um because people didn't want to learn about Japanese kangji characters and Japanese healing. Uh so I think it's possible that these other aspects came into it and there was also you know less um less uh how do I say this? I think when I learned jikod and raiki there was a lot of things I had to do a lot of boxes I had to tick the way that the Japanese work you know there's a certain hierarchy there's a certain amount of things you have to have done amount of hours you have to have completed and it's very much um a system where you are recommended for progression um and you know you have to repeat you have to repeat the courses with different teachers you have to um really immerse yourself in the discipline Whereas, you know, after the second world war and after um the the changes that took to took place, for example, she renamed it Swedish massage rather than Reiki so that people would would go and experience the healing because they wouldn't go to something that was considered Japanese. She had to get rid of all the kangji characters. And then other sort of influences came in the ideas of chakras, you know, is not specifically a Japanese idea, but you know, an angel healing and all these other aspects started to be brought in by people who who really connected with this energy and wanted to be able to bring their own experience to it. And that's what happens with humans and human nature. You know, we all bring our own experience to an energy that we feel and then we add to it and we add our own things. And that's essentially how these different branches were created um by these different schools of thought. Um and so the the original reau uh It means rey means soul and zu means uh to be given or granted permission. And that's essentially what you would call an attunement in the western style. It's the idea that you you have been given permission with humility to accept a certain soul energy to be able to be transmitted through you. And you are not taking anything from yourself. So when you're giving a treatment, you're not sapping your own energy because it was never yours to be. begin with. You become like a channel for source energy or love energy or whatever you might want to call it and you are able to receive and let that flow through you. And what's quite special about the jikodan technique or the original technique of Reiki is that you can then begin to increase your perception of that energy like you would perceive hot or cold. For example, you're not having to, you know, think hard. or introduce other ideas or concepts, you can literally just increase your awareness of the perception in your hands to allow you to know where your hands need to go. Uh, and that's something that I don't think is in the western um approach. It's a word called biosen, which essentially is a way for you to um pick up on where the energetic blockages are in the body. And it's not something that you have to intuitit necessarily. It's actually something that you can simply perceive through your hands once you've become um aware of it is how I would say.

**** Oh, it's amazing. It's just so amazing when you think about it. Our capabilities as humans for everybody to connect with this like universal soul energy and to be able to develop this skill of using energetic perception in their hand, it just blows my mind.

It's a it's an incredible gift. And for one individual to have figured out a way to allow all of us to have that potential and that we all can. Anybody can um you know it's it's something that we can all because we're we all have a soul and we all have energy within our bodies. So anybody can do it once they've been trained. But yeah, it's it's a really really special unique gift.

**** Oh, it's so beautiful. It really really is so beautiful. And um I I'd love to just kind of uh tell the listeners a little bit about kind of what the training kind of looks like because through the obviously through the more western styles of Reiki that I've I've gone on a journey with there's all these different levels that you have to go through on your journey to be a Reiki master and to be able to give attunements to other people. But I learned so much when you were talking about the Jikadin Raiki tradition with regard to who can provide rays and actually what it looks like. Um uh in the kind of training pathway because it's quite significant and you're just back from an amazing trip by the looks of it on Instagram where you went through was it over 60 different ratios by the sounds that you were giving and receiving.

**** Uh by the end of the eight days there was 75.

Wow. Oh my god.

Yeah, I'd say so. Well, you know, I think after so there was um myself and three other beautiful souls. I during your training in which you provided us with ray shoes and oh my god I was rattled for weeks afterwards. You know when so much of this pure light energy comes into the body the stuff that no longer serves you the shadowy elements they ripple to the top and oh my god it was a journey.

What did you notice? What did you notice?

**** Do you know it was almost like um I went through this kind of deep kind of death and rebirth period actually in the weeks afterwards. Um there was a lot of deep emotion and I felt there was an energy of frustration that moved through my body purely at the fact that I began recognizing the things in my life that weren't in alignment. And you know when you call in I we do so much kind of manifesting I suppose these days or envisioning where we want our lives to go and what's for our greatest good and the greatest good of my clients, my beautiful friends and family and all these things. But you know, in order to step into that new way of being, you you have to step out of the old way of being.

**** And that became so apparent to me during our healings. It was magical. I floated out of your your house after the weekend.

And I felt brilliant for two or three days until everything started coming up where it was like actually you hold a new vibrational energy now. Like some of the things that you're holding desperately on to aren't in alignment with that

and you know was it's the internal struggle of literally like white knuckles holding on desperately to the old belief structures the be the whole old behaviors there's so many different facets that kind of bubble to the surface where I was like oh my god Tony it's time to surrender um to the next phase and it just went to show like the power of the reuse that we received at the time

**** but it was the power of the people that were in the room room. All the different souls that gathered for the that beautiful uh two days that we spent together be having multiple people channel this energy with their own beautiful individual essence. I just found it was so powerful and I think the yourself and the lovely souls that were there were they were incredibly powerful souls.

So yeah,

it can be quite a journey and it you know it does change you because your heart becomes more open and you begin to see the areas of your life that you would like to change. So sometimes that can feel quite scary as well. Um

**** but it's beautiful and

I think um you know everybody will have their own experiences with Rau. Um and um it's interesting because I generally I don't tend to ask people what they experienced during RAU. because I want them to just have their own experience. Um, but people often tell me and the things that they they say it's always really interesting. Um, but of course some people will experience absolutely nothing during a rau and that's okay too because ultimately I know that with the rau uh ceremony they will have opened up that channel to the beauty of that life force or love energy and it will manifest itself in the life in in whatever way it's supposed to. And there's no there's no negative element to this form of healing. Um there's a special thing that we say in Japanese, what I say. Um and then I also ask everybody in the room to say what we call the gey which allows um only good energy to be in that process. You know, there's there's nothing um of a sort of lower vibration as it were that that is then allowed and it's It's a really beautiful thing. It's done by by traditional Shinto tradition. Um so it's it's quite different I would say from a western style attunement.

**** Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It it was an amazing experience to be with you. Um because it was Yeah. It was quite a different type of experience than the than the different types of attunements I'd had previously, you know.

Um but I've abs I've pulled you away from my question with all this uh kind of discussion about what happens afterwards, but I yeah, it was more so with regard to the the journey

with regard to how it's handed down and because you'd mentioned um which I found intriguing, there's only is it two um jikodin raiki masters in the whole world is there?

**** Well, you know, in the Jikiden Reiki tradition, the word master isn't actually used at all.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's uh I think it's it's from a place of humility. Uh they understand that we are all um students and that people who are um attuned so-called or rejued uh can become um teachers but uh nobody is the master and so even Mkawasui himself in the in the Japanese tradition he didn't make himself top dog um he was one below uh the the head of the institute and he he very specifically made that clear originally in the Japanese um gakai to say you know there is I am not at the top there is someone above me at the top and that someone obviously is divinity um but I am I am a student so Mikau sensei himself said that he was the student and sensei means um the teacher but in this tradition you can become what we call a shihan which is another way of expressing um teacher. So no one is called master. Um you can become so so as a as a shihan kaku or an assistant teacher you can teach people shenan which is the handson raiki where you literally just put your hands on people and give them healing. Um and then when you become a full shihan or a full teacher you can teach people okudin which is the distance raiki and the emotional healing. technique raiki and once you've become a shihan you could potentially become a dai shehan which is quite difficult to achieve uh there may there's only a handful of those around the world and then you can be the the president of the institute there was a European um vice president or representative uh and only those two people can create shehans which is my level now uh and in fact I've just come back from from the teaching by one of those people who happens to live in Greece and he's just retired and so at the moment currently there is only one person in the world that can authorize for you to become a shehan and he lives in Japan and he's called um Tadowl Sensei um and he's the head of the institute he will probably um soon uh figure out who he's going to make his vice representative uh who who could authorize for people to become Shians But we don't know who that's going to be or where they're going to be. So, it's actually quite difficult to be able to achieve shehan status, but I really want to emphasize that it's not difficult to learn. Like once you have leed it, you can do it and you can give it to all your family and friends and everybody and you know uh if you want to become a practitioner, I think that that process is actually incredibly easy or in my opinion. I don't how you feel about it, Tony?

**** Oh my god, I love it. There's so many parts of that story of like I love all these things. Um, yeah, I absolutely love it. And and that's the thing. So through the the western styles with the first level that you go through, you can practice on yourself and some loved ones, but you can't actually become a practitioner until you've done your level two. And you know, I when I first started training, I'd so much I just wanted to learn. I wanted to know everything about it and experience it. But it was almost like you're kind of being like held back in some senses from actually getting in and getting the nitty-gritty because with this sort of work you learn through experience by actually putting your your hands on and actually feeling.

**** Yes. Exactly Tony. And so the big difference with Jikodin is it's very hard to become a shehan because they want to keep the original tradition pure. They want they want people to know exactly how it was originally done. And the Only way to keep it completely as it was in the original way is to is to make it very difficult to become jihan. But once you go for the course, you can just touch and experience and you you know away you go. Like that's the beauty of it. It's it's beautiful in its simplicity. And that's why I just love it so much because I know that once I've given people the rays, they can go and they can help as many people as they like. uh and they will they you know if they practice it every day and live by the cockkey then they're going to experience incredible benefits for themselves and everybody around them. So that that's what I love about it.

**** Oh I love it GMA. I love it. I love it. I love it. And you know just I suppose as as we're finishing up I just wanted to identify or uh point people in the direction of how they might be able to go about doing these ratios because like I see that you've been you've been running some workshops um which if anybody's listening it is such a beautiful experience. I can't recommend it enough. It is just it's such a lovely lovely lovely journey to go on with you Gemma. Oh my god it was beautiful. Um and yeah will you be running more? How can people do the reuse to be able to start channeling this beautiful energy

**** so they can uh well they can join my seminars. I'm I'm going to be my my to them every um

every six weeks I think I'm going to run um a seminar um from my home uh I live near London so they can do that but they don't have to train with me um if you go on to the Jikiden Reiki UK association website there will be other practitioners around the country um there are not that many of them because as I said you know to become a shihan is a process um but you know that if you do go to a shihan in this tradition you will receive ru as it was originally done um so there's a lovely I mean I had some incredible teachers and I've repeated the training this is another aspect of becoming a shihan um they're really keen on you repeating the training because you may learn something new from someone else who is also a shihan in the same tradition and it allows you to deepen your practice um so I had an incredible teacher called Amanda Jane and she taught me to become a shihan kaku and she was there right at the beginning learning from Chioko sensei um and of course um Franco Jaba Peta who's sadly now retired from the from the Jikod and Raiki Institute he he is still practicing raiki um and traveling around the world and of course there are other shehans in the UK who can teach you how to do raiki in this tradition so um I know of a couple in London I know of a man based in Birmingham I know there's at least two or three in Scotland Um there are people that you can go to um and of course you can reach out to me and I will put more seminars in the diary because I love teaching chicken and raiki. I know that you know this if you've come on a seminar you can go home you can start to touch everyone and anyone and begin to really understand and perceive that energy and it's a beautiful thing. So yes um that's how you can do it.

**** Yes, I love it. I love it and I recommend that everybody go to Gemma because it was such a powerful experience and there's a beautiful little dog there to give you cuddles and oh my god we had some very powerful uh plant-based dishes at that time. So I have to tell you it was overall just the most magical magical couple of days.

Oh Gemma it has been such a pleasure. It's been such a pleasure to have you on. I'm so grateful um for your time kind of talking through all of these beautiful um things with regard to Jikiden Reiki and I hope all the listeners get a really good understanding of what Raiki is, how it came to be, how it's passed down and um how they can go on and um and start using JKU and Raiki themselves. So yes, what's the best way to get in touch with you, Gemma?

**** Oh well um Dr. Gemma Newman on Substack, Plantpower Doctor on Instagram, through my website gemma.com and any other social platforms.

Fabulous. That sounds great. That sounds was great. Everybody definitely head over to um the UK and do some Jikiden Reiki. We all need to be spreading this beautiful energy around the world.