by Diane Shewmaker
One of the most valuable ways I have found in working with the entire energy system is through a meditation that I call opening the central light column with the breath, which is a method that requires more active participation on the part of the recipient during the session. You will find the text of the meditation below.
I do the meditation in the early stages of a session, as this method has the effect of opening the various levels of the energy system in such a way that much of the effort one might otherwise need to expend in getting the main areas of the energy system flowing is taken care of quite easily. You can then spend the rest of the session focusing Reiki healing energy in areas that need specific attention.
As you lead the recipient through the meditation, place your Reiki hands wherever you are guided. As I begin, I often find myself cupping the person's head in my palms while I quietly speak the instructions into his or her ear. Take care to allow adequate time between each phase for the person to complete the instruction. Also, assure the person that he or she does not have to actually "see" or even feel the column and everything that is happening during the opening. The intention to simply breathe in and out to move the flow of the healing energy throughout the physical and subtle bodies during the meditation is all that is required.
After completing the meditation, the healing energies of Reiki will now be circulated through the central light column, into the heart, then on to the physical and subtle bodies as the person continues to inhale and exhale. Gently remind the person to reestablish the deeper and slower breathing rhythm whenever he or she lapses back into a shallow breathing pattern during the course of the session.
If so guided, you can also expand Step Six of the meditation to take a longer period to gradually move the Reiki energy into the physical body and each of the subtle bodies. This allows additional time for the Reiki to cleanse and purify the body and each of the layers of the auric field, offering the person a greater opportunity to fully absorb and integrate the universal life force into his or her total energy system.
An example of expanding Step Six in this way occurred during my sessions with a breast cancer patient named Shelly (not her real name). When we were at the physical level, I asked her to breathe the flow through her bloodstream into her entire body, and then to gently focus it in the right and left breasts and surrounding tissues. I then asked her to do a scan of the rest of her body from head to toe and to likewise breathe the energy directly into those areas that called to her in some way.
Once this was complete, we moved to the etheric body and repeated the process, and then out to the emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies one at a time. I suggested that Shelly intend for the healing flow to move into those places within the subtle bodies that held the patterning in place that was contributing to the cause of the breast cancer. We took whatever time was needed at each level, perhaps as much as ten to fifteen minutes each (this was a ninety-minute session).
While Shelly was focused on breathing the Reiki energy into each level of her field, I scanned and intuitively worked with hand positions on the physical body, as well as off the body within the energy field from a few inches to several feet away using angelic light weaving. I was also using my voice, making healing sounds. While scanning, I was looking and feeling for places within Shelly's energy anatomy that were in some way drawing attention to themselves, as well as taking direction from information provided by Shelly during the session.
We repeated this process as called for in subsequent times together, and depending on Shelly's needs, sometimes spent an entire session on only the emotional body or any of the other levels of her energy field. This allowed for in-depth clearing and healing of the patterning that was contributing to her disease. While she was in chemotherapy and subsequent radiation, Shelly adapted the meditation to convert the treating agents into pure light and then distribute them throughout her entire energy system. She reported that once she started doing this during her treatments, she thereafter had fewer negative side effects .
Shelly and I worked together like this quite intensively for about eight months. I am pleased to report that she later invited me to annual parties celebrating each subsequent year of being cancer-free. She moved away and we lost touch about four years ago, and at that point she had remained cancer-free for almost five years.
Opening the Central Light Column with the Breath
The steps for breathing open the column are as follows:
1. Ask the person to breathe more deeply and slowly than normal, breathing in up from the lungs, through the shoulders, and to the top of the head, then breathing out all the way down to the bottom of the feet. Suggest that the individual do this several times, creating a circular flow of energy around the entire body. Encourage the inhalation and exhalation to be even in length.
2. After the person has begun to relax and quiet down, draw his or her attention to the central light column that runs vertically through the middle of the body from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet, roughly parallel to the spine and connecting the chakras. Ask the person to then intuitively open and expand the column to the perfect diameter by gently breathing in and out several times.
3. Next ask the person to imagine that he or she is standing firmly on the Earth and to now send the column down like roots from a tree all the way into the center or heart of the Earth and then to anchor it there.
4. Now ask the person to also extend the column above the head all the way through the celestial realms to the heart of the Source and anchor it there.
5. Ask the person to continue the same breathing rhythm, simultaneously breathing the grounding and supportive Earth energies into the column from below and the celestial Heaven energies into the column from above, allowing Heaven and Earth to come together within the heart region. Here the energies blend, merge, balance, and unify as One and fill the heart to capacity with the universal life force energy of Reiki, which activates and nourishes the development of the unified heart chakra within the person's energy field.
6. Encourage the person to permit the flow of Reiki to then spill over into the entire circulatory system of the physical body, nourishing all the tissues, glands, organs, muscles, bones, and cells. Then have the person use the breath to expand the flow from the heart like a sunburst into the etheric, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies that surround and interpenetrate the physical body.
More on this subject:
This is just part of the article which appears in the Winter 2002 issue of the hard copy Reiki News Magazine.
