About Reiki for Grief Tenders℠
Reiki for Grief Tenders℠ is a unique and gentle grief-focused Reiki training for Grief Massage practitioners, grief counselors, end-of-life professionals, hospice workers, and anyone who tends to the grief of others with an open heart. This 7 week training will share the known history of Reiki as a form of energetic support, will provide a level one Reiki energy attunement, will teach how to create a self-care based Reiki practice and will provide learners with an opportunity to understand Reiki through the lens of grief.
Level one Reiki training is intended for self-treatment and self-care. This course will not prepare learners to provide Reiki sessions to clients. This experience is intended and designed to meet the specific needs of grief professionals who desire a connection with Reiki for their personal self-renewal and in support of their work in the field of grief and loss. This course is very unique in its centering of grief tenders and grief workers. The course is a place to explore the ways in which Reiki practice can support those who support grievers.
Week One: Introduction to a Grief Sensitive Reiki Approach | Embracing the Sacred Mystery of Loss. Topics include: Why Reiki is more than just “love and light”, the role Reiki can play in embracing the fullness of the human experience (including loss), how to sensitively talk about and practice Reiki without minimizing grief or perpetuating cultural stigmas around mourning, how regular self-Reiki treatment can be a supportive renewal tool for grief-tenders and grief workers. 3 hours.
Week Two: Reiki Level One Attunement #1 | Finding Inner Safety. Topics include: What a Reiki energy level one attunement “does” and what may be expected after an attunement, the role Reiki energy can play in fostering a felt sense of inner safety, how to practice trusting and resting in Reiki energy, how to listen to your own sacred nervous system and honor what safety feels like for you, why a felt sense of safety is so important in grief work settings. 3 hours.
Week Three: Honoring the Past | Setting Intentions for the Present. Topics include: What we know about the history of Reiki practice and its origins, why it is important to honor the roots of Reiki practice, how to practice Reiki in a respectful way, how to allow Reiki to empower your grief work without engaging in spiritual bypassing or cultural appropriation, how to be intentional in your practice of Reiki for personal grounding and replenishment, how to create intentions for your work with grievers. 3 hours.
Week Four: Hands on the Body | Heart Aligned with Love. Topics include: What a hands-on Reiki self-treatment routine can look like (several options), why the somatic experience of Reiki can matter as much as the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects, why physical grounding through the body is important for a balanced relationship with Reiki energy, how to develop Reiki self-care practices that incorporate nature, physical movement and water, why grief tenders may need extra grounding. 3 hours.
Week Five: Broken Hearts are Beautiful | Sacralizing Emotional Expression. Topics include: What emotional release is and how to trust it, how Reiki self-treatment may foster the conditions for an emotional release, how to understand the concept of a “healing crisis” and allow organic expressions of grief and other sacred emotions to occur, how writer John Welwood’s concept of a “broken-hearted warrior” can speak to the importance of honoring grief in the context of Reiki practice. 3 hours.
Week Six: Reiki as a Spiritual Practice | Seeking Connection with All That Is. Topics include: How trust in our connection to life/something greater than our individual self can foster a felt sense of belonging no matter what, what the concept of “divine order” or “the highest good for all concerned” is and how to understand it in a grief-sensitive way, how Reiki practice can support us in seeking the truest expression of our soul’s mission, how self-Reiki treatments can be a meditative experience. 3 hours.
Week Seven: Reiki Level One Attunement #2 | Review of Concepts. Students are encouraged to bring questions and reflections from the 7 week experience for discussion in-class. Class will be brought to completion with a level one Reiki energetic attunement (in addition to the level one attunement received in Week Two).
CLASS DATES: JOIN THE WAITLIST. EMAIL AIMEETAYLOR@GRIEFMASSAGE.ORG
CLASSES FORM BASED ON INTEREST FOR ZOOM OR LIVE IN-PERSON (IN CHARLOTTE NC) INSTRUCTION.
Instructor: Aimee Joy Taylor, MA, LMBT, RMT
Aimee completed two years of intensive Reiki training in 2012 and has benefitted from Reiki practice in all areas of her grief work and professional endeavors since then. She prefers the title “Reiki Mystery Teacher” to “Reiki Master Teacher” as she is ever deepening her relationship to Reiki and fully aware that Reiki is not for her to master.
She is also a Grief Massage educator, licensed massage therapist and trained grief counselor.
I created this class because this is the class I wish I could have taken years ago!
Reiki practice has been a source of nourishment, holding, warmth, spiritual connection and growth for me as I have walked my soul’s path for the past 12 years. While creating Grief Massage training programs, working with grieving clients, training to become a grief counselor, working in a Hospice setting for my clinical internship, and working with grieving clients as a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor-Associate after graduation, I found my Reiki practice to be a consistent touchstone for my own self-care, alignment with my souls mission, and connection with my deepest purpose.
However, I was concerned about associating myself with Reiki by teaching a class because my values and integrity are very much rooted in honoring loss and pushing back against a modern culture that pathologizes mourning. And sadly, in my personal experience, many Reiki-isms such as “love and light!” or “it is all part of the Highest Good” can do a great deal of harm when grieving humans encounter them in our modern world. I did not want to be lumped in with the Reiki stereotype of “positive vibes only” or “everything happens for a reason”.
I mean no disrespect to anyone in the Reiki community. I speak only from my personal experience, as I have had hurtful comments and misunderstandings occur in some of my own Reiki interactions with others. My grief was sometimes seen as something to “get over” with Reiki rather than something sacred to be witnessed and trusted. My personal practice of Reiki was extremely empowering for me and yet I felt unsure if I wanted to be a part of the larger Reiki movement by teaching.
And then, in late 2024, I was able to study with two unique Reiki teachers who opened my heart. I took “Earth Evolution Reiki” training along with “Spiritual Alignment for Healers” with “The Reiki Godmothers” Aki Hirate and Manu Del Prete of MINKA Mystery School. These trainings were tender, broken-hearted, and hopeful, all at the same time. I came away from these experiences with a changed sense of what was possible in a Reiki class. And, I felt a deep sense of calling to create a class for my fellow grief-tenders and grief-workers.
If you work with grief as a professional of any kind...
If you are seeking a gentle, nourishing form of energy work that can be self-administered…
If you long for a sense of spiritual connection to your own purpose…
If you desire a practice that will empower you in trusting life as it unfolds…
If you want to learn ways to work with energy to set intentions…
If you need a simple way to release the energy of your work day to be renewed…
And if you want all this in a grief-specific and loss-honoring context, then I created this class for you!
-AJT