Sei Ki HeartTouch Essays

What happens in a Sei Ki Session?

A session usually starts with both people kneeling and bowing to each other.

This work has come out of Japanese culture, hence the ritual, but it is significant as it sets the basic framework for the relationship between the 'practitioner' and the 'client' as one of equality and mutual respect; both are simply human beings on the journey...

There is in reality, no practitioner and no client, simply a meeting of a kind in which one plays the 'active' role, the 'doer' and the other the 'passive' role or 'receiver'.

It works to avoid the widespread tendency within 'therapy' for a projection scenario to evolve in which the practitioner is somehow 'whole' and the client 'broken' along with the numerous other complicated projections that people want to see in others, especially 'therapists'. Seeing oneself as 'broken' is a large part of the original problem.

Sei Ki is not therapy, as the term is commonly understood today, a technique to fix something in need of repair.

Rather it is for the 'practitioner' to meet another with total awareness and acceptance in the moment, from an 'empty' mind and allow the natural intelligence in the bodies, in the 'Ki' that is present in that meeting to guide the session spontaneously and enable the individuals to evolve to a deeper state of balance within their mind-bodies.

This is often experienced as a deeper, slower rhythm of breathing involving more of the body than before i.e. the body becomes more alive but it can also be felt inside as vitality moving around more freely.

Tired energy that is no longer required in the body-mind is transformed or released sometimes subtlely, sometimes not.

Movement may occur, laughter, crying, the primal scream, whatever is required as the body lets go. None of it is important in and of itself, just a spontaneous expression of the journey at that moment.

Patterns of symptoms that formed part of the previous state of being, may no longer be required in this deeper state of balance and so they disappear, sometimes after a 'clearing out' period in which the body re-organises itself.

Other aspects of the body-mind may change as well, subtlely, which perhaps were not perceived of as 'lacking' before or as a 'problem' and this is also part of the transformation.

Each bring something to the meeting, the practitioner, hopefully their depth of training in entering into 'emptiness', their sensitivity to the Qi and their own mind-body's wisdom, inner balance and compassion perhaps.

The client, their energetic state, which though perhaps appearing 'negative' can reveal hidden wisdom when the journey is walked upon.

Both parties are involved in the work at the deepest level.

The client is participating with their inner willingless to walk on the journey of transformation and to trust and enter into resonance with the practitioner and this might take time to deepen.

The session ends with a simple bowing together once more, like in the beginning.

During the session, the practitioner, with their simple empty observation and feeling offers the client a clear mirror to experience themselves in, as their whole self, not just the dressed persona that is lived out in normal human daily life.

The change then for the client as they move back into their life, is a deeper and closer relationship between the wholeness that they are and their personal consciousness, with it's dressed persona. As these two become more familar with each other, the deep tensions between them ease and so things change.

And this is to grow in life...

An important footnote : Anything I write about Sei Ki, is as an individual painting an impression of it, my impression, from my own personal experience with Akinobu Kishi and from practising it with others, and so it can't be regarded as some kind of conceptual definition. Others who have had contact with it, may form different impressions as did Kishi himself, so please take these words as simply a pointer in the general direction...

If in the end, I am asked whether I 'do' Akinobu Kishi's Sei Ki myself, then I would have to say no, no one can. What he shared has basic principles to it and practices, but is ultimately beyond form and simply an expression of the development of the practitioner.

As he said, one can imitate him, at whatever stage in his development and it will work, but the real path is to discover one's own style.

All I can do is my own personal style of Sei Ki, which I call Sei Ki HeartTouch and this is influenced my time with Akinobu Kishi.

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