Dive Into Reiki With... Nicholas Pearson

Nicholas Pearson has been a practitioner of Usui Reiki Ryoho since 2006. He has received initiation and training in various Reiki lineages, including Jikiden Reiki, Usui Shiki Ryoho, Usui/Tibetan Reiki, and Komyo ReikiDo. The award-winning author of six books, including Foundations of Reiki Ryoho and Crystal Basics, Nicholas is also a Certified Medical Reiki Master and offers training in Usui Reiki Ryoho and crystal healing around the world. He lives in Orlando, Florida, with his partner and photographer extraordinaire, Steven. And today it's a very special day because it's his birthday!

DIVE INTO REIKI: Nicholas, I've got a fantastic day to interview you; thank you so much. I wanted to start with what was your first contact with Reiki practice?
NICHOLAS PEARSON: So, my first glimpse of what Reiki may be would probably go back to my high-school days. I was really involved in all things spiritual, metaphysical, esoteric. Anything I could get my hands on, I would just devour. And I'd seen this thing called Reiki. I knew it was something out there, but I didn't have any direct first-hand experience with it until I was in college, and I had the opportunity to take a class while I was in between semesters. I want to say it was right after my sophomore year in college. My first Reiki teacher had this beautiful center in the Treasure Coast, in Southeast Florida, and I had been teaching at her store for a couple of years by then, classes mostly on things related to stones. And I had this chance to sit in on a Reiki 1 class, and it was life-changing. It was really this beautiful experience. She imparted such reverence and respect for Japan and Japanese culture—Patricia herself is half Japanese. She really made sure she gave us a glimpse of what the parent culture of Reiki was. I was obsessed after that point. I needed to know everything. I had to read every book, do everything, and devote myself to my practice, and here is where we are today.

DIR: I know a lot about Reiki, but I don't think I've read a tenth of the books you've read. Your knowledge is really huge. What drove you to dig deeper and read all of these books. Most of us stick with our eight-hour training, and then we practice. Can you tell me what sparked that curiosity and how many lineages did you study?
NP:  I started with my first teacher, who was a member of the International Center for Reiki Training. So the first couple of classes I took from her were more like one may call Usui Tibetan Ryoho. She really tried to de-Westernize it as much as possible. Kind of situate it within the context of Japanese culture and language. She taught us the precepts in Japanese. I immediately started to recite them morning and evening, if not more often, in Japanese. I learned to write them in Japanese. I began to teach myself the language. That fueled my curiosity even more. I read about everything I could get my hands on. That was the core of my practice for a few years. Just sticking to what I had learned from my first teacher. Then, in the spring of 2009, I had the opportunity to go to Japan. While I was there, I visited Saihoji temple, which where Usui's memorial stone and his family's grave are. I went to Mount Kurama, of course, to spend a day in retreat on the mountain.
A few short days after that, I had been connected with an international Reiki share and this community, to which I was introduced by my friend Richard, the sort of founder of it, the teacher in residence there, she gave away Reiki training for free, frequently, avidly. She knew that I was scheduled to complete my Shinpiden, my third-degree teacher training with my original teacher when I came back from Japan, but she initiated me into Usui Shiki Ryoho, a very Westernized lineage in a Buddhist temple in Inaricho, Tokyo. Later I would go on to study very traditional Japanese Reiki here in the US and central Florida, as well as in Toronto, Canada. I've studied Jikiden Reiki. I've taken the Shoden and Okuden training a couple of times, once with Frank Arjava sensei. And another time when I was in Toronto, I got to study with… Hyakuten Inamoto. In between trainings, my original teacher, Patricia, studied with Hyakuten as well as with Hiroshi Doi. And so she began to incorporate more Japanese practices into the teachings as I kind of advanced through the ranks in studying with her. There are components of what I learned through her that are very Gendai Reiki centric and very Komyo Reiki centric. So these days, I don't owe a particular allegiance to one school or one tradition. I certainly don't give away secrets that I wouldn't feel authorized to, but what I teach is at least in spirit inspired by all of the different styles that I've encountered sometimes by just interviewing other people or doing primary or secondary research and other times through training.

DIR: And I think that's a great thing. I feel we are in a time when lineages are starting to be more open-minded, but there was such a separation of information before. Bringing lineages together is also part of the mission, right?
NP:  Yeah. You know, there are a lot of misconceptions about lineage and form of practice, not just in Reiki, but I would say in a lot of things designed by humans. Generally, we get in our heads about it, or we get into our egos about it. Having a shorter lineage doesn't make us any more successful than having a longer one; only practice does. So I think every time I've had the opportunity to receive training, as well as to give training, it has been a learning experience. We are continually coming back to center, coming back to home, coming back to the true self in our practice, whether that is by laying on of hands, whether that is through meditation, whether that is through reflecting on or reciting the precepts, any of those external tools are just getting us back to home. The Western model of taking the class once and then going out into the world is one way of going around it. But I think maybe it's just that sort of Japanese spirit that was instilled upon me without being able to do apprentice for a long time. I found another way around that by just applying myself to the study over and over again.

DIR:  I love that. There are a couple of very important things I want to highlight from what you said. First, that a shorter lineage doesn't mean better practice or more energy. Daily practice and consistency actually are what deepen your practice. The other is letting go do the idea that a lineage is better than another or that a certificate determines the kind of practitioner you are.
I know you're an eternal student—you will probably study Reiki until the day you die in 60, 90 years, like in the future—but you also started teaching. Tell me a little bit about what made you go, "Okay, I study, I practice, and now I'm actually ready to also teach"?

NP:  I had a pretty healthy lapse of time between being authorized to teach and feeling ready to teach. I really wanted to internalize the practice before I really got there. And it wasn't a confidence issue. It wasn't that I felt unready to teach at large. I've been teaching classes on crystals and other esoteric topics since I was a teenager, honestly. So it really was just about having the diligence, the devotion, the centeredness in my Reiki practice that no matter what curveball I was going to encounter in the classroom, I was going to be able to come from it from the right Reiki space. That whatever mishaps were going to happen, because we're human beings, someone's going to arrive late. Someone is going to have to excuse themselves. Someone is going to, you know, not be prepared for class in some way. And that includes me. I showed up missing important papers once or twice in my early days, but I knew I was ready to teach when first and foremost, the act of doing a Reiju or initiation was second nature. So I didn't need to refer to my notes. I didn't have to stop and go, "Okay, what comes after I put my hands here?" I really needed to feel like that was a fluid process. And then the other part was my, my great desire to put more Reiki into the world, superseded any, anything about me. It had to be about Reiki.

Nicholas Pearson.

DIR: When we talked together, we're saying how important it is to keep the practice's spirit versus making it transactional. Like, yes, it may be a business, but we cannot lose that passion, that goal of sharing a spiritual practice where people can reconnect with their true self. I love that you practiced Reiju (attunements) every month.
NP: Yeah. After I got the Shinpiden initiation in Florida when I came back from Japan, I would practice all of the attunements or initiations for every level, at least once a month. Without having a real live human being in front of me every time I really use a crystal skull. I got this lovely friend that came back from Japan with me is carved out of Himalayan courts, and I'd sit them in a chair and imagine he was, you know, normal human height and just kind of place my hands where his head ought to be. And just go through that process every single month for quite a long time. And the way I originally learned to do Reiju was in the very Western style. So it was a different process for the first degree, then second degree, then the third degree, which I learned in two parts. So it was really four different attunement ceremonies. So I would practice all four of them every month. I started to experiment with other ones that I found in books kind of indiscriminately. I wanted to see what, what were the core elements in different styles of Reiju. Even to this day, I really loved seeing how, no matter how different the external form of that ritual is, it takes us to the same space if we do it authentically if we really put ourselves into that space.

DIR: I think that is the important thing, the core of the Reiju as a practice versus a ritual that you can do according to your notes. You mentioned that before, and I think that it's really important for us to understand—and that, as a practitioner, you also gain a lot of healing from offering Reiju. Those are things that we discuss a lot between some of us, but there are not common knowledge to the greater extent of the community, so I really appreciate that you're sharing that. And so I still love that skull story; I practice with my yoga mat. I call it Bernard!
I would love for you to share what is your daily practice, and how often do you change it? So, Some of us struggle to establish a daily practice. We have so many tools in the system. People wonder, "What do I practice every day?" Or, "I'm really busy. How can I make sure Reiki is part of my daily life?"
NP:  When I am at my most diligent, my ideal practice looks like chanting, or at least reflecting on the precepts twice a day, morning and evening. Usually just out of bed, and sometimes as I'm going to bed. I also love to do the breathing exercise called Joshin Kokyu Ho or the method for the purification of the heart-mind with the breath. That is my favorite meditation I've ever learned from any system I've ever been taught, not just Reiki, but generally. I like to do that twice a day. It doesn't always happen, but I really like to do that. And then, I follow that up with hands-on practice. Most of the time it's just letting my hands rest, wherever feels comfortable. And just being there, if I'm in need of Reiki as intervention, rather than Reiki as a spiritual practice, of course, I'm going to put my hands where I need them, if I've stubbed toe or, you know, run into a wall and bruised my knee as I'm very prone to do. I, of course, do that all day long. Anytime I have a spare hand.
Reiki seems to be at work when things are less certain or when time is certainly we'll say more pressed in my life. I will often kind of simplify and just be present with Reiki morning and evening. And then any other free time that I've got. If I don't have the chance to do Joshin Kokyu Ho as a separate meditation practice, I find myself focusing on my breath when I am on the drive to work or when I am in the shower, or if I'm washing dishes, waiting to start a new task at work—in between, I just naturally draw the breath, draw Reiki, draw light down into the Hara, the point below the belly button and let it expand on the out-breath. I let as many waking moments as I can be part of my practice.

DIR: Yeah, I use Joshin Kokyu Ho a lot. I always joke saying it's the best breeding for the subway rush hour in New York. We don't have any more rush hour, but it was the only way, like when things were crazy in New York, you just took that breath into the Hara, expand, and it was amazing what could cope with crazy things. It's good to have these tools and not to see them as something separate from daily life.  
I love the fact that we can simplify, right? So sometimes we have a formula. We feel that if we can't do everything, then we can't practice daily. But if we can just place our hands with awareness, we can just breathe with awareness and bring Reiki into our lives wherever we are, as you say, even doing the dishes—which is a very Zen way of putting it—it's no longer separate from your life.
I would love for you to discuss what is the core of the system for you? For some people, it's hands-on healing; for other people, it's the precepts. What is the core of the system in your personal experience?
NP: More and more, I'm kind of coming to the practice from this almost like metaspace. It's not about what Reiki does. It's about what our experience of Reiki is. It's not trying to measure Reiki as energy but letting Reiki be a phenomenon unto itself. I think the core of the practice is our experience of non-duality. And we might use lots of different ways to phrase that. We might experience the symptoms of that or the effects of that in a lot of different ways. So it might be from the hands-on healing. I mean, how many times have you just sat there in meditation, with your hands on a client, and you can't tell what your hands begin, and the body ends, and so on. And that's this beautiful experience of oneness. It's the same with the Shirushi and Jumon—the symbols and mantras. As we use those, are we changing those words, or are the words chanting us? There's a sense of total unity when we get into Reiki. I think that is the experience of the true self. Hyakuten sensei says that Reiki exists beyond the worlds of the pair of opposites. So, in other words, it's in the space beyond duality, beyond polarity. And if we go into our practice with an open heart, that is what we achieve. And I imagine that must be what was Usui sensei experienced at least in part on the mountain top when, when the system of Reiki was born,

DIR: I love that emphasis on phenomenon. We discussed this quite a bit during the pre-interview. Many of us see Reiki just as an energy-healing modality, which it is, or an energy-balancing one. Some of us only see it perhaps as a mindfulness practice, but it's actually all of the above. And even more than, right? It's really, as you said, a phenomenon, non-duality. But to experience that, you need to practice consistently. You may experience it in an attunement or initiation with your master, but you need deep practice to reach that level.
I wanted to ask you a couple of tips to deepen our practice if we're starting a journey or perhaps a Reiki 2 but don't have a consistent approach. You said a sentence that I loved because there is a lot of repetition in consistent Reiki practice: "Reiki is never boring if you observe." So I wondered if you could elaborate on that as a tip to deepen your Reiki practice.
NP: Sure. This is something that I experienced, I think most transparently in Jikiden Reiki training. That phrase that Reiki is never boring, treatment is never boring, that's something that I actually picked up from Frank Arjava Petter. Hayashi sensei really took this concept of byosen, which is a term coined by Usui sensei. Actually, in Japanese, it sounds quasi-medical. Even the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, the society is not super keen on overusing the word because they don't want to be perceived as practicing medicine without the proper licensing. But this concept of byosen, which literally means like sick and gland or lump or accumulation, is like the energetic echo of what our disruptions and disharmonies might be. They may ultimately lead to physical illness. They may be those hollow places in our hearts that need loving. They might just be an experience of not being in sync with the true self. Who knows? It's not our job as Reiki practitioners to diagnose or figure that out.
There are regular rhythms and patterns to the sensation of byosen, the energetic sensations. Hayashi sensei mapped these out. And he gave it like five different degrees of intensity, from the most gentle work up to intense heat and a vibration into a pulsing or throbbing. And even to an experience of discomfort, or itami, which means pain and Japanese. You'll find that certain illnesses follow a pattern. Certain people, no matter where they are in their health journey, always have similar byosen. And if you just watch the sort of rising and fall of the energy, if you watch the phenomenon of Reiki interacting with a human, whether that's yourself or someone else, it's never boring.
You could just sit there for hours and go, "Oh, byosen is less intense this time." And maybe 30 minutes later, when it reaches a peak in its cycle, you go, "Hmm, about the same as last time." And you just watch. I think that's really something that I wish more schools of Reiki would pay attention to. So many times in the West, we learn a set number of hand positions, and it's okay, five minutes here, five minutes here, five minutes here. And you go through the motion, and you give someone a fantastic treatment. It's a very full spectrum kind of treatment, but how deep are you going in five minutes? And if that's all you know, any longer than five minutes gets uncomfortable. So if we start instead to just observe what Reiki is, what the experience of Reiki is for yourself as a practitioner, even as a recipient, it transforms things. You could sit there all day and never get tired of watching that byosen rise and fall.

DIR: I love the fact you say, "just watching." Not fixing. To hold the space, letting go, and just observing and allowing, I think it's also a very important thing to do in your practice.
NP:  For sure. Reiki is very well suited to what the world is going through at large right now because Reiki is an exercise in surrender. There is very little about Reiki where we are in control of anything. But there's very little about life where we're actually in control of anything either. So there's no surprise there. The gift is conscious surrender, a conscious relationship with the phenomenon that Reiki comes from getting out of the way. Even when someone on the table is receiving hands-on healing and has a miraculous recovery, you haven't done anything. Their bodies did everything; their mind, their spirit, their soul, their whole being has been involved in this. All you did was hold space for them and allowed the phenomenon of Reiki to take place. We might not even be able to measure that as an energy in the physics sense because Reiki kind of breaks the rules of physics in some ways.

DIR: That's the amazing part. When we talked last time, we discussed the need to release the expectation that you will be fixed or become better with Reiki practice.
NP: Reiki isn't about fixing, doing changing, manipulating, pushing, pulling. There are wonderful energy healing techniques that do all of those things. And I don't want anyone whose practice that incorporates those to feel less than by it. But the heart of Reiki is not those things. And instead of trying to make things better and fix and correct, if we allow, if we look for the inherent perfection that's already there… I can make the analogy to the mineral kingdom here. We see such beauty in crystals. You know, here's this flawless one that comes from Colombia, almost optically clear all the way through. But at a molecular level, there are tiny imperfections in there, and nature is perfectly imperfect. We are part and parcel of nature. We are representations of nature. Of course, we all have our little quirks and foibles, whether that's in a material sense with our body and its functions or in a psychological sense. I don't think any of us is free of psychological quirks. If we allow those to be the perfected state, then we aren't judging, and we aren't trying to fix, and we have no expectation. And it's really that surrender of expectation or real magic happens.

DIR: We're saying Reiki is gentle, but it is very powerful. You were talking about the effects Reiki practice has had in your life. So the fact that it's gentle and noninvasive doesn't mean that it's less powerful.
NP:  Yeah. Of all the techniques that I have learned, one of the ones that has helped me the most in a very tangible way is Reiki. When I was a freshman in college, my mental well-being kind of reached a dramatic crossroads. I had this massive anxiety and panic disorder. I couldn't sleep through the night without a panic attack. I couldn't keep food down for the stress. I was a musician, and I certainly had a lot of expectations heaped on me. And then I added my own on top of that. It was not the greatest time of my life. I will say I had some really beautiful, wonderful experiences as a musician in the school of music. But my body and my heart-mind were not in perfect alignment with the soul.
So Reiki allowed me to kind of change my focus from the external tools. I was doing all the things that someone should do, like seeing a qualified mental health care practitioner. And I was trying the pharmaceutical route, and we never quite found the right mix of things that "cured" me. I was managing things with meditation and changes in my diet. I was, of course, turning to my gemstone allies. I was taking flower essences, which certainly were probably the biggest boon. And then, all of a sudden, I learned Reiki, and I had that tool everywhere I went. I didn't have to look for a rock in my pocket. I didn't have to carry around a little dropper bottle. I didn't have to make an appointment with someone else. Wellness was right here [places hands on heart.] And [I gained] the gift of surrender. My biggest trigger for my mental wellbeing has always been uncertainty, not knowing, and then I play this really wonderful game of worrying about what comes next. I think somewhere in the book, I say that I have a masterful ability to worry about anything. It's really like one of the greatest skills I've got. It's not useful; it doesn't help anything at all. But Reiki allowed me to surrender those worries and just be in the stillness. And that is big to cut through the chatter of what if and what happens next and waiting for the other shoe to drop, instead of just waiting with that expectancy. I could just be.

DIR: That is a huge gift, and especially when it comes to uncertainty. It's very useful, given the times that we're going through. So I wanted to close the Reiki part, asking what your Reiki goal is? Because you already have many years of practice, you've written amazing, beautiful boots… Is there something in terms of personal spiritual practice or other goals you would like to share with us today?
NP:  I think one of the things that I always strive for, and it's not always been like a spoken kind of rule, but one of the things that I've always held myself to is trying to create avenues for different lineages to find commonality. I fancy myself an armchair academic. I don't have any sort of pedigreed degree, but I really love to analyze and do the very intellectual kind of thing—which doesn't really change anyone's practice unless you make it.
What I really love about the learning and the teaching and the history and everything else is that it shows us what is common about everyone. If we understand how our forms of practice differ, like at what point they branched off, where changes happen, we can also appreciate the similarities. I'm hoping that by trying to get more of that message out there. Certainly, there is some fantastic academics who are doing that work brilliantly, being able to boost their signal, informing other people about their work, sharing my own insights from research and from personal practice. That has been really helpful for me. If we know what makes us different, we can also identify what makes us the same. And no matter what lineage we practice, no matter what our form of practice looks like, no matter what kind of attunement or how many we've had, what happens here [pointing towards his hand] is the same. And if it isn't, then we're doing something else, and there's nothing wrong with doing something else that it's not Reiki. So you know, fundamentally, I really love getting us back to what is that common point.

DIR: I'm very grateful that is your goal! It's incredible for you, but it's really good for all of us. I love what you said at the end because we get a lot caught in the details of how we move the hands or place the hands, but the core of the practice is still that space of oneness, love, and compassion. And that's it. Surrendering to it. Even though some days I put words in a very Latin, passionate way, it is about that beautiful stillness that we cannot really describe with words very well.
Moving on to crystals. I was really impressed when you told me you were teaching crystal classes at 18. I was kind of a precautious child, and I felt super slow compared to you. Amazing. So if you can talk a little bit about how you discovered crystals and what sparked your interest in them.
NP: I think I just came into body this time around with some deep relationship with the middle kingdom. I have memories of very early childhood compulsively picking up rocks. Like they were, they were sacred treasures. I mean, it could be gravel from the driveway, and I could find something beautiful in that. Over the years, my grandfather, I think, probably was the first to do anything about that. He gave me my first proper quartz crystal, and the rest is history. I just was so fascinated with the idea that this inner part of our environment could be elevated to something, you know, transparent like this and had regular angles and form. And then to see the variations, I mean, to look at this piece of white-capped amethyst from Veracruz, Mexico and the optically clear quartz from Colombia or anything else, and understand that they're fundamentally the same and tiny little differences that just fascinates me to no end.
I wanted to learn as much science I could, but I knew there was something mystical about rocks. And when other families did church on weekends, my dad and I would go to the library together. I would check out as many things as I thought I was allowed to. Funny story, I thought that people could only take four books out of the library at a time like there was a firm limit because my dad wanted me to focus on just the things I would actually read in two weeks. And it might be science one week, it might be fairytales and folklore the next. It could be world mythology or archeology. I started to see that cultures around the world use very similar symbols and metaphors to explain a natural phenomenon and that science and religion, and spirituality are ultimately pointing us in the same direction. They're just using a different lexicon, a different set of vocabulary to help us experience the world and all the phenomena within it.
My approach to studying crystals has always been a little bit of the science side and a little bit of this spiritual side. And I found that in, in crystal healing, I, there there's a place for the two to interact. And that was, that was really what cemented my spiritual practice. Everything kind of revolved around rocks for a very long time. And finally, I was invited to start teaching. Finally, you know, I was so old at 18, right?

DIR: That's incredible!
NP:  By that point, I'd been collecting for 10 years. I built up a very extensive practice on myself. I rarely helped other people except to gift them rocks, maybe with a set of instructions. But my practice has gone the full circle from being very, very complex to be very, very simple—these days kind of vacillates between the poles, depending on the necessities of life.

DIR: When you went to college, and you told me the story that actually rocks were following you, right?
NP:  I went to Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, maybe an hour or so outside Orlando, where I live now. I went there because it has this fabulous music school beautiful campus, a very historical kind of institution. When I enrolled, part of my federal student aid was the work-study program. I found out I worked at this place called the Gillespie Museum. I figured it was an art museum. I enrolled really late, so they probably put me with visual arts instead of with all the music stuff because that had been assigned already. Finally, I come to the conclusion that if I showed up to work, someone would give me money. This is a very motivating thing for me is a Capricorn. I asked one of the upperclassmen, a trumpet player, "So where is this Gillespie Museum?" And he just gives me the strangest look. He goes like, "Gillespie? Why on earth would you want to go to the rock museum?" And I just landed in like, "We have a what?" So I marched straight down. It was closed after rehearsal. I went home, I typed out an email. I left a voicemail. I followed up as soon as the doors opened the next morning. And they let me have my job. And I got to dive into mineral science on my own.
They actually awarded me a new position. They created a role for me at the museum as the preparatory for the collection. I was really in charge of keeping things organized and sorted and helping to come up with new exhibits that matched the programming that another student staff was working on. It was this really wonderful thing; they let me check out mineral specimens as if they're books in the library. I don't think it's ever happened before or since, but it was this wonderful relationship. I never got to complete a degree. So I left the school with this sort of empty place in my heart, an unfulfilled expectation that hung around for a very long time. After I had my first book published, I reconnected with the museum and with the new director, and we worked together with some of the professors in the religious studies program, the archeology program, and created an exhibit inspired by my first book, The Seven Archetypal Stones, which is still there. I still have things on loan to the museum to this day. It's been this really healing place for me to be able to work with academia as a not official academic and really feel seen and heard for the work that I do with rocks.

DIR: That's so sweet. Can you explain what the fundamental functions employed by all crystals for healing are?
NP: Absolutely. So after a lot of soul searching and trying to find the parallels between the physics of energy at large and the optics, physics, mechanics of crystals, in particular, I have kind of distilled this shortlist of the fundamental things that all crystals do.
First and foremost, crystals are harmonizers. They take energy, and they make it more coherent. Which is to say that they organize it in some way, allow it to march in step. A side effect of this is coherent energy fields. Coherent systems have higher amplitude. We could say it's as if they have a louder volume. You can detect them from much farther away. People often talk about crystals as being amplifiers of energy, but that's the side effect of making energy more coherent.
Crystals are also adept at sending and receiving messages or signals or information or energy. However, we want to paint the metaphor, essentially they're kind of like antennas that send and receive. They can broadcast on multiple frequencies, multiple wavelengths at the same time. Kind of similar to the way the fractal antennas inside our cell phones and other technology does— the unit cells of those are inspired by crystals themselves.
Crystals are also translators of energy. They can help us shift from this sort of inner dialogue into the language that the cosmos speaks… When the crystal structure, the lattice itself is deformed or placed under pressure, it converts that mechanical energy into electrical energy, and it does it in reverse as well. If you're got a watch or a timepiece, there's a little sliver of quartz that gets zapped by the battery, and it begins to quiver, and it oscillates, and your watch is counting the number of oscillations, and that's how it keeps time.
Those are some of the fundamental functions of crystals. It's kind of where I based my practice, finding the science and the spirituality and how they overlap. Looking for those things we can at least measure in some way with physics or with science. At the end of the day, energy, like when we heal with Reiki or like we experience with crystal healing, is a subtle thing. We don't yet have a device that can measure all of it. There's something out there, but I would assume it has to follow the same kinds of rules as the measurable energies. So if we stick with those as our model or a metaphor, we can understand the rest of what's happening too.

DIR: How do you incorporate crystals in your Reiki practice, and what's your POV on doing so?
NP:  A lot of people assume that since I'm Mr. Crystal— I've got five books out now on rocks—that my Reiki sessions must include a lot of quartz or a lot of other things. My Reiki practice is my Reiki practice, and my crystal practice is my crystal practice. And if under other circumstances, not during a pandemic, when I'm seeing clients, if they request the two together, they'll get it. But otherwise, I allowed them to be their own separate entity. And that has been, for me, a really great blessing because it allows me to just be with Reiki, with new expectations.
The simplicity and the surrender that I experience in Reiki has also informed a lot of my crystal practice. Rather than all the complicated doings that I was fond of in my earlier years, a lot of is just sitting and observing what happens when I breathe with this stone. What happens when I hold it to my heart? What happens when I create a geometric arrangement and a crystal grid and just allowing it to be. I appreciate both [Reiki and crystal practice.] They're both part and parcel of my everyday experience. I'm wearing rocks now. I've got them in my pockets when I go out into the world, and I'm practicing Reiki at home and when I out into the world. But it's not necessarily as if I'm performing crystal healing and Reiki healing at the same time in a combined kind of way. It's very organic.

DIR: I like what you are saying. They are both beautiful practices and can be very powerful, but crystals won't improve your Reiki practice. A lot of times, as Reiki practitioners, we think that if we add session will be deeper, more intense. Crystals are a modality. If you want to do both is fine, but you should never add them because you fear that your Reiki sessions are not strong enough. It's an important point to make.
You also said something very interesting: Reiki can do no harm if performed from a space of non-doing. Crystals, however—if you don't have some expertise—actually are a little bit more delicate in that sense. Can you elaborate a little on that?
NP:  Yeah. It's certainly not the kind of PSA I like to start a crystal class with. I think if we empower people to act intelligently, no harm is going to befall. But a really great example is the sort of obsession you see with these high frequencies and high vibration stones out there. People become space cadets. It's very easy to have too much of a good thing. And all things require balance. Reiki is a complete system unto itself. There's no such thing as too much or too little; you can't do harm. There are no contraindications. But you can do too much of a particular stone. And that particular stone might not be the same for two different people because they are very precise things. They are a part of this world of the pair of opposites. They exist as very unique sets of frequencies and amplitudes. It's like trying to find the right key and the right lock and joining them to experience that healing process. While some things might be fairly universal, it's easy to overdo it.
If you are not really sensitive to energies, if you don't consider yourself really tuned in or intuitive, it's possible to maybe cause discomfort for someone. While any healing system can cause discomfort when we touch those parts of the soul, consciously or not, where we're trauma is hidden, certainly release can take place. But with crystals, it can be forcible if we don't come from that space of observing and allowing, instead of forcing and fixing.

DIR: And I love one thing you said about when we do the crystal grid, we could do it as a meditation, as an act of presence and being with the stones. Sometimes I read some posts that imply that a practitioner does the crystal grid, so the grid does their daily Reiki practice or healing for them. How could you do a very simple crystal grade or sit with us crystal in a way that is not disempowering and allows you to go deeper into your practice?
NP:  Sure. Let's start with a single stone. Let's imagine someone only has one crystal in their practice. It was a gift from a friend, or they picked up a pebble from their favorite beach. The first thing we can do is just observe it with our regular eyes. Find good lighting and turn it every which way in the light. If you can see through it, try to look into the heart of that stone. My favorite thing to do, I'm a more visually inclined person… is to close [my] eyes and try to recreate the image of it in [my] mind.
If you're a more tactile person, feel it delicately. If it's sharp or fragile. Don't injure yourself or your rock. See if you can kind of create that tangible textual kind of map of the stone. Get to a place where you can really hold the concept or the idea of the stone if you're neither visual nor any other kind of way, inside you.
On the one level, doing this gives your conscious mind something to focus on. That's great because if it's distracted, the real work can take place under that level. But it's also a way for you to enter into the space of wonder. Wonder is a necessary part of spiritual experience. If you can't have awe and just be amazed at what's happening in the world around you, then give up, right? If there's no beauty or joy in your practice, you have to find a way to create it. Start on that really fundamental level and then take things deeper. Then just sit with a stone. And instead of trying to force the energy or say that, you know, I read that rhodonite goes on my heart chakra, so I'm going to put it there, and it's going to heal my heart chakra. What if you just sit with rhodonite and observe what happens with your energy field when you introduce it? Maybe you're going to feel called to place it someplace else. Maybe it's on one of those energy centers. Maybe it's in a place where you hold physical pain in your body. Maybe you're just going to look at it and weep. That's okay too. Having that space of non-judgment.
As we get comfortable with singles stones, then we can kind of get more elaborate and build crystal grids. A real simple way to do that is to get a handful of inexpensive quartz crystals and arrange them in a circle. Depending on the school of thought, you might have them facing in, or you might have them facing outward. You might have them kind of lined up in a circle. Do what works for you.
When you want to make these Reiki crystal grids, bless every stone, charge every stone, cleanse every stone. Do it often and make it an intentional meditative act instead of going through the motions so you can take a shortcut. I'm all for shortcuts. There are plenty of ways we can do it. Reiki itself is kind of a shortcut because it's pretty automatic. Once you build that muscle, it just happens. Crystals themselves can be kind of a shortcut. They're catalysts. They lessen the amount of energy or effort required to achieve a particular effect. So they take us places farther, but it's only when we do it with a conscious and conscientious relationship. There is no substitute for that.

DIR: You mentioned once that you could never cleanse your crystals enough.
NP:  I think 2020 taught us all that there's no such thing as too much washing of our hands within reason. It's hard to go overboard with that. It's the same energetically. You have to practice good psychic and spiritual hygiene. Practice good hygiene of your heart and your emotions. So cleanse your crystals often. We change our socks every day. Why not change the rest of our energies every day, too. Especially if it's a crystal that's a hard worker and it's gone with you out into the world, give it a rest every night. Let it breathe. Let it take its own sort of energetic shower, Just like you're going to hop into the shower. And you'll be amazed at what that can do for the end result.

DIR: I still haven't washed mine! I'll have to do that. If there was only one crystal you could take to a deserted island, which one would that be and why?
NP: It's like asking someone their favorite child: it's hard to answer, but you probably have one. Mine is rhodonite. I don't know if I could say that it is my absolute favorite mineral, but it is my favorite therapeutic ally for, at least, my unique set of baggage. Rhodonite is the ally that gets me through the day. It is a manganese silicate. Manganese in the mineral kingdom often relates to grounding the emotional body, giving us permission to feel vulnerable. In an increasingly harsh world and increasingly fast-paced world, feeling vulnerable is something that's hard to do, at least in the West. I can't speak for every culture, but certainly here. How many times have you been told to suck it up? Right? This is a stone that grounds and fortifies the emotional body so you can lean into the discomfort of vulnerability.
Over time, my practice has gotten really simple. It's a lot of sitting and watching. I do more complicated things for fun or with students and clients. But my everyday world is just sitting. So if I could take only one rock to a deserted island, I think I can survive that experience.

DIR: I skipped a question regarding Reiki practice, but I feel in a way it applies to crystals as well—it's your biggest Reiki oops. Most of us share our knowledge, our insights, but we seldom share the mistakes that pointed to these insights. Would you share one mistake or misconception that taught you something important?
NP: My biggest eye-opening moment in Reiki was assuming that we all had the same level of training and expertise, that our training looked similar, that we used the same language to describe things. Even that we went through the same set of notions to engage in our practice. And that was something that even shocked me with my home community when I would go away to school and then come back. One of those times, my teacher had studied with [Hiroshi] Doi sensei and Hyakuten sensei. So I would come back to my home base of Reiki circles, and suddenly the people are engaging in different physical motions, and I'm just like, "What's happening here?" Then going to experience other communities…l It's very easy to do the human thing and go, "Well, what I learned is right, I love my teacher, I maintain that my lineage is correct because she did such a fabulous job." It's very humbling to go, "Hey, you know what? It's okay that we all learn things differently. That's the beauty of Reiki. No matter what motions are going through, no matter what the form of practice looks like, no matter the everyday habits may be with Reiki, it has the same potential, the same possibility. Allowing for those differences, and over time celebrating those differences. Figuring out how they happened because that satisfies my intellectual curiosity. I think it's that experience of realizing we are not all the same, and we didn't all have the same type of training, the same set of tools that made me want to learn more and go deeper. I wanted to understand other people's perspectives. And maybe, in an ideal world, get us to focus on the things we can do to better the practice. It's hard to be taken seriously and credibly as a practice at large when we are so different from tradition to tradition.

DIR: I read many comments online about a particular Reiki being stronger or getting upgrades. It's a language we are adapting, very related to technology because it makes it easier to explain things. But it brings some layers of understanding that are not always correct and create separation. As you say, how do we make it credible if we are all the time throwing rocks at each other vs. assuming there are many expressions of one practice, oneness, and non-duality. It's like there is one music track: everyone is going to dance it differently.
Nicholas, honestly, there are no words to express my gratitude for your time and knowledge. For you to be willing to share all your years of study and practice with everyone. Thank you so much!
NP: It's my sincerest pleasure to join you to be part of this project. So thank you so much for having me.

You can find out more about Nicholas at:
website: www.theluminouspearl.com
FB: facebook.com/TheLuminousPearl
Insta: @theluminouspearl
Nicholas’s books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Nicholas-Pearson/e/B01E4TQMJU

Drawing inspired by our conversation.