DIVE INTO REIKI: Frank Arjava Petter is a world-renowned Reiki historian and teacher. Based in Greece, he travels worldwide, lecturing and teaching Jikiden Reiki workshops. He is a Dai Shihan in Jikiden Reiki and vice-president of the Jikiden Reiki Association founded by Tadao Yamaguchi in Kyoto, Japan.
His spiritual journey started at a very young age with meditation, spending 7 years practicing with Osho. Later, he moved to Japan and began teaching Reiki there in 1993.
He is the best-selling author of Reiki Fire, Reiki, the Legacy of Dr. Usui, The Original Reiki Handbook of Dr. Mikao Usui, co-author of The Spirit of Reiki, Reiki Best Practices, The Hayashi Reiki-Manual, Reiki ganz Klar, This is Reiki, and One with Reiki. Frank, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us.
FRANK ARJAVA PETTER: Thank you very much, Nathalie. It's a pleasure. I love talking to people. Like all of us—all of you listeners and we included—[what] I miss the most is the contact with people. The one-on-one contact, the hands-on contact. But we have the technology to at least keep in touch like this, and I appreciate it.

DIR:  Agree! I wish we could this in person. Hopefully, we'll do it soon. You have a fascinating origin story because you started your spiritual search young. Can you talk about your first experiences?
FAP: I'm not like a lot of people who are into spirituality and will say, "Oh, you know, I remember when I was three years old, and suddenly, I saw the light." Not at all. For me, it started when I was around 15, 16 [years old.] I started reading books on Zen, which I liked very much. I hated school, so, in my mind, after school, I was not going to go to university. I was going to go to Japan, enter a Zen monastery, and never be seen again. Ever. That was my secret plan, but of course, it became completely different. 
About the same time, I went on vacation to Brittany, France, with my parents. I remember one day sitting on the beach was in the spring break. There were no tourists there, and you had like miles of to your left miles of beach to the right. There was nobody. And I just see this dog from, I don't know, two miles away. A big white kind of retriever or something. And he comes to me like dogs do: he walks on the beach, going left, going right, sniffing here and there. But he went straight for me. I stretched out my arm, and he sniffed my hand. I looked at the dog, and I thought, I want to be like this: straightforward, fearless, and tender. 
A couple of years later, my parents and I got some letters from my brother who had gone to India overland from Germany and ended up with Osho, who, at the time, was the antichrist for everybody. There was very bad press about him everywhere. Whatever you heard or saw was just horrendous. We thought, "Oh, my God, my older brother has gone nuts. We got to do something about it!" So, my parents decided to send me there just to check up on him. to take a look. To see if he was okay. If he was okay, fair enough. If he wasn't okay, try and persuade him to come home and leave all of this craziness behind. I went to India to the Osho ashram in March 1979. I took one step into that place, and I thought, "I don't ever want to go anywhere else ever again." That's how [my journey] really started. At the time, I was 18. It hit me hard.
Ever since that moment, my sole viewpoint in life is spiritual development. For me in the first few years, and then—after I started teaching in the early and mid-nineties—also for my students. This is what I'm concerned with: spiritual growth. People waking up with me. Waking me up. Being present, showing people how to be present, how to deal with themselves, and how to live a beautiful contented, happy, conscious, and peaceful life.
This is my whole purpose, but at the same time, I am not out there in space. Thinking only about all these things. I'm a super simple person, very simple-minded. I'm here living in a small Greek village with about a thousand people, a very traditional place. It's super easy. I love everybody. The people like me, we can talk about the weather, about potatoes. We can talk about nothing at all. We can have a glass of whiskey together. I'm really a very simple-minded person. 
My intention is to do everything in life with a spiritual attitude. If you do a mundane thing with a spiritual attitude, it becomes like a prayer, a meditation, a celebration of life. And if you do something "spiritual" with a mundane attitude, it just becomes a waste of time.

DIR: I love that because when we practice Reiki, we have trouble accepting our "regular" life. We keep it separate versus seeing our everyday life as practice. The other thing we do is overcomplicating it. What is your perception of Reiki right now? 
FAP: Reiki is the simplest thing in life at all. I learned Reiki in 1992. I became a teacher in 1993 and started teaching after five, six months or so after I digested all of that. I thought Reiki was this complicated thing. Then seven years later, I came to my third Reiki teacher to Chiyoko Yamaguchi. When we asked her a complicated question, she always looked at us and said, "You think too much." Like a grandma would say to you and not like, somebody's arrogant from a place of "I know better than you, and you will learn one day when you're my age." Don't think so much. Reiki is such a simple thing. It's the simplest thing in the world. You know how it works? She said, "It goes like this: on [places his hand on his body], off [lifts his hand from the body]." That's all you need to know. Go out and touch people. There's nothing you need to do: no rituals, no prayers, no symbols, no nothing just: on, off. This is how I practice it. 
And this is how I practice it here in the village too. In all the Greek villages, at least the ones on the islands that I know of, people get nicknames. And they get them very quickly, but they stick…. My nickname in the village is the German doctor. This is how people see me. When somebody has an injury or feels sick, they come, and [my wife and I] treat them. We don't do anything spiritual, like talking about energy and all that. We go, Okay. Sit down or lay down and so on. And that's it. It's very simple. Reiki is very, very simple. I completely avoid all the esoteric stuff when I talk about it—not only with simple-minded villagers—but in general, because we don't need it. It's not necessary. 

DIR: Agree. Reiki is so simple, but that doesn't mean it's not deep. In Western culture, we often confuse simple with shallow or uninteresting, but Reiki has a lot of depth. Can you talk about that?
FAP: The only thing that really matters is what you have here now and what you have and what you are here and now. Just you, in your simplicity, breathing in, breathing out. That's it. Nothing else matters: tomorrow never comes; yesterday is gone. So, what have we got? We've got this moment. In this moment, we have a choice. Whether we want to spend this moment dreaming or being present. And Reiki is a wonderful tool to help you be present in this moment. All bodywork is like that, really, because touch anchors both the person who gives the treatment and the one who receives it in the present.

DIR: I love that concept of touch as an anchor. Often, we're touching to heal, to do something anchoring both of us in the moment. That is beautiful.
FAP: Yeah. Let's say somebody experienced something traumatic. You give them a hug. The more you hold them in your arms, the same thing happens. They immediately come to the present and maybe come out of their traumatic movement. They come back to the now. And when you're in the now, you're okay. 
Reiki brings you here. And when we are here, what problem do we have here? We don't have any problems. Problems are always either far ahead or far behind.

DIR: And when you're in the middle of a problem, you're present. You have to be.
FAP:  Right. For example, when you have an accident, suddenly everything turns into slow motion. You function perfectly. You do everything right. And then afterward, when it's finished…. [it's another thing.]
The first and foremost thing about Reiki is that it brings both the giver and the receiver into the present moment. And only in the present moment can things change. Things can happen.
The next thing people often get confused about is that they think, "Uh, this or that person is such a great healer!" Somebody asked me recently, "Who's the greatest healer on the planet at the moment?" And I said, "You know, I will tell you who it is. It's the human body. The human body is the greatest healer." 
It's not the Reiki person or the shaman, or someone else who does the healing. The body heals itself if it can. But there are obstacles to healing, and those must be removed. And this is what the Reiki person or the shaman does. He energizes the body so that those obstacles can be removed. In terms of Reiki, those obstacles are toxicity, and the removal happens by detoxing. The body begins to detox, and then healing happens if it's still possible.
When the time is up, the time is up. You can stand on your head; do all sorts of tricks, and it's not going to work. The important thing for us as Reiki [practitioners] to understand is that this is not our business. We're not here to decide who stays and who goes. We don't know what the situation for our client is. We know nothing. We may know that they have a certain illness, but we don't know why they have it. We don't know what purpose that may serve in the long run… You don't know where they are on their journey from ignorance to self-realization. And this is not for you to judge. All we do is place our hands on that person and trust that the healing will happen in due time. Whenever that might be.

DIR: I resonate very strongly with this. There is a lot of pressure on Reiki practitioners to "diagnose" or "read" the situation in some lineages. What advice will you give to a practitioner who feels they need to get the "healing" right?
FAP: In Jikiden Reiki, what we learned to do is called in Japanese byosen, the body's reaction to the incoming energy. We evaluate with the perception in our hands. So there's some kind of natural diagnosis happening, but it's not medical. And it's not that we look for it either. It's just perception the same way that you say, put your hand in the fridge, and you know that it's cold. You don't have to sit there and think, "Oh, I'm going to check the fridge from the inside and see what that temperature is." No, you just put your hand inside, and you know, "Uh, cold!" It's like that. 
From an Asian point of view, they would say your ego is not required in the work at all. Now, if we define this from an Oriental way, it becomes very uncomfortable. So, from a Western, let's say psychological understanding, maybe we think of ego as the negative aspects of our psycho-emotional selves. Arjava is egoistic. He thinks only of himself. He wants more and more money! He is like this. He is an a$#*!
From an Oriental point of view, because the Japanese are Buddhist and they believe in emptiness being the source of everything, they believe that there is no separate identity, no separate self. There is no ego. That ego is the only thing that doesn't exist. The only thing that is not [ego] is that spaciousness. That is your presence, that blue sky. Everything else is clouds passing in that blue sky. 
So, if I, during the treatment, go and do all sorts of stuff, the Japanese traditional Reiki practitioner would say, "Get the hell out of there. What are you doing there? This is not an ego trip here. You're supposed to just be emptying. Let that pass through you and leave it up to people upstairs." That's how they would look at it there. From a Japanese point of view, ego is everything that we would call "I." Everything that defines us has nothing to do with a Reiki treatment. You leave that outside.

DIR: Which is a practice per se—and it's hard! But the good news is that, in time, you start feeling a little bit of that. For me, emptiness also means inner spaciousness. We're so crammed with things, by creating the little space with meditation and Reiki practice is such a relief—because we always think of practitioners helping others, but we must start with ourselves. So, I love the concept of emptiness. 
Once we were talking about Osho, you mentioned something that I love. When I asked you how the Osho ashram was, you laughed at me because I imagined you attending like 300 orgies. And you're like, "Nathalie, every teacher is a mirror." Would you care to elaborate on the concept of the teacher as a mirror when it comes to Reiki?
FAP: Not only is the teacher a mirror, but everybody in every situation in life is a mirror. This pandemic situation is a mirror. Let's start here because we are all concerned with this at the moment. 
Let's say you have some fear of survival during the COVID situation; that's going to come up. If you have some unethical business ideas in the COVID situation, that will come up. Whatever there is inside, whatever is hiding under the surface will come up. It's like, you're looking at this thing all the time, and you see yourself. So, what is required of us to do is to be aware of what is happening: when you're being mirrored, when to be reflective, to look, not to judge.
If you're in the teacher's role, then, of course, that becomes vital. Because, first of all, you are mirroring your students, but they also mirror you. It's not one-way traffic. It's two mirrors looking at each other. Two pieces of emptiness looking at each other. That's an amazing thing. And it requires great awareness not to project anything into the other. You cannot ask your students to do this practice, but you can ask it of yourself, so you don't project into your students and don't bring them down. You don't force your worldview on them but give them space and encouragement to always reflect. To look at themselves, learn from all their clients, from all their friends, from all situations. This is the real job of a Reiki teacher. [Teaching the system] is the smaller part.

DIR: What you are saying is very important, but often training consists of attunement and a manual or a video, or a few hours of in-person training. What do you think about the current state of Reiki training today?
FAP: What I think is just my personal opinion. I always filter everything through the wisdom of my own heart. I learned that very early on. But one of the things I learned from Osho is don't believe anything that anybody says, but always check it. To know if it is valuable inside or not. If it works for you.
So, I would say, as a Reiki teacher, what do I feel comfortable with? How do I feel comfortable teaching it? I feel comfortable teaching Reiki in person. I don't feel comfortable teaching Reiki online. So, I don't do it, but it's not a judgment. If you're comfortable doing online courses, that is your business, and you have to live with it…
For me, it's not an option. I don't like it, and I don't do it. That's what I'm very happy [online] talking to people and discussing things around the topic of Reiki, but no actual teaching. I wait until I can touch my students again... For me, it's almost more important to go and eat lunch together during the workshop because that's where you really see what is happening inside people when there are no facets, no concepts. When there are no roles of teacher and student, when we are all the same, I think is when you really see things changing. To me, that only happens in the presence of one another. This is how I see it. I know that many people like to teach online. It's easier. It's convenient. You save all the airline fees, the hotels, the venues. I understand all that. People need Reiki a lot. I understand all that, but I'm not going to do it. I wait. I prefer to starve.
DIR: No, please, don't starve!
FAP: This is my truth. And I'm not saying it's the truth. There is no truth. There's only subjectivity. What I suggest is that you go inside and see, "What do you feel comfortable with?" And then you do that. Don't listen to anybody else. There's nobody smarter than you. There's nobody who knows better than you. Ask yourself what to do, how to do it, and then you are good. 
In our tradition, the teaching guidelines are quite serious and severe, but teaching, let's day starts with Shoden-Reiki 1. One then goes to Okuden-Reiki two. And then the different levels of the teachers. To become a fully certified teacher will take at least two or three years under tutelage. Plus, we have rules about how many hours of treatments one has to document in writing. It's like 120 hours of treatments with at least 40 different clients. You have to document it all and send it to the Institute. And then we decide whether we take somebody. So, we take that very seriously. You cannot do this on the weekend with us because we don't feel comfortable with that.

DIR: But I think this is good for the student. I got those eight-hour training, and when I started offering treatments, I was so insecure. I didn't have the proper training and support. And when I called to have a mentoring session, the answer I got was, "You don't need mentoring; you need a session to balance your chakras!" I knew then I was not going to do my Reiki master with that teacher. I feel we want to go through levels fast, but then we crumble. We need to start building a solid foundation. I think training for more hours is a better idea and waiting before becoming a teacher immediately.
FAP: Let's look at the traditional way that this was done. When I learned from Chiyoko sensei, you couldn't even ask to become a teacher. You would learn and learn and learn and learn. At some point, she would say to you, "Okay, now it's time." That was the traditional way. Of course, the Western world is not going to work like that. People don't understand this concept, especially where you live [in New York City.] People are so competitive, and they want everything right now. 
But what I'm saying is to get a good and solid Reiki education. There's no rush anyway. Why do you want to reach something? There's nothing to reach. You are not a better person if you're a Reiki master or a Reiki 1 practitioner. You're the same. It makes no difference. The difference is made by the work that you have done.
It's the inner work that we do [that makes the difference.] And, of course, the practical work that we do.
In Lesvos Island, where we live, we built a dojo training center. In the summer, that place is open for treatments every day, between 4:00 and 7:00 PM. Sometimes there are 30 people giving treatments every day all summer. So, we have maybe three, four, or five clients. And then a whole bunch of people, four or five on each table treating and treating, learning and learning. This is how you learn: by practicing. 

DIR: You mentioned your teacher Chiyoko Yamaguchi. Can you explain who she was?
FAP: Chiyoko Yamaguchi was my third teacher. And after I met her, I just taught what I had learned from her and left all the other [learnings] behind. She was a student of Hayashi sensei and learned Reiki from him in 1937. By the time I met her in 2000, she had 60 some years of daily practice. 
I asked her once how many treatments had she done? She said two or three every day for 63 years. I calculated it once. That's a lot. She was like an encyclopedia. You could ask her anything, "What do you do with fibromyalgia?" "Oh, yeah, in 1952, I treated this woman, and you do this. And then you do this and that." 
When I met her, I was already a well-known Reiki teacher. I had written three or four books. Everybody at that time knew who I was. And she said, "Okay, so you've been practicing for a while. Do you give treatments? I said, "Yes." She said, "Have you witnessed any healing?" I said, "Yes." She said, "Well, what?" I was like on the witness stand. I couldn't believe it because usually, Japanese people are not so inquisitive. "I'd been treating people with cancer or with whatever." "Have they gotten better?" she asked. I said, "Yes." She said, "I always ask people who are teaching Reiki, do you do treatments? Usually, they say, "No, I'm too busy teaching. And then I ask him, what in the world do you teach if you have no experience." 
I think that sums it up here. If we teach, especially if we teach, we must continue doing treatments. We must learn from every new client. The moment you stop learning, you're dead. You're finished. You might as well stay home and retire.
In my Reiki practice, we do it the same way as [all Japanese arts.] The focus is on the work. If you do your work, you progress. If you don't, you don't. It is not a judgment. It's not for everybody. But Reiki is not something that you need to take off some degree or something. It's not about that. It's about reaching a certain maturity in your practice, and you get that only by practicing. It's as simple as that. 

DIR: Often, I get questions, and my answer is to go and practice. Why? Because I can talk my head out, but it will still just be a concept. If you don't practice, you will come back with the same question because some questions are only answered by practice. And only have specific questions when you practice. 
Changing course, I like to ask my guests about their biggest Reiki oops. Because most practitioners look at someone like you and think you are so advanced that you get everything right all the time. You went to Japan, have practiced for years, wrote books… "I will never be like him!" 
But Reiki teachers are human too. Can you share one mistake that ended up being a great lesson?
FAP: That list is long! I will tell you the one I did regarding my writing. I have no journalistic training at all. In 1994, a long time ago, I found the Usui memorial in Tokyo, which at that time we thought nobody had ever seen before, no foreigner. We translated the inscription. It said something about the Usui sensei's life that he had a very loving character, and he was humorous and was a very good speaker. And the people were hanging on to his kimono to get some of his energy, that he was married, had two kids, and so on. And that we should follow the legacy of the Meiji emperor. Period. A full period. The next sentence: Kyo dakewa. Ikarus na. Shinpai suna… the Reiki principles. So when I read it, I thought, "Wow, the Reiki principles are the legacy of the Meiji emperor." And I wrote that.

DIR: Oh, that is the source of the confusion. [Laughs] I've been researching that, and I kept hitting a wall every time I was trying to find the relationship between the Meiji emperor and the Reiki precepts!
FAP: It wrote that. And then, just after the book was out, we found out that those two parts of the inscription have nothing to do with one another. That was one of the big mistakes I made. And even now, people in their classes say that the Reiki principles come from the Meiji emperor. This was my fault, my fuck up. Sorry guys!
Usui sensei put them together from what we can call the zeitgeist, the spirit of the days. That was kind of common in spiritual circles. I researched lots of other spiritual groups, and they all have these kinds of precepts. It's a very Japanese thing. Even elementary schools will have some kind of ethical backbone or precepts hanging in the principal's office or general assembly.

DIR: This may have been my favorite mistake ever! It's precious! 
Talking about another thing, Reiki practitioners are often confused: the symbols. Some lineages draw them. Some meditate with them. How do you work with the Reiki symbols? 
FAP: The Reiki symbols are tools given to the student at a certain level after they've acquired certain skills. In Jikiden Reiki, the first symbol [is given in] the first level. We get the other symbols in the second level. It's all done differently. 
Perhaps one thing that is good to say is that we seem to think that we are initiated into a degree or initiated into a symbol in our Western Reiki lineages. And if you ask a traditional Japanese Reiki practitioner or Reiki teacher, they will say that you are not initiated into a degree or a symbol, but into Reiki again and again and again.
In most Reiki lineages, there are four symbols. There are the three for the second degree and the master symbol. In Japanese lineages, there is no master symbol. It was added by students of Takata sensei after she passed away. There was recently was an interview with Phyllis Furumoto [Mrs. Takata's granddaughter and heir] before she died where she finally said it. I've been saying it for 20 years, but nobody believed me. 

DIR: I love the difference that you made: we are initiated in Reiki over and over again, not attuned to a symbol. 
FAP: The symbols are very specific. They have a purpose. You use the first symbol for this, the second for that, the third for that. You don't mix them in the traditional school because they have each a purpose of their own. There's no need to mix anything. It's not that mixing is bad or will make you explode or something—it's not necessary. 

DIR: Every lineage has a different approach. I love minimalism, so the Japanese style fits me better. 
FAP: If you ask me, "What kind of Reiki do you practice?" I will say, look, the Reiki that comes out of my hands doesn't have a label. It's just pure unpolluted life energy. And [it's the same as] what comes out of Nathalie's hands, out of everybody who's listening or not, out of every mother's hands when she's treating her child. There is no label. 
There is only a difference in practice and philosophy. Think of what we talked about earlier: the mirror. Look at the practice and choose the one that suits you. I have had a long history of Japanese culture in this life. I lived there for 12 years. I had my first Japanese girlfriend when I was 18. I have this predisposition to all things Japanese… So, I choose that [style]. But if you ask me if it's better than any other kind of Reiki… Ph my God! How can my Reiki be better than yours? Only somebody who doesn't understand the basics of Reiki would say that. Reiki does not have a label. If you think that you're better than somebody else, you really need to look at yourself, work on that first, and better not teach others.

DIR: I feel like I am going to quote you like 300 times in the future! I wanted to close the interview by discussing your two most recent books.
FAP: I published in November a Reiki book called One with Reiki. It explains Reiki's background: Japanese [culture and] spirituality. So, people who practice Reiki can understand it better. 
A few weeks ago, I published a book that's called …Is… about living in the present, being present, living a meditative and fun life. It has lots of breathing techniques, meditation techniques, etc. It's really a fun project. The editor was laughing. She said, "Oh, my! The word Reiki appears for the first time on page 156!" 
I wrote it because I see the Corona [pandemic] as a chance to do introspection, to grow. For self-realization and to do all the things that you have not done until now. Maybe some of which you have avoided until now. To fix problems that you might still have not addressed and let go of your baggage.

DIR: I've read a couple of chapters, and I really enjoyed the tone: it's joyful and warm.
FAP: For me, what is important…is to have awareness. To be present in everything. Otherwise, you cannot do your practice. Reiki is the same. But what you also need is tenderness. Tenderness for the people that you're working with, but also for the steering wheel of your car while you're driving, or for the rocks, or for the animals—for everything. If you mix awareness, mindfulness, tenderness, and kindness, that's really an incredible mixture. And that will break your heart open like a pomegranate.
DIR: Your appreciation of tenderness really comes through in the book. It's a word we don't hear a lot about Reiki. We hear a lot about doing techniques, but tenderness is much more important than perfect technique. I'm just grateful we can have these conversations and your wisdom with the world and share your tenderness. Thank you so much for all your time and wisdom!
FAP: Thank you!