DIVE INTO REIKI: Welcome to episode 13 of the Dive into Reiki podcast today with a lovely guest, Bronwen Logan. Bronwen is based in Australia, and she's a Reiki author, teacher, and co-founder of the International House of Reiki and Shibumi International Reiki Association. Due to her research into the Japanese aspect of the Reiki system since the early 2000s, Bronwen has been a major influence on how the system is taught and practiced worldwide. Her books, co-written with Frans Stiene, include The Reiki Sourcebook, The Japanese Art of Reiki, A to Z of Reiki Pocketbook, Reiki Techniques card deck, and Your Reiki Treatment. Bronwen also recorded the double CD Reiki meditations for self-healing and Reiki relaxation with Sounds True.
Bronwen, I'm so grateful you accepted this invitation and that we all get a chance to know you better because I feel that we never see that other side of the International House Reiki. I would love to start with the same question I ask everyone on this podcast, when and how was the first time you discovered Reiki practice?
BRONWEN LOGAN: I would've been in my early 20s. I remember hearing about it then and thinking, what is this thing? And I remember some strange experience when I lived in Australia, and I went to some strange person's house, and they made me fill in all these forms. I actually have no idea what that was, but I remember that they were calling it Reiki. [Laughs]. I sort of went away from that thinking, "Huh? Okay." Then a couple years later, when I was living in Holland, my best friend came over to visit, and she had studied Reiki. She was doing Reiki on me all the time, and it was really lovely. That was a really excellent introduction. At that time in my life, I was trying to find out more about different practices. I was taking different meditation classes and just doing things to try to find out what might make me feel better in myself and stronger and happier.
DIR: I love when people come across Reiki through friends, especially a few years back when there weren't many professional practitioners. Right? Yeah. So what made you go from "I love receiving Reiki from my friend" to this is the practice that will, in a way, define your life.
BL: Well, I was living in Holland with Frans [Stiene, co-founder of the International House of Reiki]. We sold everything up and went to India. So yeah, it wasn't a holiday. We were going to travel through Asia, but he had very bad sciatica, which he'd had for a number of years. So we were looking for something because we were backpacking, you know. That's really hard to actually carry a backpack when you're in pain. So we were looking for something that could help with that. And we tried all different sorts of things and met different sorts of people. India is an amazingly [diverse] country. There are lots of different modalities and local indigenous things. That was very interesting.
Bronwen Logan.
We went down to the South of India, where there's a lot of Ayurveda. That's like a traditional Indian healing system. We booked Frans into a little local place to have an ayurvedic treatment done, which is said to be very good for sciatica. We stayed there for a number of weeks while he was sort of going backward and forwards and having this treatment in the jungle. And at the same time, we were looking at healing modalities, and we came across a book. There was a book by Paula Horan. I think she's American and she lives in India. She had published a book about the system of Reiki. It was a very simple beginner's book. So that was really great. I remember sitting there, on the edge of the bed in the little room, trying to do this thing and not having any idea what I was doing. But very curious. So we thought that that would be an interesting practice to learn.
When we went to Nepal, we came across an Englishman who lived there and was teaching the Reiki system. We were there for a number of months and studied through him. What he was teaching was a little bit all over the place, to be honest. But it sort of didn't matter in one way.
I did Reiki 1 and thought, "Oh, wow, this is truly amazing." And then I did Reiki 2, and I was just like, "Oh, this is something that could be—like you were saying before—like a defining moment. It's really something that will change everything, how I'm going to do things in life."
I was very fortunate at that time in my life that I didn't have a job to go to. I didn't have to do anything, you know, to be there for other people or do anything except really look at myself, see what was happening with me, and reach out to anything that could help me. So yeah, we then went on and did Reiki 3 there. It was great.
It was sort of mind-blowing this idea that we could teach this. So not long after being in Nepal, we went to Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas, and we rented a house there right on the very top of Dajeerling, which we called Reiki House. And we started doing treatments and teaching people.
So that was sort of it—it was definitely not my intention. And in fact, the reason why I went to India first was because I thought the food was really great. I love Indian food. So That was the main reason. And once I got there, it's a bit of an addiction, India. It's such a fascinating place. And then I thought we'd be moving on to Thailand and wherever else in Southeast Asia. But that didn't happen. I ended up being in India for two years at that point. Yeah.
DIR: I love how many people go to India for a yoga or a spiritual journey. You went for food and ended up having a profoundly spiritual experience. I find the roads that take us to our destiny fascinating. So, how did you realize there was more to Reiki practice than the "all-over-the-place" training you got?
BL: When I first studied, the guy sort of had all these little bits of photocopies of this and that. This was in the late 1990s, and we didn't really have computers. I actually did get a computer when I started teaching the system of Reiki. And set up my first ever website, which was very exciting. You know, this long scrolly page. But what [out teacher] gave us was, I guess, photocopied out of books or things like that. And it was from different books, and I was like, how does this all fit together? I didn't have much of an idea. And then the idea that I wanted to teach people. How do you teach something that you know there's something really amazing there, but you are not quite sure how to put it all together. We did ask a lot of questions of that teacher and in the end, he told us not to contact him anymore. He just didn't know the answers, right?
DIR: [Laughs] I had the same experience. I called a teacher to ask questions, and he hung up on me too!
BL: [Laughs] Yeah. I mean, that's a difficult situation, but it's a really great learning lesson, isn't it? It's like, don't be like that. Don't do that. I've never said to anyone [that] I can't answer something. Even if I don't know the answer, I'll go away and work it out. Right.
We came back to Australia, [where my mom lives] because I was pregnant, and continued to build a business. I had already done a teaching English as a Foreign Language course in England. I had done a little teaching before I left Australia as well. I studied performing arts. So I used to teach performing arts as well. So, we came back to Australia, and I did a business course. That was really great. I think a lot of the problems with people who are practicing the system of Reiki and want to start a business [is that] they may not have those skills, and it's another important part of that. But you learn, right?
[The course] included things like marketing, how to do finances, and all those sorts of things—making your mind tick, go over in a different way and think about how you can best do this. That was really interesting. Within probably a year of that, I also did a teacher training and assessment course here as well in Australia. So just to get more teaching skills up, I think that's really important too. Another thing that people, you know, when they're teaching the system of Reiki, they just don't have the skills for teaching. So they're not really sure. Maybe they might be approaching things from an angle that might not work for their students. So, finding different ways of how people learn and what's the best thing for them. And that really helped me in creating the Ki Campus, our student website.
And just while I'm talking about those things, also doing like a basic counseling skills course, you don't have to be a counselor because it's not about being a counselor but knowing how to be with someone if they're really upset. If someone comes in the door and they're not feeling great, what do you say to them? Just really basic, simple things like that I think are really helpful.
And first aid would be the other one that I would recommend that people have. I just saw in Australia that our treasurer for New South Wales—the state I'm in—was walking down the street, and someone had a fit in front of him and collapsed. He had his first aid, and he helped that person immediately. Everyone was like, "Wow, that's fantastic." I think it's a really good thing to have that. You can help people who are in need, and, as a Reiki practitioner, you just never know what's going to happen.
DIR: I think it's important because many of us struggle when we go professional. We may be just holding the space, or, as some people like to say, the energy is intelligent, but there is human interaction involved. How do we communicate during our sessions and classes? How do we react when our clients do something unexpected or have emotional releases? Those are human skills, and learning them can only benefit the people we serve and us.
BL: Absolutely. A lot. I mean, as we speak, the energy is still flowing. Right? But there are still other aspects to this existence. They are the practical aspects which I think will make a big difference. And in fact, you know, they're the things that really set the International House of Reiki up to be the International House of Reiki. And if I look even at the name—the International House of Reiki. I mean, I would never have called our business the International House of Reiki. We were teaching out of our spare bedroom, with a baby in the other room when we started in Australia. But when I did the business course, they made me choose a name. The names that I wanted; I couldn't have. So, it automatically said, this is what we recommend that you should use because no one's got this name. I thought, "Well, Frans is from Holland, I'm from Australia, and we studied in Nepal and taught in India—that'll do [laughs].
DIR: And now you will teach classes worldwide and have the ki campus online. You grew into the name.
BL: In a way. I've always had quite an open sort of feeling with this, I must say. I've always [had the idea that] if you want to do something, you do it to the best that you can possibly do it. I did actually find that that year of teaching in Darjeeling was a bit like… [a sort of] internship. All that I would do in my week was get up, teach, and practice. We would go out and do treatments on local people, or they would come to us. Every couple of days, we were teaching people who were traveling through. So, it was a mixture of local people and travelers that we were working with, but it was constant. It was lovely. In this house that we lived, we had a lady who would come and make us breakfast. She was actually meant to be the cleaner, but she didn't like cleaning, so she'd make the breakfast [laugh], and that was really lovely and delicious. All I can think of when I think of that is pumpkin and tamarin and homemade rotis. So beautiful. Then we'd work, go out for lunch, come back, work, and go out for dinner because we didn't really have a kitchen. Then in the evening, I'd write. It was just heavenly. So non-stressful. You could just focus completely on what it is that you want to do. And so, it was a really great experience before moving back into the big world of having to earn a buck and that sort of thing. And have a baby.
Back in Australia, we started researching more, and the internet was taking off. That was amazing. We started contacting people all around the world and saying, "What manuals do you use? What do you teach? Who did you study with?"
[We] started collecting folder upon folder of information and putting that all together. And then in 2001, we went to Japan. I had worked out to meet different teachers that were living there. We met Chiyoko, Yamaguchi, who's no longer with us. Hyakuten Inamoto, a pure land monk. He took us around, and we met another teacher who was from the Gakkai. It was an excellent way to ground ourselves a little bit more in what was happening in Japan or had happened in Japan. There wasn't that much happening in Japan at the time. I noticed that a lot of the Japanese people were very much interested in what we were doing in the West. They were into things like Dolphin Reiki and, you know, things like that [laughs].
And I was like, "This is really weird! We want to know what people are doing in Japan, and Japan wants to know what's been happening over in the West." That was an interesting experience.
So, we got all this information, put it together, and I spent at least a year writing The Reiki Sourcebook. The thing was that I met this guy who ran a bookstore here, and he'd written something like 55 books, and it was a spiritual bookstore. I don't even know how we got to talk, but anyway, we ended up going out, having a meeting and me saying, "This is the idea for the book." And he's like, "If you know what it is you want to write, it's going to happen." I said, "Okay." And he said, "Actually, I've got a publisher in the UK who would be more than happy to have a look at it. Write a couple of chapters, send [I will] send it through." And I did and got a publishing contract. So, it was really easy [and] really lovely.
The good thing was that I had a date to have it finished. So, all that information I had to collate, go through, and make sense of—and that was The Reiki Sourcebook. I was so thrilled about that. It was a great thing to have put together because it expressed the confusion that I'd had when I started learning. It's not a book for a beginner, but if you were a teacher that you could look into this book and go, "So I was taught this technique, where does that technique come from? Or this is the lineage that I'm in. What does that mean?" You know, who says what, where, what was introduced at what point in that lineage and because there was a lot of confusion around what the system of Reiki was at that time. I think that writing that book and then The Japanese Art of Reiki has really helped to clarify for a lot of people what the system is. What it's made up of. The idea is that there's a certain number of elements that you have to practice to be able to say that you're actually working with the system of Reiki. Because what I found incredibly frustrating was that people would go, "Oh yeah, I do Reiki." And I'm thinking, "What do they mean I do Reiki? You know, like I do spiritual energy. I don't understand that." I mean, we are spiritual beings. We're also physical beings. It was just very confusing. So if someone says they do Reiki, does that mean they actually studied a course? Or did someone say my grandmother told me how to do something? Which I don't invalidate at all, but it may not be the system of Reiki.
It's a bit like saying that you do Tai Chi or something. Now Tai Chi is working with energy and moving. Well, if I work with energy and moving, do I do Tai Chi? No, I need to actually learn the practices, right?
DIR: And also bringing to light elements like Reiki meditations that were not well-known at the time.
BL: When I studied in Nepal with the English guy, there were meditations, but they weren't the same. I think that people realize that if you're going to do spiritual practice, there is some level of meditative practice in that.
When I first came back to Australia, at that time, I was talking to another Reiki teacher, and she was going to me, "Oh no, no, no, there's no breathing practices in the system of Reiki. I teach the real [Reiki]." You have to go through that experience. I went through that experience, anyway, of having to try to work out what was and wasn't real for me. Most of the people that you would talk to had studied through Western practices, through Hawayo Takata, who had taught from Hawaii. A lot of them had different ideas. Trying to discuss this was incredibly difficult. And that also helped to write because you're trying to refine what you're understanding from what you've been discovering and putting that together... I think the problem there was that, in the West, people were very much focused on hands-on-healing.
One of the elements of the system of Reiki is working with your hands. But it's just one of the aspects. It's not the aspect. We were taught the precepts right way back in the beginning, but it was not discussed and not really thought about. If we think about it now, we can see that the precepts are actually out of the five elements; the one that these are the four elements are saying if you work with us, then you'll be this. So it's the more important part, right? If there is a more important part… If we can be those precepts, then we can be the then we are Reiki. Then we discover our true selves. We discover what it means to be what, ultimately, we would call enlightened.
DIR: For me, the precepts make the practice so much more approachable. When I meet people and want to explain Reiki, I just use the precepts: a spiritual practice that allows you to let go of anger and worry and to become more grateful and compassionate. Who doesn't want that?
BL: That's beautiful. For me, the system of Reiki is incredibly simple. It's not bells and whistles, and I'm very much no-rules-Reiki… Of course, there is a foundation and a structure.
DIR: Yes, because if not, people can go a little rogue there [laughs].
BL: When we start making rules, it's all in the head, it's all this rational, you know? What I think, you know what I mean? So letting that go.
DIR: Changing gears a bit here: I would love to talk about your experience guiding Reiki meditations. I really enjoy the clarity with which you guide them and the way you use your voice to hold the space. A lot of us in the Reiki community create guided meditations. What are some of like the dos and don'ts when it comes to doing guided meditations?
BL: I think a lot of people love guided meditation because it helps their brain to latch onto something. I mean, the Zen thing where you would sit for hours and do [nothing is] incredibly hard. In our society, we are more intellectually based. We are too top-heavy. Guided meditation will help with that.
Some of the dos of guided meditations are:
I always say to people, record yourself first… and then listen back. Does it make any sense what you just said? Because you might forget to tell people something simple like just to close their eyes or whatever. You might not think about what they're doing with their hands. So and people are thinking, "Oh!" So instead of them meditating, they're thinking about, "Am I meant to be doing this, or am I meant to be doing that? So physically really helping people move into the space and knowing where they are.
I always say that with Reiki treatments as well, that what you want is the person to be really, really comfortable. Because the more comfortable that someone is, the less their mind is going to be active. If they're uncomfortable, then their mind's going to go, "What are they going to do now?" There's just all this stuff going on in their heads. What we really want is for them to be able to let go and to be in the space. So, making someone comfortable in whatever way that is, I think that's really important.
I mean, there are lots of dos and don'ts, for example, telling them how long the meditation's going to be. Because they might think when you start [that] it's going to be five minutes, or they might think, "Oh my God, do I have to sit here for an hour?" Giving them guidelines, really supporting the person, thinking about the other person, being empathetic, putting yourself in their position. [These are] really basic fundamental things to do.
The other thing is [that] when we are speaking, and we do meditation, we are going into that space as well. So, we need to be careful that we don't end up going [inward] it and [our voice] just fades away. Ensuring that you're actually still in the space with the students because it's very easy to go into your own practice. As a teacher, you need to be in both spaces at once. And that is a little bit of a challenge, but it's something that you can practice and get better at.
But even though it's great to be in that space, because then we are holding that space, we also need to be able to feel that space. We need to also have that sense of knowing that we are here and being aware of what's going on for the students. You don't know what's going to happen. And different students can respond in different ways… They might be shocked by what's happening or something like that. And you need to be aware if that's happening in the group and if you need to be there for someone.
DIR: So I know that you also extended your teachings to Reiki with animals because you love them. What is your approach to this?
BL: About? Yeah. I've always had animals in my life. But, you know, I always see humans as animals. I've had lots of humans in my life too. [Laughs].
DIR: They're many animals too, but that's a New York joke. [Laughs].
BL: Yes, but I'm talking about well-mannered animals, Nathalie! [Laughs]. I've always had some animals. I find in our society, the way that we talk to children is quite different to the way that we talk to adults... With children, there are so many beautiful picture books where the animal talks, the animal is the same as you—I'm talking about non-human animals. Yeah. The non-human animals are the same as you and me… It has feelings. It can feel pain. It can be sad. It can be happy. And children love that, you know, and they see that in animals.
Definitely, as a child, I related to animals. I just felt they were the same. I still have this image of my dad cleaning out the pond, and he had all these tadpoles in water in a bowl that he'd gotten out of the pond. He's going to throw them away, and I'm like, "Don't throw the pet!" And this adult world not understanding that. And yet this adult world had also come from this child world. So, when children grow up… it's like the rules change, you know?
How many kids have asked, "Oh, what is it that I'm eating?" And someone will say, "Well, that's pork." "What's pork?" "Well, you know that cute book about the pig? That's a pig you're eating." And then the child has to grow up and accept that this is what humans do. But we don't have to do that. We can retain that connection that we understand as children and that we don't mind allowing children to understand. And that we almost encourage children to understand. And then we take the humanity out of the humans.
I don't think I lost that particular humanity, at any rate, you know? I've always really retained this feeling. Not being the Lord of, but sharing my life with other animals—human or non-human. It just feels very right to me. When I was a kid, I had dogs, cats, and rabbits. Now I have a pig, Flora. I've got dogs and cats, and I've got horses, and I've had goats. I've got chickens and ducks. We all share this space together. And they all tell me what they want or what they don't want, or whether things are good or not good.
People love coming here because the animals actually share the space as well. I don't have a pig style. I don't know if you remember what that is. I do because my mother had a dairy farm with a pig style, and it's like this little space with these big pigs inside it. And they have to live in the mud. And that's actually not how pigs in their natural existence live. Thinking about how animals live and how they are at their happiest and trying to make way for them to experience that in the same way that I'm able to experience it. So, you can say, what does that have to do with the system of Reiki?
Like I said, I'm a bit of a "no-rules" Reiki person. I'm very much about letting go and finding truth in a situation and using the precepts to help me find those truths. And for me, the truths are that these animals need to live and exist in the best way that they can possibly live. I allow them to go everywhere, but I create ways to make everybody safe. To keep everybody happy. It's more about living together rather than me trying to make them do or be something for me.
DIR: Like a living embodiment of the practice versus offering hands-on healing to the pig for ten minutes.
BL: Yeah. My pig is very chatty. I've heard people say that they've never met a pig as chatty. She tells you the whole story. If there is something wrong, she tells me this whole thing, and she's gotten it out of the system. She's an absolutely amazing character, and it's wonderful for people to see an animal that they think of as food. People just have no idea what a pig is actually like. To meet a pig, to experience that is really meaningful… So then they actually need to have a think about things and [food]—would you eat your dog?
The other thing that I was going to say about that is that I totally believe that each of us, we create our own universe. We create this world and how [we] live. And this is the life that I have chosen. So I think people need to think about that. If we can do good within this universe, other people see that, and that affects other people.
DIR: I love that! I think that sometimes we want to save the world, but it's such a big endeavor that we never do anything. [Yet] just by changing ourselves and becoming kinder and more centered, we actually can create change. To close my interviews, I like to ask people like you—renowned Reiki masters with many years of practice and very respected—if you can share an "oops," 'Whoops," or teachable lesson.
BL: I think from a very personal level that we all need to constantly work on ourselves. And I think as a teacher, maybe I can't think of a good whoop for you, but being a better listener is definitely… a really good thing to know. That when things don't work out how you imagine them, just understanding that that's the way things are.
I think there are a lot of those just very natural human things that I wish that I could be better. The only thing I can just think about right now is that I had someone in a class who had PTSD, and I did actually know that, but I didn't ask for details. I wish I'd known much more about that experience before I went into the class because that person actually had really severe PTSD and was actually taking medications... I mean, everything was fine and it all worked out in the end, but, you know, I really felt like I had let myself down by not understanding the situation better and obviously having to do more managing in the class than what I probably would have had to have done in the first place. So, you know, understanding those things about people [is an important lesson.]
DIR: I have one last question: can you share one single tip to deepen our practice?
BL: I think that this relates to what I was saying earlier: the idea of letting go. Yeah. Especially if we're stuck. I was saying before, no rules. Really just letting go of what you think you should be doing or shouldn't be doing. Letting that all go and just sitting in that [beautiful open]. And when we're in that open space, then everything comes.
DIR: Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful knowledge and wisdom with us.
BL: Thank you!
Drawing inspired by Bronwen’s internview.
