THE VALUE OF REIKI AS PERCEIVED BY OTHER ALTERNATIVE HEALING MODALITIES AND THE WORLD

I am running into a very interesting attitude problem with others in the alternative medicine field, which is making me see the wisdom of Hawayo Takata charging $10,000.00 to make someone a Reiki Master.  I know, calm down, I can sense your outrage and see your eyebrows going up! 

Here is where I am coming from with this: I have worked in several wellness centers now with many acupuncturists, herbalists,massage therapists and even estheticians.  The attitude I get from these people is unbelievable.  It's all - I was in training intensely for 3 years at so and so's school, and paid up the wazoo for my training, you are just a lowly Reiki practitioner who only put in a few hours in training and hardly spent anything for it and all you do is run energy, etc., etc., etc.

Seriously people this is what they think of us!  So number one, this tells me that they have no clue about what Reiki is and what it does, and number two we should all be considering charging a lot more money to make people Reiki like Mrs. T did and give Reiki sessions.

I've been struggling off and on about my fees for sessions and classes for years.  My website designer told me this story one day and it totally changed my perspective on this. A high end jeweler in Santa Fe decided to get in a line of the local Native American silver and turquoise jewelry, but priced it very low (like $35 and $50) as compared to all the diamond and gold jewelry in the hundred and thousands in his shop. It sat there and didn't move at all for a long time.  One day he hired someone to come in and clean out all the cases.  They inadvertently changed all the price tags on the silver jewelry marking everything up significantly to $350 and $500 when they put everything back into the cases - it flew out the door after that.

There is even a story about Usui working in the slums of Tokyo healing beggars and after some time the supposedly healed beggars were returning to the slums - when Usui asked them why they said it was easier to beg then to go out, get a job, have a family, own a home, etc.  It is said he vowed then and there to never give Reiki away for free again - people do not value what they can get for free.

Moral of this story - our culture has a preconceived notion of how they value things - they place more value in something that costs more because they see it as more valuable whether it is or not. This is a very well known fact in the car business (why do you think a Mercedes costs so much) the fashion business, the jewelry business and so on).  I raised my prices significantly and now I am busier than ever - I VALUED MYSELF. I made a statement to the universe that I see what I do as valuable!