In my last blog article, “Merging with the Compassion of Green Tara,” I gave a general overview of Reiki healing and highlighted some things I learned at a Reiki intensive last weekend with my teacher, Reiki Master William Bagley. In this blog post I will share my personal experience with receiving the Tanran Reiki relationship healing symbols.

The first evening, Will gave us an overview of the relationship healing symbols, and then we sat in meditation while he guided us to visualize and receive those symbols. During the lecture I thought to myself, ‘This will be good information for me to know for when I work with couples. I don’t really need this right now personally, since I just took the brahmacharya celibacy vow for at least six months, and I’m not planning on being in a relationship any time soon.’ So, without feeling any emotions, I took the following notes on the meanings and actions of the relationship healing symbols:

The five Tanran Reiki relationship healing symbols support the cycle of a healthy romantic relationship. The first four symbols are in a circle, with the fifth symbol placed in the center of the circle. To view the symbols and read more extensive information than I will offer here, go to the Tanran Reiki Blog at http://tanranreiki.blogspot.com/ 

The first symbol is Toh Noh Men, and it supports the honeymoon phase when male and female are resting in each other. When male and female relax into each other, their muscles relax, and that releases all the repressed emotions that were stored in their muscle tissues. The tendency is then to blame the other person for how bad they’re feeling, rather than seeing that those emotions are releasing because of the Love. When Love brings up the repressed emotions, then that means it is meant to be a healing relationship.

The second symbol is Teh Gah, which supports the processing phase of the relationship. The key to this phase is both people committing to holding the container of the relationship. For talking to be productive, couples need to process energetically first. So, when an issue arises, rather than verbally arguing about it, the first thing to do is to get the energies back into harmony. Breathing is the key for getting the energies right. Once the energies are back in harmony, then the talking level communication can be productive.

Will taught us two breathing exercises for harmonizing the energies. One is to sit facing each other and cross your arms and hold hands. One person exhales while the other person inhales. Eye contact isn’t necessary. It is easiest to watch your partner’s mouth so you can get the breathing flowing correctly. Then you can add eye contact if you wish, by looking into each other’s left eyes. The other exercise is to sit back-to-back with arms locked on the sides, and then one person exhales while the other person inhales. Whichever way you choose, you need to breath like that for at least 42 minutes in order for the energies to really shift.

I know 42 minutes sounds like a really long time, but a good argument can go on for much longer than that, so this is definitely worth a try!

The third symbol is Neh Tah Ru, and it supports the process that unfolds when the male and female are merging their energies more and more in sexual union. With sexual union, there is a surge of energies: sexual union relaxes the tension in the muscles, so all the repressed emotions that were stored in the muscles get released, AND the karmas that were stored in the sacrum get released. The more the hearts unite, the more the energies rise up. As soon as you merge sexual energies, the natural process is that the karmas get released. If you know that this is going to happen, then you are prepared, and you can work consciously with the released energies.

This symbol is about being aware of the inevitable process that gets activated by the merging of sexual energies. There is a lot more than pleasure going on during sexual union: the Kundalini Energy is actually doing quite a lot of work, because the sacred action of sexual union is the healing of karmas. Love will bring up anything that needs to be healed. The key to this phase is both partners being committed to staying PRESENT with whatever is arising. If both partners surrender to the Energy, then they can go deeper because that mutual surrender to the Energy resolves the power struggles.

The fourth symbol is Teh Mah Lah, and it supports the whole Energy Field created by the couple. Male and female are the same, but different: here they process in a mirror image way, and they commit to being aware of the atmosphere that they are creating with each other. They commit to balancing their energies in the shared space of the breath, so that the atmosphere becomes charged by them breathing loving energy in and out of the energetic field around them.

The fifth symbol is Sakarah, and it supports the couple in unifying all dualities and floating in all of Life. When each person resolves all dualities within, then “male and female resting in each other becomes each person resting and floating in all of life.”

Again, for more information on these symbols and to see the symbols drawn, go to the Tanran Reiki Blog at http://tanranreiki.blogspot.com/ 

After the lecture, Will guided us to open and receive these symbols in meditation, and that’s when I emotionally fell apart. During the first symbol, I started crying, and with each symbol I cried harder, until we reached the fifth symbol. The first four symbols brought up all my grief that my romantic relationships haven’t been so healthy. During the fourth symbol I was crying so hard that I wanted to run away, but I made myself stay with the process, which was good, because once he started talking about the Wisdom and Divine Grace associated with the fifth symbol, Sakarah, then I immediately connected with Divine Love and my system relaxed.

As the last tears streamed down my cheeks, I had a big “Ah-HA” moment in which I understood all of the pain and suffering that I’ve gone through in romantic relationships. I saw clearly how my choosing to participate in connections that did not have healthy energetic containers inevitably led to all the dramas that played out in the stories of my life. In some of my romantic lilas (Sanskrit word for “divine plays or divine sports”), I behaved in ways that I did not like, and I regret some of my words and actions. However, in that meditation I was able to forgive myself because I understood what caused my reactions. Simply put, intense karmas arose within connections that did not have the proper containers to hold them.

Will echoed my own inclination when he said that it really works best to go deep with just one person. Due to my past propensity to attract males of the polyamorous persuasion, I have had many heated conversations on this topic. Because of the inevitable release of karmas, sharing sexual energies with more than one person at a time is like jumping into a huge fire. It is delusional to think that you won’t get burned by all those karmas.

Due to some not-so-good choices on my part, I’ve been burned a few times too many this past year, so I’m taking a “time-out” with the option to not go back in! Strangely, as I am typing about fires, a huge wind is bringing the smell of smoke into the valley, and now I hear a helicopter overhead. I pray for all the beings affected by all fires: all the actual fires and all the metaphorical fires!

Soon I will write a blog about this brahmacharya vow I’ve taken…

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of Oregon Coast by Teja Shankara.

August 18, 2010... My Reiki teacher William Bagley's response to the above article:

Dear Teja, thank you for posting all this and sharing your experience with the symbols on your blog. You definitely get the living sense of how they are meant to work. What I would like to add is that I received these symbols in dreamtime... from the Reiki Guides. It was wonderful to receive them and feel the truth behind them, and they form a kind of mandala where each of their energies is constantly interacting with each other, and there are four other heart symbols that surround them. The meaning behind the other four being there (transmuting love, trusting love, radiant love, and forgiving/processing love) is that we need the foundation of love in all our relations in order to support the more focused love of a romantic union, that both need to be committed to their spiritual path, their healing, their emotional growth, and, hopefully, even meditation practice on their solo path before they meet someone to do a "dual vehicle" journey with. The Tibetan Buddhists call this "karma mudra" to emphasize what kind of process one enters into. The relationship journey can be the easiest, more rapid, and most peaceful path to healing and enlightenment, a natural place to deeply learn what love is. Meditating on top of a mountain may give deep peace, but love is partly interpersonal and is meant to grow in relationship. There is something beautiful and deep to evolving as humans that can be learned there. It has to do with trusting the larger energy of life that brings the two beings together. The Reiki Guides said that they released the symbols into this world at this time to help something that is meant to grow and appear in human life. It is behind all the focus on relationships and healing them. Deep down we know that love in relationships can be more than it sometimes has been. Blessings, Will

May 22, 2011... My dear Reiki healer sister D. M'Chelle sent me her artistic renditions of the Tanran Reiki Relationship Healing Symbols. Please enjoy them in my blog posted today, "Tanran Reiki Relationship Healing Symbols by D. M'Chelle"