Reiki Level Two: Slowing Down to Go Deeper

If Reiki 1 was about awakening something within me, Reiki 2 was about expanding it – taking the foundations and learning to work with them at a deeper, more intentional level.

By November 2019, I was “ready” – or at least, I thought I was.

The truth is, I was still very much in motion. Still trying to get somewhere. Still quietly convincing myself that I needed to be the best. I told myself the ego had gone, that I was doing this for the right reasons – and in some ways, I really believed that. But does it ever really go?

Looking back, I think I was still measuring progress the only way I knew how: faster, better, more. I had to learn more quickly. Practise harder. Get to Level 2, then Master, then Teacher. Own the journey. Outperform the others. Be the most ‘transformed’ in the room.

It’s funny how persistent that old mindset can be, even when the scenery changes.

Reiki 2 gently (and repeatedly) knocked that mindset off its perch. Because this work doesn’t reward urgency. It doesn’t care how good your ‘pitch’ is or whether you’ve got a ten-year plan. Quick isn’t always good. Energy doesn’t perform on command. It reveals itself when you’re ready to actually feel it.

The training was held in the same space as Reiki 1, but this time I knew the room. Knew the smells. Knew where the tea was. That helped. But the experience itself was deeper, more confronting. The symbols, the idea of sending energy across time and space – if you’d told me a year earlier that this would all feel natural to me, I would’ve laughed. But it did. It made sense, not in a theoretical way, but in the body. In the room. In the results.

Reiki 2 introduced me to the idea that healing doesn’t need to be localised. That people carry pain from the past and fear about the future – and that energy, intention and presence can support them, even from a distance. That hit me. Hard.

There was something quietly powerful about being given symbols that didn’t feel like tricks or shortcuts, but tools – sacred in their simplicity. They gave shape to instinct. Structure to intuition. A kind of invisible alphabet for something I’d only ever felt before.

But the biggest shift? It was internal.

Reiki 2 made it impossible to ignore my own energy. If I turned up scattered, I’d feel it straight away. If I was grounded, the session flowed. It was humbling. Because this wasn’t about mastering techniques. It was about mastering myself – or at least paying attention to where I was getting in the way.

And that idea – that it’s not about control, it’s about surrender – was probably the hardest thing of all. Especially for someone like me, who’d spent most of his life measuring success by how much he could do, solve, fix or outperform.

What Reiki 2 gave me wasn’t just permission to slow down – it was proof that slowing down worked. That depth mattered more than pace. That presence mattered more than performance.

By the end of the course, I no longer saw Reiki as just a wellness tool. It had become a mirror – one that reflected exactly where I was, emotionally and energetically. Not always a flattering view, but always a useful one.

Level 2 marked the moment where Reiki stopped being something I did and started to become something I lived. I wasn’t “healing people.” I was holding space. Being with them. Learning with them. Practising with more precision, more patience, and – slowly – less ego.

The journey deepened. And, whether I was ready or not, it was exactly what I needed.