From Actor to Healer: Alan Rickman's New Life as a Spirit Guide, Book 1

Chapter 7 - The New Reiki Practitioner

I was happy to accommodate Alan and help any way I could, but I had no idea whether the Reiki Level I attunement would have the same effect on him as it would on a physical person.

Suffice to say, I was perplexed and needed guidance. So I relaxed on the couch and asked Spirit in my mind, "Can I attune a spirit to Reiki?" I expected to hear no.

Spirit's response was immediate: "Yes. Reiki comes from a higher plane than where Alan is. It will channel down through him."

I had no idea if it would work, but I had nothing to lose. "All right, Alan," I said out loud. "I'll perform the Reiki Level I attunement on you." Then I closed my eyes and called Alan to me. After a moment, he appeared in my mind's eye. He looked the same as always: an older man in a gray egg-shaped mist. I spent the next twenty minutes guiding him through the attunement meditation that Wayne and I used in our classes.

Afterward, I opened my eyes and took a few deep breaths. Now it was time to find out what had happened to Alan. Was he attuned to Reiki? There was only one way to know.

I asked him to practice on me. I told him he could activate the Reiki simply by asking it to turn on. In our classes, Wayne and I normally provided suggested guidelines on how to begin and end a session. But since I hadn't attuned a spirit before and didn't know what Alan needed, I kept my instruction simple.

Standing beside me, he held out his hands in front of him. With a booming voice that would have projected easily across an expansive theater, he said, "One, two, three—Reiki on!"

I burst out laughing. I'd never seen a practitioner activate Reiki like that.

I wanted to give Alan something specific to work on. So I told him I sometimes suffered from adrenal fatigue due to stress. I asked him to place his hands over my adrenals, the small glands on top of the kidneys. I expected him to hold his hands a few inches above my body, which a physical person would do. Instead, Alan slid his hands inside my torso and gently placed one hand on top of my left adrenal and the other hand on top of my right adrenal. The gentle pressure of his touch felt like physical hands on my adrenals. Was I imagining this?

Then I instructed Alan to use the power of his intention and ask Reiki to heal my adrenals. The energy would channel automatically without needing to direct it. After a moment, both of my adrenals burned with heat and tingled. I often experienced tingles when receiving Reiki from another practitioner, so this was a familiar sensation. It wasn't my imagination or my own Reiki.

I then asked Alan to work on other parts of my body—my shoulders, my hands—and I felt his warm touch every time he moved to a different area. My body relaxed under Reiki's influence. Alan's energy was strong, and I was impressed with his work. He was a gifted healer.

Afterward, I thanked him for the treatment. He nodded and disappeared without a word.

I was astonished that I had successfully attuned a spirit to Reiki! I wondered if spirits could become Reiki practitioners because the attunement is received directly by the soul, not the physical body. Early in my spiritual training, I had learned that practitioners could give treatments to the deceased. The converse is also true, because I'd met practitioners whose spirit guides could perform healing work on the living. Even Wayne works with spirit healers during his private sessions. However, I had no idea it was possible for the living to teach a deceased person how to perform healing work.

* * * * *

A few days later, I noticed a strong odor in the house. It smelled like a man's cologne or a sweet, musky aftershave. I walked from room to room, trying to figure out where it was coming from. At first, I suspected the air conditioning, but I couldn't find the source. It lingered for weeks throughout the house.