SHAMANIC REIKI MASTER TEACHER AND LIFE EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM 2017 – “SRMT”
Llyn Roberts, MA
With Stacey Gibbons and SRW Team
BUILDING YOUR SHAMANIC REIKI PRACTICE
Foundational Statement for Marketing
Get clear about what you are offering. Ask some friends and/or clients to write a two-paragraph description of their experience of your work. Ask them to keep their write-up to 30 words. Using the most enticing words and phrases of what you gather, design a paragraph from these that succinctly – in about 15 words – expresses what you do. You can also include bullet points, which are easy to read and give detail of what people can expect. Keep in mind that you must define your practice in one professional statement.
Getting the Word Out and Building Community
Consider journeying and inviting dreams and synchronicities to help you get clear about your business name, logo, details about the design of your brochure and website and materials, and so forth. Invite the help of your Shamanic Reiki spirit guides!
Remember that your business materials will need a lot of exposure to draw attention – in other words, they’ll need to be seen by people repeatedly and consistently. Commit to at least a dozen ad times for each submission if you do decide to place ads in a local holistic publication. (And, they are other and less costly ways.)
Conduct public Community Healing Circles, per the outline in the Shamanic Reiki book. This is a great way to get your name and practice out there, network with other healers, have people experience your energy, and offer something really beautiful to your community. You can start with smaller versions in your home with just a few people, until you feel comfortable moving out into the public. Or, stay with small groups in your home. Some people only desire to work with friends and family, not publicly, and that is beautiful.
Give public talks about Shamanic Reiki. Holistic bookstores and food-stores may be very open to you sharing wisdom from the book, Shamanic Reiki, which can include taking people on a simple journey experience at the end.
Invite other practitioners to offer events at your healing space, Tarot, Crystal work, shamanic work, etc.
Offer monthly fire ceremonies, if you have a fire space at home or available to you elsewhere. The Siberian Chalimar Obaa ceremony is outlined for you in Shapeshifting into Higher Consciousness. You can do an indoor version at a fireplace, btw!
Offer free introductory sessions to local holistic professionals such as chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists, naturopaths and even nurses and physicians others who may like to refer their clients to you. You can do the same at colleges and universities that may have alternative therapy programs.
Or, simply network with the above as they may be willing to display your card or brochure. Or consider creating a circle together that offers seminars to the community.
Bottom line is – become a community supporter, a resource person within your community. Get out there and meet as many people in your community as you can!
You can also look for networking groups in your area, or visit the chamber of commerce. Or, consider volunteering for a community organization you feel affinity with, for instance – offering hands-on time to an animal rehabilitation or rescue center, or designing a special one-time program for a Waldorf or other holistic school.
With consent - place brochures and cards in holistic bookstores, health food stores, health practitioner’s offices, etc.
Obtain and place endorsements from satisfied clients on your website and brochures. You must ask how they want the quote signed. Never use a quote, or a person’s full name at the end of the quote without express permission.
Word of mouth by folks who are satisfied – appreciative of you and your work – is the best advertisement!
Fees
Journey on, and really feel out - what your approach to this should be. What is right for you?
State your desired fee as an ‘Exchange Amount’. You may like to state a sliding scale range.
Offer special discounts for initial sessions for first-time clients.
Offer gift certificates.
Offer ‘package’ fees, such as 3 sessions for X amount of money.
Check your local laws regarding bartering for services.
Spiritual Means to Support Your Practice
Be you, radiate authenticity and expectancy! Be close to and make offerings to nature and the spirits with the clear intent to offer your work to benefit the Earth, all nature beings, people and invisibles – all sentient life. Do the practices and work with yourself and others as much as you can.
Keep your energy clean! People can feel and sense when you are connecting with them, or offering something, JUST to promote yourself and build your practice, and they’ll resent it. You’ll turn people off instead of attract them. Offer from the heart in a detached way – which often has the natural result of people being drawn to you and wanting to know more about your work, and providing opportunities for you to share it. To do this, you of course have to work with your own abundance and self-worth, so you’re not coming from a place of scarcity, but a place of richness, and not inadvertently getting unconscious needs met but radiating from a place of fullness.
This extrapolates to your actual hands-on work. Be vigilant. Be aware of your own issues and address them. It is also helpful to consciously psychologically/emotionally/psychically separate the ‘money’ focus from your holy in-session time with people. The suggestion in the Shamanic Reiki book to have them place the offering on the altar, helps support this intention – the offering really is for the spirits and the Earth, who do all the work. Of course you deserve to be compensated for your time and all that you offer.
If you have a sense of some unconscious obstacles that are keeping you from magnetizing the practice you want, keep doing and receiving your own work, and here’s a very helpful resource:
How to Live by Your Spiritual Vision in a Money-Based World
By Carol Bridges.
Meditate or journey on what client base you would like to work with, or that you are perfectly suited to work with, from the view of your higher self. For instance, do you offer to those who know little of the practice, newbies? Do you gear your practice to those who want to be proactive with health and wellbeing and recalibrate their energy? Are you offering to those who have deep-seated or chronic issues on any level? Are your gifts in the area of emotional healing, or physical? (of course, these are ultimately inseparable). Perhaps you will work with: animals, children, adults, and nature. Keep in mind that our ego-personalities often have ideas about what we want to do, yet our higher selves hold the clearer picture of what we’re best at, how our gifts can best develop and how we can evolve to fulfill our higher purpose.
NOTE: Healers often speak about ‘being in service’. The word service relates to ‘servant’, ‘servitude’, etc. We do not need or want to be martyrs or servants. Too many healers are unaware of their own ego forces and how they build an identity out of being a ‘do-gooder’ and one who ‘heals’ or ‘helps’ people. Remember that we aren’t the ones who ultimately heal! Consider these things, and get to the fabric of what this work is about for you as well as how your own ego processes. No worries, it is a journey we all go through, over and over, as we go more and more deeply into authenticity. Consider that what you do, what you offer - flows naturally, is a natural result of you growing more fully into who you are and becoming more harmonious with the life flow around you. You do not need to try to ‘serve’ or be a servant. Rather, embrace an ecstatic form that fills you as the conduit, and your client, as the recipient. The same is true for teachers. The wisdom is in the circle and you hold the vision and create the space for that wisdom to channel for your students. You’re really not in service to anything, but participating with the force of life in the way you are uniquely meant to, and that’s what being human is about. Journeying this path will strip you bare to brilliant fullness – it is ecstatic.