Creating a Healthy and Successful Reiki Practice

On a Saturday that I don't have a regularly-scheduled class to teach, I have some time to reflect.

Why do I do what I do and am I doing it the way I intend?

I think that I do what I do because I love it. I love to heal and watch others in the healing process. I love to see students and clients go through the transformative process that Reiki represents.

My vision for what I do is to be a community resource for Reiki; to allow healers to learn, grow, and form their own practices to help the world to heal (and especially the community in which I live, the Greater DC Area).

I believe that my practice offers the above. What it has been a bit lax in, I think, of late is to be self-supporting. If your practice isn't able to support itself in a sustainable way, even though you love it, you may have to find another source of income to supplement what you earn from Reiki.

So what's sustainable?

I believe that a sustainable practice is able to:

• yield a regular salary to its owner
• pay its monthly expenses when they are due (or early)
• save a percentage of its income each month for taxes
• have retained earnings at the end of each month
• have a "sustainability fund" to handle low months
• have working capital available for opportunities that present themselves
• schedule healing sessions for its owner(s) that support them on a regular basis

At the moment, I would say that RCGW (my practice) is able to do most of these, but has had an issue with savings or net retained earnings. This is because we have taken on a higher percentage of debt in our growing stage than was sustainable.

I would recommend, after this experience, that the financial percentages for a sustainable practice should look something like this:

• Salaries and Taxes - 40%
• Direct Expenses (class and session supplies, printing, etc) - 30%
• Overhead Expenses (rent, utilities, advertising) - 20%
• Sustainability Fund - 10%

What this means is that about 50% of everything that comes in goes to the expenses of the practice. Forty percent of what remains goes to taxes and salaries which leaves about 10% remaining for growth and emergencies each month. Hopefully, the sustainability fund is not used each month, but has a chance to grow.

It is my dream that my practice have a sustainability fund that allows it to continue without any income for up to a full year. That can become a kind of insurance, especially if you are self-employed, and can eliminate some of the worry that can accompany owning your own business. Because of this intention, I have decided to lower expenses for the business by moving my commercial space to my home office space to save just over half of my overhead expenses. That is slated to take place effective July 1, 2009.

I have some mixed feelings about the change, but in a meditation after my decision, I heard Usui-Sensei say, "Reiki is about the inside, not the outside." A beautiful space that doesn't contribute to the welfare of the business is not sustainable. That is what I am working for right now.