June 10, 2008

Well, I’ve now done it. I turned down an opportunity to teach Reiki at a very large, fairly local spa. What I lost was a month’s rent. What I kept was my integrity.

Quite a while ago, I trained a massage therapist who works at the spa. She went all the way through Reiki Master. Since then, she has been telling her boss that they should be offering Reiki as one of there services. After more than a year, he finally called me and we set up a class date. That was where things started going south.

I explained what I needed and how things would have to happen. When I finally had the number of students, I sent them an invoice for the class amount noting that 50% was due now and the rest at the beginning of class. (This is my company policy as it is explained on my website.) they called and told me that they needed me to send them a separate invoice for 50% and another one on class day. They then told me that I would be paid at the end of class, not the beginning. (Wow. If I go to classes anywhere, whoever I go to wants all their money up front. Why does this spa think they have to be different?)

I had to circumvent my accounting system to generate the invoices. (In the real business world, and invoice is sent out for the full amount, and once partial payment has been received, a statement is sent out showing the balance. It’s just like a credit card statement with a minimum due.) I agreed also to ignore my policies and take payment after the class. But I was getting a very bad feeling. Realistically, I could see myself giving them the invoice on the day of the class (a Sunday), and being told that their accounting department didn’t work on Sundays. I know someone that they paid for training, and it took them six to eight weeks to do so.

Then I started looking at what they had told me about the students. I kept being told that the students were told to keep an open mind. Uhhh, yeah. The more I listened, the more I felt that the spa wanted to be able to put this modality on the menu (offer it as a service), but the therapists were not really interested in learning it. They were only looking at getting their continuing educations credits (CEUs). Lovely.

The problem with this is that Reiki is not massage. You can not just rub like someone is showing you. Anyone can fake interest during a massage class, get their CEUs, and then never use what they have been trained. One can not do this with Reiki. If you are not willing to open up to the possibilities and let the energy through (which takes a certain mindset), then you can not do it. this would be unfair to whomever they got partnered with in the class, and would not allow them to be able to do it in practice.

Up until now, all of my students have wanted to learn Reiki. They were drawn to it, or interested in it. even the ones that took it to get their CEUs did so because they had an interest. I felt this was not going to be the case for this class at the spa.

 

I was spending a lot of time putting everything in writing to the spa, yet everything from them was verbal. They would read my letters and ignore the content. There was no contract, no written agreement. This scared me as I though I could easily be screwed for my efforts.

I felt that to teach these people who really did not want to learn would compromise my integrity as a teacher. Going against my company policy would compromise me as a business owner. By the time I looked at what was about to take place, I realized that I was only doing it for the money.

When I got into Reiki, I never wanted to be doing it for money, but one has to pay the rent. There has to be balance. (I have even turned down prospective students wanting to take someone else’s base instruction to a higher level because I felt the quality of their original training was lacking.) Here, I was doing this class only because of the money. That was not where I wanted to be. So instead of compromising my integrity, I called them and backed out of the class.

Well I still have my integrity intact. Yet I keep hearing that integrity does not pay the bills. I hope this was not a mistake. I feel it wasn’t. But only time will tell.