Hi RQ! I heard of the style, and of Peters, who was I believe the first guy to actually go to Japan with a personal translator to get things done (if I'm not mistaken?)
About the "whatever works for you" approach... it's very modern, and very "in the now"... people at a high level realise that "basics" and "forms", and also "rituals" are guidelines for the beginners, until they assimilate and integrate what's really important. Of course basics and fondations are important, but some people react very badly to discipline, and as a result, go on sucking for the rest of their life.
I'm a straight type, I don't like free style, but life made me bump into many people who were doing things the exact opposite as I was doing them, and SOMEHOW, ended up with better, smoother, painless results.
What's difficult to process, is the acceptance that other ways are possible for other people, and that there is no quantifiable quality to any single way of doing something. Everybody will react differently to every single way, and will at some point go free style. EXCEPT for japanese people of old, before the war, who would go on replicating their sensei's reiki the way they were thought. This is very japanese, very stiff, and not at all applicable in japan nowadays, eventhough a good lot of westerners love that aspect.
My dad does anyway, but in his case I believe he's trying to replace an inexistent father figure with a "master" in martial arts and whatnot.
Also, keep in mind that although most of us are born with only the lower chakra active, and the rest of them activate as we grow up, since the hippie revolution more and more people are born with the opposite make up, higher chakras open, lower chakras jammed. This makes them very spiritual from the beginning, very ESP, but also leaves them with a total abhorrence of any "fixed" system with rules and such. I know many of those, and when you listen to their childhood stories, you couldn't believe how many problems they had, and how much trouble they spawned back then, when you look at them now, all angelic faces, smooth warm energy and buddha-like smile on their face.
These people fought all the way to gain the freedom of "going free style" and use whatever was best for them, while the traditional schools and institutions frowned at them all their life.
Although I don't like some of the BS reiki you can see on Ebay, with endless variations of colors and animals, I do believe that it is important to follow your heart and whims when it comes to "evolution" or "ascension" or whatever. Same goes with healing. If you feel like eating cake in the middle of your diet, you should. Why? Because making you happy for 5min today is more healing than gaining a day in the long war that a diet often proves to be. Intent is the key where energy is concerned, and intent comes from either positive or negative states of mind. We spend enough negative time everyday worrying about crap, and making them real by focusing on them. It's high time people spend time and intent on positive thing, even if they don't fit in the currently accepted thought system.
and one last thing... following a traditional school of whatever gives you zero freedome to express and discover your own uniqueness. And the whole world is about uniqueness. But the more stiff a system is, the more afraid it is of seeing the kids leaving with their precious knowledge and go freestyle. It's born out of the fear of losing a status of importance, and fear of losing one's own uniqueness.
I like chinese styles better... you find a teacher, you train randomly around his group until he finally gives you the honor of looking at you, you show you motivation by practicing all the time, and when he sees fit to correct or teach you, he will. And if you want to leave and never come back, it won't spoil his night of sleep. Japanese ways are often very very biased and more restrictive than the army, which makes me smile cause every "hardcore" japanese teacher I know made a 90 degrees turn toward non-japanese soft/smooth style somewhere after 50. When they start feeling they lack something, they look outside of their box and realise they'd been doing it the wrong way.
The wonderful thing about reiki, is that even if you go freestyle, and might look like you're wasting your time, you can't really hurt yourself or anyone else. Everybody has a different path, and some of us have a chaotic one, like my best friend, who I feel like choking a few times a year... he needs to slam against EVERY wall before taking the softer road, and whatever I tell him won't change a thing. Just being around him is a serious training for me lol. I've never seen him accept somebody else's idea, never see him study or read a book... he will take 19years to achieve what others can do in 6 months, but SOMEHOW, he always falls back on his feet....
