Why you Should Incorporate Reiki into your life

Have you ever seamlessly stepped into something or met someone or received a gift that you didn’t ask for but it brought so much goodness to your life?

This is what Reiki is to me.

Ok let’s back it up because I have likely already lost readers to word “Reiki” alone.

Science has proven time and again that everything is energy. Almost no one would dispute that at this point. Everything is energy, in different form. The cup of coffee you are holding is energy; as well as the coffee itself and the hot water that it took to steep it.

You are energy as well. If you ever have studied anatomy and physiology, there are amazing microcellular processes involved in every single thing you do from how muscles move to how you deliver a speech. Energy propels it all.

So why would that stop outside of the human body?

Even skeptics, who are fully in the “here and now” and are largely intellect based in their thinking, will pause when their dog growls at someone for no reason. They can watch how the birds act before a huge storm. They can feel the immense power rolling off of an angry sea.

Reiki operates on the concept that everything is energy and those trained in Reiki therapy can harness the energy that is always all around us and funnel into the energetic body of the recipient.

Reiki states that there is a Universal Life Force Energy that connects all things. Practitioners work with this in a subtle way to bring relaxation to the recipient.

Some claim Reiki heals. I hesitate to call myself a healer, because I am simply enabling the recipient to relax enough so the healing process can begin. Reiki assists a person into a state of relaxation, another widely studied concept. The relaxation response is the key to so much healing. When we relax, our amazing bodies issue a whole cascade of healing chemicals from the brain and our being heals itself. Obviously there are times when we need outside help like medicine or surgery; but the relaxation response is required for these to work fully and properly.

When we are relaxed, our being knows what to do. Healing begins naturally. The Reiki session is simply setting the stage for this to take place.

Up until I became a mother, I was a slave to my emotions and my dysregulated nervous system. After having my baby, I knew I had to do something to break the cycles of trauma I grew up in and was still caught in.

I learned to meditate. Very simple- 10 minutes a day of mindfulness meditation. It changed everything. Everything.

They say, “When you take one step toward the Divine, the Divine takes a 1000 towards you.” and this was the case for me. I was taking the first steps on a path and people and experiences were put in front of me that helped me on my way.

One of these people was a trauma therapist who did her sessions under Reiki so the client could be in a relaxed state to better access their past experiences. It was hugely transformative, those first 3 sessions with her. She encouraged me to become reiki certified to help my son who has always been intense and firey.

I got certified with her and ironically, I never used it on my son, although he is now attuned to level 2, for self care and anxiety reduction. But when I returned to the major city hospital where I work, I saw a huge need for this soothing, supportive modality in the pre and post-operative areas where I work.

I spent the next 5 years working to bring Reiki to both patients and staff and we can now claim a team of over 60 Reiki practitioners. During the Covid-19 pandemic, my team gave Reiki to over 200 employees, from the president of nursing, to the people who work in the cafeteria. We have seen hundreds of patients. Many of them keep in touch with me via email or social media and have stated how much having Reiki as part of a western medicine hospital experience changed things for the better.

Honestly, even if you don’t believe in Reiki or energy, can you imagine have a person come sit near you before surgery, playing soothing music and possibly laying their hands on your hand or shoulder? If you have ever had surgery in America, you know that it is a like going through a factory- you get a number and a spot and they move you along as efficiently as possible. I can’t tell you how many people come in already crying, or begging to be put under anesthesia because they are so uncomfortable.

We also treat people after surgery. Reiki helps with physical pain (thank you Relaxation response!!) as it helps to bring neurochemicals that can soothe and provide positive feedback loops.

The hospital sent me to get trained as a Reiki teacher so I could attune an entire cohort of new nurses on a particular unit to Reiki. The point was so that they would have self care AND be able to treat patients who needed it or asked for Reiki. Many nurses report better quality of life from having Reiki certification. I know that being able to offer this to people makes them feel better about being at work; it provides a moment of true connection for them with their patient. It provides a way to help that is beyond pushing meds. It gives the nurses a purpose and a presence that is more reverent of the whole person before them and their own life experience.

I now run a humble Reiki school in the Northeast US where I live, but I can boast of having students from New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and California as well. The students who are meant to learn with me, find me. Although Reiki is Japanese, and steeped in tradition, I am a bit of a radical so my teaching style is not for everyone. My teaching style is more of an opening to the endless possibility that living with an understanding of Energy provides rather than a rigid following of rules for the sake of tradition. Die hard OG Reiki people are always saying “You CAN’T DO IT THAT WAY!”. Oh yeah? Why can’t I? Energy is a concept that humans do their best to understand and assign meaning. Maybe we make this esoteric concept too black and white sometimes?

I teach Reiki because I love energy and showing people how working with Energy can change their lives. You do not need to be a Reiki practitioner to work with energy. All it takes is an intent and an awareness. You can call in different feeling states, like ease, joy, support and you can “clear” different states such as constriction, grasping, or confusion, just by taking a moment to be deliberate and to assign your being with how you would like to proceed. An awareness of Energy can boost your human experience and give you tangible ways to change your daily life.

I love Reiki because it gives me a real way to help. Even skeptical people, when faced with life challenges, may open up to some other way of operating. People call me when their family member is dying, having surgery, going through struggle. People often ask for Reiki when life gets hard and they need a little help getting through. Many of my male clients just simply do not have any other self care and carry so much overwhelm from the pressure of being a provider. People call me to give Reiki to their sick pets, to their child who is struggling with friends at school, or to Reiki their life crisis during marriage separation.

The best part about Reiki, aside from being able to help others, is Self Reiki!!!! In my humble opinion, it is one of the best modalities for rejuvenation and nourishment. Even 15 minutes of it will give you the same amount of energy as a big cup of tea. I love to do it at 3p when I need some pep to get through the rest of the day.

I have learned so much about myself through working with Reiki. Mostly, this whole human experience is a matter of being constricted or being open. That’s it. The rest is a loving and beautiful process that carries us along. We do our part by showing up with integrity, but the rest is done without any help or input from us.

After many years of doing Reiki, there is an intimacy between me and the Reiki that is almost indescribable. The Reiki has a voice, although it is as subtle as a breeze blowing through the green leaves of a eucalyptus tree. But it does speak. It shows me where I am holding on and it shows me how to open. It teaches me to receive and to allow. It teaches me that Grace is always available to me and that it is ME who turns away or gets too graspy/constricted to allow it in.

Mostly, after having done reiki on hundreds of people, I know that all people carry things. I know all people suffer. I know that all people have things they are ashamed of, that they don’t want anyone to know. I know that all people have things that caused them to freeze in place on the inside and some of them need help moving it up and out of their being. I know that all people are inherently good and made of light and openness in the most subtle part of their being. All people wish to be good and free from suffering.

During the session, I can see it all, right before me, like a map: the ways that human living has caused people to clench, resist, tighten. How the events that unfolded in their life accrued on top of their inner light, like donning heavy cloaks. I can see their relief when they let love in; when someone reaches out a caring hand or gives them a moment of safety. Some of the people I have done Reiki on, have not had a moment of safety for a very long time.

I teach Reiki in a non-conventional way, that weaves my understanding of energy, my life-long yoga study and my experience as a nurse into it.

Reiki makes people more conscious, as it frees up what got stuck inside of us (although it never meant to get stuck in the first place.) It illuminates what is hiding in shadow, waiting for the light of love to give it a moment of blessed attention. Mostly, it relaxes people. This is something that our culture does not have access to on a large scale. We were meant to exist in the rest-and-digest mode, with spurts of the fight-or-flight mode for survival. Our society has wired us in reverse, with the sympathetic nervous system being the main operating force and access to the parasympathetic nervous system sometimes only when we collapse into bed.

Thanks for giving Reiki a moment of your time by reading this.

I encourage you to experience Reiki for yourself by getting it from someone who feels right to you.

I encourage you to add Reiki, acupuncture, craniosacral therapy, or any integrative medicine that speaks to you; to any treatment you are undergoing for physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual health.

I encourage you to learn Reiki if Energy interests you or if you are seeking a way to help yourself and others. This is a beautiful way to practice self care, become more conscious, and drop into that more subtle realm of life that is always available to us but can be hard to access.

As always, if you would like Reiki with me, please reach out. Reiki over zoom is my favorite thing to do and is a very powerful experience for clients. If you would like to train with me, fill out a form HERE and we will connect.