As I’ve been back to teaching Reiki these last few months, I have been spending a lot of time reflecting on my journey and how practising Reiki has helped me, shaped me and guided me in my life. I eventually got to the question above – what does it mean to me?
It began helping me back in 2005 when after a personal crisis and loss, I realised I wasn’t happy in my life at all. I was stagnating and the crisis had helped me to see it. I was drawn to Reiki like a moth to a flame as I strode around MBS and healing fairs looking for a cure to the pain I was feeling from watching my life being ripped asunder before my eyes. I was totally incapable of escaping its mystery as I floundered trying to pick up the pieces of my life and move forward somehow. I walked into my first day of Reiki training not even knowing what it was, what it was like or how it would become a huge part of my life. Yes, I know, most people would say that’s at the least slightly crazy but I just knew it was the right thing to do so I sat down and had my brain blown away as I learned that with this incredibly simple healing system I could potentially heal my hurting soul. What I didn’t know that day was that I was starting out on a journey, one that would never stop and that would support me to change my life so much for the better.
It’s been there to help me through C-PTSD, as well as my business and marriage crumbling beneath me just as much as it’s been there to guide my physical health and spiritual practices. I’ve used other treatments alongside it from medicines to counselling and still it works to help me heal and guide me through whatever it was I was facing.
It has been there for my family too, helping my over-tired children to settle and sleep, as well as soothing their tummy aches and the tears from small accidents. It helped my oldest son recover from lengthy spinal surgery and it helped my husband see the light around his own mental health.
For a while, it helped me to help others but as my own mental and emotional health declined, in 2012 I lost my love for Reiki as well as other things that I loved, and began to step back from it. I had stepped back into a deep, dark hole that was to keep me for four years before letting me see light again. I crept back out of that hole and began working with Reiki again on myself at first, then taking on clients and finally this year, beginning to teach again.
For me, Reiki has been there ever since that day back in 2005. It’s what I cycle back to when crisis hits and I feel lost, it’s what eases the pain when something hurts, and it’s become a part of my way of life. I’ve lost count of the amount of times “magic hands” have helped my kids feel better after a tumble or during an illness. I know when I don’t practice it, I don’t feel like myself and I fall off my path.
It’s been there when nothing else seemed to be, in those darkest of hours when everything feels hopeless and lost, and like everyone has deserted you so to say it’s been important may be an understatement. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that alongside my pagan faith, it’s been the strongest force in my life for almost fourteen years and I wouldn’t want to be without it.
So, to answer the question – what does Reiki mean to me? Sanity, peace, whole health and a spiritual connection is one answer. Another is that it’s one of the rocks that holds me steady and guides my actions each and every day. Reiki is a lot more to me than a healing system for healing myself and others, it is literally a part of me, and its value is priceless.
Blessings,
Sarah x