Being a Reiki practitioner is a pretty wild experience. I mean that in the best way.
First of all, I feel so incredibly honored that people come to me and trust me with their stories, their lives. They allow me to be a witness in their process. I perform Reiki and “listen,” meaning I open myself to whatever arises from the energy-body. I am still in awe of the fact that I can see past memories, relationship issues, personal goals and struggles. There is still no good science to help us understand how this works. But it works.
How is it that I know what has never been uttered to another soul? Or see full scenes of memories from the past? Science has only recently caught up to describing how meditation works (although the Buddha explained it 2600 years ago), so I am sure at some point we will find out how this works too.
It’s a really intimate space to share with somebody, but one I cherish deeply. I am grateful to each one of my clients for being willing to be seen. In that space of witnessing we can acknowledge and accept what happened, this creates the ground for healing. When we are seen in full, neuroscience has shown this is when we heal. The past doesn’t change, but the pain does. Energy comes back into the body. Joy, ease, and alignment return.
Another thing I feel grateful to experience in this practice is the access to alternate realms of consciousness.
In the space of a session, the Reiki energy opens the client and practitioner up to other levels of reality where we can hear and see more.
Guides and ancestors come through with beautiful messages that teach me, as well as the person receiving the treatment. The level of wisdom received is literally beyond me.
This past week I had been working on a client, we went through all of her energy centers and there was a story of healing woven into the messages I was picking up. As though that were not enough, her guides decided to take it one level further.
My last stop on the body was at the crown chakra where immediately I was transported to some realm of consciousness that reminded me of when I have sat with Grandmother Medicine.
It was as though I could see the entire universe, and within that I could feel the entire universe in my body, yet my body was also in every bit of the universe. It was so beautiful, something that I cannot quite describe but akin to seeing every star and planet and being in the universe woven together by delicate golden strands. The strands were not separate, they just are.
I was told to tell my client, “You are in everything and everything is in you,”
and,
“You are already the butterfly even when you are the caterpillar. How could you not be?”
A message that resonated for her, but also for me.
It was an unexpected psychedelic experience that has since transformed my being. Reminding me of the bigger picture. Connecting me, and my client, into something “greater.” Yet even that phrasing makes it seem like we are different from what is.
I do a pretty good job with conveying these sessions in words, but some things are untranslatable. Some things can only be understood through experience.
Which reminds me, for a long time I wondered if there was a way of communicating that might be more effective than using language. Our definitions vary, our lexicons may be lacking.
What I decided is that if we could transfer information directly through feelings and images, this may be the closest we could get to really understanding each other.
Through Reiki we’re given this opportunity.
Not only to communicate to each other, but for the universe to communicate to us.