Reiki Training

I’m pretty obsessed with this idea of energy.  Energy is so fascinating, it literally makes the world go’ round.  If the theme song of Epcot says so, it’s gotta be true.  If you just got that Disney reference, we need to be best friends.  We can’t always see it, but we can sure feel it.

Have you ever walked into a room and felt like you could cut the tension with a knife, felt the anger/awkwardness after two people have been fighting, or could totally tell two people were secretly crushing on each other?  This is what I’m talking about, energy helps us sense and feel things.

As a photographer, I thrive off the excitement of a wedding day.  I can ride that energy like a wave and use it to make my clients loosen up and have fun during their formal photos.  As a part time yoga teacher, the energy in a room can do the same but also does the opposite and will exhaust me.  Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching yoga part time, it is a dream come true, and I love my students, but there are some days I will walk out of my class and just be puzzled by the way I feel.

Since I can’t tell my students, “I’m your yoga teacher, not your therapist,” I take on a lot of what my students put out, and people come to yoga to help let go of their stuff.  Instead of creating a barrier to let them let go, I always seem to pick up what they are putting down, and that’s not how it should be.

It’s kind of like coloring.  Usually, there’s a big black outline that separates one part from another.  Most people can separate themselves and color in the lines.  With me, the black lines are thin or non existence.  After talking about this to many people, it became clear that I needed to learn how to draw boundaries, and someone suggested that I get a Reiki session.

Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction, relaxation, and can also be healing.  The first time, it felt warming and calm, and I left feeling balanced.  By the third time, some pretty magical things were happening and by the end of it, I was in tears crying out my guilt and all those icky emotions I had been holding onto for others.  It was so necessary and after it all came out it felt like 10000 pounds had been lifted off my chest.

That was it, I had to learn more, I just had to know how all those things shifted, so I signed up for a level 1 course.

I spent most of my day on Friday at the Devandi School of Yoga and Wellness.  Our teacher, Tanya, is an incredible healer and taught us the basics of Reiki.  We learned how to get in touch with our own energy, especially our Chakras and Auras, but also learned the basics of how to read others.

My favorite part of the day was learning to use a pendulum.  We each held on a string draped over our finger, very still to start.  Tanya asked us to each think of something we would always say “Yes” to and hold our other hand a few inches below the pendulum.  At first, it felt like nothing was happening, but after trying a few different questions, each of our pendulums started rotating in a small clockwise circle.

Us students looked around at each other, “Is this the wind?” one of them asked.  Our teacher smiled and told us now to pull the pendulum away and think of something that we would always say “No” to.  Sure enough, my pendulum did something different, it shook or moved just front to back.  My mind was blown.  Tanya explained that this is the energy, and we can learn to use it to help others by reading what is off in their bodies.

After gathering up the pieces of my exploded mind, it was time to wrap things up, and I came home feeling that a little bit of my life had changed.  I am brand new at this, so like any seed, I must practice and nurture it for it to grow, but I’m really excited to see where the next two courses take me.

I don’t know if I will ever heal others, but I know that I will be able to protect and heal myself with practice and more training.  I love helping others, and the problem sometimes becomes that I want to help others so bad that I sacrifice my own needs and self care.  There is always a balance to be found in this, and I can’t help but feel that I’m finally on the right path to make this happen.

Next up is the second level in August, I’ll keep you all informed on what happens.  Wild, crazy, powerful, and a bit weird, I’m so glad I went to this Reiki introduction course!