My Reiki Story, Pt. 2

“Do you want to keep going? Because there’s no going back.”

Lisa asked me this a few months after she had initiated me to Level I of Reiki training. She had been teaching me the basics of energy work, and about how she approached it as a Mayan/Aztec curandero. I had been advancing spiritually faster than anyone she had ever worked with previously, and she was trying to warn me it could get rough.

That was my “red pill” moment, though I wouldn’t realize that until years later. And it’s only been in the last month I’ve realized one deeper layer of that beyond the Matrix movie trope. She was asking my doubting self, my fearful ego, if he was willing to surrender to a mysterious magic journey in which I would face great challenge, and great internal resistance, but have the deeper awareness and spiritual assistance to get through any of it and become who I’m meant to be. That by saying “yes,” I was crossing over the point of no return, that it would become impossible to give up on this journey and return to being the one who turned away from spirituality or deeper self discovery.

At the time, I answered “yes” with much trepidation because I had dealt with such heavy, chronic anxiety and fear most of my life. But deep down a part of me recognized the call to adventure her words beckoned.

So I kept going. I would get on her massage table weekly, then going to every two weeks when she felt I was going too fast, to have time to integrate the work I was doing. I began reading Essential Reiki by Diane Stein that gave me a broader sense of the history of energy work on Earth, and how the system of what is called Reiki was discovered and taught by Mikao Usui in Japan 100 years ago. My skepticism was gradually melting away, but I held onto it because my ego did, and still can, overvalue my intellectual rigor that must strongly question or reject anything that is illogical or cannot be codified by science. I don’t regret my skepticism at the time because it led me to ask questions that were beneficial to my education as a practitioner in the future. But it also likely fed inner resistance that led me to experience some mental health crises that perhaps could have been avoided or made more manageable if I had been more willing to surrender.

One of those crises involved me feeling extremely suicidal, which I mentioned to Lisa. She told me she could no longer work with me because of me repeatedly expressing suicidal ideation. I don’t fault her for that at all, as that was not her responsibility to manage, and she was not my therapist. That was an important moment for me to assess where I was mentally and emotionally, as well as energetically, and take more efforts to really get ahold of my mental health. I am forever grateful for and indebted to Lisa for guiding me over that threshold with great patience, honesty and compassion, and allowing me to pay on a donation basis.

Despite the rough emotional waters I had swam into, I had become hooked on Reiki, and knew swimming in these strong, rough waves were part of the healing process. So I sought out a new Reiki practitioner. Through a Google search I was drawn to a woman named Rheana Jackson who practiced as a Reiki master in an office not far from where I lived. I also liked the fact she was trained in transpersonal counseling (a spiritually-oriented form of therapy), which she used as part of her practice. Rheana did not offer Reiki on a donation or sliding scale basis, but I valued the gifts Reiki brought as an investment in myself and my future enough to be willing to pay a practitioner for their time, space and skills. This is significant because some may balk at the rate of what I or other practitioners charge, but the transformational healing Reiki offers is well worth the investment and something I have never regretted making the necessary sacrifices to afford.

One of my first sessions, we essentially did a deep extraction. It felt like something hard, dense and painful was lodged in my very core. When she pulled it out of me, it was the first time during a treatment I could truly feel something was moving, whereas before with Lisa, I typically wouldn’t notice effects usually until the next day. I felt tremendous relief, and that I had made the right decision choosing to work with Rheana.

Regularly engaging in Reiki work I was able to upgrade my subtle body and clear out old junk, and increase my energy levels. I still had a lot of work to do (and probably always will). At this time, I also began attending Reiki circles and Reiki shares where practitioners, and those new to Reiki, come together to perform Reiki on one another, which is great for practicing for beginning practitioners, as well as a foot dipping in the water for those new to or curious about Reiki. It was often in those sessions I would get intuitive suggestions from others about how I needed to change, such as eating less fast food. I was able to also develop and enhance my intuitive abilities of what I could pick up for others, which is a side benefit of doing this work.

By 2013, I was ready to embark on the next adventure of my Reiki journey and upgrade to becoming a Level II practitioner. I felt called to be more than just a recipient of the energy and to be someone actively engaged with it and who could help others with this extraordinary modality.

I sought out a new teacher. I don’t remember how I stumbled across Joy Vernon, it might have been through a Reiki share, but I felt I had found my new teacher, who taught a bare-bones, simple form of Reiki called Usui Reiki Ryoho, the traditional Japanese form of Reiki in the direct lineage from founder Mikao Usui. When I approached her as a teacher she requested some evidence I had taken a Level I class. I told her I hadn’t, that I had just learned the basics of it from my previous practitioner Lisa and put her in touch with one another to verify I had a good foundation to continue my learning.

Just participating in this class, my whole vibration and spiritual connection was upgraded, and why I highly recommend folks take classes to become Reiki practitioners, aside from this world could really use it at this time of awakening, change and healing. I also met others on the spiritual and healing path who showed me there was a different way of living and seeing the world. Joy was a phenomenal teacher, sticking to the basics and allowing space and time for questions (even “stupid” questions lol), practicing on one another and gave me more self-esteem, seeing I wasn’t the bad or broken person I thought I was, though I would continue to struggle with that for years after.

By halfway through 2013 I was experiencing an awakening that I wanted to have a career or work where I was more directly engaged with helping others. I had been working as a newspaper reporter since 2010, and it was something I enjoyed for the most part, despite the stress, because journalism had been my passion since I was a teenager. Journalism definitely can be a source for good, and I felt I was touching some lives with some interviews I did and human interest stories I published. But increasingly, due to the changing nature of the industry, I felt more I was just a producer of content, especially just what would get the most clicks.

By the time I began taking my Level III class (called “Master Teacher” level in Western Reiki) which was specifically for those who want to be teachers and operate their own Reiki business, the stress from my job was becoming less tolerable, and less sustainable. I had done something to irk management who was coming down harder on me, monitoring my every movement and micromanaging me. It was as if by engaging in Reiki classes and following this path I was making a break from work that no longer truly resonated with my soul.

I was fired from my job at The Denver Post in December 2014. It was something I wanted to quit, but just didn’t have the energy or capacity to find a new opportunity, also consumed with taking the Level III class. Soon after the firing I completed the Level III course, and some of my classmates noted they could tell the job was stressing me because I looked sickly. I could have fought the firing, but a part of me felt free to be relinquished from those chains and able to pursue a new life, others saying it was one of the best things to happen to me. I also felt upgraded and on a new trajectory with finishing the final level of Reiki training.

But my spiritual initiation process had only just begun.