Continuation
…The introduction to Reiki opened a magical door! Once I stepped through it, there was no turning back!...
 
Initially my why for learning Reiki was to feel relaxed. I felt I needed to take control of my broken self and put myself back together like I Humpty Dumpty, one piece at a time. The Reiki training was the beginning of my journey of pursuing a wholistic health.
It was an amazing beginning.  I encourage anyone who's reading who can relate to any of what I'm saying in my last 2 blogs to follow up and learn something new!  If you decide you want to embark on the healer’s journey, you will want to empower yourself first.  We need to learn the tools that we can apply for ourselves.

I signed up for Reiki Level 1, and a few experiences from that class left an imprint. There were at least eight or nine students in the class, and we were all at the teacher's apartment. Deborah (the teacher) taught us the theory, the history, and how this energy therapy works.  For the first time I learnt that I was more than my physical body.  This wisdom was earth shattering for me.  It was a big WOW!  To learn that I was more than my physical body, that I had an emotional, mind, and spiritual layers was something so strange, so unfathomable.  I had no idea, or ever heard of this concept.  I learnt about chakras, these energy centers and how they could get clogged up. The wisdom, the experience of this class was mind bending.

One of the exercises that we did was to play with an energy ball.  It was a way in which we could put into feeling what we could not see.  Humans tend to have to see to believe.  In this case we felt to believe.  It was a perfect way to demonstrate that we were more than our physical bodies. We rubbed the palms of her hands together to create friction between the hands and then we would take the hands apart slowly to feel the edges of the energy ball.  We would play with it by moving the hands further apart and closer together.  This was the first time I consciously felt energy.  

Deborah had us partnered up with someone where we had to be cognizant of our own energetic field and the other person’s field.  We did this by walking slowly into each other’s space with our eyes closed.  Deborah asked me to assist her in this demonstration. She placed me at one end of the apartment, and she was at the other.  I was blind folded, and she had slippers on her feet to not make a sound.  Deborah says to the class: “Pay attention and let's see where Carole can feel me”.  I sat with my eyes closed and my back to her. She slowly started to move towards me.  I don't think she had taken her first step and I felt her. I could feel her energetic body.  I was so surprised how obvious it was to me.  Deborah asked me to turn around and take off my blindfold.  There she was at the other end of the apartment and she’d only taken one step.  Seriously, I thought she was right behind me.  She had barely even taken a step.

Deborah explained to the class that I was extremely sensitive, that if I could feel her from all the way at the end of the hallway, I was extremely sensitive.  To think that I could feel other people’s energies from. 20 feet away.  This knowledge about myself was a game changer.  A huge WOW WOW moment.  This nugget of wisdom about myself started to answer lots of questions for me about my life, my choices and most importantly how I desperately looked for ways to shut off, dumb down, numb all these energies I was feeling from other people around me. I came to realize why, as a young adolescent I made lots of bad choices of the substances I put in my body, alcohol, narcotics, sugar, and junk food.  This was my coping mechanism of absorbing all of these energies around me, anger, sadness, happiness, anxiety, loneliness.  I was feeling what others were feeling and I did not know that it wasn’t mine!  I was unconsciously numbing out, everyone else is pain that I could feel around me. I knew nothing about discernment back then. 

Learning Reiki Level 1 was a massive self-discovery of the incredibly beautiful, sensitive being that I am. I'm so grateful for it. After I completed Level 1, I went through a bit of a body detox.  I broke out into a rash and had some minor cold symptoms.  I then noticed a shift.  I quit drugs and reduced my alcohol intake. I started to make better food choices, joined a gym and worked out. I even noticed that certain friends moved on. My circle of friendship was changing. I was healing. Although that could be uncomfortable, and confusing, it was necessary.  And it certainly has played a huge part of who I am today. What I am. What my magic is, and what I am here to offer today. All these incredible experiences came to me with Reiki Level 1.  Wait till I share more stories of my journey!
 
Stay tuned….for part IV.

We all sign up for workshops, therapy and buy books that promises to fix us.  Why do we do this?  Simple, we FEEL BROKEN.  It was no different for me in my 20’s and that is why I signed up for my very first Reiki course.  It was called Dr. Usui Reiki Level I.  There was something mystical about the concept that I could heal myself.  That felt like a big truth for me.  Healing oneself was a new concept because at that point in my life I believed that life happened to me, and I was always the victim of my circumstance.  I certainly did not know anything about creating my life, my health.
 
I really want to emphasize the WHY in this blog.  My big WHY on the surface was I felt like I was in constant state of FEAR.  To be honest for good reasons.  I had some traumatic experiences in my life.  But the one that had me most crippled was the experiences and the abuses I had lived with for over a year with a partner who was…himself broken.

When I escaped from that life with my life, I always felt like I needed eyes behind my back.  I was in “flight” mode at all times and in high alert.  The result of this trauma in my body showed up in a few different ways; struggled with weight gain, constipation, severe indigestion, bouts of insomnia, lower and mid back pain, and lots of neck issues.  That was only the physical symptoms.  My mental symptoms showed up in waves of depression and that consistent negative voice in my head that told me I was useless, pathetic, stupid, ugly and fat.  Wow that is a mouthful!  Spiritually, well I was so overwrought with the physical and mental and emotional symptoms, I could not see what was broken there for the exception that I felt a spiritual void! A sense of disconnection to all that is and the strong conviction that there was no God!
 
Up to this point in my life, my health program was dependent on anti-depressants, sleeping pills, muscle relaxants and one natural product called digestive enzymes.  That is, it.  I knew in my core that there had to be another way.  But I had no answers until Reiki stepped into my life.
 
What is your WHY?  What has you in pain?  What are you suffering from?  Are you stuck in the old belief system that only the Western doctors can help you?  Western medicine has its place no argument here.  Most of us wait until there is something so severely wrong with us, perhaps its cancer, autoimmune deficiency, MS, and so on.  Why is it that the pain turns into suffering and at that point in our lives why is it so difficult to find any kind of balanced health?  We are born whole.  What the heck happened to us?

But is that really all there is?  Could there be more?  For some reason even in my darkness nights of pain, I had this knowing that there had to be other ways to heal.  I felt that there needed to be a bigger picture approach, something much more natural.  I had no awareness whatsoever at that point in my life what whole meant.  What was holistic?  I had heard whispers about mind, body, and spirit.  But what the heck was all that nonsense.
The introduction to Reiki opened a magical door! Once I stepped through it, there was no turning back!

Stay tuned as I continue sharing my journey with Reiki in part III...

Have I ever told you my story of how REIKI introduced itself into my life?  It's a beautiful story…and of course, divinely timed. I would love to share it with you.
I was in my mid 20's and life had dealt me a series of traumatic experiences in my early twenties. I’m not here to share the traumas in this post but to put it into context, I will say the state of my body was in extreme stress. I was date raped at 21 and later abused by a partner whom I lived with just over a year.

My mom decided to treat me to a pedicure, giving me an example of how to self-love.  Mom always had a knack in finding these unique self-care places for treatments.  We were in a lovely, intimate spa on Des Meurons in St. Boniface, Manitoba for a pedicure treatment. Although I don’t remember the name of this spa, I do remember that their logo was a butterfly.  For whatever reason, when we arrived for the treatment, I found out my pedicure was cancelled. But they offered me a Reflexology treatment instead.  Many of the details of that treatment are fuzzy, but what I do remember is this: A man giving gave me the treatment and towards the end of the session, he asked me if it would be okay to give me some Reiki.  My response was, “Reiki?  What the heck is that!” Whatever this man told me at the time must have satisfied my comfort level as I said, “Yes, go ahead.” The cool thing was what happened next:  I experienced this DEEP sense of RELAXATION! 

You might think what is the big deal about feeling relaxed.  But it was a big deal!  I spent most of my time in hiding from an abusive ex-partner.  I was in constant high alert. I was worried when he would come for me. I felt like I was in constant flight mode.  So, feeling relaxed was a very BIG deal!

Let’s fast forward to my late 20's, quickly approaching the big 3-0. Life looked very different. I was living in Winnipeg with my husband in our perfect house, with our perfect dog and the perfect truck.  I had great aspirations of climbing the corporate ladder and wearing the title of Management so proudly.  Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?  Well, here is the truth from the outside looking in: I was living the perfect life.  But if you are reading this blog right now you KNOW that is never the full TRUTH! Life is full of illusions.

The truth is I was MISERABLE.  My inner world was in a real shamble. My mind was filled with worries, fears, doubts, self-sabotaging, self-loathing, low self-esteem, low self-worth.  I had absolutely no LOVE for myself back in those days.  I continuously made bad food choices and drank lots of alcohol for the sake of having a good time.  Those good times always ended with a horrible hangover.  Don't get me wrong. There were many things going right in my life, but my outer appearance was not in alignment with my inner life.  I truly was not in a good place.

One of the benefits of working in a large corporation is their health and wellness benefits.  For me that was yoga.  This beautiful yoga teacher by the name of Deborah came into my life.  I started attending her yoga classes and quickly realized how much stress I held in my body.  I truly was very disconnected to from my whole body.  Deborah came to class one day handing out pamphlets. She was offering  other classes and they were--you guessed it—Reiki.  Thoughts came flooding back to me of how I had experienced 10 minutes of bliss from the man at the spa who did a Reiki treatment that to my feet all those years ago.  Yes…I was curious.  So, I saved up the my money and registered for my first Reiki class.  That first class was eye opening! , and I was absorbing the knowledge like a sponge.  There was so much truth flowing through my body., and I learnt for the very first time I was made up of energy!  Wow!

Well, as we like to say, the rest is history.  I’ll share more as of this story has as so many stories are tangled together like a fine silk cloth.  Stay tuned for more…on my journey with Reiki.