My Reiki Journey - Part III

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.

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