It speaks volumes that Reiki has built itself into such a huge presence in my life. A queen of one-time hobbies and unused art supplies, the tell-tale sign that an interest has stuck around for close to two decades is a significant one. I don’t know if it’s been the anxiety relief from my self-treatments or the ease in connecting with others that has offered more gifts. Anxiety has been such a huge part of my experience that moving through spaces with calm presence is a gift indeed. 

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One of my early workshops, when I was first learning the artform that is Reiki, a participant was very psychically open. She almost refused me working on her because “she didn’t feel anything.” It wasn’t meant to be a jab; she genuinely was used to her intuitive sense telling her what to do, where to go, and how to behave– and it scared her. There was information that was missing in her psychic abilities that went beyond the pale: she never knew that her abilities were meant to guide her back to center, back to a place of homecoming. 

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For many years, I held this experience in my Reiki training like it was my own personal failing. I can see now, having trained many highly sensitive people in the healing art of Reiki that what was missing was calm. It’s not that anyone actively goes against their own inner knowing. The truth is that most of us are attempting to find safety, some measure of security in an unknown world. What psychic information we glean is often felt through that lens. 

 

Many people who begin to study Reiki also begin to find a yearning to know themselves more deeply. What is this magical energy that somehow lights us up, relaxes us, and helps us relate to others with more ease? How many times per day do we get the ability to interact on some deeper level? For most, not often. If you are successfully courting relationships like that, you are experiencing a deeper way of knowing the world, with an open heart and a growing mentorship of love. 

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It all comes from a place of calm presence. Being aligned with our true nature, our spirit, our aliveness, comes with a core value that is often placed under a rock, in hiding, or wrapped in a bolt of shame. We do not need to understand the place we make in someone else’s heart, simply that when we are calm and relaxed in presence of others, we carve a little opening for them also. 

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