the dream life

releasing with reiki

I didn't always know what it meant to be empathic, but I always was empathic. As a child, this led to many stomach aches. As an adult, I started to figure out how to tell the difference between what was mine and what wasn't, but I couldn't necessarily do anything about it. When I began to learn about intuitive and healing work, it became obvious that I would have to come up with a method for releasing all the stuff I was carrying around in my physical and energetic body - both my stuff and the stuff I picked up from other people.

In addition to shielding and grounding practices, I have several methods for release that are working for me right now, and one in particular that engage in a couple of times a week. I want to share it with you because it's a practical use of Reiki, it's something you can do whether you know the symbols or not, and its result is a powerful transformation that you will definitely feel. 

As with all things, you can follow your own guidance and come up with a clearing and releasing method that works for you. This just happens to be what I'm doing lately.

This bliss

Do everything with so much love in your heart that you would never want to do it any other way.--Yogi Desai

This is my favorite weather -- sunny but cool enough for hoodies and campfires. Woody and I like to sit on the porch. He sleeps on the wicker couch right next to my chair. Cats come and go, soak up the sun and squabble. 

I listen to music and push words around and drink tea and sometimes I just gaze out, softly, at nothing and everything.

This month, love

I love the feeling of turning over to a new calendar page. Despite all of my iCals and phone apps and Outlooks, I still use paper calendars, too. At work, I have a giant calendar on my desk and it’s satisfying to rip off the old month and reveal a new month underneath. It fills me with delight to step out of the old and into a new and see that unmarred paper with the neatly penned-in appointments and blank days.

January felt longish to me, but now it’s history, and you know that I especially love these hot pink Valentine 28 days.

It’s also Imbolc today and the Feast Day of St. Brigid; this is a lovely post about the markers this time of year. And also this.

I have a lot of happy stuff going on this month, including the fact that I’m magically going to turn 40 for the second year in a row. So, despite the fact that upon waking this morning I was steadily greeted by 3 or 4 things that absolutely had to get done over the weekend but had not gotten done because I had completely forgotten about them (they were really important, too, like paying bills on time and putting gas in the car), it was a good day.

The principles

Reiki is not a religion but it is, I think, more than just an energy balancing technique. It's a mission, a way of life. I often remind myself to be Reiki, which is just a bit of shorthand that my soul understand, a reminder to adhere to the principles.

I’ve been thinking about the principles and how they offer a pathway. I’ve been thinking about what those words really mean and how the principles help the practitioner become a better and better conduit for healing energy and a happier, healthier person.

A quick Google search will reveal a multitude of variations on the Reiki principles which, like all good things, have evolved and are adapted to fit the context in which they reside. This is my current favorite version:

I. Just for today, I will not anger.

II. Just for today, I will not worry.

III. Just for today, I will be grateful.

IV. Just for today, I will do my work honestly.

V. Just for today, I will be kind to every living thing.

Reflection

(We name things in this house.) 

Right now I'm sitting in the studio (we also call it the healing room) in the dragonfly chair. Karma is perched on the arm of the chair, purring. Gentle meditative music is playing. Om Shanti. On the table next to us, the Himalayan salt lamp is burning.

Downstairs, nag champa is lit by the door and the aroma wafts its way up the stairs to us.

There are fairies and mermaids in the window, the January sun shining through.

I have released plans today. I'm floating in yes, doing and not doing in accordance with my impulse.

Rest

I was all ready with big plans for my weekend beginning with projects around the house today, but I should have known a rethink was in order when I got the feeling early yesterday afternoon. It was the feeling that tells me that I'm getting tired. Really tired.

I did all right this morning. I got up extra early (in retrospect, not such a great idea), created menus and a shopping list for the week, developed a newsletter, did a load of laundry...then it hit me. Sore throat. Heavy eyes. No energy.

I took a bath, sent some Reiki to my throat, dosed up on Dr. Ben Kim's Vitamin C, drank some tea and that's it. I've been under a quilt all afternoon. I'm on my second episode of RuPaul's Drag Race, fantasizing that a beautiful drag queen is going to show up at any moment and do my make-up.

I'm not sick, but I'm still recharging.

It's unclear whether or not I'll get dressed and go to the store later.

I'm reminding myself that down time is part of balance. I'm not going to say things like lost time to myself. Time is never lost. 

Rest is good.

Studio tour

I spent all day yesterday rearranging furniture. By myself. It was perhaps not the best choice for my body, but it was a great choice for the energy flow. I love how moving around rooms changes everything.

We now have book shelving in the main part of the house, a little table for coffee drinking in the kitchen, Tracy has his own guitar-playing clubhouse, the guest room is all lit up with purple lights, and dream life studio has a new home (right across the hall from its old location.)

I'm very focused on the healing work right now and I realized that I needed a more integrated space, so the reiki studio and the writing studio are now one in the same. I'm so happy with it. It feels great and I've been hanging out in here for most of the day next to my star lamp with the music playing and fragrant oil mix burning. 

Click on through for a little tour or better yet, come visit me!

And now a word from our sponsor...manipura

After experiencing a ridiculously oversensitive response to two consecutive phone calls this afternoon and questioning my entire existence, I decided to turn to my spiritual team and ask it what was up (why I am sometimes so slow to ask, I do not know). I had cards with me so I pulled one from the Angel Therapy deck: Solar Plexus Chakra.

This is one of my tricky spots. This is the place where I shut down first. I was “sick to my stomach” for most of my childhood. Anything – the slightest thing – out of the ordinary, anything that made me feel on display (challenged my self-esteem), anything upsetting or exciting, hit me there first. I carried life in my solar plexus, but not in a good way. These days, I feel it as a swirling homesickness and it’s not uncommon for me to catch myself pressing a balled fist into my navel if I’m feeling stressed.

The third chakra, the solar plexus (manipura), is the seat of personality and willpower. It’s located at the abdomen and governs all sorts of important things like identity and self-esteem and assertiveness and intuition, thus its reputation as a power center and its life lesson: acceptance of oneself in the stream of life.

Calm

Softly falling snow, fleece slippers and reindeer pajamas, yoga pants at 2, Reiki client, then back into pajamas. It was quiet and good and I was glad to have the session, here in the middle of the holiday rush. Its energy informed the day.

I was reminded of how Reiki has its own intelligence and motivation, reminded of how powerful and miraculous it is when I manage to step aside and let it flow.

As usual, I was impacted by the Reiki just as my client was, and feel rejuvenated enough head into these last three working days before the winter break. 

Blessings

Sometimes my clothes make me happy. Today is one of those times. I bought a dress in Louisville a couple of weeks ago and I wore it for the first time today. It’s soft and has these little velvet pockets and I’m really happy with it even thought the sales person who took my money said, “We almost sent these dresses back because they looked nothing like the photo…so I’m glad you like it.” Yeah, well, I do like it.

I also like the floor length 70’s number I bought for five bucks at the same store where the same clerk kept insisting that surely I was purchasing it to serve as my Halloween costume. No, I assured him, I was buying it because it was a sweet five dollar dress that I planned to wear in my normal non-Halloween life.

Speaking of Halloween, I still have glitter on my boots and that makes me happy, too.

This was my massage day. I seriously can’t think of any ill that a good massage can’t put right. Well, except vertigo maybe.

I did take Tracy to the doctor yesterday and found out that his severe vertigo isn’t caused by any other physical condition (good to know). He got some meds that seem to be doing the trick, thankfully. Can you imagine spinning for a week unable to tell up from down? The doc told him the condition would resolve itself in four to six weeks, or he could take a pill and get better faster. Mmmhmmm. We got that pill.

I may have mentioned before that I go through periods of my life thinking that I want to go to nursing school. What I’m specifically interested in is working for hospice, but I’ve always had this weird nagging thing about nursing even though my logical mind knows that I would mostly hate going through the things nurses have to endure and that I would philosophically disagree with much of what I’d be asked to do. Taking Tracy to the doctor’s office nipped my latest bout of nurse-thoughts. As soon as I walked in that place I was flooded with the understanding that nope, this is not for me.

Etheric cord flush

Yesterday evening, I received and etheric cord flush healing attunement from Alice Langholt at Reiki Awakening. Etheric cords extend between us and the people with whom we've shared relationships. It sounds far out, but it's really just energetic connection. Cord cutting is a practice that I generally make part of the Reiki treatments I channel and is something that I frequently do for myself.

I was excited to receive this attunement as a way to enhance this part of my practice and my own well-being. I plan on using the cord flush every evening.

Receiving the attunement was a pleasant experience. My body became deeply relaxed; I felt almost trance-like. Today, I've noticed an elevation in my mood. I've felt lighter and happier.

Alice teaches distant healing and practices a modality called Kundalini Reiki. She's a great resource for anyone who is interested in energy work.

On pain and talking to oneself

I completely understand how people get hooked on painkillers*. Back pain is the suck. I’ve had for years an on again off again situation with my lower back. It used to be localized to the right side and the first time I had a Reiki treatment, the practitioner sensed it and asked me what was going on in that area. I said that I didn’t know but that I sometimes had pain there and she said that it felt like something was twisted. Hmmm, I thought, interesting, but it just wasn’t that severe. I could manage it with massage therapy or heat packs. For periods of time, it would go away.

Energy cycle

When I first began to learn about Reiki, I read and heard many accounts of the energy flowing in a cycle. The practitioner would place her or her hands in a hand position, the energy would intensify, reach a peak, then begin to ebb. When the practitioner felt that natural cycle complete, he or she would know to move on to the next hand position.

Front porch Reiki

Last night, my mother and grandmother stopped by just as Tracy and I were taking Woody out for a walk. We all sat down on the front steps to talk and my grandmother mentioned that her ankles were swollen from the blood pressure medication she's taking. I sat behind her on the steps, placed my hands on her shoulders and started channeling Reiki.

Immediately, she said, "Your hands are hot! Are they supposed to be?"

As we sat there, she and my mom and I continued to talk in a light-hearted way. It was a huge lesson for me to lighten up a bit. When I see clients in my healing room, I set a mood with light and aromatherapy and music. I don't speak during the sessions and my clients don't speak to me. Yesterday reminded me that Reiki can be used in all sorts of situations - not just controlled environments; it reminded me that Reiki can be playful - as love often is; and it reminded me that Reiki flows no matter what-not from me but through me.

Information about reading and Reiki clients will never be shared here without consent.

Taking care

Thank you to the reader who suggested the blog topic: Your daily self-care regimen; the process of choosing form many exercises, etc. It seems a good fit for Wellness Wednesday.

In thinking about how to answer this, I realized that there are days when I’m not paying attention to self-care at all. At the same time, I do feel that it’s of the utmost importance. So many times, we don’t take care of ourselves because we’re busy meeting other people’s needs and expectations and yet, we’re no good to anyone if we’re not taking care of ourselves.