Category Archives: Well-being

What might I feel from a reiki treatment?

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I think that one of my most common questions that a reiki client will have for me is: ‘What will I feel?’ Lately, this question comes out in a funny way, when clients ask, ‘Is it normal to feel this way?’ You know, I’ve always hated that idea of ‘normal’ being something that we should aim for. But that’s besides the point. I think in general and specifically related to reiki, we are all very individual. There is no normal. So, while I can tell you that some clients feel the energy in different ways in their body, some clients do not feel it. Some people feel heat and a few people cool, and others experience the energy as like electricity or magnets, sparkling or like it is a pulling sensation.

Some clients go into a place very similar to meditation, and others cannot stop their minds from racing. Many have both happening during a treatment: relaxation AND busy thoughts. A few people see colours. Some people have very interesting images and visuals of things they’ve never seen before, while others have memories which may be significant and may not be! Some clients describe the thoughts and memories as ‘really random’. Occasionally, clients have images of relatives, loved ones and friends, sometimes those who have passed. And others don’t feel anything or think anything special at all, though hopefully they feel relaxed. Rarely, clients feel unpleasant sensations: pain, perhaps in a place where they have had an injury, anxiety (sometimes because it is a new experience) and one client even reported a prolonged feeling of fear and darkness.

There is also a difference between clients who have reiki regularly with some who say that treatments are nearly always the same (with some variation) and others who report that the treatment are different every time!

A similar variation would apply to how clients feel afterwards and for how long. Very occasionally, clients say they feel the effects for a long time! More often, it’s just the day or two afterwards, or maybe a day or two after that. And others say they don’t feel much different right afterwards. I also try to warn clients that they might feel worse before they feel better, as some clients feel really tired, or even like they are catching a flu. A recent client told me they broke out in some acne on their face, which doesn’t happen to them.

I wanted to share a few recent reports with you. One client who was suffering from depression reported after the treatment:

‘I took some time over the past week to pay attention to the way I was feeling and I have to say I am amazed … Right off the bat right after I left the session I felt as if my senses were renewed, my senses felt sharper and much clearer. Admittedly I was a bit skeptical that the deep pain I’d been experiencing in my chest would go away with one session so I gave it some time. I’m happy to say that that pain has been lifted significantly. I still can feel upset, but that aching physical sensation is nearly gone – which is just incredible because previously it held me down so much ..
I’m thinking to come in again in a few weeks – I’m not sure how long this lifted effect will last, but for now it feels great.’

On the other hand, a client who came because they feel they cannot be focused and are always daydreaming and distracted reported:

‘No, I did notice any difference in me. My mind is always distracted.’

If there are messages from this, for me, it is that it’s worthwhile to try out reiki and see what it does for you. Then, it’s useful to not have any expectations but to simply be open to what happens (or what does not happen). If you are hoping to feel like someone else has felt, or are expecting to feel a certain way, you may be disappointed and you may not notice what is actually happening, with your expectations in the way. And finally: nothing is normal! You will feel how you feel and that is all good. Comparing ourselves to other people is usually not very useful.

Good wishes to all!

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given more than 3,000 reiki treatments.

Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it does for them. Folks come from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

Do you need therapy or counselling?

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Clients often come to me with stress and anxiety, either generally, or in response to a particular situation. So, I often ask if they are seeing a counsellor or therapist. It’s part of my general philosophy about reiki, that a reiki treatment may be a tool that will help you in some way but that you will need a number of tools in your toolbox. One treatment is not going to magically solve a problem or issue. And furthermore, if the issue is primarily one of the mind or emotions, then I think the first place to start with is someone who specialises in these, just like if you are physically injured or sick, a medical doctor would be my first port of call.

I just came across this article in the Washington Post, ‘Not everyone need therapy‘, by Emily Edlin, and it nudged me to think about how I word my question. As the article says:

‘People need therapy when their mental health symptoms are causing serious impairments in their daily functioning — in close relationships, work performance, sleep or social activities. For instance, if a person’s work stress overwhelms them to the point that they miss work and are subsequently at risk of losing their job.

They don’t need therapy when they are able to manage their symptoms well — if they feel stressed about their work but continue to perform well, have a supportive network of family and friends, engage in meaningful activities outside work and do not have significant levels of depression and anxiety.’

I think this is a good framework and that it is true that sometimes stress and anxiety don’t require therapy, but are a signal that you need to reflect and change the situation. And many of my clients already do some form of therapy, and are coming for a reiki treatment as an alternative way to support what they are already doing.

I’d also add that there are different kinds of therapy and counselling. A number of clients who have had prolonged terrible periods at work could benefit from, I believe, workplace counselling or coaching, as the problems really are specific to work. People who can’t get over a relationship break-up or are suffering from the loss of a loved one could benefit from counsellors that specialise in these areas – relationships, grief – to help them get through this time.

I can sense that sometimes clients just need to be able to talk about how they feel, and I think being able to pay someone, a professional, to listen to you and provide objective guidance, is a wonderful thing. Very occasionally, a client will want to tell me all about the problems they are facing and this tells me that a professional listener would be good for them, rather than telling their problems to friends or family … or a reiki practitioner.

Finally, a number of clients have said that they tried counselling but that it didn’t work. There are many types of counselling available, and it’s not a given that you’ll find the right therapist right away (just as I know that some clients will ‘click’ with other reiki practitioners better than with me). So, if it didn’t work once, it may mean that counselling is not for you, but it may also mean that it wasn’t the right counsellor or type of counselling.

In any case, the important thing is recognising that you want to feel better and that you are doing something about it. If this includes reiki, I’ll see you at your next treatment!

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given 3,000 reiki treatments.
Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it does for them. Folks come from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

Is that it?

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What if a reiki treatment is just relaxing to quiet music in a room for 50 minutes?

A person standing next to you who wants you to feel better?

Time when you’re not thinking?

Or time when you’re only thinking about yourself instead of other people?

The only time in the day (or week) that you’re not thinking about what you’ll do next?

Or worrying about a problem or hurting because of something that happened?

What if a reiki treatment is just making a decision to try something new, or to feel better, and then actively making the time to do so, and then going to do it?

One of the only times that you’re awake but not checking your phone?

A conscious act to take care of yourself?

What if that’s all reiki is? Would you find it helpful?

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given more than 2,100 reiki treatments.
Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it does for them. Folks come from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

Is that relationship really toxic?

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I’ve had many clients visit over the years who have talked about being in a toxic relationship as a reason for coming for a treatment. It could be a romantic relationship or just a friendship, or used to describe a workplace. And it got me wondering about the word ‘toxic’ and what’s it all about?

Lillian Glass is a specialist in communication, who had a private practice in Beverly Hills, first helping those with voice and speech disorders, and then working on self-confidence and communication skills to the stars. She’s the author of 12 books, including the 1995 book Toxic People. Glass describes a toxic relationships as one in which people ‘don’t support each other, where there’s conflict and one seeks to undermine the other, where there’s competition, where there’s disrespect and a lack of cohesiveness.’

So, I can see how the expression can be useful. If someone is trying to make a relationship work or is ignoring how it is not working, defining the relationship as ‘toxic’ could be the push the person needs to get out of the relationship. It can be used to say, ‘I’m going to stop pretending this is good, and I need to find ways out of it.’

But I do worry that this idea and language has been spreading far and wide for over two decades now and that in some cases, it might not be accurate or true.

People are complicated. Relationships and friendships are complicated. The differences between us can cause friction and misunderstanding.

The other thing is that friendships and relationships may not last forever, and nor do they need do. We have different reasons for being in each other’s lives, and sometimes what worked for a while, doesn’t work any longer. Instead of sounding like I’m preaching, I should admit that it’s been one of my great weaknesses in life to hang onto friendships for dear life, to fret and worry about their maintenance and being in contact, and to focus too much on them. I have left friendships behind. Others have left me behind. But I have learned, over time, to accept that. As one of my friends told me long ago, ‘Doors open, doors close’.

If it truly does help you to recognise a relationship as toxic, because it prompts you to action to do something about it, then by all means, do so. But otherwise, I invite you to do some reflection. While I understand that there are some people who act in really negative ways and treat others badly, my worry is that based on my many clients, quite a few people classify every negative relationship as ‘toxic’, rather than a more objective understanding that relationships and friendships don’t always last and that they may require work and effort. I also think that it may be really hard to let go of relationships and move on if you’ve classified them in your mind as being, literally, poisonous.

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given more than 2,100 reiki treatments.
Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it does for them. Folks come from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

Reiki, sleep and remote healing

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One of my regular clients, let’s call her Anita to keep her confidentiality, switched to remote reiki treatments during the lockdown. In case you haven’t heard of it, reiki practitioners can give treatments at a distance, to a client in another room, neighbourhood or even country. It is often called ‘distance’ healing, though, as my teacher, Frans Stiene, points out, the whole idea is to ‘be one’, and to share the energetic space, the opposite of distance. I usually use the expression ‘remote reiki’ instead.

If I wasn’t a reiki practitioner myself, I think I might find the concept hard to believe. But at the same time, when we talk to each other by phone, or see each other on the computer using Zoom or Skype, we may not physically be in the same space, but we feel each other. Most of us have had the experience too, of feeling someone we are close to, a family member or partner or friend, thinking about us, even when they are far away. The biggest reason that I believe in remote reiki though is because of my personal experience having them, and the experience of my clients.

In the treatments that I’ve given, I think 100% of my clients have reported ‘feeling’ the treatment and having good results. Because it is a bit more ‘out there’ than a treatment in person, I do check, before someone books for a remote treatment, that they’ve had reiki before and are open to it. I think if you are inexperienced with reiki and don’t know what to expect, or if you’re cynical in any way about it, it would be possible to not feel or block out the effects, perhaps like when you’re supposed to be on a Zoom work call, and instead you’ve turned off the screen and are checking your Facebook!

Anyways, for Anita, what I was excited to learn was that while she didn’t find the remote treatments as strong as in-person ones, she still felt effects. And the proof was in her health monitor, which she later showed me: an inobtrusive rather pretty ring, called an Oura ring, which monitors your heart rate, sleep and relaxation. Her ring told her that when she was having reiki, it was like having a nap: her heart rate slowed down, and her ring thought she was asleep.

More recently, Anita shared with me a screenshot of her Oura ring results, during an in-person treatment, and she gave permission to me to share it with you. I was very excited to see it, as it showed that not only during the treatment did the ring think she was asleep, but that the majority of the sleep (60%) was deep sleep, rather than light sleep. And that out of the 50 minute treatment, she was able to go into that sleep-like state for 43 minutes of it, which seems pretty good to me.

To me, this is a very good explanation of one of the ways that reiki works. It allows your brain to tune into the brain waves of deep relaxation and sleep, rather than the day-to-day brain functioning which helps us get to appointments and not bump into things when we’re walking!

And that place of relaxation is healing. I’ve read that sleep it is when repair and healing takes place. Some people believe dreams are the brain’s way of healing and reordering. When we don’t get enough sleep, we feel bad, and if we don’t get enough sleep over long periods, it can have really detrimental effects on our health.

Many clients say after a treatment, ‘I think I fell asleep’, and I think this is a good thing. Some might ask, why not just get some sleep instead of doing reiki? But I think a reiki treatment is intentional relaxation. It is rest with purpose and the best kind of sleep rather than sleep because you are too tired to stay awake, or because you have to.

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given more than 2,100 reiki treatments.
Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it does for them. Folks come from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

Getting lost

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Once, during a time I was lucky enough to live in Paris, someone asked me my favourite thing to do in the city. ‘Get lost,’ I replied. I hadn’t thought of that before; the answer just came out. And it was true. When I was exploring, I didn’t have a schedule or appointments. Wandering down a small street, on purpose or by accident, and ending up not quite sure where I was: it was a great way to see the city. It filled me with wonder and delight.

On the other hand, when you do have a schedule or an appointment, getting lost is not so great. Reiki Surry Hills can be tricky to find. Surry Hills is filled with small streets and alleys. The entrance to our apartment building is on a different street to the address. The closest intersection to the entry is at Little Riley Street and Mackey Street. But Little Riley Street has two parts, the one near me, and another section that begins on the other side of Albion Street, after being interrupted by Frog Hollow Park. Mackey Street, which looks more like an alley to me, is also in two parts, interrupted by a block. If you’re on the wrong part of it, you have to walk around the block to get to the right part!

Clients will know that’s why I give detailed instructions by text for how to find me.

But even then, it doesn’t work for some clients. The majority of these who are lost don’t use Google Maps, or they use it to find the general area, and then stop using it before actually finding me. Some clients tell me that Google Maps doesn’t work and delivers them to the wrong place. A few people have had their phones run out of battery, or are almost about to, which can be a bigger problem if they can’t call me to tell me they’re lost! And a fair number of lost clients don’t actually read the instructions carefully: they read one part and not the other.

The majority of my lost clients don’t make it easier for themselves by calling me when they’re lost. Some wander around for a while before I call them to see where they are, and even manage to get themselves quite upset from being lost.

This makes me wonder. Most of my clients come because of stress and anxiety. But doesn’t always being lost cause stress and anxiety? I also imagine that some of these clients, in their daily lives, constantly encounter bad energy from other people but not know why, though the reason is because they’re late for an appointment or have inconvenienced someone else or haven’t followed instructions or a request. It’s hard to live with your head in the clouds.

So, while I recommend getting lost if you have the time for it, most of the time I would recommend not being lost. Taking the time to pay attention to where you are, and the directions that people give you, could eliminate stress and getting bad reactions from other people. If you need help finding somewhere, ask for help! People like to help others find their way. I do! And in the long run, being mindful and paying attention could certainly help you as much as a reiki treatment could.

Discover the benefits of a reiki treatment. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Over the last 10 years, I’ve given over 1,900 reiki treatments.
Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it brings them. Folks visit from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

Farewell, my reiki cat

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I don’t know if Thor knew, in the last weeks of his too-short life, that he would die soon, because he really was especially affectionate and friendly with my reiki clients. Freyja, his sister, who thankfully is distracting us from our grief, will only sometimes say hello to clients (particularly if it’s close to dinner time) but she’s very coquettish and cat-like: to pet her you really have to offer her your hand in a gentle way, and then wait for her to decide you can touch her.

But Thor! He would often sit, right in the centre of the reiki table, or else on the couch, where a client is supposed to sit, especially on sunny days, but lots of other times as well. It sometimes seemed like it was his favourite place in the apartment. He would often leap from the reiki table to sit next to a client, and then nuzzle up to them and say hello.

While he seemed to be especially attentive to cat-lovers and lovers of animals in general, he would also say hello to those who were not quite as convinced. He was really a wonderful bonus part of a reiki treatment: for clients who were new to Reiki Surry Hills and to reiki, he provided a lovely, disarming burst of cuteness, and then sprawling down in relaxation showed us a model of how to be in the world: relaxed, chilled out and in the moment. I let him stay in the room most times, and I think he only jumped on clients during treatments three times in all! Very few clients were allergic to cats though the first one who was badly allergic (he became so congested that he couldn’t really relax and enjoy his treatment) led me to try to warn clients on my website that we have cats. But this had the unexpected benefit of attracting some cat lovers who would hope to meet Thor during their treatment.

I was also surprised to see cat-phobia in action, as it was hard for me to believe that someone could be scared of that cute face, but I’ve had at least two clients who really were scared of the cats and couldn’t bear the sight of them. It was fun to hear from clients who had had a Russian Blue or knew them through their friends or family. They really are a special breed. One story that I remember vividly was a client who seemed very attached to a story of her being sick with a mysterious ailment. As she was leaving her treatment, her body was hunched over as if she was too exhausted and in pain to get to the door. But then she saw Thor and seemed to forget she was sick, her whole energy changed as she leaned down to pat him. But then she remembered she was sick so adjusted her body back to the way it was. But Thor showed me the truth.

Many of my reiki clients got to meet Thor, and many fell for his charms, so I’m sorry to let my clients know that a few weeks ago, he laid down and died in our apartment, not even six years old, and we don’t know why. But even in those moments of grief, I was hearing lessons clearly from my reiki practice. Just for today. Be grateful. Do not anger. Do not worry. Be compassionate. We’re sad, of course, but so grateful to have enjoyed his wonderful presence and personality and energy. I’m surprised and also so grateful the way he became a part of Reiki Surry Hills, and also surprised to discover how much I fell in love with him. Farewell, my reiki cat. Thank you for everything.

Chakra Con? I feel for you but do you really know what chakras are?

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You have to be a certain age to understand the joke I made in the title of this blog post. When I was a teenager, Chaka Khan’s most famous song “I feel for you” was released and while I usually didn’t love pop music that sounded like hers, I did like this song. I couldn’t deny how catchy it was, and that she was all kinds of fabulous. But really, she has little to do with this blog post except that her name can be contorted into today’s question. Is the idea of a system of chakras a con?

You see, it’s one of the most common questions that I get as a reiki practitioner. You work with chakras, right? That’s what reiki is, isn’t it? It’s also one of the most common issues that clients come for. They tell me that they feel their chakras are blocked or unbalanced. If I ask them how they know this, they have often been told this by a clairvoyant or psychic, or by a friend or stranger, or they have looked it up themselves on the internet, and their symptoms (lack of energy, not feeling great, romantic problems, not feeling fulfilled) match up to a website that says that the reason may be because their is a blockage at a chakra: at the throat or heart, the third eye, or head, the navel or root.

Someone on one of my reiki Facebook groups posted a link to an article about chakras, written by Christopher Wallis, a scholar and researcher who looks into meditation, yoga, tantra and other practices. The Real Story on the Chakras is honestly not an easy read, as it goes into careful and detailed descriptions of the six most important things that you never knew about the chakras.

But I think this is part of the point. How did a system about the subtle body and energy centres from 1000 CE or earlier from Tantrik Yoga get translated to what is understood or believed today?

If you are interested, I do encourage you to read the article yourself, but some of the things that I found particularly interesting are:

  • While most Western sources use a system of seven chakras, there were in fact many systems of chakras, using 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 21 or other counts.
  • While many present the chakra system as an ancient one, the way they are described in the West comes from a more modern time.
  • Rather than the chakras being descriptive (“your root chakra is at the base of your spine and is red”), chakras were envisioned as a focal point for achieving a goal, to meditate on or to visualise something at that place.
  • Most of the way that the West understands chakras seem to come from a 1987 book, Anodea Judith’s Wheels of Life, in which she assigns an association with each chakra to “a certain bodily gland, certain bodily malfunctions, certain foods, a certain metal, a mineral, an herb, a planet, a path of yoga, a suit of the tarot, a sephira of Jewish mysticism, and an archangel of Christianity!”. Others associate each chakra with different crystals, colours, emotions and essential oils. These seem like modern inventions. Now, it may be that there is some truth to these associations. Or they may be completely made up! You might have heard about a writer named Louise Hay who became very popular for her self-affirmations. Her ideas were very widespread that diseases came from bad emotions or attitudes (which meant that you could be at fault for being sick, for not being positive enough). I was shocked to read a number of years ago that she basically made up all of these theories herself, which have no scientific evidence. But, like the ideas of chakras, her ideas are widely believed and popular.

I’m not saying that in order to believe something is true, you need to research it and understand it completely. In fact, that would really be shooting myself in the foot, as I don’t think clients need to know everything or a lot about reiki in order for it to be beneficial for them. But I do think that if you have taken on a set of ideas, like chakras, and you are applying them to your own sense of self and well-being, then you might want to look into where those ideas come from, and whether they really ring true for you or not.

I don’t think it’s useful for clients to believe reiki is about the chakras, nor for clients to believe that they have chakras aligned with their energetic bodies that are “blocked” or “out of balance”. As I’ve said in another blog post, I don’t think your energy is blocked.

I do think that most people can benefit from reiki, and the best way to come to a treatment is with an open mind, without set ideas about what it is, or self-diagnoses of your energetic problems. My aim is for the treatment to bring you what you need at this place and time.

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given over 1,800 reiki treatments.
Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it brings them. Folks visit from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

Are you cynical about reiki?

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I usually don’t worry about people who don’t believe in reiki or think it’s all a hoax. Nearly all of my clients either believe in reiki, or are open to how it might work. So, it doesn’t seem a good use of energy to worry about those who are cynical.

But at the same time, I think it is useful for me to be able to explain to clients the ways that reiki might work, even though I’m not 100% sure. And what I especially like about this article, ‘Reiki Can’t Possibly Work. So Why Does it?’ from The Atlantic is how balanced, thorough and personal it is.

The author, Jordan Kisner, who writes beautifully, points out:

For decades, experts weren’t precisely sure how acetaminophen (Tylenol) eases pain, but Americans still took billions of doses every year. Many medical treatments are adopted for their efficacy long before their mechanisms are known or understood. Why should this be different?

But while she argues that we don’t need to know precisely how reiki works, there are a lot of reasons why and how it might work. Her approach is very close to mine: the truth is that I’m not exactly sure how reiki works, and I recognise to outsiders there are aspects of reiki that could seem quite unbelievable. But I feel it works and my clients report that it works in different ways. If what I am offering is simply my time, attention and “an act of caring” and that works for my clients, I’m happy to go with that.

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given over 1,800 reiki treatments.
Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it brings them. Folks visit from all over Sydney and elsewhere to see me. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney.

I’m not sure your energy is blocked

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If you type into Google ‘energy blocked’, depending on the day, it comes up with between 350 and 499 million results. Seriously.

A typical website, as from Integral Psychology, will tell you that people suffer trauma and the trauma gets stuck in the body. It comes from the field of Somatic Therapy, which ‘looks at the connection of mind and body and uses both psychotherapy and physical therapies for holistic healing’.

Many more websites will tell you how to find out why your chakras are blocked. How can you tell? A typical answer:

You may feel more tired or lacking energy, you may feel unmotivated or experiencing more anxiety 
and stress, dealing with digestive issues and just not feeling like your true self mentally, 
physically and spiritually.

I have to admit that when I first put up this website, and was trying to explain reiki, I explained reiki in this way too. I said that that we gather stress or blockages with time, and so reiki works to get rid of those blocks and help our energy move more freely.

I don’t know where I got that explanation from because I don’t believe it anymore!

I think my doubt started with so many of my clients coming for treatments for energy blockages and blocks in their chakras. But when asked how they were, the answers were much more simple. Rather than their heart chakra being blocked, preventing them from finding a good relationship or because they were hurt, it felt more true to me that they had been through a bad relationship, and that finding good relationships is difficult and needs work! Or that they were hurt, in a romantic or family relationship. When people said they are tired, it was likely that they live a busy life, or have young children to look after, or aren’t getting enough sleep. And the idea of ‘not feeling like oneself’? The older that I’ve gotten, the more I realise that we have many selves, and that it is a mistake to create a story about how we are always the same.

I feel a great fault of the new age movement and new age language is convincing so many people (and so many of my clients) that something is wrong with them: their chakras are blocked or not aligned; they have accumulated negative energy and they need a clearing. A few clients say they have negative energy and need it cleared, but this is a lesson, not necessarily easy, that we can learn for ourselves. If someone is angry at us, we can both see if there are valid reasons for it, and if there are not, to see that their anger is their issue, it is about them, not us, and try to not be affected by it.

What I also take issue with is the story that the older we get, that we accumulate pain and trauma and blocks: life is dangerous and we need to be healed from it. What if we told ourselves a different story, a more positive story? What if the older we are, and the more wise, the more we learn to be less stressed, less blocked and less troubled? I think that’s as good a theory as any. As my reiki teacher, Frans Stiene, says, if the energy in our body was truly blocked, we’d be … dead.

I should clarify what I’m saying. I don’t discount the idea that we can suffer trauma and that it can affect our bodies, and therefore our energy. But I don’t think it’s useful for most people to believe that we have suffered trauma and that it has affected our bodies. If you think this might be the case for you, DO see a somatic therapist or a psychotherapist or another counsellor, and uncover and define what trauma you might have suffered and address the issue directly. But don’t self-diagnose yourself and believe without questioning that you have something blocked in your body, which is the reason for not feeling great.

It’s just not healthy to walk around believing that there’s something wrong with us. There are a lot of good reasons why we might not feel great in our lives. Convincing people that our mysterious energy system is malfunctioning, I believe, takes away the power from people to address why we might not feel great. Many of the websites that tell people their chakras are blocked advise buying crystals or visiting someone who can clear their chakras. Has this all been invented as a commercial scam? I think it’s a terrible thing to convince people they are walking around with their chakras blocked and trauma stuck in their body. If you believe this, ask yourself why. How did you come to believe this?

If you know that work and life is busy, too busy for you, then you can consider finding ways of carving out time for yourself, of treating yourself well, and finding ways to slow down. If you feel tired, would taking time to yourself, or going for a walk, or doing some exercise, help you? It could be a physical issue that you should chat with a doctor or nutritionist about. If your heart is broken, perhaps talking to friends, or a counsellor, or treating yourself nicely, and also recognising that you are hurt and that there are good reasons for it, will probably help more than a rose quartz crystal for your heart. I believe that looking to ourselves to understand why we might be feeling low (or happy) is a way to give the power and responsibility back to ourselves to be able to do something about it.

A reiki treatment could be part of this. But rather than seeing a reiki practitioner to clear your blocks and align your chakras, I think the real healing comes in being proactive about wanting to feel better, gathering tools for your toolbox so you know what works for you in feeling better, and seeing your issues as something that, while they might not be easy to heal, can be healed with you taking an active part in making it happen.

Discover the gifts and benefits of a session of Japanese reiki therapy, healing energy from an experienced practitioner. Visit my website or Facebook page for more information and SMS, email, call me or book online if you’d like to make an appointment. Since 2011, I’ve given nearly 1,700 reiki treatments.
Clients come to relieve stress, anxiety and for many other issues, or to just give reiki a try to see what it does for them. While it’s easiest to get to me from the CBD, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Kings Cross, Redfern and Potts Point, I’m pretty easy to get to from anywhere in Sydney. A recent client told me she found me by googling ‘Best Reiki Sydney’. Come see for yourself.