Have you heard the term, seen the sign in your Yoga class, or heard your friend raving about Reiki? While some may call it too Woo, I will let you know right out the gate this practice has transformed my life. But before I get too excited, let’s start from the beginning.
Reiki is a unique form of energy healing that uses Universal life force energy to positively impact the body’s energy. In fact, the term comes from the Japanese words “rei” (universal) and “ki” (life energy). It allows your body a break from the stress of life and helps find a natural state of relaxation to heal.
My journey with Reiki began during my corporate career and I was burnt out and overwhelmed with life. Fast forward 10 years, I’m now a Certified Usui Holy Fire® III & Karuna Reiki® Master Teacher and practice with my clients weekly. And thanks to the wonders of technology we can work together from the comfort of their home – energy has no boundaries and it can be practiced virtually.
What can Reiki do for you?
Reduce stress and promote relaxation
improve mood and sleep
ease physical pain
enhance the quality of your life
Curious about what to expect with a Reiki session? Check out this video for a nice overview of how it works and what you can expect.
Want to learn more about Reiki? I’m excited about my first Reiki training of the year! Come join me in Huntersville, NC on April 2nd and 3rd to learn more about this healing practice, receive healing yourself, and learn how you can practice this at home, work, and even with your clients.
Holy Fire® and Karuna Reiki® are registered service marks of William Lee Rand.
Chronic pain is debilitating, and impacts every area of life – ask anyone that has it.
Not only is it a burden to your physical wellbeing, but it impacts your emotional and mental health as well. You feel different when in pain, less energetic, maybe even short-tempered or angry. For me, I felt and acted like a different person when in pain.
When I was very ill and had osteoarthritis along with other physical complications, I was miserable, but kept pushing ahead thinking one of these days I’d begin to feel better. I wasn’t happy, and definitely wasn’t enjoying life.
I had to cancel plans all the time. I couldn’t know how I would be feeling, some days were better than others, but because I couldn’t count on how I would feel, many times I just declined invitations in advance rather than cancelling last minute.
People close to me were understanding, but I did lose some close friends at the time who took my actions personally without considering what I was going through. I suppose that’s why we go are given these challenges in life, to learn and gain a clearer understanding of what’s important – and who is important – in your life.
Most people manage chronic pain through medication, just like I did initially. But it is also possible to reduce or eliminate your pain level through energy healing sessions. I wish I found energy healing sooner in my healing journey.
I suffered for almost 2 years addressing just the physical aspects of my illness, with conventional doctors, medication, etc. After only a few energy healing sessions, I began to experience a shift and after months of the energy healing combined with more holistic approach by my new naturopathic doctor, that’s when the symptoms and pain began to decrease.
Energy healing triggers the relaxation response in your physical body, releasing the energetic blocks stored in the body’s energy field, resulting in decreased stress levels and increased immune response. This is key to resolving chronic pain and other chronic issues that have manifested in the physical body over time.
And energy healing sessions balance not only the physical body, but also the emotional, mental and spiritual parts of you. It supports the body’s innate ability to heal itself and resolve imbalances on all of these levels.
It’s an integrative healing approach that looks at the whole person, including the mind, body, and spirit. The focus is on getting to the root cause contributing to chronic pain.
Another benefit of energy healing is that it can increase the efficacy of other types of healing modalities. It’s a safe complement to other types of medical and therapeutic treatments including Western medicine, Chinese medicine, herbal medicine and homeopathy.
Here’s a list of the benefits of energy healing:
Energy Healing Benefits
Many people with long-term conditions say that they have learned to “live with their pain.” During my health challenges, I thought the same.
Do you think that too many people have resigned themselves to living with pain that could be relieved? Are you one of those people? If so, maybe it’s time to pursue energy healing.
I’ve always been fascinated by crystals, rocks, and minerals. As a child, I loved looking out the window of our car, as we drove by homes that had huge rocks and boulders in their yards, and dreaming of growing up to have my own rocks and boulders in my yard.
As I began to study and learn more about the topic, and have conversations to introduce people to crystal healing, I always mention the following main points because they’re very helpful in understanding the concept.
The use of crystals for healing purposes has been around for millennia, it’s not a new concept at all, or a “New Age” invention. Ancient civilizations used crystals to heal and enhance emotional, mental, physical and spiritual balance.
The blue stone lapis lazuli and other crystals have been used in burial rites and found in Egyptian tombs. Ancient Romans and Greeks intuitively knew that the energies of the stones interact with our human electromagnetic field to bring about changes, and used crystals to protect themselves in battle with amulets and talisman or by rubbing crushed crystals on their bodies, respectively. Many cultures including ancient Aztecs, Mayans, Native Americans, and Hindus used various crystals in healing rituals and for spiritual advancement.
Scientific discoveries over the past century are changing the way we think about the roles of crystals. Crystals are a critical component in communication, information storage, solar power and laser applications in industry. For example, quartz crystals are common in devices like cell phones, TV receivers, and watches and clocks.
A ruby crystal was part of the first laser developed in the early 1960s and laser-related advances in communications have provided a new means of transmitting large quantities of info over great distances via fiber-optic cables. And we’ve got liquid crystal displays (LCDs) in our TVs and computer monitors.
We’re seeing advancements in the field of medicine as well. While today’s science can’t always explain precisely why or how crystals and crystal healing work, those who have experienced healing after being treated with crystals can’t deny that there are real improvements in their emotional, mental and physical health.
Crystal healing is a type of vibrational therapy. Crystals have the ability to shift and alter the frequencies of other objects or bodies when they occupy the same space.
Everything vibrates at a certain frequency, including crystals and the human body – we call this vibration of an object its Dominant Oscillary Rate, or DOR. Because crystals are firm and geometrically perfect, compared to our bodies and the DOR of our bodies that are not geometrically perfect, crystals entrain, or oscillate, the energy that is put near them.
That’s the basis for how crystal healing works: crystals are placed near or on the body and the body will begin to oscillate, or vibrate, at the same frequency as that crystal. This new vibrational field affects the nervous system and stimulates biochemical shifts that impact physical health in a positive, healing way.
It increases coherence in the body, meaning that your heart, brain and other organs sync up. Have you ever felt out of sync, just not right? Or something stressful happens and it feels like you’ve been thrown off balance? That’s why people wear crystals or carry them in their pockets, to provide that harmonizing vibration all the time.
There are many other practical applications for the different varieties of crystals and crystal healing. You can meditate with crystals – holding them in your hands or placing on or near your body during meditation.
In addition to carrying or wearing crystals, they are used in crystal baths, crystal elixirs, for protection from electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure, and in crystal grids in homes and offices to transmute, protect and amplify energy.
Crystal grid on my desk
There’s a huge variety of crystals with over 4,500 types of minerals from mother earth and each crystal has different subtle energetic properties common to its geometric class, color, hardness level, different vibrational frequencies, and unique healing properties.
I create numerous crystal grids in my home and office, and by using a variety of crystals in these grids or in crystal body layouts for client sessions, benefit from each crystal’s unique properties that combine to amplify the energetic potential of the single crystal into a more potent healing tool.
To learn more, follow Energy Rapport on social media (@energyrapport). Or check out the many books that have been written about crystals and crystal healing. One of my favorites is The Book of Stones by Robert Simmons and Naisha Ahsian.
You know the saying “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” I’m a big proponent of teaching people Reiki energy healing.
Not that I don’t love providing Reiki energy sessions to my clients, those sessions are the highlights of my day. But I’m a teacher at heart and have a lot of experience in it – since my teenage years when I taught kids how to swim, to more recently training employees across the globe and now sharing my knowledge with others through my business offerings.
And I love empowering people and seeing their confidence grow. So to be able to teach you the ability to give yourself or others healing Reiki energy whenever you need it – there’s real power in that for you as the student….a lifetime of power.
Think about that for a moment. We go through life experiencing so many things that impact our energy, both positively and negatively, every day. Maybe you got into an argument with someone close to you or have a close relationship that is not going well and is ending soon. Maybe a loved one is sick, is dying, or has recently died.
Maybe you’ve been going non-stop taking care of aging parents, your kids, your spouse, pretty much everyone else but you. Maybe you’re like I was and are so career focused that you’re working crazy hours in a toxic environment and an unfulfilling job.
Sometimes even positive experiences can feel quite draining too. Have you ever been to a big event or party and had a blast while there, but felt worn out the next day and needed some alone time. I can’t be the only one.
Think about the impact these kinds of things have on you mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually – especially if you’re experiencing them day after day. At some point, if these imbalances continue without doing anything to improve them, you’ll be forced to deal with them and by then, it may be a very severe concern forcing you to act: like a serious illness, chronic disease, or other debilitating issue (heart attack, cancer, auto immune disease, depression, anxiety, etc.) that brings your life to a screeching halt.
What if you had the ability to rebalance each day, or throughout the day, to ensure optimal health and wellbeing, so that you never got to that point where it becomes a serious issue? YOU DO.
Anyone can learn Reiki energy healing. I learned Reiki energy years ago during my corporate career so I would have a tool to use for stress reduction. It worked back then when I practiced it. Just like anything else, you have to use it regularly, to make it a practice, in order to see results.
Today I practice self-Reiki every day, even multiple times each day. And during stressful times like my recent red-eye flight across country or when in physical pain from way too much walking on my still injured foot, even more frequently.
It’s a tool that’s here when I need it, and I make sure I use it to my full advantage. So, that brings me to my original question: would you be into this? Into taking a Reiki energy healing class with me?
If you’re interested in meditation, yoga, alternative health and healing, have received energy healing treatments – the answer is probably yes. And I strongly believe the answer is yes for anyone with an open mind and a desire to impact their life in a positive way, and the lives of those they love.
Students have taken my classes to reduce and eliminate stress, reduce anxiety, help with depression, rebalance and enhance their energy every day, address health problems, and help their loved ones and pets. And if your desire is to make a career out of it, you can learn all about that too.
To learn more about Reiki energy classes I provide including the different levels and what’s included in each, or if you’d like to express interest in one of my upcoming classes, find more details here.
I often get asked how and why I got into energy healing work. I apparently seem normal enough, whatever that means. How do you go from an excellent student who loves to learn, growing up attending Catholic school and church, and who went into Human Resources career with a Psychology degree and MBA so she can help people, to now being a transformational life coach and energy expert and practitioner who still loves to help people improve their lives?
Let me take you back to my intro to energy healing, as a grateful recipient. About 8 years into my career after college, I became very ill. I was overstressed and like many other people who were brought up the way I was, I suffered through it.
We didn’t make a big deal about anything. Work was important, making a good living and being successful was important – even at the risk of your health. You just dealt with it and pushed through it.
Well, my body wasn’t having any of that. I went to numerous doctors, took the meds and advice they provided, but wasn’t getting better. This went on for about 18 months – with no official diagnosis and no real solution, only band-aids to treat the symptoms – antibiotics and steroids – which made the situation progressively worse.
Then a friend suggested I see someone for energy healing work. I had no idea what that meant, but I was desperate, nothing else was working and I needed to feel better. Energy healing affects the whole person, your mind, your physical body, and your spirit.
It came to me at just the right time. Not only was my body shutting down, my mental and emotional states were going downhill fast. And I had no connection to spirit – to my intuition, to trusting my gut instinct regarding what choices and paths forward were best for me to take.
I went for energy healing regularly – every 2-3 weeks and slowly began to heal. As I felt better, choices became clearer, next steps appeared. A new naturopathic doctor I went to finally diagnosed my disease, now at least we knew what we were dealing with. It was acute onset Sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that affected my lungs, with symptoms including shortness of breath, fatigue, night sweats, aching arthritis in most of my joints and painful red growths on my shins.
Working with this doctor, we started a more natural and holistic healing approach, continuing the energy work, and adding healing foods and supplements into my diet and more balance in my work life.
If I was going to completely heal I had to learn how to better manage my stress, not just ignore it or push through it. My symptoms eventually went away, and I continued with energy work for maintenance on a monthly basis.
Fast forward about 10 years, I’m living in a new state and am in another demanding HR position and I can feel things are getting unbalanced and stressful. I found a massage therapist who was also a Reiki Master Teacher and I decided to take a Reiki class with her, so that I can use the energy healing of Reiki on myself, as a tool to help reduce my stress.
And it worked for a while, until things got even more hectic at work and I stopped my regular energy self-healing. A few more years of that, and I’m in the most toxic and hopeless position in my career for about a year, and my body decided to take over again. One of the painful growths from the sarcoidosis appeared on my shin again.
Oh, I was not going to go through all that pain and suffering again. I took a medical leave from that position, and part of my recovery included taking additional energy healing classes.
Now I’ve incorporated energy healing into my business, calling in Energy Rapport and it’s all about helping others recognize and connect to energy to start feeling better and create a life they love.
I took my own disease and suffering and now facilitate energy healing to help others who are ready to heal, whether it be from chronic conditions, surgery, serious illnesses, major life circumstances (divorce, death of a loved one, etc.) or other emotional and mental struggles. You can learn more at my website here.
Dogs are really in tune with energy, definitely more than us humans.
And if you’re paying attention, you see it in them every day. You can see when your dog’s energy is high – think of them running around at the dog park, or protecting the house from the delivery truck driver.
My dogs can go from napping on the couch to full-on, alert, at the window barking when they hear someone on the front porch; from peaceful and calm to high energy and on task, doing their jobs to protect the house. I always thank them for doing such a good job!
And then you can see when your dog’s energy is low, when they’re sick and not feeling well it’s very obvious; they move slower, tail is down and no wagging.
Or maybe you see that low energy when they’ve had a fun but exhausting day at doggie day care or on a long hike with you – and they can barely keep their eyes open on the car ride home.
So, just like us, dogs experience different things during the day and it has an impact on their energy system. If these things happen to be negative, and happen a lot, like chronic stress, it may lead to imbalances and other chronic issues and possibly cause behavioral problems too.
As a Reiki Master I provide energy treatment sessions that are deeply relaxing – my clients (both people and dogs) typically get very calm and peaceful and many fall asleep during a session.
In this soothing session, clients receive the rebalancing of energy that promotes the body’s natural ability to heal itself on all levels – emotionally, mentally and physically.
There are so many benefits to energy healing sessions, and once things improve in one area I typically see other areas improving as well.
Here are five reasons that your dog may need the benefits of having energy treatments:
Your dog has behavioral issues related to too much stress. It could be from something currently stressing her out or maybe she’s a rescue and has a previous history of abuse.
Your dog has chronic physical ailments or is always getting sick for no obvious reason – kind of like people who are out of balance and always seem to be the first ones to get sick when they are around others who have a cold or the flu.
Your dog has abandonment issues and high anxiety, especially when you leave the house, or even leave the room. He may act out by whining, pacing, barking or destroying furniture.
Your dog is going in for surgery. Energy treatments before and after surgery can help reduce anxiety, minimize pain levels, and support a speedy recovery time.
You’re about to go on an extended vacation or business trip, and your dog will be in a different environment with a different routine, like at a boarding facility or having pet sitters around instead of you being there. Dogs like routines and this can be very disturbing for them – they may not eat well or show other signs of being stressed. Energy treatments before and after your trip can be very beneficial.
If one of these describe you and your dog’s situation, and you’d like a safe, natural, non-invasive technique to reduce stress and balance energy, try energy treatments. They are not a substitute for medical treatment, but they complement medical treatments like surgery or other procedures well; and they are very beneficial for natural relief of stress and anxiety.
Imagine how you would feel if your dog’s anxiety and stress lessened or went away completely, if her physical ailments improved, and if she was happier and more confident and content?
One more thing: I find that providing energy treatments to dogs helps their human companions too. Yes, that’s you, the pet parents.
Pet parents and their dogs often mirror each other’s emotional and physical states, and as you see improvements in your dog you may notice your improvements in your life too.
Wouldn’t it feel great knowing that you are caring for your dog in a way that comforts, supports, and benefits your dog’s mind, body and spirit?
Leave a comment below about your experiences with energy treatments for your dog; it’ll be helpful for others to read about, especially if this is a new option they’re considering.
Oh, I was not going to go through all that pain and suffering again. I took a medical leave from that position, and part of my recovery included taking additional energy healing classes.