Slow progress

This is a draft I started in October, 2011, and last edited on June 26, 2012. I am publishing it now for posterity and as a demarcation between what this blog was and what it is now (see About page). Funnily, the post starts by discussing what the blog had become then vs. what it was before THAT.

New blog! I started Blossom Reiki on Blogger to share my progress in learning Reiki and building a practice. When I decided not to build a practice right away and to travel instead, I briefly changed the name to Reiki The World. And then…. when my travel planning took prominence, I realized I wanted to “establish an online presence” (a phrase that makes me want to roll my eyes at myself a little bit) and broaden the scope of the blog to include… all of me. So I chose a new name, migrated from Blogger to WordPress, and here we are. Thanks for being here with me.

What’s going on:

Health

I’m down to four treatments per week at Portland Natural Health. All of my practitioners feel they have moved through the damage caused by the car accident and are now working on my underlying postural/structural issues. I went through a phase for several weeks of being resentful about the amount of time I am having to invest in getting healthy (which does not preclude being grateful for the excellent care I’m receiving).

My employer was patient about all the time off I took when my appointments were stacked back-to-back, but I eventually had to start pushing them to the evenings, fewer at a time, which meant I had appointments after work every day and rarely got home before 7:00 and then had exercises I was supposed to do. I did a lot of complaining and very little of the home therapy for a while. And then I adjusted my attitude and accepted that the more I participated in my recovery, the quicker it would be.

In addition to the chiropractic, massage, and acupuncture, I am now in physical therapy, which is all about the home exercises, and I’m doing the best I can to take my responsibility to do them seriously. I do them most days. And the really good news is I am starting to have pain-free days again.

Reiki

I received my Reiki II certificate in mid-October. As with Reiki I, I didn’t feel much of anything during or after the actual attunement. What was different, however, was my attitude toward not feeling anything. After Reiki I, I was overly concerned about not feeling the energy right away, but since that time, I’ve learned to let go of expectations and let whatever is to just be. (Michelle, my teacher: “You understand how huge that is, right?”)

Having said that, I had a major new experience with my newly acquired level of energy channeling. A Reiki II class and attunement includes the ability to send Reiki over distance, whether that’s time or space. My mom in San Diego has been having knee pain since January, and once I learned what I could do as a Reiki II practitioner, I’d been looking forward to sending her Reiki to help relieve her pain.

About a week after my attunement, she was having a particularly bad day with her knee. She’d gone to the doctor and had several cc’s of fluid removed from her knee (eww). When she got home, the back of her knee was really hurting, which was unusual. It seemed like a good opportunity to practice distance Reiki for the first time, so I asked her to sit quietly for 15 minutes while I did so.

I felt the energy very strongly as I sent it (in fact, the only other time I felt it like that was immediately following the car accident). I texted her afterward to say I was done and that I trusted she had received the energy whether she was aware of it or not. I had hope in the outcome, but I did my best to temper my expectations.

What she reported thus really surprised me. She had done some deep breathing and repeated the words, “light and healing in, darkness and pain out” (well, isn’t Mom cute with her little mantra). She was aware of receiving the energy, and best of all, the back of her knee didn’t hurt anymore. In other words, IT WORKED!

portable table

Finances

Travel

The ball is in motion

When I decided one evening in March to pursue Reiki, it hit me like a punch in the gut (or a hug from an angel, in nicer terms).  I went from floundering to certain in a single moment.

I didn’t have that same moment when it came to my decision to plan a RTW trip.  It happened somewhere in June, following the World Domination Summit.  I just found myself talking about it like it was going to happen, and then I couldn’t figure out why I never believed it before.  In any case, it’s on!

Continue reading

World Domination Summit (#WDS)

Last weekend, I attended a conference tongue-in-cheekily called the World Domination Summit.  It was the brainchild of Chris Guillebeau, author of the blog and book called “The Art of Non-Conformity“.  The subtitle of the book is “Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World”.  Chris has carved out a life for himself on his own terms and is passionate about writing and creating tools for people to follow in his footsteps, particularly in the areas of work and travel.  He has come to call his readership “a small army of remarkable people”, and he wanted to gather this group of artists, entrepreneurs, and travelers in one place to meet each other, share stories, and generally just be awesome together. Continue reading

Through the looking glass

What a difference a week makes.  Or perhaps what a difference a second attunement makes, though it’s not “supposed” to make any difference at all.

I practiced using Reiki every day this week, in short bursts, a few minutes at a time.  On Wednesday evening, I received a check-in e-mail from Michelle to her four students: “How ya doin’, let me know if you have any questions, see you Sunday.”  Given the invitation, I shared my feelings thus far. Continue reading

Attunement!

That exclamation point belies my low-key experience, but hey, it was still a big step that happened today.

I was slightly mistaken about the structure of Michelle’s Reiki I class, which takes place over two weekends. First, I thought we would learn about the history of Reiki, but that’s not until next weekend.  The vast majority of the three-hour-plus class was indeed talking, but the subject matter was what Reiki is and some of the basic tenets about how to use it and what it does.  Michelle loosely followed a Reiki I/II manual, written by an internationally known American Reiki Master/Teacher and used by many teachers, and supplemented that information with her own addendum where she feels the manual doesn’t go into enough detail.

Also, I had read that Reiki I consists of four attunements and thus expected we (four of us) would receive two today and two next week. Michelle says only one is required, but she performs one on each class day. So I’ll get another, but really I received the real deal already.

And I didn’t feel a thing.  I had already tempered my expectations, so it’s fine that I don’t suddenly feel tingly and glowing and elevated to a higher plane.  Accepting that divine energy animates all of life in the first place requires faith, so I suppose it’s fitting enough that I have to accept on faith that I now have the ability to act as a conduit for that energy.

I’ve been looking forward to practicing on myself for two months now, and that opportunity has finally arrived.  I admit I’ll be disappointed if I don’t soon have something more substantial to write here about my experience, though.

Whoa! I will not end this post on a downer like that, so…. I will add that I still feel that I am absolutely on a positive path and I am grateful to have led myself here and I am thrilled to discover/create what comes next.

Use the force, Luke

I find that I am struggling with the idea of explaining what Reiki is to people who will likely consider it to be a bunch of woo (from Wikipedia: “a term used by scientific skeptics for pseudoscience, alternative medicine and New Age beliefs, or a person who holds such beliefs”).

I e-mailed Michelle to ask her if I can accurately describe it like “acupuncture but without the needles”.  I don’t want to misrepresent Reiki while I navigate my own self-consciousness around it.  She said she has described it that way on numerous occasions, and I could also say it’s “universal life force energy”.  That’s what I’m trying not to say!

See, there is a supposition here that all around us in the physical world and in our physical bodies is an energetic field that gets out of whack through our life experiences – stress, trauma, etc. – and that a skilled practitioner can access and balance said energy, stimulating the body’s natural healing response.  This makes perfect sense to *me*.  On a quantum level, all matter is energy.  It’s just a “matter” of how fast the particles are vibrating.  (I’m so clever.)

I have seen Reiki described in multiple places as “a Japanese stress reduction technique that promotes relaxation and healing”.  I suppose that’s a good opener, and if I end up going into more detail like that above, I just have to get over the fact that some people are going to think I’m a nutter.

Volunteer training – New Avenues for Youth

After being attuned to Reiki in mid-May, I’ll be looking for as many opportunities as I can create for myself to practice, practice, practice.  I’ll be doing self-Reiki daily, but I will also want to practice on others.

When I have a practice up and running, I plan to do some volunteering, and for whatever reason, I’ve imagined that being in a hospice setting.  But when I received an e-mail on Monday from Michelle inviting me to a volunteer training session tonight at New Avenues for Youth – since I’ll be attuned by the time there is a Reiki clinic there – I figured I might as well.  From the New Avenues web site:

Our mission is to work in partnership with our community to prevent youth homelessness and provide homeless and at-risk young people the resources and skills needed to lead healthy, productive lives.”

As you might imagine, trust of adults is hard to come by in this population, and there are strict guidelines around establishing physical and emotional boundaries, so it’s a big deal to be setting up a Reiki volunteer program there.

Honestly, some of what I learned tonight gave me trepidation, but this entire adventure has me FINALLY (that word deserves caps lock every time I use it in this particular context.. it will be a running theme on the blog) stepping outside of my comfort zone.  So I look forward to being of service to the at-risk youth community, as well as having some new experiences myself.

Reiki Zoe

Having published this blog over the weekend, I decided to see if it would come up on a search in Google Blogs.

I typed “Reiki Zoe” in the search box.  This site did not come up in the results, but one that did and caught my eye is written by someone named Zoe who just started practicing Reiki in February, just started blogging about it, and even chose the same Blogger template I did!  Weird.

Zoe Merkle, meet Zoe Pilmer: http://zoepilmer.blogspot.com/