At the start of 2018 I finally took the plunge and did my Reiki Teacher training. Whilst shadowing a reiki 1 class, along with 4 other Reiki Masters, we had a discussion about how Reiki changes your life. All the masters agreed that it had had a profound impact on our lives, in unseen, and not always entirely joyfilled ways! We were all quick to point out to the students that this wasn’t a negative thing, as they were looking a little worried about what they’d let themselves in for! Most of them returned for the Reiki 2 course, so we obviously didn’t scare them off!

Since then a lot of thoughts have meandered across my mind; many books have been read; and there have been numerous experiences, good and bad, that have shaped my thinking on this.

I started Reiki training because I wanted to have a tool to help my husband – a very odd thing happened to him which freaked me out to the extent that I went looking for emergency shamanic healers and spiritualists (it was a seriously mad time that I won’t get into here!) When I couldn’t find anyone to help, I jumped in at the deep end and signed up for a Reiki course, as you do!

Reiki 1 didn’t do much for me for a variety of reasons: my deeply felt scepticism along with the more down to earth issues I had with the venue. 

Thankfully something made me go back and do Reiki 2. That was the point at which things really changed for me. 

Whilst part of that was due to direct experiences with the inexplicable forces of woo, it was a much more mundane magic that created the seismic shifts that continue to rumble through my life. 

Understanding exactly what had caused the inner tectonic plates to start reeking havoc on my life, took me most of last year to process. A series of (seemingly unconnected) experiences coalesced into one of those ‘duh’ aha moments. 

Last year the idea that is The Sensory Coach came to me, which of course set me off on a voyage of discovery that ended up with learning about how the different sensory types affect how we experience our surroundings. This knowledge lead me to write a post about the dangers of having ones feelings denied and reframed by others.

The previous year I’d begun researching terms such as gaslighting, narcissism, coercive control, emotional abuse etc thanks to the horrific experiences my friend, L , was going through. 

I saw aspects of my own life where some of these things had been, and still were, present. This really set the cat among the pigeons in my home life: I was no longer allowing myself to be steamrollered by opinions close family members found it useful to have me believe about myself. 

The more my self belief increased, the more the foundations of my family shifted – earthquakes are not fun things to live through.

The final puzzle piece was jiggled into place towards the end of last year.

I was looking for quotes about the senses to use as blog fodder when I happened across this:

‘Magic is really only the utilization of the entire spectrum of the senses. Humans have cut themselves off from their senses. Now they see only a tiny portion of the visible spectrum, hear only the loudest of sounds, their sense of smell is shockingly poor and they can only distinguish the sweetest and sourest of tastes.‘’

This is from the novel The Alchemyst by Michael Scott which obviously I had to devour immediately! 

Once that jigsaw piece slotted into the puzzle, it took a little more processing time for me to realise exactly what it was about Reiki, that had been behind the changes in my life. It was beautifully simple.

For the first time in my life, people were interested in my inner experiences. More importantly, I was encouraged to share those experiences and when I found the courage to do so, I wasn’t told that what I had experienced was wrong! Every student’s experience was listened to and accepted without question or without trying to justify or rationalise it. 

This happened at every Reiki training, with a wide variety of different people. My confidence grew with each new session.

I now believe that the reason Reiki 2 was so ground breaking for me wasn’t because it showed me that ‘the woo was true’, but because I’d had my internal experience validated.  Personal information given to me AFTER I had given Reiki to a fellow student, clearly showed me that the feelings I’d so nearly dismissed, were real, and had a direct connection to something tangible.  This left me with a nascent sense of trust in my own feelings from which there was to be no going back. 

The idea that magic is simply the full utilisation of all our senses makes perfect sense to me, whilst taking nothing away from the magic of magic! 

Many people think Reiki is some sort of magical (or wishful) thinking, even though there is a large body of scientific evidence that supports its efficacy. I’d argue that it IS magic, a magic that is supported by science, though of course you’re unlikely to hear research scientists using the M word!

Our senses ARE the creators of magic; for instance, intuition, which is so often talked about as though it’s some magickal cult of woo, is simply the translating of the very subtle information we pick up from our environment. 

What this means is that we can all be magicians – sensory alchemy is available to us all. You simply have to believe (in yourself). 

But be warned…. once you start to learn the arts of transmutation (aka taking the red pill) there’s no going back. Your life will never be the same again. As my friend Jenna says:

‘It may be turbulent’.