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Reiki - A very personal journey!
"The secret of inviting happiness through many blessings
The Spiritual Medicine for all illnesses" - Dr. Mikao Usui 1865-1926
March 2005 - I've been out of work for three years: suffering from chronic depression, struggling with the everyday aspects of what most people call life. But to me it isn't life, it's a sort of existence: that sums it all up really, I sort of exist, I don't live! When I wake up I can't wait to go back to bed, sleep isn't scary but being awake is! Through all this I somehow appear (to those who don't really know me), sometimes, to be quite normal? So I try & go through the motions of doing normal things.
So I find myself once again on a trip to the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall, with my wife Lisa. It's one of those normal things that I go through the motion of doing! Lis has put up with a lot from me in the past few years as well as being unwell herself. Although only 35, her hands are the hands of a much older person, the Doctors surmise that she has arthritis & give her a multitude of medications which never quite seem to achieve anything.
One evening in a small pub near to our holiday cottage, a friend's wife on hearing of Lisa's plight says "have you tried Reiki" our joint bemused & confused reply is "have we tried what!" Two days later we drive a couple of miles to the wonderfully named Hen House where our friends are B&Bing & which is run by a couple 'who do reiki'. We meet with Gary who shows me, having volunteered to go first (being totally in the mindset of lets get this over with), to his treatment room - an hour later feeling pleasantly relaxed I swap with Lisa.
Next day, as usual, I awake at daylight; hours later I hear Lis moving about upstairs - there's a lot of noise, commotion, unusual for her in morning! She appears downstairs animated, waving her hands about; & then I realise what it is she's babbling about on about, her fingers are working, she has for the first time in years full mobility in her hands!
Months later after a suggestion by another of Lisa's friends, I find myself (with great reluctance) going to see a hypnotherapist, me sceptical No!!! But, despite of myself & my doubts, he touches something inside of me, & for the first time in many years I have something to look forward to; sitting in the Hypnotherapists chair.
Somehow I find myself reading a copy of the Marlborough college summer school brochure, & there it is; that reiki thing again, supposedly you can learn how it's done? Well I suppose I might learn something that might be of some help to Lis, possibly, nothing to loose I guess?
So, with a dozen or so strangers I find myself on a Reiki One course. My first thoughts: I'm surrounded by lunatics! Or have I finally flipped, but I realise that yes they are actually talking about spirits & spirit guides & angels & remote healing & universal energy, welcome to the world of the wacky!
Four years later: & I'm still in the "world of the wacky" except I no longer view Reiki as wacky, nor weird! It is now part of my life: I'm now & practising Reiki Master & Hypnotherapist specialising in regression therapy, using the skills that I have to learnt to help others, as well as using it to help myself! I no longer allow depression into my life; I no longer take the medications that numb a person in a zombie like existence!
Reiki is usually viewed as a healing art or method & yes it is that: but it is also more than that! It is (& was designed its founder to be) a system for self-improvement, self- healing & self-discovery: it is as Mikao Usui said "The secret of inviting happiness through many blessings, The Spiritual Medicine for all illnesses" & for that I am supremely grateful!
With blessings love & thanks to: Lisa (my wife), Jill Sudbury (my reiki Mistress), Chris Jarmey, Andy Tomlinson, Sam, Kim & so many others who have guided me, taught me & led me out of darkness into light!
Paul Baskerville
August 2009