How Reiki Works

Simply put, Reiki uses the natural energy that flows in each of us to bring your system the balance it needs. Whether it’s physical tension that needs releasing, anxiety or stress, an active mind, Reiki brings balance. Everyone has a different experience with Reiki because the energy serves what each person needs in that moment.

In a Reiki session, you lie down fully clothed, eyes open or closed, your choice. I follow your energy and move my hands around various parts of your body with hands on the body or hovering just above, your choice. You will likely feel heat from my hands and likely get more and more relaxed as the session proceeds. Many folks fall asleep or end the session feeling deeply relaxed.

General benefits of Reiki include reduction in pain and stress, improved sleep, improved digestion. People can feel more motivated, less depressed.

Other benefits include moving through your day with a steadier mood, an expanded self-awareness, increased productivity, and a more profound sense of engagement with the world.

How Individual Healing Works

intentional self-care means commitment

Part of our work together is to help you build a sustaining and consistent home practice of self-care.

Self-care is not about sitting to meditate when you feel like it, going to a yoga class when it fits your schedule. This is self-care for radical change, for transformation. This is self-care for resilience, for social change. This is self-care for radical self-love.

This self-care is mandatory. It is intentional. Thus, it takes commitment. It takes consistency. Like eating every day for your survival, you must tap into your self-care every day. To survive. And eventually, to thrive.

Over time, I offer you tools such as meditation audio recordings, grounding practices to infuse into your day, and more. You begin to integrate them at your pace. I want to help you develop a self-care practice that becomes second nature, like putting on your clothes every morning, not because I told you to, but because you value it, you value you. This in itself will be a journey towards self-healing and self-love.

The other part of our work together is the weekly sessions. I work with folks for a minimum of three months. Why? So you learn to show up for yourself on a regular basis. So the tools and practices integrate more fully and deeply. And faster! Each week, we do a check-in to see how the self-care tools are integrating into your daily practice. You share your victories (or I point them out to you!). We honor your process and celebrate it whole-heartedly every step of the way.

True Self-Care Is Not Instagram-able

How often do we see photos of a super relaxed, bronzed woman meditating against the Caribbean sea, her wispy (most likely blonde) hair blowing in the wind with the hashtag “selfcaresunday”. 

Or a perfectly dressed person sipping a cappuccino at a white-walled cafe decorated with one tastefully macrame-d plant holder, looking off dreamily into the distance: #selfcaremoment.

True self-care moments look like this: you really want to snooze your morning alarm, but you know that will take away the 10 minutes you allotted to your morning meditation. So you sit down, not facing the Carribbean sea, but your slightly cluttered living room. You do your best to ignore the hairball you can see under the sofa, tempted as you are to just spend these 5 minutes sweeping the floor. You close your eyes and you meditate. 

True self-care is not cute. It is not always pretty. Not when you do it daily. Self-care is effort. It is commitment. We don’t always see rainbows and hear harp music before or after. Sometimes we remain cranky after our morning sit. 

But in coming back to our practice daily, even if it’s ugly and imperfect, we maintain the all-important connection to our selves. This connection, this overall grounding that we cultivate with a daily practice means that in those moments when we experience set back, or get triggered, we will come out of it with more ease and skill than if we don’t have a self-care practice, or a sporadic one that we turn to only in times of crisis.

Self-care takes work. Effort. Consistency.

Before-and-After Photos of a Self-Care Practice

My close friend and mentor teaches boot camp in the next room from where I hold my self-care classes. She is able to post photos on social media showing the “before-and-after” effects of these workouts on her clients. You can see the weight-loss, you can see the slimmed down bodies. 

I scratch my head: how can I, too, show the before-and-after effects of a self-care practice on my students?

How do you take a photo of a person who has sat in their 5 minute morning meditation and is moving through their day feeling a little lighter, more grounded than they used to. 

How do you take a photo of that same person’s calmer nervous system in that exact moment when someone cuts them off in traffic but because they meditated that morning, they don’t cuss a storm or clench their fists or grind their teeth like they used to. 

How do you photograph that moment when someone says no to an invitation because they are exhausted from the week and are choosing quiet time over obligatory socializing? How do you capture the feeling of guilt or shame they might initially feel but also a feeling of self-empowerment: they are finally putting themselves first. The thrill of it. In their heart, in their spirit. How this small change will lead to big results in the coming months and years as they create more and more time for themselves.

My friend posts videos of her workouts. It is noisy, it is fun, people are dripping with sweat. Very engaging, external signs of the work.

My self-care classes have deeply personal discussions around why we come to these practices and how difficult they are to maintain. Honest discussion in safe community. Knowing you’re not alone makes the work so much more accessible.

My videos, when I do make them, show folks who look like they’re asleep on the floor. I can’t photograph the deep relaxation their nervous system is experiencing, or the release of childhood trauma that their body held for decades which releases slowly every time they are in this carefully set-up restorative pose.

In a society obsessed with the external, with legitimizing every moment with a selfie, the work of self-care can easily take a back seat. Because the work brings up all the feels, and then helps us move through it to a more grounded, easeful place. This work is internal, it is personal, it is hard, it is unglamorous. 

It asks us to get quiet. Sit with ourselves. Reflect. Rest. These things are increasingly difficult to do in a society that asks us to do the opposite all the time. 

And when we do, when we show up for ourselves, over and over, day after day, change happens. Unphotographable change but deep, lifelong change. We get lighter, not in weight but in our hearts, our spirits.  We get powerful not from the heavy weights we lift but from each time we take care of ourselves, put ourselves first.

We show up for ourselves and love ourselves and people will see it, trust me. They may not be able to put their finger on it, you may not be able to at first either, but you will inspire your loved ones when they see the results of your self-care journey written all over your body, mind, spirit. 

You may not photograph it, but you will be walking proof of it.