I’ve been studying Reiki and other forms of natural healing for almost 20 years now. When I first heard about Reiki, I felt a deep unexplainable attraction to the gentle healing nature of this modality as well as its simplicity. I learned that by placing my hands on myself or another in a loving way that this could somehow effect healing . Yet as much as my heart loved this kind of belief system, my mind had many questions. After learning my first level in Reiki or my first degree as it is also named, I had some really amazing experiences with the children and teachers I worked with, as well as my own reflexology clients at the time. Yet even after each of these experiences would happen, I still questioned the authenticity of what was happening. I would wonder if Reiki was a phenomenon of mind over matter at work. That if you tell someone that they can heal from Reiki energy, it could be a placebo effect, and have a positive effect on the person who believes. I had 2 experiences that challenged this theory. The second one for good.
During a time back in the late 90’s I worked for a school board as a behaviour support worker. It was my job to come into a classroom and work with one or more children who were exhibiting behaviours that would frequently cause them to be sent out of the classroom or sent home. One month, I was asked to work with a 6 year old girl who had severe autism. She was in grade one, and her parents and teachers were trying to allow her the experience of a regular classroom setting. This was sometimes challenging as she would have sudden outbursts of aggression towards her classmates for no apparent reason, and also she would frequently hurt herself by scratching her nails deeply into her skin. While I was trying to figure out how to best support her, many times I found myself cradling her, trying to stop her from lashing out at the children in her class or trying to stop her from scratching herself.
Each time I would cradle her, she would be violently rocking her body, punching with her arms, kicking her legs, and screaming. My response each time was to try and calm her, by slowing the rocking to a more gentle rhythm, humming, whispering her name, and sometimes trying to redirect her to focus on something that might help break the dramatic and sometimes traumatic outbursts. It wasn’t until about the 4th time this happened with her in one week that I remember my mind saying inside my head “Julie try Reiki, you have nothing to lose.” So I did. Like many times before, I sat on the floor cradling her. Only this time I closed my eyes and began sending her Reiki. Immediately something happened that had never happened before. She stopped rocking, she stopped yelling, she stopped trying to scratch herself. Her ridged body began to melt. She lay restful in my arms. It was a very short time, but it seemed to be enough for her to compose herself and be ready to start out on another adventure again. This experience was repeated more than once and each time she would lay calmly in my arms, and we would begin anew again. When I had time to think about what had happened, I realized this could not have been mind over matter, she had no idea what I was doing. Although I believe she sure felt it.
After the next experience I am going to share, I was compelled to go and learn my second level in Reiki. I now had moved to Salt Spring, and one day was on my way to an appointment in town. I was just about to leave my home when a bird hit my living room window. I went outside and saw it sitting stunned on my wooden deck. The bird was puffy looking, and it’s eye was bloody. An image of a birds head on my kitchen floor popped into my head. Earlier that week, to my horror, my cat had brought the head of a bird in through the cat door, and left it as a trophy for me to find. I knew if I left now, that there was a great possibility my cat would eat this bird too. I only had about 10 minutes before I had to be somewhere. I knelt down near the side of the deck about 7-8 ft away from the bird. I cupped my hands started sending Reiki, and said a quick prayer.
” Ok God, if this Reiki thing is real, then please help this bird” I felt impatient because I didn’t think anything was really going to happen and I felt pressured that I might be late for my appointment. But to my astonishment after a few minutes the bird started moving. It started to hop. It hopped over each space in my deck which seemed hard for it to do. It was hopping towards me. In the time of about 3 minutes it had made its way to me and was nestling itself into my hands! I could feel it’s feathery little warm body against my palms. I remember feeling like every hair on my body was standing at attention. I remember thinking ” Nature doesn’t lie.” After a few more minutes, I picked the bird up, and put him on a high stump. When I returned later that day, the bird was gone, and I was relieved to see there was no bird head on my kitchen floor.