How it began
My first experience of energy healing was with a woman in Sweden, around 2018.
It was shortly after the beginning of my Kundalini awakening. I was hopeful and excited about a spiritual path that seemed to be moving very quickly, but I was also deeply unsettled. I had been depressed for years, at times suicidal, and waves of despair, existential fear and loneliness would still come over me. My heart felt blocked.
During that healing, it was as if everything began falling back into place.
There was something both motherly and fatherly about it. Soothing, grounding, deeply peaceful. I felt as though everything within me was being drawn towards the centre of my being, finding its rhythm again. It felt divine, and also utterly natural.
I couldn’t understand how it was possible. For a while, I was completely fine with not understanding.
I wanted to learn this. I wanted to experience it again, to have my own relationship with that healing current, and to share it with other people.
Around that time, I was studying psychology and neuroscience at university. I had also studied exercise science and personal training in Australia. But I had never felt this same movement from within my heart to share what I was learning. With healing, that wish was there from the beginning. It never occurred to me to try to keep it for myself.
The woman I visited didn’t call what she offered Reiki. It was through my own practice and experience that I later came to understand it as the same universal life force – something that isn’t confined to a particular tradition or name.
Learning to allow
I went back to her a few times. After perhaps three healings, I had already booked a ticket to Thailand to learn traditional Usui Reiki.
I initially went to study Levels 1 and 2. What I experienced was so profound that I wanted to continue learning, eventually completing the Master and Master Teacher levels as well.
The relationship with my teacher at the time felt different from what I had known at school. I experienced her as someone who had a gift and could pass that gift on to me. There was something sacred in that way of learning.
What struck me most about the practice was its simplicity.
I had spent years exploring the body, mind and brain – through study, physical practice, deep introspection and philosophy. There were many ways I had tried to understand both the world within me and the world around me.
With Reiki, there were principles to learn, techniques to practise and, as the training progressed, symbols to work with. But at the heart of it was something remarkably simple: allowing the work to happen.
There is attention, presence and practice involved. Yet the healing itself was something I was learning to allow.
This fascinated me. Something could be so simple, sometimes so difficult to allow, and have such a profound effect on my life.
Living with the practice
For many years, I felt that the important thing was to embody what I had experienced – to live with this peace and let it become part of my everyday life.
That was much harder than I had imagined.
I struggled with my sensitivity and with finding a way to live in a world that often seemed to have little room for it. Living in a city, working an ordinary day job, and trying to bring these experiences into daily life could be deeply painful. There were years of difficulty, and some very dark moments.
Yet even in the midst of that, I could find this peace again.
I could feel safe and supported while so much in my life was still difficult. That has been an immense blessing.
Looking back now, I feel that the peace was always here. It was the foundation from which all those difficulties played out, even when I didn’t understand how to live with it.
I have always loved travelling, and I’ve spent time living and learning in different parts of the world. But I’ve also come to recognise how travelling, meditation, and even healing can become places I retreat to when everyday life feels difficult.
More recently, living what I have experienced has become something much more practical.
When I get up from meditation or finish a healing, the practice continues. The peace may feel quieter as I go out into the world, but it can still be there – in my work, my relationships, and the ordinary things I do each day.
For me, this also means meeting the fears that make it difficult to feel at ease in those parts of my life. It is an ongoing part of the practice.
I want to let what I experience in the healing have a place in the whole of my life.
Why I share Reiki
From that first healing, sharing this energy with other people felt like the most natural thing. The wish to share it arose from the experience itself.
My understanding of that wish has changed over time. Because I had suffered so much, I sometimes assumed that everyone else needed help in the same way. I’ve come to recognise how differently people arrive, and how much room there needs to be for their own experience.
When I share Reiki with someone, I receive it too. That shared experience is something I love about this work.
Today, I understand my part as helping people discover this peace within themselves. I bring my training, my experience and my attention to the session, and we spend that time together with the Reiki.
It has become one of the most natural ways I know of being with another person.
