My spiritual journey to becoming a level 3 practitioner
Being born into a Catholic country and going to an all-girl Chinese Catholic school (yes), I naturally had a sense of spirituality. Growing up, I would be active in a lot of church activities. However, as I grew older and busier, I also became disillusioned with organized religions. There’s a lot of practices that various churches do that I don’t agree with today. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered meditation and energy healing.
Reiki is a Japanese form of energy healing which channels life force energies from a divine source through the practitioner and is administered by the laying of hands on or near various parts of the body. Reiki comes from the Japanese words “Rei” (universal) and “Ki” (life energy). Energy comes in different forms but it is all around us. Some may call it "Qi" or "Prana" others will call it "Life force" but they all refer to the same thing.
It is known that in order for your body to heal, you must be able to get into that deep meditative rest and Reiki helps you get there. It can be used to reduce stress, induce relaxation, diminish pain, speed up recovery, address illnesses and complement other types of therapy.
Today Reiki is recognized worldwide and practitioners are included in modern western hospitals around the world. They offer Reiki services as part of the patient's after care and sometimes practitioners are also in surgery rooms as well. Even if there has been no official conclusive study, more and more hospitals have accepted Reiki or various forms of touch therapy simply because there is a high demand for it. Patients have reported to have healed faster and required less care due to its relaxing and pain relieving effects.
"Reiki comes from the Japanese words “Rei” (universal) and “Ki” (life energy)."
I first got introduced to Reiki from someone I used to know. At first, I was a bit skeptical but after witnessing how instantaneous the healing occurred, I got more and more curious. I signed up for my first class back in 2016 under Reiki Master Sarah Salcedo-Rubin.
She taught me the Usui method and our lineage can be directly traced back to the founder of Reiki himself, Mikao Usui. Reiki uses a few symbols and hand gestures and is typically more structured than other modalities but the energy is highly intuitive in itself. During my first class and practice session, even if I had my doubts as I was doing it, the person on the receiving end still felt the warm healing energies throughout their body.
There are 3 levels to Reiki and after 2 years I was able to complete the 3rd and last level of Reiki in 2018. Let me tell you that it wasn’t easy. Being open to embarking on this spiritual journey comes with more awareness to not just yourself but the world around you. Life will find a way to upgrade you and leave behind all those who are no longer in the same frequency. After my completion of my level 3 practice, I thought I was done with my spiritual journey but I have only begun. I can say that I have been through the most challenging trials of my life in that very same year and that is what healing looks like. A lot of people may think that healing is all peace and rainbows but in reality it’s a lot of shadow work and facing your inner demons.
What I've learned may be different from the norm and it may not resonate with you but I do encourage you to try things once and be open to expanding your mind. My personal meditation and healing practice has helped me cope with the noise of the everyday life. Even when the world stood still and became quiet back in 2020, I learned how to hold space for an Earth that has held its space for us many times before and embraced the silence to make more room for healing.
Curious to try? Send me a message in any of my social media platforms and book a Reiki session with me.
Want to learn Reiki for yourself? Check out Sarah's website here.