Thanksgiving is Once a Year But Gratitude Should Be a Daily Practice

“You should never go to bed at night without being thankful and celebrating at least one thing in your life.” - Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith

Ever since I heard those words in March 2011 I’ve had an alarm programmed in my phone that goes off at 10pm every night that reads “Be Thankful and Celebrate One Thing.” All of my friends know about my gratitude alarm, and I make sure that everyone around me at 10pm, no matter where I am, takes a moment to be grateful for something in their life.

The benefits of a gratitude practice come from the consistency of it (as with just about everything). From the moment I heard Rev. Michael say the quote above, I knew I wanted to incorporate that into my life, and I immediately grabbed my brain’s external hard drive, aka my phone, and programmed an alarm that would repeat daily. If I didn’t do that I knew I would forget about it in just a few minutes.

If you really want to feel the benefits of a gratitude practice…

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Takata's Cleansing Elixir

This month I filmed a video for you all describing four different things you can do first thing in the morning to help keep you hydrated and your gut healthy. I have used all of these and believe it has helped maintain my overall health and happiness. I was inspired to make this video after reading the article "Takata's Handouts" from the Reiki News Magazine posted where Hawayo Takata listed one of these practices as a way of "cleansing out the system."

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Seeing Jury Duty as a Divine Intervention

“God loves you!” exclaimed Dustin to the commuters in the Metro Red Line subway car while standing next to me with his hand just above mine on the rail, and I started to laugh a little inside for several reasons. For one, the fear of being pulled into his performance as an unwitting volunteer being in such close proximity when I was hoping to enjoy an uneventful ride home was challenging the stoic poker face I was desperately holding onto, but the main reason for my internal chuckles was that the message he shared was one that I had received directly though the events of the day and felt that truth deep into my core.

You see, that morning I was summoned downtown to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse to appear for jury duty which had thrown a big monkey wrench my work and family plans for the day, and I was stressing out about finding time to learn a few songs for gigs I had coming up over the next few days. Being called into jury duty did not fit well into my schedule, however it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened for me.

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Making Sense of Freud's Tripartite Theory of Personality

In last month’s post I started talking about the ego/identity and how we have to dismantle parts of it to grow and develop into a closer version of our higher self, however I never really formally studied the psychoanalytical origin of the word ego. I use the word often enough thinking that I understand it having heard others use it in psychological and spiritual teachings and books, yet I never took the time to look it up. With all of the “fake news” and unverified stories circulating these days I felt it was time to make sure I knew the original definition of that word and how it has been updated since its debut into our lexicon before flinging it around in my stories.

When I looked into it I found the the English word “ego” comes from Latin meaning “I, myself,” and it turns out that there is no universal agreement as to what the “ego” is. To save myself from getting too lost in the research of “ego” and how the concept has evolved through different people’s perspectives, I decided to focus on Sigmund Freud’s tripartite theory of personality involving the id, the ego, and the super-ego.

In Freud’s The Ego and The Id published in 1923 he described three aspects of the human mind. After looking up many different explanations and interpretations of these concepts, this is how they make sense to me.

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Death of the Ego (A Gift from My Son)

On June 6th I welcomed my son into this world, and within one week’s time I had broken a toe, chopped off the tip of a finger, and fell into a depression the depths of which I had only experienced twice in my life before (and those two experiences were doozies… life-changers). This was my big entrance into the world of parenthood.

The first few days were nice while the three of us were huddled together in the hospital room getting to know each other, but the decline started when we got home. I guess the mix of hormones running through my system kept me going during the hospital stay, but once they wore off my experience started to change. The exhaustion started to set in and my clarity and coordination started to head out.

It was the day after we arrived home that I tripped in my backyard and broke my toe. A simple accident that could’ve happened at any time, but it was my first warning…

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Reiki during Pregnancy

With our son’s expected due date coming up on June 6th, I thought I’d share with you a little bit about how reiki has been a big part of the pregnancy. For starters I would say that it was after a reiki session last summer that we conceived him.

Once a month my partner Joei and I get together with a friend and practice Shu Chu Reiki on each other. (Shu Chu Reiki is the Japanese term for multiple practitioners giving reiki to one person at the same time.) For several months Joei would ask for reproductive health in hopes that she and I would conceive a child. We had already talked about trying to get pregnant and were open to the possibility if we were lucky enough to win that jackpot, however it wasn’t until the reiki trade in August 2017 that I realized I was still a little hesitant. She had been all in for almost a year, and although I said I was, I was still afraid of taking that next step in life and becoming a father. During that day of reiki I truly felt her intention and desire to go through the challenging and traumatic experience of pregnancy and delivery and most importantly that she wanted to do this with me.

I felt honored to be the guy she wanted to have a child with and from that point on I was all in. Months later after learning the due date and doing a little back-calculation I discovered that we must have conceived shortly after that day.

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Reiki Healing Summit Spring 2018

I'm happy to tell you all about the Reiki Healing Summit Spring 2018 put on by Reiki Rays University featuring interviews with Reiki Practitioners from all over the world including Pamela Miles, Walter Lubeck, and yours truly. This FREE online event will run from May 21-26 with topics including Reiki Research, Reiki Drumming, Distant Reiki, Reiki as a Spiritual Practice, and Reiki in Cancer Treatments. Over 30 leading Reiki Practitioners offer their knowledge and expertise to the worldwide Reiki community to help us develop ourselves and deepen our practice.

I am deeply honored to be a part of this global event as I share about my experience working with “Reiki and the Cancer Community.” Register now and tune in on May 24th to listen to my interview or UPGRADE and listen to it at anytime along with all of the other insightful interviews.

I registered for the Full Access Pass for the Winter 2018 Summit and thoroughly enjoyed listening the interviews at my leisure, and I even had the option to download the mp3’s and transcripts of each of the sessions. Choose which option suits you best and enjoy the summit.

Read more about the Reiki Healing Summit HERE.


Aside from the summit, I have a few other things going on this month that I’d like to share. The first weekend of the month is jam packed full of goodness. On Friday May 4th I’ll be playing bass for the Atma Bhajan and the Sounds of Truth Kirtan Soundbath Experience at The Yogi Tree. It’s been a while since I’ve played a Kirtan in SoCal, so I’m looking forward to sharing in the vibe with you all there. (Sign up for it here.)

On Saturday May 5th, I will be presenting a talk on “Implementing Mindfulness in Schools” for the Burbank Unified School District’s First Annual Wellness Symposium which is open to all staff, parents, and community partners in Burbank. The event runs from 8:30am-12:30pm at John Burroughs High School and has a wide variety of topics ranging from “Addressing Bullying and Cyberbullying” to “Zumba!” If you’re a parent in Burbank or know someone that is, please pass on this information to them. There’s something for everyone there, plus they’re giving away prizes. :-)

I also have a Reiki I class on Friday May 25th for anyone that wants to get their certification at the start of Memorial Day Weekend.


With the birth of my son expected at the beginning of next month I will be cutting back on seeing private clients in June and I won’t be teaching any other classes until mid-July at the earliest. If he decides to join us early I may even have to cancel the May 25th class, but one thing is for sure. I will be focusing on his and his mother’s health after he arrives so if you reach out and don’t hear from me that is why.

I wish you all a wonderful month and hope to see you at one of the events in May.

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Channeling Money

With tax day coming up this month we all seem to have money on our minds this time of year, and I thought I’d share with you my journey though navigating my finances once I decided to pursue a career in the healing arts.

After I resigned from my teaching career I knew I had to be very careful with money because I did not have the stability of a steady paycheck anymore and needed to make sure I had enough money to pay my bills each month. I watched a financial prosperity workshop with Edwene Gaines online where she talked about the importance of tithing and how by removing 10% of your income off the top to be given to the people and organizations where you are spiritually fed you create space for more money to flow into.

Imagine that you have a jar that contains all of your money. If you try to hold on to all of your money then your jar is full and there’s no room for more money to flow into it. But, by consciously creating the space for more money by giving it away you keep the energetic flow of money in your direction to fill the void in your jar.

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Death is a part of Life

Two-thousand eighteen was already looking to be one of the most memorable years of my life with the upcoming birth of my son in June, and in addition the universe conspired to add tragedy to this year ensuring that 2018 will forever be tattooed onto my heart. On February 7th at 3:49pm EST my father, Bob Kukan, passed away in a Pittsburgh hospital surrounded by his children and siblings. No one saw this coming, and it was only a little more than a month ago that we all got together along with his closest friends to celebrate his 70th birthday.

This is one event in my life that I could never have prepared for. Similarly to becoming a parent (so I hear), the feelings associated with losing a parent are only understood once you experience it, and now that I’ve experienced the latter I’m even more curious to experience the former.

You can listen to other people’s stories and read up on grieving the loss of a parent, but until you’ve gone through it, it’s all a mental exercise. The emotional and physical pains that were present for me were overwhelming at times and still tend to come and go, and from what I hear they will continue to come and go for a long time.

Through this loss however, I see a silver lining. I am reminded of the fragility of this precious human life that we have and the finite quality of it.

The truth is that we are all going to die one day, and we must not turn away from that truth. Many of us fear it and never want to talk or think about it which prevents us from ever truly accepting and embracing it. By doing so we may be holding ourselves back from saying the things we want to say and doing the things we want to do with the expectation that we will live another day and get to do those things sometime in the future. Without exploring and accepting this truth how can we ever truly live our life to its fullest potential?

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Rolling into 2018 Late

For those of you that have been receiving my newsletters for awhile, you know that I’ve been consistently delivering them to your inbox on the first on the month for quite some time, however you’ll notice that this one is a day late. The funny thing for me is that although this wasn’t intentionally done, it reflects they way that I brought in the new year… a little late.

I missed the countdown to midnight and it wasn’t until 10 minutes past that my partner announced to the four of us at our NYE dinner, “It’s 2018. Happy New Year.”

This was the first time in a long time that I haven’t been aware of the strike of midnight on NYE and celebrated in this traditional way, and I could can easily label this tradition (in my mind) the “right” way to celebrate the new year. By doing so my shadow could then use this missed opportunity to celebrate at midnight as ammunition to make me upset about not doing it “right” and find a way to ruin the evening by sending my thoughts down a rabbit hole of negativity all because of one missed moment.

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Achieving a Year Long Goal in the Nick of Time

I recently looked at my list of actions for 2017 that is posted on my bathroom wall and noticed that one of my goals was not going to be met. And I did not have a good reason as to why it was not accomplished by now. The goal was to post 12-15 blog articles this year, and since I had the habit of writing an article for each monthly newsletter, I figured this would be an easily attained goal. However at the beginning of the year I could not see that far into the future to know that I would not manage to write one for the December newsletter and in doing so create a challenge for myself in attaining this goal.

That did not sit well with me since I was the only person responsible for it, and I could not blame anyone else for mismanaging my time and preventing me from writing the article. Part of me was looking at this as a failure which could have easily been avoided if I would have found a way to write the article in time for the December newsletter. At the end of November, I was able to find (what I thought were) good reasons for justifying my inability to write it, but now I see that choice has now made me work harder at the end of the year to accomplish my original goal. It just delayed the work. It didn’t make it disappear.

I could choose to take the easy route. Do no work and be okay with calling myself a failure. Or I could do some work and achieve the goal.

Relax and fail. Work and achieve. Relax or Work. Fail or Achieve. The choice is mine.

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Connecting with The Other Side

We are all reminded at this time of year to be thankful since we have Thanksgiving coming up, yet I’m reminded of another day this month that holds a special significance to me, the day my grandmother passed away. I’m not going to try to bring your spirits down in any way by telling you about Grandma Chuma’s death, but rather I’m going to tell you about how it impacted and deepened my relationship to her and “the other side”.

This all happened 5 years ago.

It was 2012, and I had just resigned from my teaching position at the high school and became a Reiki Master. I was diving head first into spiritual living and learning as much as I could about the healing arts, intuitive development, and other topics that were far removed from the linear thinking and rational modeling that mathematics had provided me for more than a decade.

I was regularly listening to a podcast called Psychic Teachers which was hosted by two women that were college professors for their day jobs and psychics on the side. One was a medium and Reiki Master, and the other was a tarot card reader and an intuitive.

Each week they would discuss a topic like mediumship, astrology, and oracle cards, and it was a great way for me to start opening up my own intuitive abilities and pull away from the need to be able to explain things logically and scientifically. The Psychic Teachers often talked about connecting with loved ones who have passed, and the techniques they discussed helped me on the days that followed my grandmother's passing.

After I got the call that she was gone I grabbed my copy of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and read aloud some prayers to help her soul transition from her physical body into the afterlife. When I finished the prayers I sat in meditation and watched an incredible scene unfold in my mind.

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10 Years Ago Reiki Showed Up (Not the Way You Would Think)

Coming up on the 10th anniversary of my first Reiki attunement I want to share with you the real story of what got me into Reiki. Last year I wrote the story of the first Reiki class I took (you can read that story here), but I didn’t go into detail of what my impetus was in studying Reiki in the first place. I’ll admit that I’m a little frightened of what you may think of me after hearing this story, but this is something I share with all of my Reiki students to help break the ice in the beginning of class. Plus, it’s my chance to shine light on my shadow side so that I can take its power away. I see the fear. I recognize the fear. I act anyway.

And here we go with the real story of what attracted me to Reiki.

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Reflections on 10 Days of Silence

This month's article is a long one, and I'm not really sure how many of you will want to endure it. It's a description of my experience during a 10-day Vipassana Course that I took in August 2014. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, it's a ten-day silent meditation course. It was an incredible experience and quite difficult for me to summarize it without going into the depths and importance of some of the insights that I had during those days.

For those that want the highlights, the themes of the days were as such:
Day 0 Carpool
Day 1 Frustration
Day 2 Anger
Day 3 Distractions
Day 4 Sacral Chakra: Creativity and Sexuality
Day 5 I'M NOT ENLIGHTENED!
Day 6 Energy of an 8 year old boy
Day 7 Death
Day 8 Re-birthing Ideas
Day 9 Visitation
Day 10 Scorpio

If you want to take a journey through my experience, I invite you to continue reading the detailed account below.

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Getting Good with God

I started house shopping in September 2010 when I realized I had enough money for a down payment and thought I better jump at the opportunity to purchase a house in Los Angeles before the market picked up again and the opportunity slipped through my hands. By March 2011 I had looked at dozens of houses, written several offers, and still had nothing to show for it. In the meantime I had taken three Reiki classes in less than four months time with my second Reiki Master, Marla Mervis, (Check her out www.marlamervisreiki.com. She’s incredible!) and all the energy spun me into a deep depression.

I was easily irritated, unhappy at work, and felt like I was spread to thin with all the obligations and responsibilities I had.

Upon recognizing this, I pulled back from socializing with friends and knew that I had to analyze my situation and do some soul searching, and then a friend of mine invited me to attend a service at Agape International Spiritual Center.

I had never been to Agape and I was excited to go because I had heard so many great things from others about it.

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How I came to understand "Healthy Mind = Healthy Body"

As I sat facing the doctor from the other side of his desk, I could feel my muscles beginning to tense up and my heart starting to race while he told me he was sending me to the emergency room for an immediate MRI because of the results of my blood work that was drawn just an hour prior to sitting in front of him. I had never had an MRI before and I was getting nervous because this was all happening so quickly. I had come to Urgent Care because of a mild stomach discomfort I would get after I eating, and after a couple weeks of hearing me comment about it my roommate urged me to get it checked out.

After the MRI, I went back to the doctor’s office to wait for the results. The waiting room is the worst place to be in times like these. This is when the mind likes to travel to those dark and scary places.

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21 Day Mindfulness Meditation Challenge

As difficult as it is to believe for me now, there was once a time before I was a meditator. Ten years have passed since I took my first meditation class, and I can honestly say that my life has drastically improved ever since. Through meditation I have learned so much about myself and have become a better person because of it. I have been able to notice tension in my body and consciously release it in order to be more relaxed, and I have been able to recognize when I'm paying attention to the task at hand or daydreaming and not present. I have learned to observe my thoughts as they are without judging myself harshly for the ones that I would rather not appear in my mind, and I have also learned to cultivate more positive thoughts and perceptions on life.

I'm not going to tell you that meditating is easy, and it definitely was no walk in the park for me in the beginning.

I was very frustrated at my inability to remain focused on my breath for more than two or three inhales at a time during those early meditation classes, however after taking a weekly class for several months I made a commitment to myself to meditate every morning as soon as I got out of bed. On some days it was easier for me to focus, and I could see progress being made. On other days my inability to focus seemed to stir up harsh self-criticism which I could have easily used to tell myself that meditation is not for me and that I should quit the practice.

But that's just it. Meditation is a practice. It's not a perfection. You see the results of meditating from doing it consistently.

There’s a quote from Zig Ziglar that I used to have posted in my classroom that said, “People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.” I could say the same thing about the effects of meditation. They won’t last unless you do it every day.

Nutritionists will tell you that you can’t really determine the effects of a change in your diet for 2-3 weeks when you follow the plan daily so don’t go into meditating thinking you can get great results by sporadically meditating. Make a commitment to yourself to meditate daily for 21 days and then assess how you are doing.

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Bill Nye Saves the World, But What Does Reiki Do?

Bill Nye, the famed Science Guy, has a new show released on Netflix and being a fan of this science educator I decided to dive in and watch a few episodes the other day. The second episode caught my attention because it was on debunking claims from alternative medicine. Although it didn’t bring up Reiki specifically, it reminded me of some of the opposing views that I as a Reiki Practitioner have to face in the world. Someone even said that I was doing “the work of the devil” a few years ago when referring to my Reiki practice, and these types of thoughts and beliefs about what I and other practitioners do can get me down. I’ll even admit that there are times when I think of myself as a “snake oil salesman” and charlatan when comparing what I do to doctors and other medical professionals because I don’t know nor can I explain scientifically what, if anything, is actually happening during a Reiki treatment.

The practice of medicine uses scientifically based methodologies that have shown to produce consistent and repeatable results time and time again, and Reiki has yet to be consistent in its results nor has enough research been done to refute the claims that is no better than a placebo. With articles such as “Reiki is Nonsense” (2015), “Reiki: Fraudulent Misrepresentation” (2014), and “Giving placebos such as reiki to cancer patients does more harm than good” (2011), it makes it hard to share openly in public what I do for a living, and even harder to talk about it some family members. 

These critiques of the use of Reiki helps drive me to find out what research has been done and to look at what the results say, and surprisingly there are a lot of studies that have been done. Not all research has followed the strict guidelines of being a double-blind study, but more and more of them are starting to show up. I’d like to share some of the research and articles that I have found with you, and let you come to your own conclusions and conduct your own research.

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The Words Flow into the Voyage of an Interview

Inspired by the artist that spoke last night
I'll attempt to write a rhyme that flows faster than light.
But there I go again,
Comparing myself to others
When all of my pain comes from focusing on these druthers.
I'll prevent myself from editing
As is so often the case in this place called my mind
Where you'll find that these thoughts are not even mine.
Yet they come from a place we might call the Divine
Even though I have no thought of what I will find.
When I look to the depth of the world of inside...

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You Have Always Been and Will Always Be.

While perusing through my old journals, I came across a couple of entries that I titled “Why it’s time to Believe in Reincarnation.” In those entries I went into a rant about how we are destroying our planet and that by believing in reincarnation we might take better care of it because we would be destined to live on it again for many lifetimes. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a home to come back to in our next life.

Aside from that rant, I found that I had somehow explained to myself how we are connected to the beginning of time as we currently define it in through science (The Big Bang) and that we will continue to be connected to the cosmos long after we die.

I’m sure there are many “holes” and assumptions in my explanation, which would make it a terrible logical argument, but this all came to me in a flash over two mornings in 2014. If you willing to set aside judgments and beliefs for a few minutes and allow your mind to go on a journey, then I invite you to read further.

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