Ok, so we are in 2021, but let’s first take a look at the numerology of the year to gain a little understanding of what we are heading into.
This year is a 5 year, and 5 is the energy of change, variety, and freedom. Freedom from…
Read morePutting 2020 to Bed
Enjoy your Holidays this month safely, and use the themes of these holidays to turn on the light within you as we end 2020 and begin moving into 2021.
Read moreReiki Healing Summit 2020
For the last several years Reiki Rays has hosted an online Reiki Healing Summit, and this year the summit begins this weekend on November 7th. I always find it nice to hear other experienced Reiki Teachers and Practitioners talking about their experiences and stories, and I wanted to make you aware of this event in case you are interested.
The event is free, and you can read the invitation from Reiki Rays below. For a small fee you can upgrade for a lifetime access to the interviews, downloadable mp3’s and transcripts, as well as bonus interviews and meditations. You can check out the lifetime access pass here.
Read moreA Little Something For Everyone
When putting together my monthly newsletters I look for fun facts and special days for each month to share as a quote or to put on the calendar. I stumbled upon a site that had special days for all of October that were so random that I thought I would share them with you. There seems to be a day for everyone this month.
Read moreHealing Power of Nature
Last month I took a trip to Pennsylvania to visit family, and I thoroughly enjoyed driving through the lush green mountains and exploring the state parks tucked within them. There’s nothing like communing with nature to lift your spirits.
Have you ever heard of the practice of shinrin yoku or “forest bathing”?
Read moreWaka Waka Waka
No, I'm not impersonating Fozzy Bear. Waka is a form of Japanese poetry in a 5-7-5-7-7 meter. More popular is the haiku which is 5-7-5, but I found out about waka through Reiki. During Mikao Usui's lifetime the Meiji Emperor ruled over Japan and was also a notable waka poet. Usui sensei used the Meiji Emperor's poems as a part of his Reiki Association meetings. Some of them have been translated and you can find them in the appendix of the book The Spirit of Reiki (Lubeck, Petter, Rand).
Here are a few examples:
Cycles of Rest and Unrest
Take care of yourself during these times. I was reminded this past month of how off kilter I get when I don’t get enough sleep. I get very irritable when I am sleep deprived, and I first shared that story after my son was born (here). I don’t always notice it as soon as I would like to, but recognizing it and making adjustments is more important than how fast I notice it. Shortly after I allowed myself one more hour of sleep in the morning my temperament started to shift. It was then I started seeing connections back to 9 years ago.
In 2011 after receiving my Reiki Advanced Practitioner attunements I fell into a bit of a depression, and upon reflecting on my life path at that point I started to consider changing careers. And in changing careers my entire life would change. That was a very emotional two year period in my life making that adjustment.
Here we are in 2020 and my life as I had built it over the last 9 years has been placed on hold, and that has been quite challenging to process especially when having no certainty on when, if ever, I can go back to doing the work I was doing and in what capacity it will be available…
Read moreWe Need Meditation and Prayers More Than Ever
My heart weighs heavily with all of the pain in the world right now. I can’t bring myself to write about an uplifting story or teachable moment from my life at this time. All I want to iterate is to maintain your spiritual practice. Groups of people meditating together can cause changes in society at large as stated by a study from the Maharishi University of Management.
“For the period 2007-2010, when there was a sufficiently large group, statistical analysis found a significant decrease in both the national homicide rate and urban violent crime rate compared to trends during the baseline period of 2002-2006.”
For the benefit of your self, your community, your country, and your world, please keep up your meditation and/or prayer practice. You can do it on your own or join a group. I am going live every morning at 8am if you want to join in with me or perhaps you have another group you are a part of already. Just please, keep it up. The world needs it right now…
Read moreGetting Through The Quarantine Slump
In the first few weeks of shelter-in-place I was feeling very accomplished. I was getting many chores and jobs around the house completed, and I was thinking that this quarantine was the best thing that could have happened. And then it started to take a turn.
My momentum started to slow as the weather turned to non stop rain putting a damper on making progress on any outside projects as well as curbing the daily walks around the block with my son so he could run around and burn off some energy. I felt confined in the house and unable to get anything accomplished.
I was falling into a depression, and I felt I could do nothing about it…
Read moreOnline Reiki Healing Circles and Meditations
I pray that you are all doing well in the midst of this global health crisis. Until the stay-at-home order is lifted I will not be offering any in-person Reiki sessions, and classes are on hold until they can be rescheduled.
I have moved the Monday night Reiki Healing Circle to the Kukan Reiki Kai Facebook page, and I go LIVE from 7:30-8:30pm leading a guided meditation and a self-Reiki session.
I have also been leading a brief meditation every morning at 8am also on Facebook Live that you can join (with your kids as well) or you can watch the recording anytime on the Kukan Reiki Kai Facebook page.
Read moreInner Work to Refine and Define Your Self
On my path of becoming my best self (a work in progress), I find that the times when I can recognize that an event or comment has triggered me with an emotional reaction that does not match the energy level of the event or comment are the best opportunities to go within and heal something about my self. Of course I don’t always recognize it in the moment, however when I do see that something is awry, I know I need to make time to process what is going on in my inner world.
Making the time to do this inner work is crucial in personal development. If I let these opportunities pass I leave myself vulnerable to more emotional upsets in the future which might cause me to say or do something that may hurt someone else. I would prefer to not act irresponsibly and mindless like that, and that’s why I choose to use the following inquiry…
Read moreThe Morning Pages
Have you ever heard of the Morning Pages? If so, have you tried them out? How did they work for you?
If you haven’t heard of the Morning Pages, allow me to explain. It is a free-form thought flow journaling exercise prescribed by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way. Within the first 30 minutes of waking, you are to get out a notebook and write three pages (with paper and pen) of anything that comes to mind, and you don’t stop until you fill all three pages.
This is not a timed exercise. This is a process, and it is one that gave me great results. You can think of it as another form of meditation where…
Read moreNew Year, New Class Offering
As we move forward into a new year and new decade, many of us will spend some time creating New Year Resolutions, most of which will fall by the wayside as the year progresses. Or maybe that’s just me.
One of my goals this year is to start teaching Jikiden Reiki Classes, and I will begin by offering the first level training (Shoden) on February 8th and 9th. I’m telling you this now because you will need to register by January 16th in order for me to receive the manuals and certificates from Kyoto, Japan before class starts.
For those of you unfamiliar with Jikiden Reiki…
Read more'Tis The Season... To Rise Above Holiday Traffic Woes
Remember folks, the end of the year is supposed to be filled with holiday cheer, not holiday jeer. Last year I noticed a lot of hostility and irritability in drivers around the holiday season especially around parking lots of malls and major shopping destinations. During a time when all of the major religious holidays are celebrating the light, I found darkness lashing out through snarling faces, violent hand gestures, and colorful language. (or was that just me? :)
This year I want do my part to align more with the light, and I want to share three actions I plan to implement to keep my spirit lifted (and hopefully lift others in the process)…
Read moreCreating Vacations Despite FOMO
For those of you that vacation regularly you already know the benefits, but for those of you that get stuck in whatever reasons you have to not take a vacation (“I can’t find the time.” “I don’t have the money.”) consider planning a vacation anyway. I had my share of excuses that prevented me from planning time off and leaving home, and once I took the first leap I found the importance of it and decided to make it an integral part of my life and my budget…
Read moreUnderstanding How Your Body Works Enhances Reiki's Effects
In order to understand how Reiki can facilitate healing, it helps to understand some basics of how the human body works. For this month’s post, I’d like to walk you through a simplistic understanding of the autonomic nervous system.
The Autonomic Nervous System is composed of two sub-systems: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. You know more about these systems than you realize. You probably don’t recognize them because I’m using their more technical names.
The Sympathetic Nervous System is referred to…
Read moreRewriting Your Internal Dialogue
Have you ever wanted to deny who you are? Have you taken the time to decide/discover/create who you are? You are the one you. You may have heard this before, but you are the one and only version of you that has ever existed and will have ever existed in the timeline of our existence. The snowflake/thumbprint/QR code that is you exists for only one reason: to exist. You simply get to enjoy (or suffer) through the very circumstances and choices that are unique to you. Those moments when you are by yourself watching the birds fly by/boats pass by/people walk by, are for you to soak in and enjoy. All the thoughts that race through your mind are for you to experience. No one else will have those moments, those exact flow of thoughts. You alone get to enjoy those.
Of course, you could choose to suffer through them. You can choose to view them in a negative connotation and add them to the other reasons to see life as suffering, a hardship, and a worthless story to endure, and that’s not a bad or a good thing. It just is. That may be the hardest thing to accept. The is of the is.
What is your story?
Read moreYour Truest Most Genuine Self
You can find inspiration in the most unsuspecting places. This month I transcribed for you a closing thought from a podcast host for a home improvement show. When I first heard this, it was exactly what I needed to hear to help get me back to a “beginner’s mind” approach to life. I’ve listened to it several times, and now that I typed it out, I can read through it anytime to get me back on track and out of any ruts I find myself in.
The following is from the July 7th episode of the “‘Home’ with Dean Sharp - the house whisperer” podcast. Enjoy!
“ Somebody asked me this week, “How is it that you are working so hard and yet having so much fun?” which is a great question. The secret is that I am a big kid and every day I spend absolutely as much time as possible utterly captivated by wonder and playing as hard as I can. And that may seem a little irresponsible, but…
Read moreRevisiting Grief and The Inner Child
About two months ago I was playing in the pit orchestra for a small production of the musical Big Fish, an adaptation of the movie directed by Tim Burton which itself was based on the novel by Daniel Wallace, and if you know anything of the story you know that it is similar to the events in my life last year. I was familiar with the story when I took the gig, but I had no idea how emotionally painful an experience it would be.
Without even realizing it I had withdrawn internally into a sad and angry place all while keeping a cheerful and unaffected exterior facade. I felt empty. I had nothing to give to my family and friends, and I felt as if I was barely keeping my head above water. I had reached another emotional low point in my life, and upon realizing that I knew it was time to do some more self-work.
I dug into my self-help toolbox to see what I could use to work my way out of the darkness, and after observing the consistent thoughts that were circulating my mind, I knew it was time to revisit some inner child work.
Big Fish weaves a story around a father-son relationship…
Read moreFrank Arjava Petter is Teaching in LA This Month!
Three years ago I had the opportunity to study with my favorite reiki author/researcher, Frank Arjava Petter, when he was traveling through San Diego to teach Jikiden Reiki seminars, and this year he will be teaching in Los Angeles at the end of the month. Arjava sensei has authored several books on reiki including Reiki Fire, The Original Reiki Handbook of Dr. Mikao Usui, and This is Reiki, and was the first to publish a translation of the memorial inscription at Mikao Usui’s gravesite.
Having read many reiki books and websites on the subject I like Arjava’s easily accessible writing style and his dedication to getting validated and verifiable information regarding reiki and Mikao Usui out to the public.
Having met and studied with him in person I can say…
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