I had always struggled with Reiki and what I had learned about it. There was something not quite right about the information I had been taught, but I could never put my finger on it. There were so many ‘rules’ that it felt restrictive and so much that we really didn’t know.

 I received my first Reiki Master’s cert, (from Antoinette Everts) but we were taught that we now were under obligation to go out and teach it. Neither Ani, nor myself, had any desire to do that. We both felt that it was personal. I had no desire to teach it. I wanted it for my own development and healing, and I tell you, there was a lot to heal!

So, I didn’t rush out to train anyone. But I did practice the attunement process, attuning myself many times as a healing process. I learned many things through practicing Reiki but there was always something missing. I never felt connected to the symbols. They felt superficial. It was only through my own personal teaching, while receiving the Gaia Method, that I began to understand it. When we are first learning about Reiki, we are not able to really ‘feel’ the energies. We are taught on an intellectual level, how to understand Reiki and the symbols, but Reiki is not an intellectual process, it is energetic and sensory.

On top of that, all of my subsequent attunements were also focussed on the Indian 7-chakra system, and this too never sat right with me. Intuitively, the only ‘centres’ I ever wanted to work with were the brow centre, the heart, and the belly. On top of that, I could heal with my ‘seeing’, and my breath, but I had no idea that this too was Reiki, until I found a book by Bronwen and Frans Stein.  Suddenly everything made complete sense! I wasn’t rejecting Reiki, I was doing it the way it was originally meant to be used! What a revelation! 

Interestingly, it was while I was receiving the Gaia Method system that I began to understand how the Reiki system worked. Until I had learned how to connect to the earth, I wasn’t fully using Reiki! And without all of the Reiki attunements and the energetic growth, I achieved through it, I would never have been ‘ready’ to receive the Gaia Method in the first place! In fact, when I received the first Gaia Method symbol, I thought it was a new Gaia Reiki, which I was not interested in doing. It turned out to be a completely separate system and yet Reiki got me there!

One of the issues I had was with the symbols, but I found that they were not quite what I had been taught. There was nearly too much information given for the symbols, when their function was in fact much more simple. It was during a Gaia Method class I was holding in Winchester that I finally understood the SeiHeiKi symbol, 15 years after receiving my first Reiki attunement!

 I did a meditation and it was much deeper than usual and had a deeper impact on the subsequent healing practice! I worked with two women and it was during a session with one of the women, Sandy, that I finally found a connection to the SHK. My guides showed me its effect and elemental use. It appeared as a large wave of water, superimposed on the symbol. When I placed it in Sandy’s energy it created ripples in her watery, emotional layer, which , after a few soft ripples, became a smooth surface, like a lake. After this, a past life trauma emerged, where she lived in the Mediterranean during the Trojan period.

The symbol is a cleansing wave of energy, opening up our emotional body to heal issues within it.  It was that simple. Finally, I could see a use for SHK.  At the time I wondered if this is what Usui was doing when he introduced the symbols for his students? Was it related to the elements too? What was also interesting is that the room I was using was being rented from a Network Chiropractor, who I had been receiving treatments from for a number of years. His Practice is called the Healing Wave of Winchester, so I imagine that it was no coincidence that the SHK symbol ‘showed’  itself here!

A few months later, I did a Reiki Master’s individual training with a student called Chaz. As part of his practice, he attuned me to all three levels, which turned out to be very interesting. During the attunement of the first level, I could feel a connection in my belly (Earth Dan Tien) and a little heat in my hands. For the second attunement, the heat and feeling in my belly and hands increased with a ‘mini’ conflagration! The third degree brought an anchoring of the energy into the Dan tien, with an increased awareness of my divinity. 

I found this very interesting, as I had never ‘seen’ the effects of an attunement before. What I found the most interesting was how the Master degree is designed to anchor the energy in the Dan Tien and that centre connects us to the earth. We are then the medium between Heaven and Eath.

I also realised, over the years and through the Stein book, that Reiki was designed to be a personal healing path, designed to be lived, not just practised. I could relax! There was no ‘pressure’ to be perfect, to live up to some unattainable standards and obligations and there was no ‘law’ that said that now that I was attuned to the Master level, I had to pass it on to all and sundry.

But I discovered, that that is not how Reiki itself works either. It takes time for our bodies and channels to be ready to pass on the energies. For the first few years I taught no-one, but then one day someone asked me to give them an attunement. I was terrified, but I intuitively understood that I was ready to pass on the first degree. “When the teacher is ready, the student appears!”  

For a few more years, of constant personal healing and growing, a student approached me and asked me to pass the second attunement. And a couple of years after that I was asked to pass the Master’s degree. I knew each time that I was ready, because the student would appear! It wasn’t going to happen until I was ready and I consciously had no control over that! My Soul/Entity-Self was in the driving seat, and I learned to trust her judgement.

I received many attunements over the years, in quite a few Reiki modalities, but they all felt like I was adding more energy to myself and adding more keys. I never consciously worked with any of them, but they all added to my growth and the ability of my energy-field to channel greater amounts of energy. Without having gone through this process of Reiki and Ascension I would never have been able to do the Gaia Method at all. And Ascension? That turned out to be ‘Descension’, the anchoring of my body to the earth plane and the world of nature energies! Totally not what I was expecting, but what a gift…traumatic as it was! 

My own personal healing has been and remains a huge part of my life and the Reiki energy that flows through me is the energy that supports that process.  That is why I still offer Reiki attunements to people who want to Learn the Gaia Method. If you want to be the best energyworker that you can be, then your own personal healing is vital to that process. How can you heal the world if you cannot heal yourself?

The understanding of world issues is through the healing and understanding of your own. We all learn through experience! That is why we travel the path on foot and not a chauffeur-driven car!