Reiki & Therapy: How I got here

I remember sitting in my Reiki training and learning about all of these new concepts: meridians, chakras, subtle energy body, and the like. There is so much to learn and even though I had diligently read Donna Eden's "Energy Medicine" I still felt like I was just scratching the surface to this unbelievable world of energy medicine. I finished my Reiki master training and after going through 4 levels of it, I realized I felt less prepared than ever to start working with people's energy. I know I am intuitive - in fact, I've known that for most of my life. It wasn't until a mundane day in 2019 when I fully realized that I am a full-blown empath and my journey with energy began.

I was at my first therapist job. The combination of being a baby therapist and an empath who hasn't figured out how to protect their energy is a wild ride. The first two years after grad school are incredibly intense and my caseload was broad. In a lot of ways, it helped me figure out my population and in other ways it was a recipe for chaos. I worked in a "cube farm" and often floated around to chat with other therapists about cases or to just check in with colleagues who had become friends. On this particular occasion, I was walking with my friend Brittany, who I later had a private practice with, who had so much experience and I looked up to her. I was discussing some feelings that I was having and all of the sudden she goes, "Oh! You're an empath!" Immediately, something deeply resonated in me, and I became so curious about what that meant. I started googling, as one does, to find out more. Because of how intense everything was with work; I didn't do much else with it at the time.

Then, towards the end of summer, I had a convergence of difficult things happen that pushed me over the edge, and I found myself wondering if I should check myself in somewhere. I hit my limit at work, my grandmother passed, and I had a long conversation with a family member that, while informative, also included a lot of traumas and I snapped. I was in a fog and knew that my life could not continue the way things were but also didn't know what to do next. Serendipitously, I saw my cousin, Olivia, a few days later. I hadn't seen her in several years and I spent some time with her and my sister. Towards the end of our visit, we started discussing energy. Olivia, the wise being that she is, recommended this book to me that I'd never heard of before called "The Celestine Prophecy." At that point, I was so ready for any ideas that I purchased the book and received it a few days later. I can still vividly remember getting into the book and suddenly having this sensation of vibration all over my body that was so intense, I had to stop and check to see if I was feeling anxious about it. As I scanned myself, there was no anxiety, just excitement. It was the first time I felt deep resonance so physically and I often think of that moment as my spiritual awakening.

For the next few years, I began exploring lots of different approaches to spirituality. I discovered a podcast that had lots of guests on it that engaged in holistic practices that were often incredibly creative, and I listened for resonance with each episode. They also discussed functional nutrition, astrology, moon cycles, and earth medicine. Brittany and I began doing our own moon circles and I felt myself getting more and more into alignment.

Then, the pandemic hit. I consider myself fortunate in a lot of ways when it comes to the pandemic. While many people were struggling with isolation and disconnection, I found that I was thriving with the space from others. In retrospect, I know that was because I needed to feel out what being an empath meant for me and not being around others gave me the opportunity to start listening without additional noise. Working from home felt amazing for me because the stress of the day-to-day decreased. I could make food in my own kitchen, I didn't have to wake up as early, and I could wear clothes that made me feel comfortable and supported. I had space to dive deeper into my spiritual practices. When we bought our house, I was spending time outside and grounding with the Earth and sleeping so deeply. When I finally moved on from my first job, I felt the stress melt off of me and my practice deepened further.

I opened my practice in early 2022 and allowed it to just be for about half a year before I was trained in Accelerated Resolution Therapy. I always knew I wanted to work with people with trauma, but after getting trained in ART I felt like I finally had the skills necessary to niche down and dive in. Now, after 3 years, ART is still one of my primary modalities that I use to support people, but I found that I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to support people in connecting with self. Around the same time, I started going to a local CrossFit gym to work on my physical being. While there, I attended an event where I met Tanya, and the seed was planted for AzItala Yoga. We talked about Reiki and all of her other offerings, and I was intrigued (though it would take a while for that seed to grow). Eventually, I began going to yoga classes to manage stress at AzItala and during a particular yin yoga class where I was learning that my bodily discomfort was very tied to stored emotions, I had the thought of connecting with Tanya to collaborate. I felt that there had to be some kind of way to incorporate ART with non-therapy practices for deeper work, but I had no idea how.

Tanya and I met in a local coffee shop sometime later and we put together a rough draft of something we could do. I felt somewhat discouraged as I realized how many rules therapy has that makes it difficult to integrate with other practitioners. Not that I ever wished I could be unethical or anything, there are just a lot of things to consider when using therapy modalities in a non-traditional manner. Time passed and our idea fizzled, but it paved the way for something much greater. I signed up to take Reiki training from Tanya in the spring of 2024. Level 1 and 2 were done in a weekend in June, and I was so ready to dive in. With each new concept that I learned, I felt so strongly that there was incredible cross-over between the therapy work I was already doing and energy work, I just didn't have the language for it yet. I started practicing Reiki on myself every day and had profound attunement experiences that deeply resonated. I signed up to take the advanced and master trainings in August 2024 and was so excited. Those trainings turned out to be somewhat of a different experience for me. I had (what I think was) a repressed memory surface and my attunements felt more challenging. I now think that it's because I had not gone that deep into myself before, but who knows. I was still excited to learn and absorb anything I could, but I also felt like an imposter. So, I finished my training and then tried to practice on a couple of family members but then stopped. I moved into my current office, which happens to be at the center where I did my Reiki training and adjusted to the boom in business that the move brought me.

A few months later, I mentioned feeling like an imposter to Tanya and she reminded me about the practice component and that if I continued to practice on myself, I would be able to notice subtle energy better and would be able to feel it on others as a result. So, I began practicing on myself. I refreshed my memory and reiki'd my space, my body, my husband, my pets...anything and anyone that I could. And I started to feel it.

Then, I began looking online to see if other therapists were doing Reiki, too. I knew it wasn't outside of the realm of possibility since many of the groups I was in were for non-traditional practitioners, but I finally came across one specific to Reiki. I leaped into the Psychotherapeutic Reiki Level 1 class that was based off of Richard Curtain's "Psychotherapeutic Reiki: A Holistic Mind-Body Approach to Psychotherapy" and knew I had found my people. It is nerve-wracking to do something so out of the box, but in completing that course I truly believe this is the integration I have been searching for and allows me to use the full spectrum of my gifts to help others.

I think a lot of people hear energy work and it feels too "woo woo" for them or it feels non-scientific, and they don't feel it has a place in therapy. Historically, modern western psychology has been built by people who create theories about why we work the way we do. Many of those theories are repackaged versions of eastern, indigenous, and ancient wisdom that we have made into "modern psychology." We use those theories to create a lens, but they are not inherently scientific in and of themselves; they are just theories. Certainly, in the psychology field's pursuit of being considered a "hard" science, there have been lots of strides to describe why certain theories have evidence-based merit, but I also think that it leads us to creating therapy environments that are, frankly, sterile, even though one of the basic tenets of therapy is to meet the client where they are at and focus on the human connection pieces first and foremost throughout the process. Furthermore, much of therapy's history is rooted in the therapist being the professional and people going to the therapist to be the expert. We have seen the evolution of the belief that people should be empowered and have the ability to heal themselves with support, which is exactly what Reiki does. It gives the power to the client and supports them in tuning into their own innate wisdom of themselves. In my mind, this also makes Reiki in therapy an anti-colonist and anti-capitalist practice because the client does not rely on an external expert source for healing but rather receives true support in their work to heal themselves.

Much of the work that we already do as therapists is energy work. Attuning to our clients, observing their body language, listening carefully to their words, checking for congruence, noticing their mood and affect, supporting thought and belief changes (thoughts are energy, after all), supporting nervous system regulation (stay tuned, the theories that support Reiki are incredible), and co-regulation to name a few. There are tons of crossovers between Polyvagal, Somatic, Mindfulness, Humanistic, and Psychodynamic approaches as well. Some of the field's top experts speak at the annual Energy Psychology conference because, rest assured, the convergence is occurring between science and the metaphysical, and I think the next decade is going to see an incredible explosion in this area.