Integrating Mind, Body, Soul

You will always heal what you are ready to heal, shift what is ready to shift, see what you are ready to see. Don't underestimate this gentle yet quietly powerful form of ancient healing amongst the cacophony of emerging, cutting edge, healing technologies available to us today.

I recently participated in a survey of a PhD candidates research study investigating the prevalence and frequency of psychic phenomena in Reiki practice.  As someone who has been practicing this form of healing since 1998, this made me very excited. I found my first Reiki healer in a community newsletter in 1996, the year my daughter was born. I was 23. I knew nothing about it but was open to exploring a range of healing techniques. I was so blown away by my first experience that I knew I had to learn how to do it so I could share it!

In my first ever Reiki session I sat in a chair above a tiny crystal and esoteric book shop just outside of Durban, South Africa. I had no idea what to expect. This was way before the days of google, everything at our fingertips and instant gratification! The healer gave me a blue kyonite crystal to hold. I was told that this was the stone of Archangel Michael. I had the most incredible out of body experience and experienced the purest ecstacy. My heart felt too big for my body, I exploded out of my human form and experienced pure vastness. I blissfully spun in what felt like the centre of the universe. My physical body wanted to express this as laughter, the energy bubbled up from deep within me and shot upwards and outwards. I still held the awareness of where I was and heard people in the shop below me. The extreme intoxicating euphoric elation was almost unbearable yet I did not want it to stop. After the session was over the healer told me I may experience some physical detoxification symptoms as energy cleared and balanced and that if I experienced any emotions to allow them to flow and not resist them as it may still be aspects from the healing releasing, rebalancing and adjusting. I floated out of there grinning broadly, as high as a kite. I did experience some intense sharp pain in my kidneys in the days following the session which I sat and breathed and cried through in a hot epsom salt bath. Energy definitely needed to continue to move in a very different way now.

The reason I had booked the session in the first place was because my partner at the time had been diagnosed as hiv positive. I at that stage  had no idea if I was positive or not and if I was, so would my daughter have been as I was still breastfeeding her. In those days you needed to wait two weeks for your hiv test results. This was a torturous yet transformational time for me. My full focus was on survival and healing. It was like another part of me sharply kicked into action. I shifted gear, turned inward and quietly yet strongly made the decision that I choose to live, if I live my daughter lives. During this time I did not give fear space, that definitely came later, along with a whopping dose of PTSD, that I had no idea of the name of while I  panic attacked my way through it!  I had been reading Carolyn Myss and Shirley Maclaine books at the time and their experiences with psychic surgery, energy healing and miracles were inspiring. I did not really consciously know what I was doing, yet trusted what came up for me to practice. What I do now know is that the experience was a catalyst for immense healing and a life time dedicated to a spiritual path.

After a long two weeks I received my results, they were negative. I was told I needed to go for another test in three months time as there was a window period where the virus might not be detected yet. In that timeframe I had moved to Cape Town and actually waited six months to do my second test. It remained negative. Over the years I have sporadically done tests. All of them have been negative.

In 2001 my partner and daughter's father died of an Aids related illness. A beautiful man that brought me some of my hardest lessons. Our soul contract unmistakeable.

This was actually just the beginning of a lifetimes worth of intense unrelenting learnings, resistance, surrender, insight, struggle, growth, survival, spiritual practice, joy, illusion, betrayal, refinement, remembrance, single motherhood and ultimately healing through multiple dark nights of the souls and multiple exquisitely powerful moments, miracles and everything else in-between. I write this 27 years later. In 2024 I am 51 and breathing into the space of reflection and realisation.

We are all here to learn and evolve. This journey of life an awakening or rather a journey of reawakening and remembering who we are and why we have come.

In 1998 I found a Reiki Master in Cape Town. She never advertised anywhere and just operated through word of mouth. I loved that. She trusted that the right people would find her. I did all my Reiki attunements with her as well as my Reiki Master initiation.

One of the first distant Reiki sessions I gave all those years ago was incredible to me. For distant healing I send healing energy for a short twenty minutes at a time for four days in a row. The woman I was sending distant reiki to had shot herself in the hand while cleaning a gun, we had spoken on the phone and I had offered to send her four sessions. I sat daily for those sessions and diligently sent the healing. I didn't experience anything out of the ordinary and I doubted whether the healing had any effect. We spoke on the phone after the sessions and she said it was miraculous, her hand had felt like it was continuously on a hot plate before the Reiki. After the healings she said she didn't experience that constant pain anymore and her doctor couldn't believe how fast her hand was healing. That was my first big lesson in trusting the healing energy. Once we set the intention to heal it happens and flows even when it feels like it is not tangibly strong for us as healers. Often our job is to get out of the way of ourselves and to align with the frequency of who we are. Full presence is the most potent gift and catalyst.

When I am facilitating a Reiki session I am mostly very visual and receive visual images that are relevant for the client,  that are often symbolic of the energy relevant to the healing. Some healings are more visual than others and no one is more powerful than the other. 

People receive the Reiki healing energy in different ways too. For some it is incredibly tangible and they physically, energetically and emotionally feel a marked difference post a session, while other people fall asleep and don't experience anything other than a deeply relaxed and peaceful state. Some people see colours, visions, ancestors, angels and guides and hear words while others don't.  For one person miraculous physical healing can occur, while another person receives deep spiritual healing, with nothing necessarily physical shifting, yet  necessary subtle internal shifts have occurred. 

If you are reading this and have been considering a Reiki healing session at this stage of your life and journey consider this as your yes. Book that session, it may be exactly what you need.

© Patwant Rhodes