Reiki ~ A Touch of Energy

As a massage instructor at Esalen Institute, many years ago, I discovered that if I just held my hands still, resting them on my client's body, a deepening experience of relaxation occurred. I experimented with placing my hands in different areas, and found that each person had an "energy map" that guided me. Sometimes I felt in contact with their soul, even past lives. This type of hands-on contact was probably the first way one human reached out to help another feel better, help another heal. In my youthful exuberance, I thought I had invented a form of healing that no one else knew about! I called it "Energy Alignment," because it felt as if an alignment took place between the physical body and the energy overlay.

I began to hear of other systems that used this approach and realized that although it was new to me, it wasn't new at all. One system is called Reiki, which is Japanese for "universal energy." Eventually I became "attuned" to the Reiki energy and certified as a Reiki Teacher (Actually called Reiki Master but my feminist spirit prefers not to use gender-based terms. And Reiki Mistress, well, doesn't quite do it.)

This week I reunited with a group of Reiki healers I used to meet with when I first moved to Florida. (Yikes, that was in the last century!) We did a round-robin of treatments on one another - brief, only five minutes each, but with eight sets of hands applying the touch at once, it was extraordinary. Time stretched to encompass a transformation of dimensions.

The potential of touch is enormous. Babies, as well as the oldest among us, "fail to thrive" without it. Beyond fulfilling a living need, touch brings us into the intersection of here-and-now, the place where authentic intimacy (into-me-see) takes place.

Richard (my husband) and I have been focusing on the power of touch lately. Highlighting the connection of skin-to-skin ~ The Lover's Touch.