Word of the Week

Consider this...

This past weekend I had a very interesting experience. I work with a woman who owns her own Reiki business, and I spent some time helping her out with it. As a thank you for my help, she gave me a Reiki session.

For those of you who aren’t familiar (and I wasn’t before this experience), Reiki is the practice of transferring the universe’s energy through a gentle touch. The goal of this session, and a particular focus of this person, is to balance the chakras, the body’s 7 energy centers. The session lasted for an hour and began with a 20 minute meditation.

Setting aside your beliefs about such a thing and its efficacy, it was a very interesting experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

First off, it was incredibly relaxing and throughout the entire session I had an intense feeling of calm. Obviously, part of this was due to the opening meditation; this makes sense since studies show that health and well-being improve when people take regular time to meditate. I’ve tried but have trouble sustaining the practice, yet this was a particularly good meditation and it relaxed me greatly while fostering significant positive visualization.

One of the larger goals of the Reiki was to de-stress and rejuvenate, and as I carry quite a bit of stress (see my last post on exhaustion) it was most necessary for me to engage in the experience with these goals in mind. Having an open mind helped increase the efficacy of the session, I believe, and I have to admit that I felt calmer after the session, a feeling that stayed with me the rest of the weekend.

Even though I still had tons of work to do that day, I was not allowing the volume of work to stress me out. I just remained calm and did what needed doing. I think the Reiki contributed to my sense of calm, and efficacy aside, calming practices have great value. A calmer life is a healthier life, and I’m glad that I’ve started enjoying one.