A month before I ever heard of Reiki, I started to feel like I had a weight sitting on my chest and it was hard to breathe. I had dinner with a girlfriend and she told me about a psychic fair she recently attended where she had a Reiki session. She told me about the different chakras and how hers were unblocked by this session. I immediately felt like the weight on my chest was the cause of a huge block in my heart chakra. I was involved in a relationship that had a major trust issue and I really wanted to overcome it, so I made an appointment with Barbara Savin, the Reiki Master who gave the Reiki session to my girlfriend.I went into the Reiki session without knowing what to expect. As soon as the session started, I felt my grandmother’s spirit enter the room. It was a very emotional experience. I felt a very hot energy around my heart and all of a sudden, the block was lifted. It was such an intense feeling of joy that went through my body. I was very relaxed after the session and my heart chakra felt cleared.

 

After a difficult break-up from an abusive relationship, I turned to Reiki again. Although I had been in therapy for three years to help me deal with an abusive childhood, I felt the one Reiki session that I had with Barbara worked more than the three years in therapy combined. I enrolled in a Reiki I class, and it was a very emotional experience. I learned about the different chakras in the body and what each chakra represented. It also made me aware that we are all made of energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, so we still live on after we leave our physical bodies. Shortly after, I took Reiki II and learned the lessons of forgiveness and how it is important for us to forgive other people.When I give myself Reiki and work on a certain chakra, my questions about why I feel angry, lonely, or have other emotions created from fear, are usually answered. I was always questioning why I had to go through such an abusive and devastating experience with an ex-boyfriend and the answer came to me – it was to put me back in touch with my spiritual self and with God. I grew up as a Catholic and was taught to fear God. So when I became independent and lived on my own, I turned my back on God and decided that God was not real. In reality, what I really wanted to believe was that the Catholic vengeful God wasn’t real, and, therefore I could not be controlled and could be independent. I was raised in a strict household where I could never make my own decisions or do what I wanted to do. As I grew older, I felt that if I believed there wasn’t a God, then that would give me more freedom because I could make my own choices and not go to hell for doing things that were against the Catholic religion. Being in the abusive relationship made me find Reiki in order to heal myself, but believing in Reiki also meant that I must believe in God because it is God’s energy. Experiencing the Reiki energy makes me realize that God’s energy is part of us. It is still a struggle to accept that God gives me unconditional love, so I will continue to use Reiki to help me heal and let God back into my life.Last month I had my second Reiki session with Barbara. Before it started, I asked my grandmother again to come into the session for help. I didn’t feel her presence right away, but she did come in. I saw her in my mind’s eye, standing next to me wearing the familiar dress and apron. She gave me a big hug and I started to cry and release all the sadness and hurt that I held inside since she died when I was eight years old. I didn’t want her to leave me again, but when she had to go, I knew that she would always be there for me whenever I would ask for her. The Reiki session also helped me to take one step closer to faith in knowing that I am never alone; that God and my spirit guides and angels are always with me.