Marie jumped out of my hands staring me down with large questioning eyes and exclaimed, “HOW DID YOU KNOW???” I jumped back startled by her response to my question, and then she gave me the whole story. But before I fill you in on her story I need to tell you how we got to that point.
I was at the Saddle Ranch in Universal CityWalk to see some friends play in a band showcase when Marie showed up looking… miserable. There was a large group of friends out that night, and we were all in good spirits and having a good time. But not Marie. She complained of having a terrible headache, and you could see the suffering in her face.
I was still fairly new in the Reiki world, and I was the only one in my group of friends that even knew about Reiki. I loved to offer Reiki to any of my friends that I thought could benefit so that I could get more practice. I liked being the oddball of the group and talking to my friends about this Japanese healing practice that I learned, and when I saw how badly Marie was hurting I immediately asked her if I could give her Reiki. I don’t even think she knew what I was saying, but she had reached the point at which she would do anything to alleviate the pain. She agreed to let me give her Reiki right then and there.
Now if you haven’t been to the Saddle Ranch, let me paint you a picture. Imagine an open-air restaurant bar near the Universal Studios Theme Park that’s fairly busy at night with customers enjoying either a late dinner or watching the live bands performing one after the other. To put it another way, this was not the ideal location for a Reiki treatment. It was loud. There was no privacy, and it was standing room only where the bands were playing. Regardless of the circumstances, I was determined to make it work.
I stood to Marie’s left, placing my hands on her forehead and the back of her head, and asked her to close her eyes. I also closed my eyes to focus on allowing the Reiki to flow. I began to get into the zone and reach the meditative state that I experience during Reiki treatments, and I started imagining the silhouette of her body in my mind. As I did, the red blinking lights that I had become accustomed to appearing on the silhouettes of clients began showing up in my mind’s eye. After 5 minutes of treating her head, all of the red lights disappeared except for one that continued blinking on her lower back. As I said in last month’s article, I had not yet learned to trust these images in my mind as intuitive insights, but yet I had to know if this blinking light was pointing me in the direction of where to put my hands.
I asked Marie how her lower back was doing so that I could know whether I was picking up something intuitively or if my mind was playing tricks on me. Without saying a word, she lifted her right arm parallel to the ground and gave me a thumbs-down, signaling that her lower back was also in pain. “I guess the red light was correct,” I thought to myself while mentally patting myself on the back, and then asked her if I could give her Reiki there. She said yes, and I placed one hand on her lower back and the other on her stomach, sandwiching her core between my hands.
I continued giving Reiki and meditating with the image of her silhouette and the red blinking lights in my mind. There were lots of lights appearing and disappearing in my imagination while the restaurant patrons talked and shouted all around us and the bands continued rocking on. All of that noise was fading into the background though as I became very intrigued by two blinking lights that were persistently grabbing my attention on Marie’s silhouette, however they were in locations that had me questioning the validity of them bringing me intuitive guidance. “They have to be my imagination messing with me,” I thought and continued giving Reiki to her lower back. “But what if they’re correct?” I asked myself, and began going back and forth questioning whether or not they could be correct intuitive insights or just nonsense that my mind came up with to throw me off.
This internal debate regarding whether or not to believe that the red blinking lights were providing me with information to enhance Marie’s Reiki treatment went on for another 5 minutes until I couldn’t take it any more. I had to find out whether I was right or wrong, and it didn’t matter which it was. I just needed to know so I could stop questioning it. I finally said something to Marie.
“Do you have anything going on with your big toes?” I asked almost wanting her to laugh at such an absurd question, and after I finished asking she jumped back exclaiming, “HOW DID YOU KNOW???”
She went on to tell me the whole story of what was going on with her. She said that a couple of years earlier she was in a car accident and has had back troubles on and off ever since. Her back pain can be managed with chiropractic visits when it’s out of alignment, but when it’s out she gets headaches and occasionally her toes go numb. She knew that her headache that night was caused by her back being out of alignment and that her toes are connected with that chain, but all that I knew about the situation was that she had a headache.
How can I explain the red blinking lights appearing on her lower back and her toes in my meditation while giving Reiki??? These were details that I had no way of knowing before we started the treatment, and yet they showed up. I can’t explain how or why, however I can’t deny the experience. Somehow I was able to pick up the connection between her headache, her back, and her toes, and that’s enough for me.
I’ve realized that I don’t have to explain everything. Sometimes leaving a little mystery in life is much better than losing myself in the search for answers. How I got the information is not as important as the information itself. I received it, and any explanation of how that happened is theory and speculation. I can easily lose myself in the rabbit hole of the “how’s” and “why’s” of explanations, but sometimes you just have to let go of the need to explain it and enjoy having experienced the situation. Life’s a little easier when I do that.
Before writing this story I reached out to Marie to see if she was okay with me publishing it online to which she replied, “Oh my gosh yes! I don’t mind you writing about it at all! Such a cool experience.”
I agree. It was a cool experience, and it was experiences like this that kept me interested in Reiki in the first few years of my practice and continue to inspire me to be open to receiving information during treatments that will enhance the experience for my clients and myself. Even if I can’t explain how I receive them.