Yesterday, I was perusing Facebook, and looking at all of the Valentine’s Day posts that were flowing through my news feed. Then I saw a post by an acquaintance that said “So far the worst Valentine’s Day yet. Yaaaay.” It sounded like he needed to know that someone cared, so I left a little response, saying, “Aww. Hugs. Because you are a very cool and important person. And I see that.” And his response was, “Well thank you. I guess maybe not worst. One compliment can change a lot. Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone.”

It got me thinking. Valentine’s Day is nice for those who have a special someone. Even friends who will be your Valentine and keep you feeling included. But, if you’re not feelin’ it, Valentine’s Day can rub in your face what you’re missing.

My kids didn’t have school yesterday due to a snow day. However, the weather had turned sunny and warm, and they wanted me to take them to Starbucks for a treat. I started wondering how I could brighten the day of those who feel lonely on Valentine’s Day. And I kept thinking about hugs.

Human touch. So many people are talking these days about how it’s important, yet has become a neglected thing in our busy western culture. And I tell my kids that hugs are magic. Because they are.

I’d seen videos on YouTube about “Free Hugs” – essentially, a guy is holding a sign that says “Free Hugs” and walking around a city. People come up and hug him, and smile. You know what I next thought, right?

Yeah, I thought it. And then I couldn’t stop thinking it. I wanted to hold a Free Hugs sign. And stand outside Starbucks in the sunshine, hugging people. I realized I’d have to ask my kids what they thought of it. Because, first of all I don’t want them to think their mother is a weirdo and be embarrassed. They need to buy in. Then I thought about them holding the sign, and I wasn’t so comfy with that. Random adults hugging my kids…feels a little wrong. Kids hugging my kids…ok. Old people hugging my kids…ok. (Why the double standard? I guess because it just seems that old people need lots of love and the grandparent thing seems different. Social mores are weird. I know.) Me hugging anyone…ok. As long as no one is copping a feel. Then it’s not ok. This series of thoughts gave me some serious pause. What could my kids do that would make me feel ok? Hand out little hand-decorated hearts. Yeah. That felt ok.

It was time to ask them. I called them all to the dining room table for a meeting. I was actually nervous and couldn’t say it for a few minutes, which made them impatient. Then I took a deep breath and told them about my idea, and showed them the “Free Hugs” video on YouTube. At first, they said it was weird. “Can’t we just go to Starbucks and have our drink, and that’s it, Mom?” But then Eli said he thought it might be nice. And Sari agreed. I asked Arin if she would decorate some hearts. She said she would. And Rayna asked if she could film it. So she was in. We made a poster. Now it’s really happening! What will people think, how will they respond if we do this? I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? said my inner master of worry. Yep.

We got our materials together and we went. First, I bought the kids the drinks and food they wanted. It was gorgeous outside so we got settled at a table out in front of the Starbucks. I didn’t get myself anything to eat or drink, just watched them enjoy their snack. Then I started holding up the sign.

Some employee of Starbucks came outside and asked to see the sign. I guess they were afraid it said “Don’t go to this Starbucks! They made my drink wrong!” or something like that. She was very relieved when she saw it said “Free Hugs.”

Then some people looked, smiled and kept walking.

But then someone came over and hugged me. Arin gave her a heart. She said thank you. Then others did. And pretty soon, we all felt really happy and awesome. Eli wanted to hold the sign. When we saw four little girls about his age (10 or so), he held it. They consulted each other and giggled. I think one of them wanted to hug him. He turned really red. Then Sari said, “That’s my Brother!” in this sort of threatening way, and they opted to hug me instead on their way into Starbucks. Eli was disappointed about that for about the next six hours.

One person bought me a cappuccino and brought it out to me. Another bought me a gift card and brought it out to me. One woman with a camera took my picture with the sign. Two women who hugged me said we should come to their restaurant that night, since they had newly opened. I said that sounds nice.

When we got home, Eli edited the video footage we had and made it into this really great montage memento of our day. The kids all said how great it was and asked when we could do it again. I’m glad my kids are open minded. We all were feeling the love.

That night, we went to dinner and tried to get into that restaurant the ladies had mentioned. It was packed. They had open tables but were not seating, in order to try to let the overwhelmed kitchen get caught up with orders. I guess this is typical for a new restaurant learning the ropes on the fly. So they wouldn’t seat us. As we walked out, we saw the women I had hugged. Turns out they were co-owners of the place and they greeted me. I told them what happened, they immediately insisted on finding us a table. We had a nice dinner (though yeah, a long wait for the food). See what hugging can get you? My kids did. And I guess that’s a nice lesson on Karma.

Please enjoy and share the video. Maybe we can inspire a little more love in the world.

I’ve decided that this is the year that I prioritize growth. This means, growth for my business, and for my own intuitive self (because, after all, this is my career and so it’s like anyone who has to keep up with the latest in their own field – training to get better at what I do is part of the job. The nice thing is that this is the sort of training that benefits my whole being, not just the biz.) And, Universe, just to be clear, my goals for growth do not include my physical body girth nor weight. Thank you.

Q: How can Reiki help me stay healthy this winter? A: Here are some ways Reiki can help! Schedule a Reiki session with a practitioner. Don’t wait until you’re sick! The energy will bring you into balance, and that will affect … Continue reading →

Originally posted on Reiki Questions and Answers:
Q: Is there scientific evidence that Reiki works? A: That’s an interesting question. There is both scientific and experiential evidence that Reiki works. Just ask someone who gives Reiki, or the clients who receive…

I want to thank again all who helped me with paying forward the Random Act of Kindness (see previous post) for my friend who needed help. She has emailed me a response to share with all of you. I’m so proud to have been part of a beautiful effort to make a difference.

To all who have graciously contributed!

During our time of need and with so many changes and hardships going on we thank you immensely for the gracious donations that you have made to help our family. These things have helped decrease some of the stress we’ve been dealing with and made life infinitely easier! While I myself have heard of such wonderful things being done for people I never thought to have it happen to myself and I am stunned and astounded to tears that so many people – none of which I know personally – were kind enough to be so generous! You have my eternal gratitude!

Love,
The Williams Family

We went on a family vacation! It’s the first time we’ve had the chance to really get away for a full week all together in six years. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that the last couple of years have been hard for my family. But we put some money aside and were able to rent a beach house in the Virginia Beach area for a week of R&R and sunshine. It was really needed. It was wonderful.

One night on our trip we went out to a little crab shack for dinner. We ordered food for our crew of six and dug into a delicious repast. The kids were (happily) well behaved and even sang a little bit together, just having fun. The restaurant was a social atmosphere- not quiet or fancy. When we finished, we asked the server for our check. Evan, my husband, went to the bathroom. Before he came back, the server came back to our table and informed me and the kids that the gentleman at the table behind us had paid for our meal. Surprised, I turned around. He was sitting with his back to our table. He had not spoken to us or acknowledged us in any way during the meal.

I said to him, “Excuse me, but did you just pay for my family’s dinner?” He replied, “Yes.” Shocked, I said, “Wow. Thank you so much! That was incredibly nice of you!” He said, “Ok.” My kids asked him, “Why did you pay for our dinner?” He shrugged and replied, “I don’t know.” So I just responded that we were on vacation and this was a super wonderful thing for him to do and thanked him again.

Evan came out of the bathroom and we left. I told him what had happened and he was surprised and taken aback also. It was a wonderful lesson for our kids (and us) about random acts of kindness.

I’ve been looking for an opportunity to pay it forward. An opportunity has recently presented itself and I’m requesting the help of anyone who would like to participate with me. I know that I can be exponentially more powerful if I have support. Here’s what I’m asking:

I have a good friend who I know from Twitter and Facebook. She just (6/10/11) had her first baby. (A little boy). She and her partner have been struggling very hard financially and she has decided she needs to go back to work as soon as she can – planning on two weeks or less – despite the healing she really needs to do instead, and the time she needs with her newborn son.

I see my friend now, who is really in need of making ends meet until she is well enough to start work again. They can barely make rent and food, let alone utilities. And I know she might be embarrassed if I put her name here, or if money started flowing to her from a lot of different people.

So I’m looking for a way to “pay it forward.”

Here’s my idea.

I’ve created a special paypal button.

If you feel like doing a similar random act of kindness for someone you don’t know, click and put in whatever amount, however small, even $1, that you want.

In three days, (on 6/17), I’ll send the full amount to my friend, include my own contribution, and tell her that it is a gift from her friends on Twitter.

I’ll let you be anonymous like the guy in the restaurant. And we’ll all feel great knowing that this generous act of his was paid forward.

Hello everyone! I’d like to welcome author Sharon Baker to the Reiki Awakening blog! Sharon is an RN and a Reiki Master Teacher who has written a really wonderful Reiki book about her powerful experiences with Reiki, Healing With Hands. I really enjoyed reading the stories about the many different people Sharon gave Reiki to, and the ways in which their situations were improved after receiving Reiki treatments. Her additional scientific information is enlightening and her writing is both heartwarming and real. Great news is that I have 3 copies of Healing With Hands to give away! I’m honored to have an article I wrote featured on Sharon’s blog this week as well! So to win a copy of this wonderful book, here’s what to do:

1) Read and leave a comment here about Sharon’s article.

2) Read and leave a comment on Sharon’s blog about my article. Those who have commented on both blogs by Friday, July 16 will be entered in a drawing to win one of the three books. I’ll announce the winners on Friday afternoon! A bonus is that everyone who comments on Sharon’s blog is also entered to win a basket of books! It’s a double win opportunity! I’m so happy to have the chance to feature a really wonderful author, and reward my readers too! Enjoy Sharon’s post!

Energy
by Sharon Baker, RN, RMT

Strength, force vigor and power producing an effect. It may be mechanical, electrical, thermal, chemical, life force or spiritual energy. It is the synergist for all living things and systems to operate. Energy is manifested in many forms: motion, light, heat, ionizing radiation or sound. Nothing would be happening within us or on our planet without energy.

My recent Reiki Master Student, Colleen D, is an automotive engineer. What really got my attention was that Colleen seemed so comfortable with energy medicine concepts: no struggle to prove ideals or science. After my initial surprise, I decided to interview her for this month’s newsletter.

I began by asking what drew her to Reiki. She said it was her late father, a magistrate and lifelong seeker of esoteric truths, who encouraged her whole interest in Reiki and related therapies. “Dad received Reiki treatments himself and was an enthusiastic fan of Dr. Robert Becker, author of, “The Body Electric.” She began her early journey learning Eastern views of stress reduction and self healing. She later experienced a Reiki session and soon completed all the Reiki levels. Colleen also stated, like many, she was sensitive to antibiotics and since she suffered from chronic bronchitis, had to look outside the box for treatment.

I asked Colleen about parallels between Reiki and engineering theories. Familiar words to both are blueprint, electrical, stress, design, systems, vibration, energy.

Colleen stated that both Reiki and engineering share a common thread regarding vibrational theory and its application here on earth. the earth itself has several rather slow frequencies between 6 and 50 cycles (or hertz) per seconds called Schumann’s Resonance. As I researched this data further, I found an interesting tidbit-the average earth frequency is 7-10 hz. which corresponds to the average frequency of our brain waves. She added, everything on the earth has its own resonance-water, trees, rocks, lowland and highlands. Thought and light are among the highest forms of vibration and light itself contains multiple vibrations. Per Wikipedia, the physics, the term light sometimes refers to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, weather visible or not.

You as light workers are manipulating and channeling this highest form of “light” resonance. Human hands frequencies have been measured from .3-30 hz. and this changes according to the need of the client as the treatment progresses.

“Also, we recognize open and closed energy systems in engineering,” Colleen explained further. “Thermodynamics’ 1st law is the ‘conversation of energy’ – the total amount of energy in a closed system remains constant and can only change form, it cannot be destroyed. I think of this form as I do self Reiki. I circulate my own chi via my hands, moving out toxin and stress of the day. Also, in engineering, we deal with open systems, where something constantly interacts with the environment moving in energy from its surroundings for maximum functioning. For example consider a car engine, with its inlet and outlet, as an open system. Air and fuel are ingested through the inlet into a chamber in the engine. Within the engine system, there is a spark plug where the air and fuel mixture ignites, to create a powerful explosion, which increases the size of the engine chamber. After the explosion, the engine rids itself of non combustible waste through the outlet or exhaust. As we give a Reiki treatment in open system fashion we also interact with the environment to move chi into the client. The healers are also the properly timed spark plug which ignites power and maximizes the flow to help the client run efficiently, expelling waste or toxin through human outlets. Another engineering view is that electrical systems automatically have a magnetic field which is also widely recognized in Reiki. Whether human or machine, electrical fields exist even when there is no current flowing. If current flows the strength of the magnetic field will vary but the electrical field strength will remain constant.”

Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing – right in the hub of the wheel – not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness – that’s your heart. That’s where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you’ll always find peace.

-Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

This was just what I needed to read, and I marked the page so I could return to it. I have been feeling like the whirlwind of my life is spinning around me, with all the places I need to go, things I need to accomplish, and wonders of what is coming. But this paragraph helped me remember that calm comes from within, no matter what else is happening, that I can return to this balanced center and avoid feeling frazzled by it all.

As I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts, my husband is looking for a job and his mother is dealing with lung cancer, stage 4. Our kids are now off for the summer, and they have various places to be, as do I. Lots of things are going on. But I’m calm.

I’ve taken my teacher, Connie’s advice and kept asking the angels and Universe and Spirit for abundance, support, and to connect us with the right opportunities for our highest good. And it is working. I see it working all the time.

We won that dance contest that I mentioned a couple posts back. We won $1,000. Did I work for this? Hell yes I did. I emailed at least 150 people a day asking them to vote for our goofy dancing video. And people voted, commented, and shared the video with their friends, asking them to vote. So let’s say it was a joint effort between the angels and me.

I was offered a job teaching music for three weeks at a day camp, filling in for their regular music teacher who is delayed this summer. The pay is about as much as I might have made in eight weeks at a different camp, because they are diverting his salary to me for those three weeks. Thank you, angels.

I’ve met some wonderful people who have introduced my mother in law and me to some very promising alternative therapies which we are trying for helping her regain her health. I am not taking these connections for granted, but seeing them as part of the process of connections happening with our being open to accepting them.

Evan (my husband), has had one job interview, and has two others coming up for different positions, all of which could be suitable and worthy of his education and experience. He is going into each one open, expectant, and confident that the right opportunity at the right time will be his. An attitude of expectation and hope is surrounding him, along with his confidence in his ability and his natural poise. My pride and belief in him is ever strong.

I continue to meet interesting and brilliant people who illuminate my life with wisdom, creative ideas, growth and opportunities. I don’t take any of these meetings for granted, and am grateful for each encounter. I am open to where each connection may lead and thank the universe for making these connections possible.

At the times when I feel a sense of worry or uncertainty nagging at me, or if I feel a wave of unhappiness at our challenges, this passage from Eat Pray Love helps me regain perspective:

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will lead away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.

Finally, I want to let you dear readers know that on July 12, I will welcome Reiki Master Sharon Baker, RN in a guest post here on my blog, as part of her blog tour for her new book on Reiki, Healing With Hands: Miracles, Inspiration and Science. She has over 30 years experience in the traditional medical field and began exploring alternative holistic methods of healing in the late 1980s. She was on the board of Michigan Holistic Nurses Association for 5 years. She continues to update her knowledge and skills through a variety of classes and workshops. Sharon also conducts several workshops and classes privately as well as at local colleges. I will also be a guest on Sharon’s blog that day, so come on over and see what I’m sharing then – http://www.healerscorner.blogspot.com . The first three readers who leave a comment on her blog after my post and one on mine after hers will win a copy of her inspiring book! I read and enjoyed it very much, and I found her anecdotes and information both relevant and inspiring. I’m sure you will too!

Peace.

I’d like to welcome author Christy Strauch to the Reiki Awakening blog this week! Christy is on a blog book tour, and is seriously impressive in her ability to explain clearly how to start and grow a business. She wrote an article for my blog for you friends who wish to know how to develop your energy healing practice into a viable business. She has some really great practical advice! Get ready to be inspired!

Christy Strauch is the author of Passion, Plan, Profit: 12 Simple Steps to Convert Your Passion into a Solid Business. In addition she is president of Clarity To Business and has worked with over 300 small business owners, from artists to real estate agents, helping them do what they are passionate about – and make a profit. Her book is available at Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Passion-Plan-Profit-Simple-Business/dp/0984055703. I encourage you to get her book and work through the process to plan and execute the growth of your business. I am grateful for her wisdom and glad to share it with you. Now, here’s Christy!

How Energy Healers Can Grow Their Businesses
by Christy Strauch

The first step in helping your business grow, no matter what it is (after you make sure you’re doing a great job at the products and services you provide), is to understand, at a deep level, who your perfect clients are, and what they want and need from you.

You went into this work to help people. Even though you might want to help everyone, you have to be specific about who it is you want to, and are most effective at, helping the most. Be ruthless about this. Who are you drawn to? Elders? Athletic boys between the ages of 12-18? Pre-menopausal women? Who are your perfect clients? Healers are lucky; to be an effective healer you intuitively know many things about your clients already. Take that knowledge you already have and talk to your clients to gather the rest. You need both the demographic information about them (things like their age, where they live, level of education) and psychographic information (what they like to do for fun, their attitudes about healing and medicine, what they read, who else they go to for help, and lots of other questions).

The second step in building your practice is to understand how to draw more people to you. Healing professions rely on trust. Although you could run an ad in a local newspaper, or show up to a networking event and hand out your cards, or even cold-call prospective clients (kidding, this is a bad idea); people go to healers because they trust them. And the best way for someone to trust you as a healer, is if someone else your client trusts, recommends you.

Now that you know your clients deeply, ask yourself: who else do they work with? Other healers such as acupuncturists, massage therapists, chiropractors, or? Where do they shop? Do they exercise at a specific place, or buy their food at a certain store? The most effective way to build your practice is to work with other people who also work with your perfect clients.
Visit the people your clients also work with and see if they would be willing to refer their clients to you (and vice versa: you would also refer clients to them). Use your intuition here also; you will only want to refer your precious clients to people you trust implicitly; the same is true for other practitioners and businesses. They will only want to refer their clients to people they trust.

The best referral relationships are ones based on deep mutual trust. These relationships need nurturing and communication to thrive, just like any other relationship that’s important to you.

Get deeply acquainted with your clients, and enter into meaningful referral relationships with other businesses. These are the two primary keys to success in the healing professions.

One of the things I do for people is intuitive development mentoring. I would like to say outright that I am not the most intuitive person I know. Not at all. I’ll also tell you that I was not born psychic, and I never had any sort of childhood intuitive abilities. I have never seen a ghost, spirit, guide, angel, or UFO. Many people who I mentor have much higher developed intuitive abilities than I do. They see visions, symbols, colors, angels, hear messages, are empathic, and more. So what the heck makes me qualified to mentor anyone in intuitive development? It’s a great question. I’ve asked myself the same thing dozens of times. I think I started doing intuitive development mentoring before I knew the answer.

Maybe that fact in itself is part of the answer.

I think it all goes back to two things. First, I am a regular person. As I said, no natural psychic abilities, nothing particularly connected about me from the start. Nope. But I have been a seeker. I always wanted a spiritual connection. Then I learned Reiki. Boom. Things changed. When I say things changed, I don’t mean it in an offhanded way. I mean…THINGS CHANGED! Developing a spiritual connection is a huge awakening. Because of Reiki, I have a physical reaction to spiritual energy. Something invisible is there, and I can feel it, tell it what to do, and it goes and does it. Seriously, that is major. Reiki took me, a spiritually disconnected regular kind of person, and showed me a dimension of life that I never knew was there. It was like stepping into color from black and white. The inspiration of this change in me taught me that others like me, regular people, could also experience the difference. I figured if I could do it, anyone could. So my journey started with Reiki.

But it didn’t stop there.

I practiced Reiki every day. I found reasons to call the energy all day long. I gave Reiki to my plants, food, my kids, my parents, sent distance Reiki to friends, and joined the Distance Healing Network so I’d have more people to give Reiki to. I began to notice that the more I connected with energy, the more I was able to sense – my intuition was growing. I could tell where a person needed healing; if the person had pain or emotional issues, illness or trauma. I started to get a sense of it. I talked to others, found teachers, received attunements to help grow these connections. If you’ve read older entries in my blog (or you go back and have a look), you’ll be able to follow all of this as it happened.

I realized that I could also help people do this. I wanted to be able to show people the way into the world of color. I started teaching Reiki. People emailed me with questions about how to sense energy, and I would give answers from my own experience. I came to realize that distance healing was something I had grown very comfortable doing, with validating results. I wanted to show people that they could do that too. So I started mentoring distance healing and put together an ebook of what I learned, in order to help others get as comfortable with distance healing as I am. The more I learned and discovered I could do, the more I wanted to show people so they could learn it too.

That brings me to the other reason I mentor intuitive development:

I’m a teacher. It’s who I am. I have an ability to explain and show people how to understand things, and it works for this. I take each student from where they are, and show them how to get where they want to be. Often, ironically, they bring more to the table than I ever had. People are different, after all. Sometimes people come to me with experiences with angels, guides, or spirits, but they want to learn more about distance healing. I’m happy to give them the tools I use that make distance healing successful for me. Whatever they come with doesn’t really matter as much as helping them reach the goals they have set for themselves. That’s what I focus on – bridging the gap.

Along with being a teacher is something that I feel is one of my own intuitive gifts that has developed. I can get a sense of how to help a person achieve what they want to learn. I listen to (ok, more accurately, I read about) what the person’s goals are. Sometimes the person tells me about what’s challenging about reaching his/her goals. I quiet my thoughts. I get a feel for what the person said, and then I get an idea of how to move forward. I tell them. Sometimes this involves creating a curriculum of exercises to develop an ability. Sometimes it may mean suggesting an attunement designed to open the awareness of that particular area. Other times, it may mean sending healing to whatever is blocking the progress. Whatever it is, I seem to have an answer that makes sense and helps the person be successful.

My own intuitive growth has been a trickle, rather than a gush. I have seen some of my students experience an intuitive gush after Kundalini Reiki attunements. Suddenly, someone can channel information, or is seeing angels, feeling new and exciting sensations. I love it when people embrace these sudden gifts. Sometimes people become ungrounded or overwhelmed, and I help them adjust. No matter how fast or slowly one’s intuition has developed, I think an important thing is to look back and see over time just how much growth and change has actually happened. This blog has been valuable for me in terms of doing that.

Always, though, intuitive development is a process. It may be a trickle, a gush, or some combination. But it happens when and how the person is ready and open to receiving it. And that may be the most important lesson of all.

Peace.