Welcome back to Returning Home: The Podcast! I have taken a little hiatus while I had some big life events happening: getting married, bringing home a new puppy, and opening an in-person office/healing space! There has been a lot to celebrate in the 3D world. It feels good to be back on the show with you.
In this latest episode of Returning Home: The Podcast, I invite you to learn more about Reiki, which is my spiritual home. I explain a bit about the history of Reiki and how it got to the West from Japan, what the power of Reiki offers to you, and my own personal path for getting to Reiki (spoiler alert- I once thought all religion/spirituality was really corny!).
The reasons you should listen to this episode are:
- You want to understand more about what Reiki is.
- You are on a spiritual journey and you don’t feel like you have a spiritual home as of yet.
- Hear about my path to this approach to spirituality.
Resources:
- Listen to previous episodes of Returning Home: The Podcast
- Episode 15: Be The Change: Positivity As a Practice
- Episode 3: 8 Healing Resources to Return Home To Yourself
- Sign up for a 1-1 Reiki Session with me here
- Sign up for my upcoming Reiki Mini Retreat (happening Saturday, August 19 2023 from 10am-12pm) here
- Connect with me on IG: @elisekindya
- Sign up for my newsletter
- Visit my website to learn more about my offerings: www.elisekindya.com
Episode Highlights:
[02:27] The History of Reiki
- The Original Reiki Ideals by Mikao Usui
- The approach of Reiki is kindness and appreciation of life
- Reiki means “universal life force energy”
- Reiki was founded and discovered in Japan
- 1914- Matiji Kawakami used Reiki in his therapy practice
- 1922- Mikao Usui received Reiki while meditating on Karuma Yama
- 1930s- Usui asked Hayashi Sensei to take over for him
- 1930s-1940s- Master Takata brought Reiki to the West through Hawaii
- Levels of Reiki: 1, 2, 3 and Master level
- William Lee Rand wrote many training manuals on Reiki that are used today
[06:35] Zooming out and seeing spirituality in general
- How spirituality runs through everything
- Universal force of love that transcends time, space and human made understanding of time and space
- Reiki runs through everything and can’t be tied down or stopped
- It helps to perceive this force to strengthen it, but it is working whether we focus on it or not
- Much like the universal laws of the universe and gravity- it works whether we recognize it or not
- Reiki is Source – The Divine, God/Goddess
- Reality is created in our minds, so we can decide to recognize it and let it help
- It can only help, it cannot hurt anyone
- How a Reiki session works- the practitioner tapping into this source/subtle energy realms and being a channel of it to you as the client
[10:30] My Journey To Reiki
- The days I am offering Reiki are really good days, it feels good and I know it is working on a heart, spirit and soul level
- I was raised Christian
- Maybe other trauma survivors can relate- becoming athetist or agnostic to rebel against organized religion
- I did not agree with how religion was presented and forced onto me as a child and teenager
- I was always drawn to tarot and other mystical practices but didn’t practice due to gatekeeping
- Slowly but surely, I opened to other approaches to life and spirit there were
[13:01] On the move- discovering Reiki in Richmond
- Nature is a huge part of life in Richmond which seemed to open me more to spirit and Reiki
- Living in NY and NJ, nature isn’t a big part of life or my upbringing and I felt really disconnected from anything important
- Having trauma in life cuts us off to positive experiences
- Life felt more hopeful about life in Richmond due to an abundance of nature all around and easily accessible
[15:52] How Social Work Opened me to Spirit
- The Social Work Framework of biopsychosocialspiritual helped me open up more to the idea of spirituality
- In my training as a trauma-informed therapist, it was important to build resilience by doing inner work and have inner resources
- Started a mindfulness practice and then being in that community, Reiki was a clear next step
- Health and healing always takes place in my mind – as a therapist, mental health is key
- Mindfulness and yoga helped me tune into my body
[18:45] If You’re Seeking, Reiki Might Help
- Reiki felt like a natural place to expand into my spirituality
- It wasn’t on my radar at first
- In 2016 or 2017, going to Yogaville was eye opening- they describe each religion as a path to get to the same place: God
- As a rebel, I liked that I didn’t have to choose to practice a specific religion
- There is no “church of Reiki”
- You get to experience spirit in your own unique way
- Reiki deals with subtle energy that is outside of conscious awareness
- Spiritual but not religious #sbnr
[23:01] Reiki in my Life Now
- Reiki is a communal experience
- Reiki events, shares, and mini-retreats
- Combining the other training I have as an LCSW with this spiritual aspect is something different I offer my clients
- A Reiki session with me is a little different than with other practitioners
- Reiki is an empowering approach to spirituality- your power comes from within you and not from an outside source
[26:01] Reiki as Empowerment
- As someone who had choice taken away, Reiki is a refuge
- I am a rebel and want to forge my own path
- Reiki is amazing to me because it helped me find a way to be spiritual in my own way and not fit in a mold to do it
[28:52] Sobriety Strengthened My Connection to Reiki
- Being a clear channel in this way is important to me
- We keep going deeper into our healing
- Spoiler alert- there is no end to peeling our healing onion
- Being a human is a lot of work!
- Reiki offers me a way to be a human and feel happy, empowered and in more control of my life
- It gave me the gift of being more in touch with this side of myself
- There is always more to learn, love, heal and grow into
[30:47] Reiki Mini-retreat!
- In person in Richmond on Saturday August 19, 10am-12pm
- If you want to experience Reiki with me in person, email me for a discount code!
- Group Reiki as well as 1-1 hands on experience, journaling, and more!
- Visit www.elisekindya.com to book in person 1-1 sessions with me
Transcript:
Hello and thank you so much for tuning back into Returning Home: The Podcast. This is your host, Elise Kindya, and today I want to bring you a topic related to a portion of the work I do where I offer Reiki to my clients. I want to talk about what is Reiki, where did it come from, and how it became part of my life path.
So without further ado, I’m just going to jump right in.
I wanted to first read the Reiki ideals which is kind of an approach to life based on this philosophy of life, the structure or framework that we come from with Reiki.
The original Reiki ideals are:
The secret art of inviting happiness
The miraculous Medicine of all diseases
Just for today do not be angry
Do not worry and be filled with gratitude
Devote yourself to your work and be kind to people
Every morning and evening join your hands in prayer, pray these words to your heart and chant these words with your mouth.
Overall the approach of Reiki is kindness and just simply appreciating life. The word Reiki means universal life force energy. It is a practice that was founded / discovered in Japan. I do want to honor the lineage of this practice. It is a Japanese practice. The first time that Reiki is documented as being used within the most important thing it was a therapist Maybe you have a long time being trial called crazy employer published a book and so he integrated this into his practice at that time. In 1922 is when Mikao Usui received Reiki on Karuma Yama in Japan. Throughout the 1920s is when Usui was training people. In the 1930s he asked another practitioner to continue administering and training people in reiki after Usui passed away.
From the 1930s-1940s master Takata brought Reiki to the west through Hawaii.
There are levels to reiki- reiki 1 and 2 are attuned together, and reiki 3 and master are taught together.
Many people in the west can be traced back to master Usui and william lee rand.
So that’s some of the history of reiki- how it got here, how it got passed down.
I like to zoom out from that and think about spirituality in general. That is how I see Reiki. Yes, there are the symbols, hand placements, and ways practitioners are attuned. And I like zooming out and seeing how spirituality runs through everything. This is where I am in 2023.
Reiki is a world meaning universal life force energy. There is a universal force of love that transcends time and space and people and human made understanding of time and place. It’s a subtle life force that runs through all things. People, animals, the earth, the universe. It can’t be tied down or stopped. It strengthens when it is perceived, but it doesn’t have to be perceived to be working. Like any universal law, like gravity- you know it’s working without perceiving it. These are universal laws. Reiki is source- god, the divine, goddess, or whatever your word for it is. It’s happening whether you want it to or not. Your reality is created in your mind- if you want to believe it, you can. If you believe it’s helping, it is. It can’t hurt you, which is important to know. It’s subtle and it’s love. Even though it operates outside of conscious awareness, it strengthens when it’s called upon. Someone who is attuned to reiki and they direct it into you as the client. Also a way to tap into angels, guides and your spirit team on the other side of the veil. Our perception of 3D reality, and then more going on behind the scenes. Tapping into the subtle energy realms.
I do want to tell you a little bit about how I got here. Even as I’m saying this out loud, I’m like “woah”. But I do feel them. And when I’m offering reiki as a practitioner, the days I am doing that and hours afterward are really good days. I know it’s working on a heart, spirit and soul level. It’s doing good.
Rewinding back to the beginning. I was raised Christian. And maybe other trauma survivors could relate, it’s not like I believed in Christianity but the way it’s force fed to us, we’re made to sit in Sunday school and youth group. As an aquarius I hated that. I was forced to go to youth group but I only went so I could see boys I had crushes on and drink and smoke on the way there. I was a rebel, so that quickly went out the window, and I became agnostic or atheist. I was always drawn to tarot and other mystical things, but didn’t practice any of that. There was a lot of gatekeeping so I stood away from it. But slowly but surely, I was opening more and more to what else was out there and other approaches to life.
It brought me to Richmond in 2010, and I have such a stronger connection to nature than I did in NY and NJ. In New York, there is hardly any nature and a lot of people. Maybe part of my agnostic/ atheism- being from the northeast- so many people around me and they’re all terrible so how can god be real when this is life? I experienced trauma in my upbringing that made me pessimistic. As humans, that’s our default, our nervous system is wired to see danger and the negative, and when you experience it you look for more of it. That’s how I was before hearing about Reiki.
Then I moved to Richmond in 2010 for grad school. Nature is very accessible in Richmond, it’s part of life. Yes, there are built up places and you know some of it’s very sprawling or you know urban. But, there is a lot of easy, free access to, like, we have the River or the James River Park system. We have a lot of parks in the city. There’s a lot of just trees and yards and you know houses that have yards and gardens and things like that. And I think that really primed me to be more hopeful about life. Nature is something that I didn’t realize just about myself growing up but it’s so grounding for me and it is a really spiritual practice and place for me even to just sit under a tree. Being outside like soaking up the sun, who knew? And then going to graduate school and becoming a social worker and LCSW and our framework for that is “bio psycho social spiritual” and I remember hearing that spiritual part is being like oh that’s so corny. My whole perspective of religion was Christianity or Judaism or Islam but like just really formal and patriarchal. And you have to fit in a mold, and if you didn’t fit in you were fucked up.
So in grad school I thought it was pretty corny but then and so that’s 2013 is when I graduated and then like slowly but surely, as a trauma informed therapist as well, trauma like the opposite of that being resilience and how do you build resilience is by doing your inner work, and yes, we need bigger systems that don’t traumatize people. I was working on the clinical 1-1 level, helping people build resilience and resourcing within themselves. To do that, I had to have my own mindfulness practice. And then, going into that community and it was just like step by step you know, when I look back, I can just see how it was like every step on the pass was bringing me closer to where I am now. I’m sure in 5 years I’ll look back to where I am in 5 years and be like “wow that’s good how I was taking all those steps.” I started practicing mindfulness and then that brought me to… I’m such a mind person when it comes to health like I’m an Aquarius I always want to be and I’m a therapist right like it’s all very mental thinking I’m even talking on the podcast right now. Practicing mindfulness brought me into the body. I was doing more yoga, which opened me up as well. I started working at a float spa which I think was like my direct line to Reiki because then I met Katie Bosch, who is the person I got my Reiki 1 training from and then yeah from there it’s just kind of the rest of history.
I would say if anyone is on a spiritual path or like doesn’t know, especially if you’re like atheist or agnostic or like questioning all of that I would say just like take each step as it comes up for you. For me, it was just really natural of, you know, I didn’t become a therapist thinking “oh and I’m also going to practice Reiki and spirituality with my clients” like that wasn’t something that was on my radar. I took each step as it came and just kept saying open to what was for me.
Also, going to Yogaville in 2016 or 2017, was something else too that opened me to this and I had never seen it except this way before. If you ever go to the Lotus Temple, they show a graphic of different religions how they’re all in this one path that leads you to God and I was like “oh okay so you don’t really have to choose one or the other” and that’s something I really like about Reiki. There’s no church of Reiki. There is a system we operate inside of but it’s really not tied down to any one thing. It’s whatever that person that’s experiencing that energy wants it to be. And a lot of the healing happens outside of words, outside of explanation. If you ever do a Reiki session with me I do talk during it, which is kind of different. A lot of Reiki therapists or practitioners don’t really talk, like how a massage is typically silent. For me, I am a therapist. There is a kind of give and take conversation happening. There are things happening on a subtle energy level that I don’t have control over. And nobody does, like, the client doesn’t really have control over either. It’s really just channeling up this force and so there’s really no words to put to that. Going to Yogaville was something too that really opened me up to the idea that you can be spiritual but not religious. #sbnr
There was a lot shifting for me in my identity at that time, in 2018. A lot was changing, in how I wanted to experience life. I was open to change at that point and learning something new. Now, with my experience with helping people use Reiki has been a community building practice. It’s a communal thing. I’ve hosted shares- sharing is caring. I’m hosting a mini-retreat next month in my healing space. With my background as a clinician as well as someone who understands the systematic things going on in our world as well on the macro level as well as on the micro level, and bringing this spiritual aspect is something different I offer my clients. Working with me and receiving Reiki from me is maybe a little bit different than some people. All of it is great. It really can’t hurt, it can only help.
There are different ways to receive and ways to be in touch with your own healing. This is an empowering approach to healing and to spirituality. A lot of times there is a top down approach to spirituality, that you should be humble and ashamed of humanness. This is not Reiki at all. It’s an empowering way to be in touch with spirituality. It’s saying- here is your power. Yield it and be in touch with yourself.
For me, that’s powerful, heartening and hopeful. It helps me. I am someone who has been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, complex trauma, my ACES is a 4, I’ve got things going on. Choice was always taken away. Story time- let me check in for a second. For me, choice wasn’t something offered in my life. It was more- this is who we are as people, this is how you fit in. For me, I’m a rebel, I’m not the one. For me, Reiki is amazing because as someone who wants to be spiritual but didn’t know how to do it in the terms I was offered back then. It would never work for me to be told how to fit in. For me, Reiki offers me a way to still be spiritual but I don’t have to fit in a mold to do it. Something to take away is that you don’t have to fit in any specific mold or do anything in a specific way. You’re allowed to like what you like, do what you do, and be in touch with spirit how you want. There are no rules around it. It’s empowering. It gives you back your power. We could go on a tangent about how people don’t want us to be in power and how religion is used to control us. If you’re someone who wants to be in touch with your spiritual side and be empowered, I think Reiki is a path for you. I won’t force you to do anything., I’ll tell you what I think as someone who has been there. But you do you, you’re more than welcome to take or leave whatever I’m saying. This is my experience with this modality. You as the person in the driver’s seat of your life.
It got stronger once I became sober. I became sober January 1, 2020. I had just had my Reiki 2 training in November of 2019. December of 2020 is when I did Reiki III and Master level. It’s gotten stronger from there. Something I’ve been practicing for 3 years. It’s like the onion, keep peeling the layers. Spoiler alert- there is no end to the peeling. It can be annoying and sometimes you want it to stop. Being a human is a lot of work. If you have to be here and do this, why not do something that makes you feel good and empowered, and happy and in more control of your life. For me, that’s where Reiki comes in. Reiki gave me the gift of being more in touch with myself. There is more to learn. If you’re a human you don’t know everything. So that’s exciting- There is more to learn and experience, to heal, love and grow into. That for me is the gift of Reiki.
That is where I will leave you.
If you’ve made it to the end, thank you so much for listening.
I am offering a Mini Reiki Retreat on Saturday August 19 from 10am-12pm. In person at my office in Richmond. The mini-retreat is $55. Send me an email at elise@elisekindya.com and let me know you listened to this podcast episode and I’ll send you a discount. There will be a combination of group and 1-1 hands on Reiki, journaling and more.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. You can find me on IG @elisekindya
You can also book a 1-1 Reiki with me on my website www.elisekindya.com
Thank you again for tuning in today!
