Choice and responsibility

I am extremely passionate about Reiki as it literally saved my life from the depression that had enveloped me in my twenties. Working with my Reiki Master and her intuitive life coaching offering supported me not only in my healing but in finding a new way of being, which has brought much purpose, joy and contentment.

The reason this is on my mind is because I established Beinspired off the back of that healing and work on myself back in 2006, the last time the moon did its full major lunar standstill. This was the same year that yoga started exploding into the west - I had just been a tiny bit ahead of the trend and the teacher training course I attended was the first of its kind. Since then yoga teacher training has also exploded, and that is a world I have since left behind.

While yoga helped me enormously in my healing and my letting go of the past, which was causing all the angst and the suppression of the soul which was causing depression, it was really Reiki that kept encouraging me to find this new way. And the wonderful thing about Reiki is that it is gentle and compassionate, because it is essentially the energy of love and once upon a time, during meditation, I intuited that life was just love on this planet, until something changed, as it always will do, and in came a move away from our heart based relating. And here we are today, stuck in power and money and all the yucky solar plexus action that accompanies this. But anyway, that’s another story.

I have always felt passionate about sharing Reiki with others, because I know that it can make a huge difference. However I am also aware that the person needs to participate in his or her healing journey. Reiki will heal regardless (unless the person absolutely prevents it), but to really gain the benefits there needs to be some personal responsibility and accountability. This has become increasingly clearer to me over the years and I was reminded of this last week as I was working with a client and all of a sudden I had a sense that she won’t find the healing she seeks because she is not prepared to look into her shadows and take responsibility.

This isn’t her fault, she is merely indoctrinated into the allopathic health mind set of expecting others to do the healing, taking pills and potions and what not, which can obviously help, but even then, we need to be brave enough to get to the root cause, if we can, of the loss of well being, which usually involves participation of the emotional and mental bodies - we are more than just the physical!

I have seen a number of clients this week who have displayed such courage in the way they have dealt with their illnesses and used it as a platform for deep transformation, leaving behind a way of living which was causing the loss of well being, which is often around the way we are relating, on some level. These individuals have found the courage to look at their mental patterning and the emotional repression that undoubtably caused the loss of wellbeing in the first place. We have to remember that we are energy and that where energy gets stuck or becomes heavy, it can manifest as dis-ease.

It struck me that many keep on keeping on and hoping that they’ll be OK until they are not OK. So many of our modern health complaints are now normalised as if they are to be expected, such as dementia. I always have an issue with the signs that warn you that the elderly might be crossing the road, these heart collapsed stick figures, crumpled under the weight of age. I am inspired by yoga teachers who have lived into their nineties and managed to maintain such agility, grace and lightness.

As we say in Ayurveda, “health is your wealth” and this is so true, yet our current society tells us that wealth is about making as much money as you can, rushing around, stressed in the process of accumulation, ignoring the signs that your body is giving that it is not coping, drinking wine, taking cannabis, numbing out online, consuming vast quantities of pharmaceuticals just to get through the day. It doesn’t have to be that way! We have choice, just we don’t often realise it. This is where Reiki helps as it raises our consciousness so that we begin to realise that we have choice and then we begin to make different choices.

We also start to notice when we are giving ourselves a hard time, which is often the cause of much suffering, and we might find that little wiggle room which allows us to observe the way we are relating to ourselves and others, and again make changes. Consciousness is all that we are ultimately, just that so much of our existence is lived unconsciously. This is what makes Reiki so amazing, it increases consciousness and helps us to expand beyond our limited 3-D reality and appreciate the wider cosmos and our place in it.

My motivation towards offering the spiritual life coaching was to give clients the opportunity to go deeper, as I did with the intuitive life coaching all those years ago. I am in awe of my clients who have trodden this path. This week I am reminded of their courage and amazed at the extent of their transformation by their thoughtfulness and determination to make changes. I am reminded that often the change is as simple as a shift in mindset and perspective and a deepening of love for themselves. Usually there needs to be a celebration of their differences, and an acknowledgement that they don’t fit into the mainstream and might let ago off even trying.

I left the mainstream a good while ago now and it is very liberating. There are always so many ways to live life and so many different realities, it seems a shame to limit ourselves to what is expected of us by society, regardless of whether there is any alignment on a soulful level. But it is hard, often we are stepping alone, a ship at sail at night, maybe you see other lights from other ships, but you are no longer part of the fleet. Still, community helps enormously, not a false community, this wishy washy idea of something, but of human connection and relating on a deep soulful level that helps one to feel less alone.

I am proud of my students and the way they have created community within Beinspired. Our Friday and Sunday morning yoga sessions a two of the most uplifting times of the week, because of the sharing and humour and the lightheartedness that is such a needed part of spiritual practice, otherwise we start to take ourselves far too seriously and that’s counterproductive to the heart and soul.

Anyway, going back to Reiki, I have always felt indebted to this practice, which supports not only our healing but our personal and spiritual development. It has helped me in so many ways, re-aligning me with people and situations which have supported me to live more of what makes me feel alive. This hasn’t always been easy, I have grown apart from others, relationships have had to change, life is always encouraging me to step outside the comfort zone, but there is depth, their is aliveness and for that I am eternally grateful. Who wants to live a half lived life? We only get one chance, why squander it thinking we’ll be here forever, forgetting that we are impermanent?

So many do though, move through life unaware of the fact their time could be up the next day. I have always found the sorcery perspective helpful of using death as your advisor - if you were to die tomorrow, what would you do differently today? Now that’s an interesting question to work with.

But many will pop their head back in the sand and keep on keeping on with lives that lack meaning and lose themselves to their depression and anxiety, without appreciating it could be different. Maybe there is a little voice inside which knows this and tries to get our attention, but the fear of change is often too strong…what will we become if we let go of our pain? What then of the stories we tell ourselves of the harm we have experienced in our life and all the people we blame?

This is also an interesting question to ask - who will you be if you let go of our idea of who you are? If you forgive those who harmed you, what then? If you forgive yourself for your perceived wrongdoings, what then?

Many don’t realise they can create new stories, every day of their lives, new stories that are positive and full of hope. Yes, life will always throw us challenges and curved balls but it is up to us how we narrate these experiences, the stories we tell ourselves and the life we therefore create because of reality reflecting back the state of our mind. If we are always stuck in negative thinking, then the world will appear a very negative place. If we always feel fear then the world will look scary. Remember that we have choice, you have choice, I have choice.

Needless to say, I am always keen that others have the opportunity to experience the many benefits of Reiki too, and am always delighted to catch up with students and hear how their lives have been changed by this ancient practice.

I am keen to encourage more to this path, in the hope that it may positively make a difference in their lives. I have a number of Reiki One and Two attunement courses coming up but I am aware that many of you are ready for the Master attunement. Usually I offer this one to one, but am considering another group attunement session in the autumn so that you may spend the day with others who are like minded and keen to develop and deepen their spiritual practice. If you are reading this and wondering if that might work for you then please ping me an email so I can get an idea of how many might like to take their practice forwards.

In the interim, we have some charity events coming up so that those of you Reiki attuned can come and lend a hand, literally. The next one is March 15th 4.30-5.15pm when we will be offering Reiki to the Pink Ladies, so women experiencing breast cancer, and all hands are helpful so again, get in touch if you have the time to spare and can lend a hand - please don’t let insecurity get in the way, we will work in groups. There will be another chance to work with Parkinson’s Guernsey in May too.

Other than that, if you are reading this and life is a bit challenging as it is with the moon doing her thing and asking us to slow down and heal and expand into a new way of being, then do feel to get in touch as maybe it is time to begin or deepen your Reiki journey and make positive changes in your life by taking responsibility and holding yourself accountable. This of course has a knock on effect on everyone else - the more you positively change, the more the collective positively changes.

This reminds me, as I have heard people concerned about the state of the world currently (but doesn’t every generation worry about this) and yet, if you want to see positive change then it has to start with you. If you don’t make changes, how can you expect others to make changes too. This is when we realise we need to take responsibility, when we stop looking at others to make the changes that we need to make in our own lives - remember, we have choice.

My email is emma@beinspiredby.co.uk.

For those wanting to read more about Reiki and my experience with it, then probably my books Namaste and Dancing with the Moon, are the best ones to read.

With love

Emma x