Tag: Reiki

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The Reiki Badge of Self-Care

Self-Reiki-Badge-300x300I have recently worked with several new clients who have taken a Level One Reiki class, yet were not “doing Reiki.”

While giving a Reiki session is a beneficial for both the giver and the receiver, the most important healing you can give is to yourself.

As I have written about before, doing Reiki daily, or in my case nightly, has proven to be more valuable than I would have ever thought possible. Besides waking up much more rested in the morning, giving myself Reiki before I go to sleep releases and balances my physical body. My nighttime sessions have also become the time when I seem to get my most creative ideas. I tell you, I’m really getting a lot out of this.

It also just feels good.

I started doing Reiki after reading the blog of Reiki Master Pamela Miles. Click on the badge and read what she has to say about daily Reiki treatments. Also check out her post: Can Reiki Help You?

Thanks for the badge, Pamela!

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch, Reiki and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.

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More About Reiki and Better Sleep

ReikiThis post gives me another opportunity to state my world vision:

Everyone has the opportunity to learn Reiki, Healing Touch or other hands-on-healing modality, and can choose to give regular treatments to themselves, family members, and friends. Everyone has the option to use energy work to feel less anxious, more emotionally balanced and reduce pain in their physical body.

Over a year ago, I decided to give myself daily Reiki treatments. I am still amazed at the results. Reiki keeps me emotionally centered and in a state of better health, with higher energy and mental clarity.

For me, regular self-treatments also includes better and more restful sleep.

About 4 months ago, during a very busy time in my life, I found I was consistently waking up during the night. I took that time to do extra Reiki on myself. Sometimes I would fall asleep soon after starting the healing, but sometimes I would complete a full hour session while wide awake. The most interesting thing is that even when I was up for several hours at night, I was very rarely tired the next day. I found that I stopped worrying about how fatigued I was going to be the next day when I couldn’t sleep. That in itself was very, very – like phenomenally – helpful.

When doing energy work my hands sometimes get hot and sometimes they don’t. During those night sessions my hands were super hot, which felt great in the cold weather. I started really enjoying the late night healings. It was so relaxing, quiet and peaceful.

Eventually, though, I started sleeping though the night. I feel so fortunate to have such a valuable resource at my fingertips.

You can have it too.

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.

 

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Healing Touch and Good Sleep

IMG_4795My clients report two things most often after a healing touch session.

The first is usually right after the healing. ‘I am so relaxed.” Or “I have never felt this peaceful.”

The second benefit is usually reported one or two days after the session. “I am sleeping so much better.” “I did not wake up one time last night.” “I feel so much more rested during the day.”

Healing Touch and Reiki can promote healthy sleep patterns. It seems that no matter why my clients come for a healing – medical condition, emotional crisis, or regular self-care, they find they sleep better. Getting a good night’s sleep is extremely helpful in keeping their energy system balanced and healthy.

As an energetic practitioner, I often sense that my client’s nervous system is “reset” during the healing. I do not have any nervous system reset monitors that can scientifically prove this, but I have often felt my client’s energy field “click” into alignment.

Sometimes one healing is all it takes to create this shift and often, since getting better sleep is a byproduct of a session and not the reason the client originally booked the session, the client will not even have noticed it until I ask about how the session affected them.

For most clients, it takes several sessions to create deeper sleep patterns, especially if the client has been out of energetic alignment for a longer time. The first session may create a shift in their sleeping patterns that last one or two days, the next session affects them for a week, and so on.

Good sleep is a good thing.

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.

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An Invitation To Heal

IMG_5864One of my main objectives when I started writing this blog was to encourage my readers to use energetic healing in their own lives. Healing is a gift we all inherently possess and can easily access to benefit our family, friends and, most importantly, our own well-being.

If you have any interest in hands on healing you can take a class, and start healing on a daily basis. Many of my clients have taken just one Healing Touch or Reiki class and have significantly supported friends, family members and themselves through chemotherapy and other health challenges. Healing classes are also a great place to meet other healers and start trading sessions. I’m a big advocate of developing a healing community.

I also hope to help inspire health organizations to use energetic healing – especially the modality Healing Touch and Reiki – in nursing homes, clinics, assisted living facilities, hospitals and hospice to support wellness, prevent disease, ease pain and keep us in balance.

In the future I may be writing and reflecting on the specifics of what I am experiencing in my healing sessions and I don’t want to detour anyone from their path to healing because they think they have to see auras before they can heal. You don’t have to see or feel energy to make a difference in someone’s life with a healing session.

My vision: There will come a time when every family has at least one member who enjoys doing hands-on-healing. Children will start energetic classes in grade school. People will ask for a healing before reaching for an aspirin.

Every one of us has the ability to make our lives more comfortable, healthier and, as I have experienced from my first day of Reiki, more joyful!

Go for it.

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.

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Reiki, Hospice and Supporting the Caregiver

Silvia with her son Alessandro, and husband Jim
Silvia with her son Alessandro, and husband Jim

I was very honored to assist Silvia while she held a beautiful space of love and positive energy for her husband’s transition. Thank you Silvia, for taking the time to write such a generous testimonial.

“I first began working with Jeri with Reiki distant healing during my husband’s last illness. She did a distance healing right after our initial phone conversation.

A few days later she came to our house while we were both resting and gave my husband Reiki in the hospital bed. Jeri then gave me Reiki on our marriage bed which was side by side with the hospital bed.

I was exhausted from caring for my husband and from trying to help him heal through Ayurveda and other holistic methods. The Ayurveda specialist recommended Jeri, and in a way, Jeri saved my life, and helped my husband’s passing be much more spiritual and balanced.

I fell asleep after the Reiki, and my husband slept for several hours and then woke and ate well, and spoke, and seemed much calmer. Sleeping next to him, both of us holding hands as we slept after the Reiki, I ‘talked’ to my husband’s spirit and was much more calm, because I had explained to him that he could choose to go or to stay and heal, but that he need take no baggage if he went…

I was feeling tortured by the inability of the medical establishment and of my husband’s family to accept any type of alternative healing… or the possibility of a miracle. I did not even feel that I was competent to give Reiki, although I am a Reiki Level 2 Practitioner. Jeri assured me that I could do no harm, and after her encouragement I gave him Reiki before any medication or any treatment.

My husband passed at 2:08 PM on July 4th. After his cremation, my third son and I both had Reiki with Jeri. Jeri and I worked together on my son at my request, and it was a powerful and healing session. Jeri gave me the confidence and the loving care that we both needed… My son was suffering from post-traumatic stress after a bad accident, and the Reiki allowed him to fly back home in much better health and spirits…

I am very grateful to Jeri because she is a loving and intuitive healer who brings all the power of her love and intent to the table.”

Silvia A. Brandon Pérez

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.

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Three Healers Who Write About Energetic Healing

  DSCF4910IMG_4181Rose #1

Since I started this blog two years ago, I have found several other healers writing about their practices and how energetic healing can enrich our lives. In this post I would like to share three of those blogs with you.

The first blog is by Judith Schutz, Judith Treating cancer with Energy Healing (including the Bengston Method and the Domancic Method): A resource on the use of bioenergy healing to treat cancer, with commentary on working with the Bengston Bioenergy Healing Method, the Domancic Method, Matrix Energetics, Quantum Touch, and Reiki.

Besides sharing her immense experience with the above energetic modalities, Judith is frequently challenging the unconscious ways in which our media and healthcare system treat cancer.

In her short, yet profound post “Some thoughts on Roger Ebert “losing his battle to cancer”  she writes:

“This metaphor of cancer as a war that is waged between the disease and the patient has got to go”.

“…We need to find a more useful metaphor, one that gives us new ways of looking at this disease, that will perhaps trigger different, and less harmful, treatments. How about the alternative where we look at the cancer cell as confused? A cell that has lost its connection to the whole that could perhaps be taught to return to normal…”

Judith currently uses all the healing modalities she has studied in the treatment of sports injuries. Click here for her Treating Sports Injuries With Bioenergy blog.

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The next blog is from Reiki Master Pamela Miles who has been doing Reiki since 1986. Pamela’s Reiki practice is in New York where she also teaches. Pamela has a wonderful website, yet I received an email from her a few weeks ago stating that she is going to redo it. Her video on Reiki is one of the best introductions I have seen on energetic healing, so I hope she keeps that on her site.

I personally have been very inspired by Pamela’s website. Her commitment, clarity, and years of healing experience make her blog an incredible resource.

There are two subjects she addresses often that I have found particularly interesting. The first one is self-care. Pamela is a big advocate of daily Reiki treatments. Check out her post The Most Important Thing. Since discovering Pamela’s blog, I have made a conscious effort to make sure I give myself daily Reiki treatments. I have really noticed a difference, especially in my emotional well-being.

Pamela also writes about describing Reiki as more of a spiritual practice instead of an energy medicine. In her post Reiki: Spiritual Practice or Energy Medicine? she states:

“As a spiritual practice, a Reiki treatment doesn’t rearrange the biofield as much as it reminds the system of its capacity to self-heal. A Reiki hand sounds the metaphorical wellness chord, the “sound” of which calls the human system to reorganize around its inherent wellness, thereby increasing consonance in the system, and reducing dissonance from within, rather than sweeping it away from outside, as is done by an energy medicine treatment. The Reiki hand may be the soft mallet that sounds the gong, but the resonance, reorganization, and healing come from within. Yes, the practitioner plays a role, but Reiki healing remains essentially self-healing.

In energy medicine, the therapist does the housecleaning, whereas through spiritual practice, we alter our state from within. Reiki is a spiritual practice that has therapeutic applications. That doesn’t make it energy medicine, but it means it can look like energy medicine.”

From this perspective, Healing Touch would then be more of an energy medicine. This is interesting to me because as an energetic practitioner I LOVE Reiki, yet call myself a Healing Touch Practitioner for a variety of reasons too long to list now. When I give myself an energetic treatment I have always felt like I was doing Reiki, so Pamela’s thoughts on this make a lot of sense to me.

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The third and last blog is from Barbara Litchfield, a Healing Touch colleague that I have yet to meet in person. Barbara has been blogging since 2007. Her writing style is heartfelt, honest and based on her own healing practice. From reading her blog, I can tell Barbara is a heart centered healer – deeply committed to helping people feel better.

Barbara’s post, Energy Therapy Changes the Energetic Pattern is nothing short of BRILLIANT. If you don’t have time to read it right now, click on the link, bookmark it and save it for later.

I hope you enjoy these blogs as much as I do.

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.

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A Healing Pattern

c. Jeri Lawson 2013 All Rights Reserved "Balance"There are moments in my healing sessions when I sense the client I am working with has reached a state of perfect balance.

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These moments are experienced by my client as relief from the issue that he or she has come to see me for – such as lower back pain. In this healing pattern, his or her whole body has also deeply relaxed, and there is a feeling of complete emotional and mental peace.

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This can happen in the first five minutes of the session.

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If this is the case, my focus for the rest of the healing is setting or grounding that higher vibration in my client’s body while he or she is in this pain-free state. I set an intention to organize and assist my client in strengthening their energy field so they can hold this frequency for as long as possible.

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Healing is then measured by how long my client can stay balanced after the session. This is good because transformation is happening at a rate that is safe and comfortable. There is less pain for  longer periods between sessions until the pain does not return. Sometimes this happens in one or two sessions and sometimes it takes many sessions. It is obvious to me and the client that each session is making a difference.

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As I write this I realize it sounds like I am causing the balance to happen, but really I am just following the energy during the session with conscious intention. This always creates the best results for my client. As a Healer I set the space for the healing to happen and then just follow the energy.

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Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.

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Healing Touch California’s 7th Annual Regional Symposium on Self-Care: Post Traumatic Stress

IMG_5571I had signed up for Kathy Allan’s Pre-symposium Workshop It Takes a Special Person to Be a Healer even though I had never heard of Kathy Allan before and had no idea of what to expect. All I knew was that her class was right after Anne Day’s Journaling Your Healing Journey and just before the networking gathering and pinning ceremony.

The presentation turned out to be one of the highlights of the conference and has given me a deeper understanding of emotional and energetic release in my Healing Touch Practice.

First of all, Kathy Moray Allan is remarkable. She is a Healing Touch Certified Practitioner and Instructor as well as a Board Certified Holistic Nurse. She studied energy healing with Rosalyn Bruyere for three years, taught Integrative Imagery for Beyond Ordinary Nursing and graduated from the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute as a Certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. Kathy is also on the Advisory Board of One Freedom, an organization that provides trauma education and training to the military, their families and care providers.

The focus of her workshop was on how prolonged exposure to clients who have been traumatized by natural disasters, domestic abuse, family break ups or terrorist threats can affect the healer. The Symposium was right after the Boston Marathon Bombings, so maybe that had something to do with how profound and timely this workshop felt.

Kathy talked about Practitioner Traumatization, Compassion Fatigue and old fashion Burnout. She described the symptoms healers may notice in themselves, and gave out strategies to prevent practitioner trauma.

Some of the strategies were: get Healing Touch Treatments (of course), spend time in nature, develop and nurture a sense of spiritual connection, sing, laugh and listen to Bellruth Naparstek’s Guided Imagery CD’s.

Kathy spoke about Post Traumatic Stress, a topic that is now being addressed frequently in the healing world. One reason for this being the increase of War Veterans that are now dealing with it.

Kathy’s handout stated this about Post Traumatic Stress:

“Although it is a source of tremendous distress and dysfunction, it is not an ailment or disease, but the byproduct of and instinctively instigated, altered state of consciousness.”

I also found this quote from her handouts by Peter Levine very inspirational:

“Remember, traumatized individuals had the strength to survive the experience and with a little help they can learn how to restore the wisdom of their bodies and the joy in their lives.

…Not only can trauma be healed, but with appropriate guidance and support, it can be transformative. Trauma has the potential to be one of the most significant forces for psychological, social and spiritual awakening and evolution.”

Post Traumatic Stress is not just about veterans, war and major disasters. In my healing practice I have always observed how beneficial it is for my clients to regularly release trauma from surgeries, minor car accidents, dental work and even the paralyzing effect of constant financial stress. Regular Reiki, Breathwork, Massage and Healing Touch sessions really keeps stress from accumulating in the physical body.

This short post does not give justice to the insights I gained from Kathy’s presentation. I feel like I have come back to my own healing practice with a fresh perspective and deeper awareness on how to better assist my clients.

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Here are a few more links about the Symposium and Self-Care Techniques that may be  of interest:

Self Care: Shine a Bit Brighter Each Day an article by Caroline Elliott, BScN, RN, HTPA, who was on the Symposium planning committee.

Here is an article by Anne Day called Journaling for Self-care and Development. Anne presented the pre-symposium workshop Journaling Your Healing Journey, which I attended and thoroughly enjoyed.

A free voice guided Chakra Meditation by Ellen Long.

A Huffington Post’s Healing Touch With Guided Imagery Could Help Relieve PTSD Symptoms In Soldiers, Study Suggests

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Beach Walks, Reiki and Super Storm Sandy

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Hawley Hussey’s home was one of the few left standing after Super Storm Sandy.

I asked my dear friend Hawley Hussey to write a post about her Reiki practice and she sent me this beautiful letter to share with you. Hawley is an artist, writer, performer, arts educator and, as she calls herself in this letter, a maker.

Over the years I have watched Hawley bring art to children in the inner cities who would otherwise never get a chance to  experience painting, drawing, performing, pretending, playing and the exhilaration of creating. She is a catalyst for joy.

I have experienced Hawley’s distance Reiki healings while facing personally challenging moments and the Reiki she sends is so grounding, loving and tangible.

Hawley lives in Coney Island and in her letter she describes her healing process after super storm Sandy:

“Dear Jeri,

As you know I have done Reiki every day since my first Reiki 1 attunement in 2001 here in NYC.

I practiced Reiki 1 for a full year, then my Reiki 2 attunement changed everything with the ability to engage in distance work. Distance Reiki is a daily part of me, like good hot coffee and walks on the beach. Beach walks are now the great exception as my beach community was leveled by super storm Sandy.

I got internet and phone about two weeks ago but not one moment of complaint can happen as my neighbors are either homeless or sequestered into a couple of rooms in their homes as they still wait for relief. Our beach house was strangely spared.

There is no real solace in being the ones who made it. My beach walks and especially my well-known winter bathing (usually a daily practice) have come to a full stop. The water has been filthy and the beach side houses are so destroyed it is impossible for me to engage in the joy the edge usually brings to me. The edge where ocean, sand and boardwalk meet.

Reiki has preserved a thin thread of hope for me.  The thread is gold and real and keeps my spirits afloat even with this loss of my neighborhood and my bit of the Atlantic.  All the destruction brought with it high creativity. I had to go within. Tap into the source of wonder I was born with and be what I am.  A maker. With no internet or phone since October’s end my painting and writing practice have flourished.

I did notice that I pretty much let go of the tending of my wee beach side apartment. Normally I take great pride in my organizing and tending to my home. I think I had been distancing myself in case I had to suddenly leave.  Although I still have to look through much damage to the ships passing and sunsets setting I am still sending Reiki daily and without fail. To  myself, to the sea, to my neighbors, to my loved ones, to difficult people at work, to strangers I see suffering, to potential wild cards on a crowded train. Much is gone from this brush with an explosive and destructive wilderness experience and much has quietly and quite unexpectedly arrived.

I am so thankful for Reiki.”

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About This Blog

DSC_1057I have been writing this blog for over a year and a half, so I thought it might be time to write this mission statement. This also meant I had to reexamine and clarify my intentions as a healer. Sometimes the shortest posts take the longest to write.

ABOUT THIS BLOG:
This blog is about my energetic healing practice. My intention in my healing practice is to validate and develop the intuitive healing abilities in each person I work with and assist him or her into coming into balance physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I know that all healing is self-healing and my goal is to create a safe and inspiring place where all possibilities exist.

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The modalities I write about in this blog are: Healing Touch, Reiki and Clarity Breathwork. I am also a massage therapist and roughly half my healing practice is massage based.

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In my blog, I also share about my experience of having a healing business at this moment in our modern culture and just how extraordinary and incredibly ordinary it is to work in altered states of consciousness and sacred space on a daily basis.

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Healing is a mystery. The more I learn about healing, more I realize my focus as a healer is not about intellectually understanding what healing is, but to create, ground and hold the space for this mystery to happen for my clients.

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Lastly, my intention as the author of this blog is to communicate how this healing space can support each of us individually and as a community by encouraging the use of energetic healing – especially the modality Healing Touch and Reiki – in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, hospitals and hospice to support wellness, prevent disease and keep us in balance.

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Click here to learn more about Healing Touch.
Click here to learn more about Reiki.
Click here to learn more about Clarity Breathwork.

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Jeri Lawson is available for sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.