Reiki is basically a way of balancing mind, body and spirit so you feel less stressed and healthier through directed self-healing. If Reiki was an exercise, it would be similar to Yoga in the way the positions supply different focus to various energy centers, calming and soothing the body, mind and spirit.

A Reiki practitioner has been indoctrinated into the use of Reiki and typically uses a light touch to balance your body’s energy. A full-body Reiki session focuses on the seven main chakra centers, but you can also direct the practitioner to focus on an area of discomfort or somewhere you feel needs healing.

Reiki is not tied to any religion or belief system, although it is a very spiritual practice. You don’t even have to believe in Reiki for it to work for you. All it requires of you is that you be open to receiving the energy guided through a practitioner. Healing/balance may be noticeable to you right away; maybe not for hours or days later when you may notice that your pain has lessened or is no longer there at all or discover that something that’s been bothering you no longer has the power to upset you. Remember, Reiki is a mind, body and spirit-centered healing that focuses not only on the physical symptoms of discomfort, but on the underlying causes.

How does it work? I can’t begin to tell you. I can just tell you from my five years of being involved with it, both experiencing it through others and in using it myself, that it does. There is ongoing, formal research on Reiki, and you can find many research papers on the Internet. I’m more focused on the results than the “how.” You may not know it, but the medical community prescribed aspirin for 70 years before they found out just how it works on the body. One day we’ll have accepted, documented proof of how Reiki works, but for now I’ll just accept that it does.

A person receiving Reiki may experience tingling, muscle twitching, a feeling of deep warmth . . . You may see colors or be more sensitive to what you are hearing. You may sleep better that night. Most often a client walks away feeling more calm and relaxed and may have no further inkling of the actual healing received until later on as the Reiki works through the body to balance and harmonize the mind, body and spirit energies. If a recipient of the energy was experiencing pain at the beginning of the session, he or she may find that the pain has lessened or disappeared entirely.

Reiki does not take the place of regular medicine or your doctor’s instructions, but works hand-in-hand with it to help focus your body’s natural instinct to heal itself. You already use hands-on healing instinctively without even knowing it. When you have a headache, your hands automatically go to your head. When your stomach hurts, your hands go to your stomach. This is your body’s way of telling you how to “lick your wounds,” like an animal does when it’s hurt. In fact, many doctors and healers like chiropractors are using Reiki in their practices today, and that number is growing. Some well-known hospitals that have ongoing Reiki programs include: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Yale-New Haven Hospital, Penn Medicine, John Hopkins Hospital & Health System, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, George Washington University Hospital and California Pacific Medical University (from Reiki Master Pamela Miles). Reiki is often used with hospice and cancer patients to help ease their pain. It can be used on sick animals, with colicky babies . . . The uses are infinite.

In my Reiki practice I bring in other subtle healing methods with the client’s permission just to make the session more pleasant. I offer light therapy, sound therapy, affirmations and aroma therapy to enhance your Reiki experience. I also draw upon the energies of Goddesses to help with certain charkas. Calling upon these Goddess energies are my way of giving name to the inherent qualities within a person that already know how to help you heal. By focusing on certain Goddesses, I am reminding that part of your body that houses this healing energy to “wake up” and heal itself.

Reiki comes from Dr. Mikao Usui, a healer who first received the energy of Reiki in Japan during the 1920s. One of his students later brought the teachings to America, and it has spread to other countries as well. There are many excellent sources on the Web to find out more about the origins of Reiki and explain it more fully. I would encourage you to research Reiki on the Web if you have an interest in finding out more.

If you’re in the Columbia, S.C., area and want to learn more about Reiki or even give it a try in person, contact information@reioflight.com to schedule an appointment. For a limited time, I am offering free half-hour sessions as part of my research on the healing effects of Reiki. Because Reiki is essentially energy healing, it can also be done long distance. If you’d like to experience Reiki in this manner, contact me. If you’re not in the Columbia area and had rather experience a hands-on Reiki session, look on the Internet to find a Reiki healer close to you.

Until then, Namaste, which means “The Higher Power in me recognizes the higher power in you.”

Starting eighth grade I was short, flat chested, skinny and had a badly cut shag ala Mrs. Brady. I rode the bus to school. We were new in town. I knew no one besides my family and began my 8th grade year by having someone shove me aside on the bus and telling me to “get out of the way, boy.” I remember thinking, “Even if they can’t see my chest, can’t they see my big hoop earrings?” Boys didn’t wear earrings back then, at least not big hoops down to their shoulders, which was the reason I had worn mine to begin with.

From what my teenage daughters tell me, verbal abuse among their peers has only gotten worse. Names that make me cringe are not whispered in private and giggled about behind dainty hands but shouted across lunchroom tables and down the hall for anyone within distance to hear. Other girls do not defend, but either join in the humiliation of another, glad it wasn’t they who were singled out this time, or walk away embarrassed for the other but afraid to have the situation turned on them.

At this point I have to admit that I was one of those girls. Even though I wasn’t the “picker,” I was the one who walked away.  I have wished so many times that I would have recognized the Athena in me back then, the warrior who fights for her beliefs. But I was happy enough to be left unnoticed.

If we want to stop the abuse we suffer from men, we must first stop it among ourselves. Oftentimes it is not something another woman has done to us personally that makes us rear our ugly heads. It can just be the wear she wears a dress, the way her glossy hair tosses back when she laughs, the way she gathers attention . . . Yes, I’m talking jealousy here.

Real women forgive. Real women support one another. Real women stand up for themselves and others who are not able to. Real women cower from anyone who is stronger than they. Real women wear a size 2, work out and have weekly appointments with their hairdressers, stylists, masseuses and manicurists. Real women get $10 hair cuts and buy their clothes at K-Mart so their kids can buy their jeans from American Eagle.

Real women show off the figures they work so hard for. Real women work two jobs just to keep food on the table because their husbands got laid off.

Real women live off alimony and lunch at the country club. Real women rush home from working a 12-hour shift before picking the kids up from the sitter’s and making grilled cheese for dinner.

Real women wear bikinis to the beach with high heels because it makes them feel powerful and sexy. Real women wear burkas because it makes them feel part of something ancient and sacred.

When we stop judging each other in the moment by appearance and get to know the person underneath the burka, underneath the makeup and red bikini, then, and only then, shall we be truly free.

Yesterday was Chinese New Year, the year of the tiger, the year of the lunar moon, all bringing in feminine energies. It’s a good time to start being truly free, don’t you think?

Take the pledge: I will not judge another woman because of her outward appearance because I don’t know how her appearance makes her feel. I will not judge another women because of her actions because I know not where she’s been or where she’s going. I will not judge another women because my own insecurities keep me from realizing that she may be a terrific person who’s had the good fortune to have a wonderful, prosperous life, for that can be my life, too. When we cease looking at others’ lives too closely and focus more on our own, we can make our world a whole lot better, one person at a time.

I had an interesting discussion with a friend the other day about forgiveness and came to realize that I am the person I am because of EVERYONE who has entered my life. I can’t just thank the people who were friends, who loved me unconditionally, who gave me courage, hope and inspiration.

I must also give credit to those who betrayed me, made me feel “less than,” abused me, broke promises, used me, lied to me. It is they who brought out my survival skills, my inner strengths, who made me focus and take charge of my happiness.

You may or may not know who you are. You may have been in my life for a long time or been oblivious to the fact that I even existed. Surviving those hard yesterdays made me stronger, more vital, and put me on the path to who I am and who I am becoming. And the broken sails – all those unkept promises meant to lift me up but instead left me to drown – like clouds, fly me home.

I forgive you, and I thank you.

I say I forgive. The saying comes easily. It’s the truth behind it that doesn’t. Days, weeks, even years go by and I think, “I am healed. I have truly forgiven.” And then…

I’m learning to let go, to not dwell on or live in the past, but it’s damned hard. I ask for help from God, the universe, to help me let go the bonds every day. And my prayers are answered. But it’s a cycle I repeat when the memories return.

I even realize deep in my heart that I am a far better person for having experienced betrayal and pain, and that if I hadn’t gone through that experience I wouldn’t be here in this place at this time. In a way, going through the pain is what saved me from a life of it. I learned from it. I did not want to be there any longer and so I escaped. And I am more than happy today. I am content in my life, even in the moments that aren’t particularly wonderful. That’s a place that’s taken me nearly two dozen years to find.

I don’t want to lose this contentment, this feeling, by dwelling in the past, and from there (and from God) will come my eventual healing. Still, from those dark secrets I remember, I bleed. Not always, but from time to time.

Things I am working to change my perception of:

1. No one in the world is hungry or lives in poverty. Everyone has full bellies and laughs all day from their warm, comfortable homes.

2. No one picks on or belittles another just because they are “in charge.” We all work in a spirit of harmony and cooperation.

3. There is no such thing as abuse. Husbands don’t punch their wives; mothers don’t hit their children; nations don’t hold their own citizens hostage.

4. People don’t say hurtful things out of anger. Everyone takes time to think about their thoughts before they speak their minds.

5. There is no greed. People who have are happy to give to those who have not because they realize by helping one, they are helping all, and that they may one day need that help themselves.

6. There are no religious disputes. Everyone agrees that it doesn’t matter what you believe it. He/She/It believes in you, and that is enough.

Then I married a Catholic in a Baptist church and organized religion kind of went off track. We tried to compromise our faiths after the marriage. I’ve attended mass at Catholic churches, attended a Methodist and a Lutheran church at different points in my life, hit the Presbyterian church up on a few visits and even went to a Unitarian church once.  When I travel I light candles in Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches across Europe for my friends, family and the world. Now though I no longer attend church services, I pray. I meditate. I do a lot of asking and thinking. My friends represent many religions and none.

But I’ll tell you what I don’t believe. I don’t believe God would create soul time bombs – people who, without hearing and accepting Jesus or Buddha or St. Patrick into their lives as the way into heaven – would be doomed to hell just because someone couldn’t reach them with the message before they died of poverty and hunger while waiting on the messenger. I don’t believe people who don’t believe what I believe are doomed to hell. I don’t believe millions of people who were “brought up in the wrong faith” are hellbound just because they were raised by a  devout family. I believe hell is here on earth because we’ve made it so.

Don’t get me wrong. My faith is very strong. I KNOW without a doubt that there is a higher power than me – us. As a creative person, I know you don’t create anything without putting a little of yourself into the project, so it just makes sense that there’s a little of whoever created me is inside of here somewhere. Since SHE created you, there’s a piece inside you, too. We are all connected. Whether that bigger piece that connects us all is called God, Allah, Buddha or Jerome matters not to me.

Still it took me a bit aback when someone at my recent trade show for my company, Rei of Light (www.reioflight.com) asked how I could reconcile my business of selling Goddesswear with my spirituality. If I don’t worship Goddesses, why do I sell Goddess merchandise? It was my failure that I didn’t explain my business well enough. I don’t worship Goddesses. I’m trying to empower women – all women – by using their reinterpreted images to represent courage, strength, determination, peace, creativity . . . Now, some of the beautiful women who buy my products do worship Goddesses and do say they feel the Goddess energies coming through. I have no doubt they do. They are more attune than I am to this sort of energy. I suppose I could just have easily used images of  Wonder Woman and  Super Girl to portray strengths, but that is not the gift that was given me. When I had the idea for Rei of Light, it was a very clear vision of faceless, ethereal, boldly colored Goddesses of all backgrounds. I created the company based on this instinct, not knowing even what I was to do with the images. I went on faith. For me, faith in something bigger than me is easy. I just have to look around. It’s religion that’s hard.

Just as a cross serves as a reminder of some people’s faith, when I look down and see this beautiful, imaginative and powerful artwork, I am reminded that I have these qualities, these strengths, in myself when I need them. All I have to do is reach deep enough. I have those qualities because God put them there, as he did in every woman, every man. We, as humans, have either chosen consciously or unconsciously to ignore or temporarily abandon our strengths.  Sometimes it’s because of fear; sometimes we just let the world beat us down. I’m just doing my part to find a creative way to put focus back there.

Some might call me a feminist. I am a humanist. I don’t want to take power away from men and give it to women. I want us to see that everyone has “Goddess” qualities, these innner strengths that see us through the hard times, that let us focus when we need to, that give us creativity and allow us to help others without depleting our own energy. Goddess bless us all.

The tidbit is from En Vogue’s Free Your Mind, if it seems familiar. Today I’m stuck on the meaning. For me, it’s a double entendre, and I wonder whether the writers had that intent when they wrote it. Is it: Free your mind, and the rest [of yourself - your body - your spirit] will follow? That’s how I’ve always thought of it. Free your mind and the rest of you can see what is really important - get through to the truth. But lately I’ve begun to wonder if it’s, instead,  free YOUR mind and the REST [of humanity] will follow. I think perhaps it’s both. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Start with me. My hand is up.

It’s not often that I ponder over music lyrics these days. Heck, most of the time I can’t remember the lyrics or even learn new ones unless they’re written on the insert of the CD package and I can sing along. Yes, I’m at THAT age. But this one line really gets me. I know it’s a pop song probably written for popularity and sellability, but it has depth. Free your mind. I just like the sound of that.

Freedom to me is one of the loveliest, most powerful words in my vocabulary. I am one that likes to be free in all things. I hate schedules. I hate lists. I hate doing things on someone else’s time. I hate that TiVo won’t record my shows BEFORE they air.

I think it’s time we free ourselves of a lot of things – fear, prejudice, bullying, manipulation, never having enough, being afraid to express an opinion [being afraid to even HAVE an opinion, for that matter]. . . . And while we’re at it, let’s free our vocabularies of that word “BITCH.” I don’t care how many syllables it takes you to pronounce it. I don’t care how you spell it. I don’t care if it’s a “black” word or a “white” word. LET IT GO.

I remember when that word didn’t even exist in my sheltered childhood. We didn’t even dare call our female dog THAT WORD. The dog had a name, and it was “Penny.” Now I hear bi-atch during cell phone conversations while I’m eating lunch. I hear it walking down the street. I hear it all over the radio and on TV. I’ve heard it from my daughters and even tried it out myself a few times as a term of “endearment.” I was trying to be hip, but it never quite rolled off my tongue without my seeing my mother’s face in front of me with a bar of soap.

It’s time for us to stop using that word in every day language. It’s time for us to stop using it as a substitute for “hey, girl!” It’s time for us to stop answering to it. It’s time for us to stop accepting it. And that’s not the older “unhip” part of me speaking: it’s the older, wiser part of me.

Part of me knows that a word is just a word and that if the meaning of a word can evolve – change – it has no real power or meaning at all. BUT that doesn’t stop the hurt when someone’s calling you that name. It doesn’t create respect or power. It belittles, as it was meant to do when it first became a curse word.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” As Shakespeare might say today, “A bi-atch by any other name is still a bitch.”

She read from a winding stairwell to the group of 20-30 standing below her in the small, warm belly of the store. Her voice was like a smooth rollercoaster, flowing up and down, as she read her works on relationships. It wasn’t that she used “big” words, words that don’t appear in everyday, normal conversation. It was just that she strung those words together so beautifully that they emerged to form melodies.

Out of the millions of word she could have chosen to write those poems I was left wondering why THOSE words? I’m not a poet, but I love words. Although I prefer to write simply, I do read my favorite passages in books over and over just for the sound of the words long after I’ve gotten the meaning. Pat Conroy and his descriptions of the Carolina LowCountry get me every time.

But, as I said, I prefer to get my meaning out with the use of the basics. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to be beautiful and memorable. Take refrigerator poetry – the jumble of magnetic words you can buy at a book store for less than $20? I find great fun working with these. After Cassie the poet’s reading, I went back to see some of my “greatest works” as originally published – on the side of my refrigerator.

There, under the title of “squirm poetry,”  I read such classics as:

boy/s be slow & not lean/ed good (a fun poke at my husband, the only man in a house full of girls)

drink champagne more (and I wondered why I had not put “drink MORE champagne” instead, but such is the temperment of an artist!)

never cut my hair or bad will look I (a note to myself to quit messing with my hair during its “awkward” stage and finally let it grow out)

And then there were the messages to my daughters, waiting like little treasures for them to discover:

bug you/r sister/s after they eat to pick up their crap

perhaps the dog need a bath

desire steel cup (must have been a Christmas or birthday wish)

my peace devoured (written after one of their screamfests – I can feel my angst even now!)

But then I read the “real” stuff, The Best of The 2009 Refrigerator Poems, and thought that given the chance and a few more “s”es and “ed”s, I just might show real potential as a  poet.

you question not my heart – you listen to my voice seeped with poison – let go and breathe

fear is a ferocious prisoner from which we must heal

from dark secrets I remember I bleed

like hard yesterday/s broken sail/s like cloud/s fly me home

red velvet fire from melt/ing tree/s pierce/s a hole in the porcelain breeze – vast blue sky but hot glass (my tribute to Al Gore and stand on global warming)

But perhaps the most glorious short poem of all showcased on our kitchen art wall was a poem written not by me, but my husband, which, in its short six words, sums up our entire lives’ hopes and dreams: I linger over delicious, haunting pie. Now, he meant that he just wanted pie. But on a deeper level it says:  Slow down and enjoy this moment. There will be other pies, all sorts of pies, but THIS one is here now. Savor the taste.

According to my astrological chart, today is supposedly an auspicious day to start new things, so I thought it would be a good time to try the meditation tapes I HAD to have that have been perched on my dresser for a month. 

To prepare for this journey, I wanted to start with the best of intentions, so I took a cleansing salt bath, and drank some purified water before loading the CD. Okay, it was really unsweetened tea, which is about as close as I get to purified water, but that should be good enough for any Southern gal.

I have been on my “spiritual journey” for about 13 years and most of the time feel no more enlightened than I did when I took the first conscious step on this path. Awakening, for me, at least, is very hard. Ironic considering that I am a chronic insomniac, so sleeping, too, is very hard. Perhaps I’m meant to forever be in that in-between stage like Neo in the Matrix before he accepted the realism of his unreal world. Maybe subconsciously I’m afraid of being unplugged but realize that the plug is there.

On my spiritual quest I have been to church (several dominations ranging from the stodgy Catholic to the speaking-in-tongues garden variety). I pray. I meditate. I have tried mantras and chanting but am self conscious about hearing the unfamiliar tones come from my mouth. I practice Reiki and have been read, cleared and channeled by a dozen psychics. I have tried other healing methods and meditations and had my astrological chart done. I have even been Tai Chi whipped (sounds dreadful, but feels marvelous)!

I won’t deny the benefit of some of these techniques: some, in fact, have been quite beneficial. The ones that I have not felt a direct benefit from have been fun and/or a bit scary, but, hey, I’m all for trying new things. I tend to jump around from place to place and thing to thing quite a bit. If someone says I can be enlightened just by wearing a stone around my neck, well, let’s just say I have THAT necklace many times over. Not to knock crystal jewelry. I have quite a few pieces that I love and quite a few friends who make it. Everything I do I put down as a learning experience.

But I finally found method that speaks to me – Holosync. It promises a quicker path to enlightenment starting with only half an hour a day, like meditation on steroids. Apparently it’s been around for 10 years, but it figures I’m just finding out about it.

I figure there will be several different points of view to this approach – (1) the purist: if she can find in one day what it took me a lifetime to achieve, it does not matter. Her path is her own. (2) the trying-to-be-enlighted-but-not-making-much-progress:  How dare she think this quickie path might work when I’ve been meditating religiously for 23 years and have only crested the tip of achieving nirvana once (but it was soooo worth it. )(3) the total disbeliever: It won’t work. Meditation is for people who just don’t want to face the real world. Whatever. I find myself caught in the middle. I am eagerly anticipating the process, but with a hopeful look into the result, no matter how unattached to results I am not supposed to be.

Anyway, here’s to Day 1 of Holosync . . . Is it cheating to peek to see how much time you have left? Is it cheating to even think about peeking? No enlightenment, but I did enjoy a nice quite bath.

I vow to you, my reader (me!), that I will faithfully and to the best of my ability, try the Holosync format for the next two weeks and see where it leads. There. It’s in writing. It’s a pact to myself. Done deal. I’ll keep you updated.