I understand what I am about to tell you is going to seem wildly farfetched and out-there, but I promise you it is even more wildly real and right here. Right everywhere actually. And it’s affecting every single one of us in a multitude of ways and even though my own doctor discounted it (and me), I was led to a wonderful new doctor, who agrees it’s affecting everyone, everywhere and the symptoms are real. 

I’m not writing this to instill fear into anyone, but rather to bring awareness in hopes of helping you make correlations and connections to your own health, symptoms, body, sicknesses, sadnesses and debilitating anxiousness, and aching everythings. 

We’ve never lived in a world like the one we live in now and it’s a world of convenience and instant access. All of our old-school ways of doing things are almost completely phased out with wireless and smart devices. More cell towers, more antennas, more cell phones, more wireless security cameras, more laptops, more Alexas, more tablets, more smart watches, more wireless baby monitors, cordless phones, and the ability to do cool things like turn your heat up in your home from across the world on another wireless device. But all of these things are wreaking havoc on our bodies.

I know it, because I can FEEL it. I feel EMFs because my body is healing from being hypersensitive to electro magnetic everythings……

When a neighbor is on a device, or streaming something, or downloading something, or making a wireless call, or using bluetooth, I feel PAIN in my body and it’s a pain I can not escape until the thing that is happening is over. How is this possible? I have had a series of unfortunate health events over time and eventually my body couldn’t take one more single thing. I was simply overburdened. 

I believe we are all born with an empty barrel that we slowly fill up with toxins. And that barrel is able to handle quite a bit. It can tolerate ingestion of pesticides from the food we eat, inhalation of toxic candles or cleaning supplies, off-gassing from carpets and fumes from paints and furniture stains, drinking polluted water, or the chemicals we put in and on our body with laundry detergents, lotions, perfumes, make up, deodorants etc.. The list goes on and on. But one day, our body says ENOUGH. That might be the day when you break out in a rash, but you haven’t changed anything in your diet or environment. You might feel exhausted all of a sudden, or have mood changes. You might begin to have joint pain or muscle spasms in weird places. You might get pounding headaches or tingling in your hands or feet. Your vision may increasingly get worse. You may suddenly have seasonal allergies, or lingering illnesses, maybe even a good dose of brain fog. I myself have stared at a recipe for 2 hours not being able to comprehend what I am supposed to do, or how to do it.

The smaller the body, the bigger the burden. There is a very popular quote by Mary Oliver, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I would like to make a new version of that go viral, and that is “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious body?”

We only get one, and it’s up to us to give it our best chance to not only survive, but to THRIVE. It is challenging for me to feel good all the time, even though I have done EVERYTHING I can do to reduce EMF’s in my own home, and have mitigated lots of things. You see, I can only control my environment with regards to what I can physically do, like getting rid of wifi, hardwiring my computer, getting a landline, fix faulty wiring, unplug things I don’t use, eliminate all wireless things, stop using the microwave etc... but my issue (and yours even though you may not see it that way yet) is what is happening in the homes around our homes, and the world around us. Our bodies are increasingly being burdened by the better, faster, smarter, wireless, 4G, 5G, 10G etc. A lot of people attribute their aches, pains, and burdens to, “I’m old. I’m getting old. That happens,” but I beg to differ. 

I was talking to a friend of mine today and I said, “I feel like I’m a non smoker, but my home is full of people smoking, and even though they are figuratively lighting up in their own homes and cars, their smoke is filling up and going through my own home and into my one and precious body.”

Aside from mold toxicity, reactions to the vaccine, and being treated for lyme that I had all in the last 2 years, I think it’s important to mention what I now do for a living: I am a Feng Shui and Healthy Home Consultant, and Reiki Master Teacher. I started my small business Loving Karma in 2018 to help people align the energy in their homes and bodies. I have trained under many different teachers and had many mentors in a variety of energy-healing modalities. I have the ability to sense things acutely in energy fields in and around my and my clients’bodies, including the energy fields in and around our homes and environments. 

My body will feel like someone has a blow torch aimed right at me when someone is on a cell phone over a football field away. I can say that confidently because my sister and brother-in- law live in the house next to me, over a football field away, and if I use my landline to call her cell phone, my body immediately starts to burn and head begins to pound. 

If you are part of my close circle of friends, you will know the accuracy of my ability to detect when something is on, because I’ve been told “everything is shut off,” and I insist something hasn’t been shut down all the way by the amount of pain my body feels.   9 times out of 10, I am right when they doublecheck, and then power things off all the way, and the pain subsides. And the one time, the 1 out of 10 is the challenge I face in my home when I don’t know where it’s coming from, but I feel it. That is why I have had to quit my day job over a year ago, because I couldn’t tolerate my own work environment. Driving is a challenge, grocery shopping is a challenge, and forget about going out and hanging out with people for fun—-I simply don’t do it anymore, because I can’t ask the world to shut everything off for my comfort. 

So instead, I am doing what I can do, and that is bringing this awareness out into the world, to get people talking and thinking and start paying attention to what these devices and signals might be doing to you and your own precious children and families and pets and loved ones. The burden is getting heavier and heavier with all the latest and not-so-greatest devices and people are becoming more and more symptomatic. There seems to be more sickness and death from unknown causes, or supposed known causes, but no one is attributing the sickness and deaths to the aforementioned burdens. I am trying to bring awareness to the world. These EMF’s are taxing our bodies. They are a pollutant. They are toxic and they are everywhere.   

I hope this can be the tip of the iceberg for you in what you start to learn and understand. You CAN take action to mitigate your own environment to improve your sleep, health, mood, and your life.

Here are ten of my favorite simple tips of things you can do right now to reduce your own burdens and improve your immune systems:

• Start with your sleeping space and unplug EVERYTHING around you. Our sleeping spaces are where we spend 1/3 of our lives. Let that 1/3 of your life be the BEST chance your body gets to recover from what is burdening it daily out in the world.
• Put your phone in airplane mode with wifi, bluetooth, and cellular turned off while you sleep. And if you can, power it down all together! 
• Move your router as far away from your bodies as possible, like the other side of the house from where you sleep. Routers are one of the biggest culprits emitting high doses of radiation. (Pay attention to how you feel when you’re around one for long periods of time).
• Put your router on a timer. This way at night, it can’t bounce off anyone in your house or any of the smart devices nearby. 
• Get a battery-operated alarm clock so you don’t have to rely on your phone, or a plug-in one that emits lots of EMF’s.
• Opt for wired everything including headphones, keyboards, gaming devices, etc
• Disable wifi on your laptop when not using it, and never ever put the laptop in your lap.
• Don’t hold your phone to your ear when making a call – put it on speaker if you need to or use a wired headset to give yourself ample distance. 
• Don’t carry your phone on or near your body and if you do, shut it off completely. Signals are constantly being bounced from the tower or router to you phone saying, “Where are you?” And your phone bounces back, “Here I am” and that’s CONSTANT. And guess what else it hits besides your phone? Yup, you. 
• Wherever you spend long periods of time, see what you can unplug to reduce the levels of EMF’s around you.

If you are local to Northeastern CT, I offer Healthy Home Consultations where I bring in my Trifield Meter and measure your sleeping and working spaces so you can see what your exposures levels are and learn ways to reduce and mitigate your own EMF pollution. 

Spread the word, not the wireless. Your one wild and precious body deserves it, and so does mine. 

When I took my first Level One Usui Shiki Ryoho Reiki Class in February of 2018, I had no idea how much that energetic modality would change my life. It was a curiosity more than anything else honestly.   

As a Feng Shui Consultant, I understood clearly the concept of how energy flowed around us and through our environments. I learned how to manipulate the energy in such a way that those who experienced the changes in their homes felt better physically, had direction they hadn’t had before, and welcomed other positive shifts into their lives as well.   

I did not understand though, and hadn’t been able to grasp the idea of this invisible life force energy called Reiki that flowed through our bodies. Little did I know then the impact it would have on me and the multitude of uses and situations I would be applying it to in my own daily life. 

There is a standard answer most Reiki Practitioners will give when asked what this alternative modality even is. I say alternative because simply put, it is another method anyone can use and integrate into their own healing regimen once they have been attuned to the Reiki energy. You may have heard it described as a hands on, or off, Japanese stress reduction technique that is used for alleviating symptoms associated with pain, depression, anxiety, and more. 

Whenever we experience discomfort in or on our bodies, like a headache, or falling down and getting a scrape, our hands immediately gravitate towards that pain. We do this instinctively because we are all natural born healers, but this is a concept that not many people can seem to grasp or even understand. 

That’s because we live in a world where we were taught that the common way to alleviate our ailments was to go outside of ourselves to seek help instead of going within. 

We end up going to doctors who write us prescriptions that we fill at pharmacies in order to be able to put something foreign into our systems for temporary relief. But taking a pill from a bottle usually doesn’t address the root cause of the problem, and many people are left dealing with chronic conditions that require more medicine. More medicine can then create other health related problems as a result of the first medication’s side effects. (And to be clear, I am not anti-western medicine. In fact, I feel there is a great need and place for our doctors in this world and the medicines that they prescribe.)   

Taking pills is such the norm that even our homes have designated spaces in our bathrooms for all of the medicines we take. But Reiki doesn’t come in a bottle and it certainly doesn’t sit on a shelf. It is a beautiful healing energy that we can access all the time and anytime once we have been attuned to it. 

When people ask me what an attunement is, I explain it like this; “Imagine your favorite song is on the radio, but you can’t hear it until you tune into the radio station that it is playing on. You physically have to use your hand to turn a dial to pick up a signal on a specific station to hear a song. An attunement is a similar process between a Reiki Master Teacher and a Reiki Student. The Reiki Master Teacher is tuning the dial, or rather the Reiki Student, into the station, or rather the Reiki Energy, to be able to hear the favorite song. 

Reiki has allowed me to heal myself in ways I never thought possible. One of my Reiki Teachers, Libby Barnett, said we are our own laboratories and have to have our own experiences before we can attest to something as being true for us. Having said that, I can wholeheartedly say with confidence that the things I have experienced with my own Reiki healing are inexplicable but have yielded results that even I was shocked to see.

Earlier this year I had my Covid Vaccine and one week after my first shot I developed a raised welt that itched just larger than the size of my hand on my right shoulder at the site of the vaccination. After speaking to a medical professional, and then googling of course because that’s the age we are in, I discovered it was a rare side effect, but had already been documented in 30,000 people. I was told it would last approximately 1-3 weeks but would go away on it’s own. This was a great opportunity for me to apply what I knew. 

It was a Sunday morning and my daughter wanted to watch something on Netflix so I sat with her on the couch and took my left hand, crossing my arm over my chest and rested it over to my right shoulder and upper arm area. Hands on with my intention is what turns the Reiki on. 

There I sat, comfortably, not even focusing on what I was doing, because with Reiki, there is no doing, there is only being. I laughed through the funny parts of whatever it was we were watching and even forgot that my hand was resting on the vaccination sight. My feet were comfortably crossed on the foot rest in front of me and I am telling you all of this so you can understand the simplicity of this. You do not even need a Reiki table, you do not need to be lying down, and you do not have to sit rigidly with legs uncrossed or in any certain way for healing to take place. I do however have a Reiki table in my Zen Den where I do Reiki treatments with people lying down, and I have been on a table receiving treatments as well, but for all intents and purposes, you only need to be and do what is comfortable for you. 

An hour later the show was over and I noticed the itching had subsided. I took my hand off my arm and went about my day not paying anymore attention to it. 

Because I am a Reiki Teacher, I feel it’s important to take before and after pictures to show students as this helps them understand the magnitude of what we can do for ourselves alone with this beautiful gift. I had taken a picture that morning to keep track of it and have something to compare it to. Well that night, after my shower I checked it again and was in awe of what I saw. The welt, just 10 hours after I did Reiki, was almost completely healed. The even more amazing thing is you can see where my left hand was directing the Reiki. Because the welt was slightly larger than my hand, my hand was centered over it. The area where my hand rested received direct intensive healing and the wound cleared up from the center outward. You can even see the outline of some of my fingers. It was completely cleared up by the next morning. That was a great example of how Reiki speeds up the recovery process and reduces symptoms. 

Another incidence where I used Reiki and it amazed me happened just this past July of 2021. On a 90˚ degree hotter-than-hot kind of day, I took my daughter Arianna and her friends to the beach for some summer fun. The girls decided to take a walk along the shallow part of the shoreline and Arianna stepped on a broken shell cutting the bottom right heel of her foot. Not much of a concern, she cleaned it when she got home. The next morning however she was limping around telling me it hurt to put weight on it. When I looked at it, I saw a tell tale sign of infection. She had a streak that had started to develop coming out of the wound site. Even though I practice Reiki, I also practice common sense and know when not to play the waiting game. I called her pediatrician and made an appointment knowing she would most likely need antibiotics to kick what was brewing. I still sat her down at 9 o’clock that morning and had her put her feet in my lap. She watched tv and I put my hands on her foot and turned on the Reiki. We cleaned and bandaged the wound and put a sock on her foot to keep it protected.

Five hours later we were in the doctors office and explained what happened. The doctor asked Arianna to pull off her sock so she could examine it and the streak was GONE. I couldn’t believe my eyes. And I LOVE that I STILL get that excitement and amazement when I am witness to this kind of healing. The pediatrician said, “If there was a streak, then I would say start the antibiotics immediately, but I don’t see a streak.” I had to take out my phone to show her the picture from just 5 hours before to prove I wasn’t crazy. She told me if she had seen my daughter’s foot looking the way it did in the picture just 5 hours earlier that she would definitely be taking the antibiotics. We were given a prescription to take just in case the streak came back, but it didn’t. And her foot healed just fine on it’s own. That’s another example of how Reiki helped with a speedy recovery and reduction of symptoms.

Aside from those examples I just gave of how I’ve used Reiki in the past, I truly do use it in my life daily. I turn it on in my morning meditations to start my day on the right foot. I send Reiki to my plants, my family, my pets, my friends, and I love it so much that I teach it. I also send it distantly to situations and for world healing. I belong to many social media groups where people request Reiki and we send it to each other distantly. There are so many ways to apply it and integrate it into your own life and for your own healing.   

If you have ever been curious about learning more about Reiki or becoming a practitioner, I strongly encourage you to do so. Especially in times like we are in now, the world could use more healers and we can always always use a little more healing. 

Click here for upcoming classes.

What if I told you that as a Reiki Master Teacher, I couldn’t whole heartedly explain to you in words exactly what Reiki was and how it worked, but that it has yielded results that sometimes have taken even me by surprise.

The truth is, I’m not here to fix, heal, change or improve anyone. I am only here to help YOU restore balance to your own body, one session at a time; and that looks like different things to different people. 

I think one of the biggest misconceptions that holds people back from trying Reiki is that they think it is “woo woo” or some sort of a religious practice or cult, which I can assure you, it is not. Typically, the people (that I have come across) who believe this have not done their own research, but have taken someone else’s word for what they believe it to be, without ever learning or trying it for themselves.

If you were to ask Google to define Reiki, you might find something along the lines of it being a Japanese form of energy healing or type of alternative medicine, where Reiki practitioners use a hands-on healing method to connect to “universal energy” that moves from the practitioner to the client to facilitate healing on some level.

My opinion? I find most definitions of Reiki to be limiting, and barely scratch the surface of what it truly is and can do for people. But I can tell you it’s not a pill with a possible side effect, that society has taught most of us to seek out first.

I think many of us consciously or unconsciously bury traumatic events from our pasts that are too painful to deal with on a physical, mental, and or emotional level. And in those deep down  unhealed places where things go unaddressed, unseen, and unresolved, our bodies become weakened, and then start speaking to us through physical discomfort and dis ease, begging us to address what we have ignored our whole lives.

We are so quick to go outside of ourselves looking for help yet haven’t really learned how to be aware enough to go within. Reiki helps us do that. Reiki helps me pay deeper attention to what my body is saying with a much greater awareness. 

When asked if I can help them with something specific through a Reiki session, my standard answer, (which I was taught to say by one of my many wonderful Reiki teachers, “Libby Barnett,”) was, “Don’t know. It can’t hurt, but it might help.”

It’s always the case that I don’t know. I never know. And no one should ever claim to know. We are all so extremely different physically, mentally, emotionally, and energetically.

I’ve had different situations where people have approached me after events where I had given mini Reiki sessions in small groups, that were in awe of their own experiences. One woman came up to me and told me her sciatic pain was completely gone in that moment and that she hadn’t experienced relief like that after sitting for that long in years. 

I had another woman tell me her wrist pain had melted away after her session, making her curious enough to want to learn how to perform it on herself and others. When she took one of my classes, she shared this with me 4 days later; 

“I also wanted to let you know directly that my knee pain has been GONE ever since you performed the Reiki session on me after the class on Saturday. It’s slowly starting to come back, as is expected as it is chronic pain having to do with weight gain, but the few days of relief was HUGE and much needed. Thank you truly for helping me!”

All types of people from many different professions and backgrounds have come to me for sessions. I’ve had stay at home moms, chiropractors, business owners, insurance brokers, therapists, teachers, social workers, other energy healers, martial artists, physical trainers, expecting moms, retirees, salesman, students and more. And it’s important to mention the fur babies who have benefitted from Reiki as well, such as guinea pigs, cats, dogs, chipmunks, squirrels, birds, and even horses.

How often do people come to me for Reiki sessions? That depends on a lot of things. Some come once a month, and some come once a year as a treat for themselves. I have other clients who come weekly for a period of time depending on what they are going through. And I’ve had many people gift their loved ones a Reiki session after experiencing it for themselves. I also have distant clients that book sessions for themselves who live in other countries seeking alternative ways to find balance in their own busy lives.

I can’t speak to what it may or may not do for you, but I can share with you, different types of things that people have come to me for when booking their own sessions; 

• They want to boost their body’s ability to better handle and recover from an upcoming surgery
• They just had surgery and want to help speed up their recovery
• They want to reduce their side effects to the meds they are taking
• They are seeking relief from anxiety or depression and have tried everything else and nothing has worked
• They are trying to quit or get a better handle on some sort of a habit
• They have sciatic pain, or back pain and are seeking some sort of relief 
• They suffer from headaches
• They want their chakras (energy systems) balanced
• They have a lot of self judgement and are trying to lose weight
• They have trouble relaxing or sleeping
• They are stressed out in general and on the verge of a burn out or have already reached their burn out point.
• They are just looking for something that will bring a sense of peace into their chaotic lives and want to tame their monkey mind
• They are going through a divorce and seeking self care
• They are grieving the loss of a loved one

For some, the level of relaxation reached during a Reiki session has been so deep that they have fallen asleep on the table or in the zero gravity chair. A few of my students who were once clients had such a moving Reiki experience of their own during a session, that they wanted to learn how to do it for themselves. I’ve had a few go through all the different levels of training with me because of how it has enhanced their own lives. 

For me, Reiki has become part of who I am and interwoven into the fabric of my daily life. I bring it into my daily mediations each morning to help start my day with a clear mind and sense of balance. I use the Reiki symbols, which I acquired in my Level 2 course in 2018, when I cook or eat a meal to enhance vitality, or when I drink a glass of water to invite cleansing energy, or when I get dressed in the morning for daily empowerment,  or when I prepare a room for a Reiki client for the highest healing, or when I have a situation in my life that I am trying to bring peace to. 

I have even used it to help heal events from my own childhood.  

In case you find that odd, let me explain further.  When you are a Level 2 practitioner, you can use the distant symbol, not only to send Reiki to someone across the world or anywhere that is not where you are, but you can send Reiki to a situation, any situation, to any point in time in your life. 

Time and space simply does not exist when you use the Distant Symbol. Some people use it to send Reiki to future things like job interviews they have a few days out, or upcoming surgeries, or upcoming exams to help affect the best possible outcomes. And in the same context, others use it to go backwards. 

Distant Reiki has helped me go back to those points of trauma in my own childhood to help me help the little girl that I was, which is the same little girl who lives deep down inside of the woman I am today.   

How amazing is it, to be given the opportunity to be who you are today, and go back to the little child you once were and look them in the eyes, giving them/yourself all the healing you needed and deserved?  I have been able to hug her, hold her, comfort her, love her, and make her feel safe again, validating her as a human being, and empowering her to confidently go after her dreams. 

There is no rule book for how to use Reiki, and how I use it, may not be how another practitioner uses it. There may never be any distant Reiki or inner child work done at all. Some people may use it to simply bring peace to family members or friends or even their pets who are going through a hard time. 

If you’re not sure when you should give Reiki a try, then I offer you some things to think about; 

Do you have a sense of just feeling “off” and want to restore balance and bring a sense of peace into your life? When was the last time you tried something new for yourself as a form of self-care? Have you tried other things that haven’t helped you in the past and are looking for an alternative way to try to help yourself? Or might Reiki be a complement to what you are already doing that could help enhance your own healing? 

If you are Reiki curious, and want to seek out your own Reiki Practitioner and/or even a teacher, I encourage you to do some homework first. Research the background of the person you are interested in having a session with. They should be more than happy to share their credentials and trainings with you. I also encourage you to read their reviews whether on a platform like google or their own website.   Being able to read what other people’s experiences have been with a practitioner is invaluable. Word of mouth is another great way to discover new people to try, so don’t be shy to ask around either. Ideally you want to feel comfortable with the practitioner with whom you are entrusting your energy.

I think it’s healthy and wise to be skeptical of anything you don’t understand, but before knocking it, I would encourage you to give it a try. We have to be our own laboratories before we can truly attest to something as being helpful to ourselves or not. 

Whatever your healing journey may entail in the future, or even the distant past, I hope it involves Reiki in some way or another. It can’t hurt and it just might help you too. 

For more information on how to schedule a Reiki session with Angela from Loving Karma, please click the following link below:

https://lovingkarma.com/work-with-angela/reiki-services

When I tell you I am about to be vulnerable, I’m about to be vulnerable with a capital V. We’re talking Vagina vulnerable. And if you are wondering WHY on earth I would be talking about my vagina so publicly, I would tell you it is because I want to help as many others who have suffered the most horrible pain you can possibly imagine on a multitude of levels when it comes to the “down there” parts of our bodies, which affect the up-here parts of our mentality and the everywhere else parts of our soul. 

I’ve always told people I’m a delicate flower. Since I was 18 I’ve had so many random, “what is that on my body,” or “where did that rash come from,” or “what did I just eat that is giving me a pounding headache,” types of experiences. But nothing, and I mean NOTHING, has ever come close to what I have been dealing with these last 6 months. 

I KNOW like I KNOW like I KNOW that this information is going to help at least one person out there who is suffering from something that doctors can’t seem to figure out or identify the cause, but have given a prescription to mask the symptoms. While it is all done in kindness to provide us some sort of relief, we are still sent on our merry way to continue to suffer, and be exposed to whatever it is that is causing us this unimaginable, and debilitating at times, sort of nightmare. 

So if it is you, the reader that I help, then all of this mortifying and embarrassing vagina talk will be worth it.

I can remember attending a workshop at Omega in Rhinebeck, NY, just weeks after my ex and I broke up last September, barely able to walk because it hurt so badly. Was it a yeast infection? Was it a bladder infection? God forbid was it an STD? I knew he sailed from our relationship straight to his next one, but did he cheat on me? This felt worse than anything I had ever experienced before. What the hell was wrong with me and why was this happening AGAIN?

The excruciating itch and extremely painful burn made me call my doctor on my way home from that retreat, because I was SURE it had to be a yeast infection. While I was relieved to get the prescription for Diflucan, I was disappointed when it didn’t help all that much. The symptoms had slightly faded but didn’t completely go away.

My life was becoming a daily cry-fest before leaving my room, or the house, or my car to go into anywhere. And then I would do what we all do when we are suffering, I pretended I was okay. I couldn’t let people know what was wrong because, well… it was about my vagina, and I was raised that it wasn’t proper to talk freely about that part of my body, but I’m SO FUCKING OVER the shame and the silent suffering. 

I had unfortunately been through this whole scenario the year before and been to doctor after doctor after doctor, only to be told, “You’re perfectly healthy Angela, we can’t find anything wrong, but try this prescription,” or, “there is this exploratory thing we can do with a camera where we would insert it into your – .” I would stop them with a hard fast “NO THANK YOU,” while waving my hands furiously back and forth. My previous experience has been that exploratory-anything hurts my sensitive-everything, and I didn’t want to deal with one more prolonged repercussion from something that was “exploratory.”

Any time doctors would offer me a prescription I would wince, telling them how sensitive my body was and how terrified I was to put something foreign and unnatural on or in it for fear of exacerbating my symptoms. Even though I had that little voice inside of my head saying “don’t do it don’t do it,” the same voice was also playing on repeat like a skipped broken record the “doctors know best” track.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge believer in Western Medicine and understand it's place in this world, and in my own life.  There are many situations and circumstances, where prescriptions are helpful and even necessary.  However, I was finding that Western Medicine didn't always have the answers I was seeking, and that was frustrating. But as a result of not having answers, and continuing to be in pain, it became my mission to figure things out.

I sat on the floor of my daughter’s room and  held his little frail body in between my hands. There wasn’t much warmth radiating from him and I knew he was dying. Wanting to ease his pain, I turned on the Reiki and felt the slightest bit of static emanating from his little body. Normally when I do Reiki on a healthy person or animal, I can sense a vitality that is palpable, strong and expansive, but with Keebler, it was hard to even sense. 

When I was little, my (typical) brothers used to use me as their 9 volt battery tester. The sensation from touching a new battery to my tongue would send me through the roof, but a 9 volt battery that was weak, would barely give a zing. Keebler had no zing.

I remember adopting him from the Humane Society when he was just six weeks old for my daughter. It was just days after her last guinea pig Rita had passed and she was devastated. Since the day we brought him home, he had such a presence and aliveness. Guinea pigs do this thing called “popcorning” where they bounce and jump and squeak when they are happy and excited. He was such a love bug.  I would listen from my bedroom while he and my daughter would have conversations through piggy squealing back and forth. And in the mornings when I would wake up my daughter and he would see me, he would get so excited and race around his cage making his little piggy sounds because he knew he was about to get carrots. It was our little morning ritual. 

As we sat with him feeling heavy and sad knowing he was transitioning, I remembered one of my Reiki teachers, Kathleen Prasad, who taught me, and is the founder of, the “Let Animals Lead” method. We are all energetic beings and can feel one another’s emotions and state of mind. And the greatest gift we could give to Keebler in that moment was to put our feelings of sadness aside. The depths of pain we felt were likely overwhelming his already heavily and very little burdened body. 

“See him as a beautiful, radiating, ball of light Arianna.”That little baby we adopted almost five years ago was still the same soul whose energy filled our hearts and our home all that time. As we shifted into this new vibration of love and light, I began to feel what he was feeling. As a Reiki practitioner, this is a common occurrence for me. I tend to connect to the energies of those around me and start to sense things. I began to feel immense pain in my head and lower back. 

“You are so beautiful and handsome Keebler. We love you so so so much!  It’s okay to go honey. You are so safe and loved.” We repeatedly said these things to him until it was late into the night. I felt the energy flow like a river from my hands into his body. We placed him back into his cage with such grace and ease. He used to leap like superman into his cage and now couldn’t even see where he was. He waited until he felt the floor of his cage before he moved out of our hands. 

Later that night, I woke up to an electric buzzing sound in my head that also felt like harsh static in my body. At the same time my breathing became labored and I began have tiny fits of coughing spells. Within one minute I heard a loud pop, like a fuse being blown and I felt the release happen in my own body. At the same time in my minds eye, I saw and heard a violet flame flicker and go out. It was like the sound of a sterno can being covered. I knew immediately he was gone. 

As I went into Arianna’s room, my eyes confirmed what my soul already knew. Our sweet boy had transitioned and was finally at peace.   

I don’t think there is anything more humbling than to be part of someone’s transition in life. Reiki is forever my teacher and I am so grateful to have been part of, and witness to Keebler’s passing. I know that our ability to hold space for him emotionally, allowed for him to relax into the receiving of the Reiki energy. 

It’s a beautiful thing to be able to do that for anyone, whether they are in transition or not. Thank you Dr. Mikao Usui, for bringing Reiki into my life. 

I used to work with a woman, who in her sixties and nearly retired, had given up on decorating for Christmas in her own home. She was divorced, her kids were grown, and she lived alone. Her life was mostly work and not much time for anything else.

She worked long hours at her job and was too tired and exhausted by the time she got home to even think about anything other than sleep. “It’s too much work,” she said, “to go into the attic, and drag out the tree, and pull all the ornaments out, and make space for everything, and rearrange furniture, and my kids are all grown and why bother, and and and..…”

It wasn’t even my home, but it literally hurt my heart to hear her go on and on about how she “just wasn’t going to do it.” As a Feng Shui Consultant, part of me wondered though, if it was too painful for her to pull out all the memories of the past.

Decorating for the holidays is for sure nostalgic for most of us, but for others, the pain of the memories and the process of taking everything out itself is unbearable.

I can totally relate to those feelings as well on a multitude of levels. The first Christmas after I was separated from my now ex husband, was probably one of the hardest for me. Even I didn’t want to unpack all of the Christmas memories. Why, would I want to voluntarily evoke those painful memories and be reminded of a time in my life that didn’t exist anymore. I get it. I TOTALLY get it. But then there is my daughter who was only 9 years old at the time. I had to keep the magic alive for her. It was one of her favorite times of the year, and I couldn’t let my pain rob her of her happiness.

I drudged through it, box after box. I literally had to push myself through, pick myself up off the floor, maybe even with a scraper at times. While pulling out the ornaments, I would secretly run to the bathroom to cry sometimes, not wanting her to see me, then come back out, and feel the raw emotions; ornament, after ornament, after ornament. I needed what felt hard to hurry up and move through me in order to be able move on from the pain.

But I slowed the hurrying and felt what was hard. I allowed the memories to sink in. I was setting time aside to do just this. Not only was it was sacred, but it was an important part of my healing. I was grieving and I was releasing. I didn’t just “let go.” I was letting go. This allowing of my emotions didn’t (and still doesn’t) always come easily. But without me going through the motions, I knew there was no moving forward.

Around the same time I was processing all of this, my sister talked me into attending a workshop at Omega up in Rhinebeck, NY, given by a man named Panache Desai. “It will change you,” she said.

She was right. My biggest takeaway, and there were MANY, was that our emotions are just energy in motion wanting to be expressed. When we don’t allow them to move through us fluidly, they cement themselves deep within our bodies creating sickness and dis-ease. Hmmmmmm…..feeling and releasing? (Healthy) Or neglecting and cementing? (Disease.)

Easy to see how powerful this lesson is right?

Now enter the Feng Shui part.

Feng Shui isn’t just about moving a piece of furniture and feeling better, or setting up the Christmas tree and feeling the magic in the air. (Although it can be!).

It’s about looking at things differently through the eyes of energy, and EVERYTHING is energy. The things we own are energy, the thoughts we think are energy, and the emotions we feel are all energy.

When you look at something in your space, does it uplift you? That is the ultimate Feng Shui goal, to uplift you. When you feel better in your space, it can be life changing, on a multitude of levels. Unfortunately though, many of us hold onto things that energetically, quite honestly, deplete and drain the life out of us. If there was an energy sucking vampire, we’d all be goners, but I’ll save that for another article.

When was the last time you took a good look around you and truly paid attention to the things you own? Is your basement or garage full of stuff? Are you closets and attics jam packed? Yes? With what? Are you at the point where you need to ask yourself if you are living in a home or a storage unit? (Thank one of my teachers, Tisha Morris, for that jewel of wisdom.). I don’t know about you, but I like living in my home. Forget the storage unit!

Out of sight may be out of mind for some people, but out of sight is never out of your energy field. And that’s where we need to start paying attention. If our homes are a mirror of ourselves, and this is a cardinal rule of Feng Shui, then what are we reflecting out into the world? What is our home reflecting onto us? Are we able to become who we want to be if much of what we hold onto is from a time in our life that we are trying to move on from? (Thank you both Karen Rauch Carter and Tisha Morris again for opening my eyes to this.)

But what if what we are trying to move on from is heavier than a bunch of ornaments that remind someone of marriage gone bad? And I’m not making light of what divorce feels like, because that shit is hard. But there is harder. Wayyyyyy harder. I’m talking unfathomable hard.

I asked my friends through a Facebook post to share with me what it was they were dreading about this holiday season and why. It was specifically for the purpose of this article and to learn how people felt while unpacking the memories of their pasts. My initial thought was that everyone experiences a range of emotions when they hold an item from the past. How great would it be, if by sharing some of these answers, that other people who read this, could know that they are not alone in what they feel and face in their own lives. What if these answers could help facilitate other peoples healing when they pull out their own decorations, or recipe boxes, or holiday tablecloths?

The first answer I received was, “My mom died in early December, so that adds a layer of sadness to the holidays. She loved Christmas time and always decorated, made cookies and hosted the holiday dinners. I often stress myself out trying to live up to the holidays she created for my sister and I.”

And this next one I’m sure many people can relate to. “I have a personalized ornament with a photo of my dog, Marley, who passed last year, that will be tough.”

But then there are things we can’t all relate to. Bonnie, a friend I grew up with, lost everything when her house burned down two years ago. “Not having all my handmade ornaments and all the special ornaments the kids have made and collected over the years makes me really sad. I dread pulling out what little I have but we will work on making new memories.”

Another friend Lynn, who also went through a divorce wrote, “I miss not having my family together, especially during the holidays! It’s also hard not having the two most amazingly awesome supportive giving parents a girl could ask for around during the holidays.”

I was left speechless when I read what my childhood friend Tracy, mother of three beautiful sons, wrote. Before sharing what she wrote, I should mention that her first born, Cole, died by suicide just shy of his twenty first birthday two years ago. This will be her third Christmas without him.

She wrote, “For me, the holidays will never be the same. I used to love the songs. I’d start playing Christmas music in my car as soon as Thanksgiving was over. I can’t listen to it anymore. It’s way too painful. Instead of invoking sweet memories of Christmas past, it’s a stabbing reminder that the happy holidays enjoyed with my family will never be. That I no longer have an intact family, and that my sweet Coley will never celebrate another Christmas on this earth.” Tracy goes on to tell how she will never cut down another tree because Cole used to be the one who did that. She bought her first fake tree for her other two boys after Cole died. She goes on to say, “My tree used to be dressed in ornaments collected over the years – consisting primarily of ornaments the boys made and ornaments I bought for them or bought on our travels. I haven’t been able to take those out. Instead I bought a bunch of generic ornaments. I’m thinking of opening the old box this year. Feeling stronger than the past two Christmases.”

It would be wildly unfair for me, not only as a Feng Shui Consultant, but as a human being, to expect that a blanket “remedy” of doing something in your home could help everyone heal equally.

If the holidays for you are hard, and holding an object from a time in your life, that ceases to exist anymore, evokes your own “layer of sadness,” or causes a “pang,” or feels “tough,” or even resonates as your own “stabbing reminder,” then I offer you this;

Before pulling out your box of decorations, create a space for yourself that feels sacred. Set yourself up for success. Help yourself tune into the present moment. Breathe. It’s important for us to ground ourselves before doing this to anchor our own energy into the here and now. Objects from the past can pull you backwards, and if not careful, send you into a tailspin. (And for some, the tailspin happens just at the thought of taking the box out, and, that’s OKAY.). Even that is progress in my opinion.

If it all feels like too much, then stop. All I can ask is that you do is your best. Like Don Miguel Ruiz says in one of my favorite books, The Four Agreements, “Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgement, sef-abuse, and regret.”

Try awakening your senses by adding life to your surroundings with plants, or fresh cut flowers. Do you have a favorite blanket you can open up and sit on for this process that feels soft to the touch? Lay it out. Do you have a favorite playlist you could listen to help you along? Listen to it. How about a candle to honor what you are doing. Light it with intention to honor yourself and your loved ones whom you are missing. Go slow. Surrender to your feelings and allow yourself to cry. Melt and release the cement inside of you. Heal and repeat. Ornament, after ornament, after ornament.