Reflections on Healing
If someone had told 27-year-old me that I would pursue a path of energy healing, I would have laughed and thought they were ridiculous. In January 2014, I had just graduated from veterinary school. I had spent most of my life living from my left brain. I was rational, scientific, and required a certain type of evidence in order to believe in something. I spent several years practicing veterinary medicine, identified with my role as a doctor. In early adulthood, I even spent some time in a place of self-righteous atheism. I proudly read “The Blind Watchmaker,” and formed layers of identity around those ideologies. I dismissed “thoughts and prayers,” with the belief that only action had value and impact. I had a subconscious superiority complex around my own intellectual intelligence.
So how did I get here? Embracing the reality that I know nothing definitively, and that I am not the doer? Receiving the revelation that life is happening through me, and that I am not an agent creating any apparent happening? Feeling the freedom of letting go of identities and belief systems? My mind may still conceptualize this in a linear way, yet a deeper part of me knows that it all simply is. And this is beyond time and space; beyond conceptualization.
But why not continue on with the storyline, just for fun. In 2017, I visited Austin for the first time. I felt a strong attraction to the energy of this place, and upon returning to NY, I gave 2 months notice at my job, and started preparing to move to Texas. After an unplanned detour through the Rio Grande Valley, I moved to Austin in the Spring of 2018. I continued to work as a small animal general practitioner.
About a year later, I became a member of a local yoga studio in South Austin. This practice was different from the yoga I had experienced before, which felt more like a physical practice. There was a deeper emotional and spiritual element to this practice. It seemed to be the catalyst for a spiritual awakening. I was able to come into deeper embodied presence and breath awareness, and to witness and move through emotions in a new way. I experienced emotional release through crying on my mat in class, and the practice carried into other compartments of my life as well/off the mat. I was feeling more tuned in to my inner truth.
Moving forward to Fall 2019 - At the time, I was still on social media (which could be a whole story in itself), and came across an ad for Reiki 1 & 2 class. Although I was still predominantly left-brained, and quite skeptical, something about it attracted me. I contacted the teacher offering the class, and enrolled in the weekend training. The material opened many doors within my own awareness, and way of viewing life. My mind was still a little caught in desiring logical explanation, and I asked my teacher about the mechanism of action by which Reiki could possibly do anything. Rather than an answer in word form, I was invited to lie on the table and receive from my teacher and classmates. I could describe that experience as astral in quality; deeply calming and peaceful; surreal. With that first-hand knowing/experiencing, the need for logical explanations fell away.
