Reiki Rebuilt My Body to Hold the Light

In full health and enjoying time with my good friend, the sun (summer 2025).

This month I celebrate the 20-year anniversary of Spirit's interception with the course of my life.

Celebrate might seem an odd word to choose when considering the means that were chosen by Spirit – a sudden and rather extreme physical system failure – and yet even at the time I knew that beneath the pain of my experience was a great gift.

What happened you ask?
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Well, life had been ticking along as life does when one is in her early 30’s and pushing herself towards all her worldly goals whilst pushing down a great big pile of unresolved emotional trauma. In my then home of Ireland I was doing a PhD, raising a toddler, and working a couple of part-time jobs. I was indeed working very hard…and partying very hard whenever I could. Having left a very difficult marriage two years previously I was still revelling in my newfound freedom in a country renowned for its revels. That I had not done a single iota of emotional processing hadn’t really been consciously noticed by me. Wasn’t the release I felt on the dance floor the only release I needed?

But for several months, my body had been showing me something was amiss. I started to get these skin irritations that would not heal. I was trying various self-treatments and doing my best to ignore the small little spots and sores.

I of course did not realize then how kind my body was being in trying to get my attention. My skin was saying…there’s something in here that needs you…we can’t keep these emotions in anymore…it’s got to come out…please stop, listen, you are bursting with the stagnant toxicity of unexpressed pain…

Then in early February of 2006 my container finally burst. Within a matter of days a small rash along my hairline had become a full head-to-toe affair. I was covered in red oozing spots and open sores. The swelling was incredible, especially on my face and down my arms. I could barely see - my eyes were almost swollen shut - and I couldn’t bend my arms they were just so puffy. But since I could hardly raise an arm anyway bending them hardly mattered - the exhaustion I felt was so complete. I was totally completely utterly exhausted. And the itch! Oh the pain and the itch! And everything made it worse. I couldn’t eat, bathe, move, or be touched without my skin reacting.

It took weeks for this extreme reaction to even begin to quiet and months for me to get a diagnosis. Cutaneous Lupus I was told – in the most extreme presentation that the specialist had ever seen. He said that it meant I was allergic to the sun. That I always would be. That for some people with this kind of Lupus it progresses and moves into the body to affect the organs, most especially the kidneys. There was no medical treatment, although an anti-malarial drug had been found (quite by accident) to reduce symptoms of this kind of Lupus.

I accepted the diagnosis, but not the life-sentence.

I heard a voice loud and clear in my head, and it spoke loud and clear through my lips. That will not be me. I will honor the way my wisdom is at work here, and I will heal.

I kindly refused the offer of the anti-malarial medication. And I turned towards the presence that I had found beside me almost as soon as I became still enough in my illness to feel this subtle aspect of my being – Spirit.

I began to meditate, many hours a day. Because movement had become so difficult – between the exhaustion and the great discomfort of skin rubbing against fabric – stillness was the only tolerable position for me. But meditation was about so much more than just not moving. Meditation was a gateway into this dimension of existence that offered me feelings of such love, expansion, hope, healing, and wise guidance. Spirit was guiding me, showing me the way through.

Until that point I had NEVER meditated, never prayed, never even really considered Spirit. And that didn’t matter. Spirit was suddenly there, and I suddenly knew Spirit. A dormant part of me had awakened.

Spirit guided me to many great healers, who helped me access and release the emotional pain that had been trapped in my body.

And then Spirit guided me to Reiki.

When I found Reiki I knew that I had found the beginning of the road back to full health for me. Reiki became a way for me to connect with myself so lovingly, to include the healing hands of Spirit in my every day, and to see reality through whole new eyes. With Reiki the only limitations were of my own mindset. How much did I want to cling to the stories of necessary illness, of the body’s restrictions to healing itself, of the delusion of believing in the Light? My analytical mind feebly tried to tell me these stories were real - that I couldn’t heal, that Spirit wasn’t real, that the infinite potential of the Light to heal was crazy talk. But luckily my analytical mind didn’t stand a chance against my own spirit that was showing me a new truth.

The only question was could I get out of the way enough to let Reiki work with the wisdom of my own energetic anatomy and restore my body to full health?

Yes.
I could, and I did.

Of course, many other modalities were required! I sought a lot of nutritional and herbal advice to heal a long-time leaky gut. I found some outstanding healers and helpers for emotional healing and energetic restoration. I had so many good friends that just held me, and of course my mum, who had learned Reiki years before, and who flooded me with the Reiki ray whenever she could.

Most of all I had Spirit. Spirit never left, not once. The presence and guidance of Spirit joined me the day my body collapsed and has never left.
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I guess that old container had to fall apart to rebuild one made to hold the Light. What a great gift!