Back to Arizona for Sekhem-Seichim-Reiki

I am heading back to Arizona, this time to Phoenix, to followup on my earlier Master class in June for one of my students, Mike, who wasn't able to complete the full scheduled class then. Mike is assisting me at a Sekhem-Seichim-Reiki I-II class to follow his makeup session this weekend at his and his fiancee Andrea's house in Phoenix.

Arizona is like a breath of fresh air to me, the energy seems to lift me up, the sun cleans out all the East Coast mildew and my lungs seem to be twice the size they are here in Maryland. I definitely feel like it has become a second "retreat home" for me over the years, especially Sedona.

I am planning on driving up to Sedona tomorrow (I get in at 1:30pm and have some time to play). The mountains up there seem to be calling me to come back, take a hike, get some sun, and let some of the sadness of the past year go. Why the sadness? Well, let's just say that plans are like caterpillars, some of them become butterflies and some of them are just dead pupae. I have had a few dead pupae this year and need to focus on the butterflies that have flown, rather than those that haven't developed.

How to stay in a place of light? For me, sometimes the answer is to go within in meditation or healing or speaking with an inspirational friend or Master and sometimes...you just have to get out of town and go to a happy place. That, for me, is Sedona.

I call out to the guides and to God to be there with me and help me find my center once again, to spread my wings and be in a place of love, truth and light. Let me walk the path of Gratefulness once again....

I remember once again the Gokai or Reiki Principles:
Just for Today-
I release all anger.
I release all worry.
I am grateful.
I work hard.
I am kind to all.

Arizona Insights

I'm back from Sedona. I like to think of it as the anti-Washington, the place where conflict is non-existent, where drivers are polite, where people are nice, the sun is bright, and the energy uplifting. I wasn't disappointed this trip, even on the drive up from Phoenix.

I went there to teach a class with my partner, Steve, and an assistant, Krystal. We had four students: Mike, Iris, Marcia, and Terrence, aka Terry. The class was in Sekhem-Seichim-Reiki and included instruction in all of the seven levels or facets of the system.

We stayed at a lovely rental house called Red Rock Escape on Navahopi Road, about four blocks from the main street of Sedona. It was four blocks from my Karuna Reiki (R) teacher, Laurelle Gaia's shop, Peace Place. We visited the shop a couple of times. It has a large store, healing center, and class room area. We were only able to visit with Laurelle and her husband Michael briefly because they had a business trip the next day.

I incorporated natural sites for attunements, including Cathedral Rock, Airport Mesa, and in a walk with Terrence Tindall, Bell Rock. We also did attunements in rocking chairs on the front porch and in a lovely back yard with adirondack chairs. The class included the following exercises:

• Reiki Regressions - I was regressed back to a lifetime I had as Richard Douglas born in Louisiana in 1850 and died in 1931 in Atlanta, GA. In that lifetime, I worked very hard as a lawyer and felt that the work had not taken advantage of many opportunities to connect with family or other people in a more helpful way. Other students were regressed or progressed to early or future times using the Shining Everlasting Flower of Enlightenment symbol from SSR.
  
• Deep Aura Cleansing - We learned how to clear attachments from the aura using energy fields and the Shining Everlasting Living Waters of Ra symbol from SSR.
  
• Healing Attunements - We incorporated the SSR attunement energy to transform attached blocked energies.
  
• All Love/SKHM - We used meditation techniques and moving techniques from the All Love/SKHM system developed by my teacher Patrick Zeigler.

In addition to the above, the students did LOTS of healing, had five attunements, and gave each other multiple attunements in the 42 different variations of the SSR system.

I hope to do an SSR I-II class in Arizona at Mike and Andrea's house in Phoenix, AZ in September. I'm really looking forward to being back!

Boulder, Colorado Summary

Well, it's been a couple of months since I last had an entry in the blog. During this time, I have been teaching and working, trying to make time to get ready to travel to Boulder.

We left on June 12 and arrived at Denver International to tornado warnings. We arrived in the Boulder valley to a "hail" of hailstones, most about 2 inches in diameter. But the sun was also shining and the greenness of the mountains and trees beckoned, seeming to say welcome.

The first night, I received a tibetan bowl sound healing with Sri, a Nepalese man who was in Boulder briefly. This was at a store called Old Tibet on Pearl Street, near the Pearl Street mall, about a mile from the University of Colorado. I had really only been in the city two hours and immediately I was drawn into a healing from a soul that I felt I had already known and worked with. I knew then that things would be different from other places I have visited. This was a real place where mystical awakenings happen surrounded by absolutely the most beautiful natural spaces I have ever encountered.

The next day, Steve and I went to the Solstice Center on 302 Pearl Street where we had rented the Lotus Room to give a Sekhem-Seichim-Reiki I-II class to two students, Cathy and Andy Barton, newlyweds from New Castle, Colorado. They had only recently done Reiki I training and found the class a very powerful opening to their sensitivity to the reiki energy. We had wonderful Italian food with them for lunch on the first day and on the second day went to the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, a miraculous wooden structure built in Tajikistan and shipped and reassembled in Boulder. Wonderful teas and a space that has no description that can give it justice.

Since the class, Steve and I have been dining out, walking, driving up into the mountains, meeting with a new Reiki Master friend named Deborah who moved to Boulder four years ago from Takoma Park, MD, and today went with Marie, our new Real Estate agent to see some houses in Louisville, Lafayette, Niwot, and Longmont (all of them a bit east of Boulder, since our Reiki dollars don't seem to stretch into the city right now).

I think we are moving here/here being Boulder, since I'm sitting at our hotel right now. It feels strange to say it...I love the DC area and have deep roots there, but feel like home is moving west.

My Journey with Integrated Energy Therapy

Last weekend, I went to Richmond, Virginia to complete my Master-Instructor training with Karen Puglia in Integrated Energy Therapy (TM), a modality developed by Stevan Thayer. I can now teach six classes:

• IET Basic
• IET Intermediate
• IET Advanced
• IET for Pets
• IET for Kids
• Angels of the Energy Field

I started my journey with IET with Diane Shewmaker, my teacher for the Basic, Intermediate, Advanced and Angels classes. IET restricts its Master-Instructors from offering its Master-Instructor course to a very few, only three at the moment worldwide, including the developer of the system.

IET is billed as a successor system to Reiki, but my reasons for taking it were mostly about the concept of the emotional connection to the physical and energetic body. In the IET system, various emotional points or cellular memory areas or maps, are held throughout the body, running from the head to the feet.

The crown center is said to hold the emotion of guilt.
The forehead center is said to hold the emotion of distrust.
The back of neck region is said to hold threat.
The shoulders are said to hold the "shoulds" from the men and women (starting with Dad and Mom) in our lives.
The heart center is said to hold heartache.
The throat and lungs are said to hold shame.
The upper abdomen is said to hold anger and resentment.
The lower abdomen is said to hold stress and powerlessness.
The lower back and legs are said to hold fear.

In IET, we ask a group of nine angels to assist us in imprinting new energies to replace the energies of the negative emotions above. We do this with hand positions somewhat similar to Western Reiki, but also with energy points on the back and pulling out negative energies through the auric field.

I continue to love learning new things, but I am finding some definite synergies between IET and Chinese Medicine in how they work with the body. I do think they vary a bit around the abdomen, however.

In Chinese Medicine,

The Liver meridian is about Anger.
The Heart meridian is about Joy.
The Spleen meridian is about Worry.
The Lung meridian is about Sadness.
The Kidney meridian is about Fear.

Most of these compare similarly to the IET with only the Spleen meridian varying. In IET, that area is said to hold resentment. If you think of it being more internal to external, then worry and resentment are both internal processes.

I will begin teaching IET classes starting in May 2009. Diane Shewmaker is offering the classes once again starting with the IET Basic on February 28, 2009. You can find out more information by clicking on the name of this article above or going to http://www.reikicenter.info/new.htm#iet.

Karuna Reiki, the Reiki of Compassionate Action

Karuna is a word from Sanskrit that means compassion. The boddhisatva of compassion is referred to as the Maha-Karuna, or the sound that illumines the world. In Karuna Reiki (R), we bring in a system of eight healing symbolic energies that heal at the cellular level and, as such, bring us to a place where there is no "other" in our world.

Each person is a reflection of our journey. As we heal with our hearts, we see ourselves and our own journey in those around us.

I may feel joy at the election of a particular politician, but still know that I must connect with his opponent because part of my journey is reflected in his experience, the experience of loss.

The Karuna Reiki (R) system comes from the International Center for Reiki Training in Southfield, Michigan (URL: http://reiki.org/). The energies, however, originate in a time and place that predate that center. Some sources indicate that the energies were used in the originating Tera Mai or Tera Mai Seichim systems. Some say that they come from the sage Sai Baba. What I would say is that the energies take us to a very deep healing level extremely quickly, open, clear, fill with light, and bring us back before we, as the client, may even be aware of the process.

Karuna Reiki (R) is taught to those who have completed Reiki Master training at the practitioner level for the first eight symbols and the teacher level for the Master symbols of the system.

I first learned Karuna from Laurelle Gaia in Del Ray Beach, Florida. The energy seemed to make me feel connected to everyone around me on the street, on the plane, in the ocean, you name it. I felt what the ocean felt when we worked with the energy at sunrise; I felt a sense of "why not?" come over me that resulted in my having my first website created three days after I completed the course.

The changes in my life since learning this system have been profound: growing a practice, becoming a full-time practitioner and teacher two years later, opening an office two years after that, doubling the space two years after that. Growth has been the rule, rather than the exception as I have moved forward on my healing path, the path of the boddhisatva, one who helps lead others to enlightenment.

Over the past year, I have learned compassionate action for my own journey, that I need to receive as well as give, to have quiet time as well as activity. That is part of the healing path: to be whole as you walk in support of others and ourselves.

I am in the middle of teaching Karuna Reiki with Patricia Bonnard this week and am finding the class very healing from a personal perspective, since I really needed this energy once again myself. There will be another Karuna Reiki Practitioner and Master class next month. You can see the link above for more information or our calendar at http://reikicenter.info/calendar.htm#karuna1.