Burning sage can be a great way of cleansing negative energies from within our homes, places of work and our own energy system. At the moment many people are feeling more bombarded than normal by the worries and anxieties of the world and the people close to us. This can happen in spite of us generally coming into direct contact with far fewer people than we might be accustomed to.

Reiki can  help us to deal with the wear and tear that effects our body and our aura. Meditation can help us to slow down and rebalance our minds. Burning sage can help us to keep the space we inhabit and our own energy as clean and clear from accumulated negative energies around us as possible.

If you'd like to read more on this topic I would highly recommend an article written by my wonderful Reiki Master and Teacher Chyna Honey, author of Understanding Reiki: From self-care to energy medicine. You can find her excellent article: How to use smoke to cleanse negative energies here.

I have a limited supply of sage bundles, also known as smudge sticks, if you would like me to arrange to post one to you. I have some large bundles for £15 and a twin pack of small bundles for £10. These prices include UK postage. I do also have copies of Chyna's book if you find yourself with a little more time than usual and you fancy doing some reading about Reiki. The cost for those is £10 plus £1.50 postage. 

Take good care of yourself.
Karen

Dr Karen Janes ©
2nd April 2020

I'll be writing some more articles soon. I hope to include some tips and advice to help manage the stress that this difficult time is creating or adding to any existing challenges. I also have some exciting new things coming up that I will be able to offer you online. 

In the meantime please have a read of my most recent newsletter, which tells you a bit more about what I'm up to and how I may be able to help if you're struggling.

I hope you stay safe and well and I am here if I can be of any help at all. 

There are so many aspects of self-care that, despite us knowing they are good for us we either don’t do at all or we don’t do very consistently. These things aren’t rational.

Everyone who smokes knows that it is increasing their risk of certain illnesses yet they continue to smoke, when we don’t get enough sleep we know we would benefit from more hours in bed or if we eat too many takeaway dinners we know that isn’t the best food to keep our digestive system working at its best. Lots of things get in the way and make it harder for us to do these things that we ‘know’ are good for us. This is true even when we really want to and on days when we are doing our best to take good care of ourselves.

The challenge of self care

As with taking care of our physical body, many things can get in the way of us using our Reiki once we become a channel. This is one of the reasons why sharing clear and full explanations to students at each level of attunement can be so helpful to us. Understanding this can help us to develop a regular and committed practice. There is however another key thing which can really help us with our Reiki, but is also something that is relevant to learning more generally and that is to do with repetition, which I will come to in a little more detail shortly.

We may find ourselves getting angry or frustrated or feeling guilty about anything we perceive as lacking with our self-care. Instead it can be helpful to try to understand a little more about the nature of human beings as a species. In that way we really can start to treat our desire to take care of ourselves as something that we can continue to refine and develop and that it will always be a work in progress. I hope this article adds a little to that knowledge.
 

Today was the first day of my Reiki Master/Teacher re-training with Chyna Honey, author of Understanding Reiki; from self-care to energy medicine. On this day one of nine, it felt like we barely scratched the surface, at the same time as beginning to fill in some blanks that I hadn’t known were there. I feel so excited to be learning this last and final piece. Although, when I say final that isn’t really the case.

The process of learning Reiki, like many things, is a bit like learning to drive a car. At each of the levels we receive the information relevant to that level, a bit like taking lessons and passing your driving test. Then we go away and really learn how to become a driver through a process of practice and repetition. This helps to build our experience and along with it our confidence. As this is happening we gradually learn how to lift our eyes and our attention up from all the mechanics of what we need to do to get a car to start moving, to speed up, to slow down, to turn and of course to stop and start being able to consider our surroundings and other drivers in a much more comprehensive manner. It isn’t until we can do this part that we can start to hone our skill. I’m not sure that there will ever be an end point to that part of the learning.

I have been a Reiki teacher and, indeed, have taught Reiki, for nearly 15 years and I am still learning. Reiki has much to teach us, both directly about Reiki but also about what wellness really means and about self-care in a wider context. I often say to my clients that I truly believe that the practice of good self-care is a life-long journey. Life keeps happening so, as a human being, there will always be things that will challenge us. What is important is our commitment to ourselves, to keep working on it, to keep circling back when we have slipped a little, to catch those slips sooner and, maybe most importantly, to not judge ourselves for those slips. If self-care was easy no one would take drugs, stay up too late, eat too much chocolate or berate themselves inside their own head. Reiki can help us both directly and indirectly on the road to better self-care and ultimately to better wellbeing.

One of the reasons that I have chosen to re-do my Reiki training is because I want to be able to teach people about Reiki in as pure a way as possible. So much has been added and misinformed over the years and there were times when I felt that my explanations for what Reiki was and wasn’t wouldn’t hold up to too much questioning. I no longer feel that. Whilst I can’t promise that I can answer every question that a student might ask me I wholeheartedly trust the explanations that I have. At each step of my more recent trainings I have found, over and over, moments of clarity, moments of relief and many moments of joy.

I hope Reiki brings to the students I teach even just a fraction of the many good things it has brought to me. I can’t wait to discover what happens as the next days of our training begin to unfold.