My Journey with Reiki

In 1995 my son left for college, and for the first time ever, I was living alone. Although I had a full time job as a recruitment specialist for a special needs adoption agency, I still had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with, so I began doing some volunteer work for a crisis phone line in Pittsburgh called Contact Pittsburgh. I walked in to the office one night at 10:45 to work the 11 PM to 3 AM shift, and saw the secretary for Contact laying on the sofa, and the gentleman who was going to work the phones with me, kneeling beside her on the floor with his hands hovering above her back. I wasn't sure what was going on!

After a few minutes, he put his hands down and stood up. She stood up also and said, "I don't know what you did to my back, but it doesn't hurt anymore!" She explained that she had hurt her back several days before and she could barely move because it was so painful. However, after whatever this man did to her, she felt great!

Needless to say, I was intrigued, and during our four-hour shift together, when we weren't busy on the phones, I was grilling him about what he had done to her. This was my introduction to Reiki.

As so often happens to many of us, although I was very interested in what I had learned, my life path took me elsewhere, and I put Reiki on a back burner for quite a while.

I started graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh to work on a Master's Degree in Social Work, and when I graduated in 1998, I took a job as a Licensed Social Worker in an adoption agency. Although I specialized in family therapy during my time at Pitt, and had wanted to be a therapist since I graduated from high school, entry level jobs as a psychotherapist were very low paying, and I had school loans to pay, so I decided to stay in adoption, where my past experience and my new degree gave me better earning power.

However, the Universe had other plans for me, and when, after only about 18 months, I received notice that my office was closing, I took a job as a residential therapist in a locked down facility for teenage girls, most of whom were from inner city Philadelphia, and all of whom had major emotional wounds of one sort or another. It didn't take me long to realize that my skills as a therapist just didn't seem to be enough to make a significant impact on these girls. I remembered Reiki, and decided to learn it to see if it would help.

Once I learned Reiki, I began using it daily in conjunction with traditional therapeutic techniques, and I began to see amazing things happen. Girls who had nightmares that were so bad that they couldn't sleep, began to sleep through the night as their nightmares ceased. Other girls, who weren't able to interact with peers or staff, began to develop better relationship skills, and girls that never opened up in therapy, began to seek me out and began to work on the issues that were causing them problems. Bit by bit, day by day, I became a true believer in and advocate for the power of Reiki.

In February 2001, I left that facility and took a new position as a therapist in the outpatient department of another residential treatment facility for children in Pittsburgh's North Hills. When I started there, no one really knew anything about Reiki. I was able to talk with my supervisor about it and got permission to begin using it as an adjunct to my more traditional therapeutic tools. The more I used it, the more changes I saw in my clients, and the more that word about Reiki spread through the facility. By the time I left there in August 2003, every therapist but one in the outpatient department was a Reiki practitioner, and they had allowed me to open a Reiki clinic for the public.

So if things were going so well, why did I leave? When I learned Reiki I was taught that the more often you use it, the stronger it becomes. I was also taught that the more you take Reiki on as a part of yourself, the more it (God) will lead you along the path you are truly meant to follow. Ever since my first Reiki I class in February 2000, I had used Reiki many, many times a day, both on myself and on others. By this time I had also become a Reiki Master in Usui/Tibetan Reiki as well as Karuna Reiki, which is a type of Reiki energy with a higher vibrational level. And, true to what I had been taught, Reiki began to lead me along a somewhat different path.

When doing a traditional Reiki session, I would place my hands on specific placements on the client's body and allow my hands to rest in each of those positions for about 2 minutes, before moving on to the next position. For about the first two and a half years after I learned Reiki, my sessions continued in the traditional way.

But one day, as I was working on the back of a client, my right hand spontaneously, and of its own accord, lifted off the body and began to move in small circles above my client's back. I was fascinated and wondered just what was going on. But I wasn't frightened or alarmed. I just allowed my hand, and then both hands, to continue moving, as the energy seemed to be guiding them to do. This was the beginning of an evolution in my Reiki abilities that continues on even today.

As my abilities continued to evolve, I became more and more certain that I needed to open a private practice doing Reiki, although I believed at the time that this would be in addition to my full time position at the facility where I was working. However, I took a personal day off from work one day in May and took a road trip to Erie, where I walked along the beach and spent some time in prayer and meditation. It was during the meditation that I came to understand that God's plan for my Reiki practice and my plan for my Reiki practice were a bit different.

As I said at the beginning of my website, during my meditation that day I saw the Blessed Mother appear before me. She was standing with her arms folded across her chest, tapping her toe, and she said in a very assertive voice "I have work for you to do and you can't do it while you're working where you are."

(For those of you who have visited my site before and recall that I used to say that I saw God dressed as a woman, the Blessed Mother has recently come to me in another meditation and she was kind enough to correct my error. For much of my life I've had difficulty accepting direction from female authority figures, most likely due to power and control issues with my own mother, so I guess it was easier for me to accept the figure I was seeing as God in drag - no disrespect intended - than it was to take such a big leap of faith from a female authority figure! But the Blessed Mother has told me that it was time I come clean and own up - so now you know the true story.)

Up until I began doing Reiki on myself, I'd never been any good at meditating. I couldn't keep my mind quiet, and I certainly didn't 'see' things that I'd heard others say they could see when they meditated. And even after using Reiki, I still had a great deal of difficulty. It wasn't unusual for my mind to be busy trying to figure out when I was going to get the laundry done or go grocery shopping while my hands were busy doing Reiki. So to see this image, in this kind of detail, and to hear the voice so clearly, was really a shock.

I wandered the beaches, sometimes just sitting there staring out at the water, while this scenario played over and over again in my head. What should I do? How do you respond to a message from the Blessed Mother? Give up my job? Leave this place where I finally felt like I belonged and where I was doing the work that I'd always dreamed of doing ever since high school? And to top it off, I was being asked to leave a place that was allowing me to use Reiki and had even made it possible for me to open and supervise the Reiki clinic there!

But the more I thought about it, the more I began to consider it. My Reiki had continued to evolve after that initial session where my hands had lifted off my client's body and begun moving in the air. They moved almost continually now, and I sensed that I was doing energy work on a much deeper level than I realized. Most of the time though, I didn't really know exactly what was happening; I just knew that in many instances, it seemed to have a profound effect on my clients, much more so than when I had been doing Reiki the traditional way.

By the next day, I had made up my mind. I wrote a letter of resignation, deciding that I would keep my job part time until my Reiki practice built to the point that it was self-sustaining. My supervisor agreed to this plan, and I set my final day of full-time work for July 3, 2003.

I wasn't sure how long I would continue to work part time, but thought that I might do so for at least 6 months, and maybe even a year. I had no idea how long it would take for my Reiki practice to take off. But once again, Mary had other plans!

About six weeks later on a Friday night, I was doing Reiki on myself and meditating, and just like that day in Erie, I once again saw Mary standing in front of me, arms crossed over her chest, toe tapping, and I heard "What do you think you're doing? I didn't tell you to keep a lifeline…I told you to leave! I have work for you to do and you can't do it as long as you're attached to that job."

Now, I have to admit that since going part-time, I really wasn't feeling all that good about my job. I had moved to a different office to give my office to the person who would be taking my full time position, and the office they gave me was separated from most of the other therapists. I was feeling isolated and lonely, and like I no longer belonged. But the idea of leaving completely threw me into a panic. So I tried to bargain with the Blessed Mother. "What about October?" I said. "Can I leave in October?" She stood there, tapping Her toe and shaking Her head. "Well, how about September? Can I at least wait till then?" Again I watched the shake of Her head. "You mean now, right, now? You want me to leave now?" And she smiled and nodded her head. "All will be well. Trust me." And then she was gone.

All weekend long I kept thinking about that message, that vision. I couldn't get it out of my head. But little by little I began to feel that this really was the right thing to do. So Sunday evening I sat down at the computer and typed out my final letter of resignation. My last day of work would be at the end of August.

I went in on Monday morning and handed it to my boss. She was shocked, but accepted it and said she wished me well. I worked out my notice and on October 6, 2003, I opened The Place for Reiki. There's more to the story of course, much more, but this is a website and not a book, so I'll stop here for now. If you're interested in finding out how my Reiki abilities have evolved since I left that job, please click here and read about my individual healing sessions, called Mind, Body and Soul (MBS) Sessions and my meditation and healing circles. I also offer a variety of workshops and classes at The Place for Reiki, and if you'd like to check that out, please click here.

Thanks for visiting The Place for Reiki and for taking the time to get to know a little about Reiki and a little about me. I hope something here has caught your attention and your interest, and that you'll go on to pursue your interest in Reiki in one way or another. But if, like me, you just decide to put Reiki on the back burner for a while, don't worry. When you're ready, it will be ready. And when you come back to it, it will be just the right time for you to begin your journey with Reiki. I know, because it's just how it happened with me.

Peace and blessings,

Bonnie J. Hassan, LSW, RMT, RKRM, SSRM       

Bonnie is a registered Reiki Master/ Teacher with the International Association of Reiki Professionals (IARP) and has been practicing and teaching Reiki since 2000.  She is a certified Master in the Usui/Tibetan, Karuna® and Sekhem-Seichim-Reiki Systems.  Bonnie is also a mental health therapist and licensed social worker.  She is credentialed with Magellan Behavioral Health.  Her specialty areas include grief and loss issues, foster care and adoption, and family therapy.   She has a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh, and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Human Resource Management from Geneva College.