I noticed a name I hadn’t seen for a while at one of my Global Self Reiki Practices. I knew Tiziana Boccaccio’s mother was suffering from dementia, and that Tiziana had become her main caregiver. I’ve worked with enough families to know how very difficult that is, so I emailed to check-in and ask about her mom. I was so moved by what Tiziana shared about how powerfully her Reiki self practice is supporting her that I asked permission to share her words with you. Here’s how Tiziana expressed the profound healing she’s experienced from decades of anger, and how her Reiki practice led to self mot ..read more

I attended the annual Duncan W. Clark lecture at the venerable New York Academy of Medicine here in New York City to hear Donna Shalala speak on the future of nursing. Shalala is a formidable American, then president of the University of Miami, past president of Hunter College of the City University of New York, past chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the longest-serving Secretary of Health and Human Services in US history, recipient of over four dozen honorary degrees and seemingly endless other honors, including our nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of ..read more

Your help is need to protect NJ Reiki. The legislature has scheduled a public hearing for Monday. That’s very short notice and it would be SO POWERFUL for the Reiki community to SHOW UP BIG. We need your oral or written testimony to oppose NJ Assembly Bill 2461 Your participation matters, and I’ll walk you through how you can help protect NJ Reiki. The time is NOW. Please show up to Protect NJ Reiki by emailing written testimony or by appearing in person at the public hearing in Trenton on Monday, March 20. Before we go into the details of how you can do that, let’s back up a step in case you ..read more

We’re in a nip-it-in-the-bud moment. It’s time to protect New Jersey Reiki! Your help is needed whether or not you live in NJ. The NJ legislator from Middlesex proposed establishing a “Natural Health and Vitality Task Force.” The purpose of the task force “shall be to develop wellness programs and public policy.” Can you imagine how many ways can this could go sideways? The NJ task force will be made of “Naturopathic practitioners, chiropractors, psychologists, or nutritionists who have been appointed to the task force shall have actively engaged in their respective practice for at least fiv ..read more

Take care of your state, and your state takes care of everything else. I’ve said that thousands of times to thousands of people. Even still, I appreciate it more with each contemplation. If you can take only one action, take the action that has the most leverage in your life, that brings improvements on every level: take care of your state. A Dutch colleague, Anne Boerrigter, recently wrote about what “Take care of your state” has meant to her, and kindly translated it to English for me (Read the original Dutch here). I asked to share it with you because she so beautifully and humanl ..read more

A Reiki student backed down on a really good opportunity because she was afraid. She couldn’t believe that “with all the work I’ve done on myself,“ here she was again, hitting the same wall. She was paralyzed by fear, with no idea what she was afraid of. I knew talking wasn’t going to help. When you’re up against your wall, you need to change your state; you need to heal. So I suggested she heart write. Heart writing is a practice I developed to circumvent your mind and pour your heart out. She took my suggestion, and her wall came tumbling down. It was too late for the opportunity she’d pushe ..read more

Why don’t you practice daily self Reiki? Really, what’s your favorite excuse? I’m sure you see how silly it seems that anything could keep you from placing your hand on your body. It’s truly not that hard, given your hand is always conveniently located at the end of your arm. I’m sincerely interested to know why you don’t practice daily self Reiki, and if you’d like to, I’m happy to help troubleshoot a way around your obstacle. The following are the 5 reasons I hear most often why people don’t practice daily self Reiki. I don’t have time to practice every day I encourage my students to aim for ..read more

Not a week goes by without me hearing of someone who’s been hurt by Reiki misinformation or a clumsy Reiki practitioner. I say “clumsy” because I rarely hear apparently deliberate attempts to hurt someone via Reiki practice. Personally, I don’t think it’s possible — how can balance be harmful? — but when someone nefarious calls their manipulative behavior “Reiki,” which they can legally do, it’s deeply problematic. It shifts the attention away from the perpetrator and directs it to Reiki misinformation, which of course is presented as fact. Let’s put that huge problem aside for the moment. Wha ..read more

The first gorgeous spring morning of the year reminded me of a poem by E. E. Cummings, [in Just-]. It begins: in Just- spring          when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman whistles          far          and wee and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it’s spring when the world is puddle-wonderful…   Cummings did his own thing when it came to capitalization and punctuation. Coming across his poetry as a kid, that wa ..read more

The Massachusetts Reiki licensing attempt seems to have ended, at least for the moment. MA legislators have decided to focus on other matters, and moved the bills to a further investigation and study order. Of course, it’s possible the bills could be moved back to the floor, but that almost never happens. It seems the state legislature is uninterested in moving forward with licensing, at least at this time. Your testimony opposing the Massachusetts Reiki licensing bills made the difference. At the end of the first day of testimony, it was noted that 1500 emails had been received, mostly in opp ..read more