Try Anything Tuesday

Hey there, happy people!

I tried a new thing today. Have you heard of Reiki? It's a Japanese energy healing technique. I just so happen to have a friend here who is a Reiki practitioner. I've known her for a couple years but it never really appealed to my logical brain.

Then this fall, I did something to my shoulder - slept wrong? I don't know. For a while it was distractingly painful, but not debilitating. Then, throughout the rainy season the pain would come and go. It hasn't been as bad for a while, but I can't sleep on my left side.

It turns out, a friend of mine back in the US goes to reiki regularly. (I don't know the verbs. "does" reiki? "Has reiki done to her"?) She sent me an article about how it has been used with some success to treat pain and trauma. Bingo.

So today, I had my first reiki session. Afterward I was told to pay attention to how I feel over the next few days, starting with today. Here's what I wrote today about the session:

Took my brain a while to relax. "Am I doing this right? Where should my hands be? What do other people do?" I felt her warm pressure in various places, but no emotion or build-up.

Tried to relax.

Tried to relax.

Trying is the antithesis of relaxing. Let my mind wander. I wondered what was happening, and associated different touch points with different chakras.

Did I doze off? I noticed a prayer-like lifting sensation. My hands felt they were rising (they weren't). My body felt lifted and pulled like taffy (it wasn't). Then I know I dozed. The place where my body was (head-to-toe) became a pool of shifting colors. Liquid violet, red, pink - jewel tones in a sea of darkness. As if someone was pouring swirls of paint together. Next I was a pool of milky-liquid (like that one Doctor Who episode).

After I thought I heard a rain storm starting (wasn't happening), I was conscious of myself again. My hand slipped involuntarily. I had a coughing fit for no reason.

Afterward, she told me the coughing thing is not uncommon as the body releases toxins through the process. She said to drink water, and that I'll probably want to go to bed early tonight.

I was so thirsty. 

Hours later, at home, after drinking more water, I felt light-headed.

When I sat to work at my computer, it felt like I'd had an injection in my shoulder.

I should explain, she knew my issues were insomnia, joint pain, and "a shoulder" but not which one. My shoulder hasn't been acting up lately, either. When we finished, she said she kept being drawn to my left ankle, and asked if I had injured that sometime in the past. No, but for the past couple weeks that ankle has felt bruised. A mild pain, so I never mentioned it.

Weird!