Just for today
Do not be angry
Do not worry
Be grateful
Do your work with diligence
Be kind to others

These are the 5 Reiki principles. And good life principles in anyone's book I think!

Mum I am focusing on today I do not worry :-)

So I am now a certified Reiki practicioner!

I will write up the days experience as I did yesterday. Do not feel you have to read this! This is mainly for me to write down everything while i remember like a diary, so that I can look back in the future and remember how amazing it's been.

It started with a group meditation where we all visualised breathing in Reiki and filling ourselves, our auras and then the room with Reiki. I felt lots of energy all around not just me, but everybody in the room, I could feel it surrounding us. Really cool!
Then we had out 3rd attunement out of 4. As Torsten (our teacher and Reiki master) said, if we were a steak we would be medium well after this one! Again, this was an intense experience! I sat meditating waiting for my turn and I could feel balls of energy pulsating in my palms more and more the closer to me she got (she was working her way around the circle) When she got to me the feelings in my palms intensified and i got the same feeling in my head around the crown chakra. Really intense pulsing of energy. I felt a tingling where my third eye chakra is and saw green and purple. I also felt like there was somebody right behind me a while before she got to me.

After this we took it in turns to give each other a full body Reiki treatment. I was the first one in my pair to receive, so i lay on the couch covered in a blanket and Seonaid did my treatment. It was amazing! Halfway through the treatment she had her hands on my heart chakra and i started feeling the energy pulsing on the inside of my shins where the shin splints are! Afterwards Torsten said that the energy goes wherever it is needed. When she had her hands on my naval chakra i felt energy deep down whirling and spinning around, it was a very intense vibrating feeling deep inside my torso. I have felt something similar before, years ago when i used to do a chakra energy meditation and sometimes i would feel these sensations. The whole treatment was just so relaxing i felt miles away.

When it was my turn to give her a treatment I felt very relaxed and almost in a trance the whole time. Torsten came around to each of us and put his hands on our shoulders for a few minutes during the treatment to intensify the flow of Reiki and immediately i could feel the heat pulsing from my hands and i got really really warm myself and could feel energy whirring in my root chakra. I then carried on with the treatment myself and Seonaid was so relaxed she feel asleep! While she was awake her muscles jerked and spasmed a bit and she didn't know why but after reading up it seems to be due to the energy finding its way and releasing blockages. I could feel heat and occasional tingling in my hands throughout and got warm myself too. SeonaId said that my hands were really hot even through the blanket.

We had a lovely vegetarian lunch and i got talking to a lady who's husband comes from the same village in Neath as Mike and lived down the road from Mike's parents! Small world!

Then we had our final attunement in order to complete the Level 1 course. In this one i felt surrounded by energy and a cool breeze was blowing in my palms as the attunement began and as he got closer to me I felt the balls of energy pulsing again. While I was receiving the final one the feelings in my hands were joined by pressure and pulsing energy around my head and visuals of scenes in my minds eye but i don't know what they were as they were too fleeting.

The course has actually changed my life. It has been so amazing. It has surpassed my expectations with the experiences that we've all had over the weekend. And i think it has taught me how to meditate. My mind is always so full of chatter when i try, flitting hither and thither!! But this weekend I have managed to get into a deep meditative state in a matter of minutes using Reiki, it is unbelievable.
It's also reconnected me to the spiritual path that i was on a few years ago and kind of became distracted from.

We have a 21 day cleansing process now when our bodies adjust to the Reiki energy and it clears our blockages and lets out old unhealthy emotions that we've been hanging onto or kept buried. Torsten advised us to treat ourselves every day to get used to the energy and help with the cleansing and after 3 weeks a habit is formed and hopefully we will not want to be without the daily treatment! I feel so so happy today and grateful for everything in my life and I welcome any negative emotions that need to be released so that I can move forward as a happier person.

Mike has agreed to let me practice on him too which is great even though he thinks it is hippy rubbish! He has never had a treatment though so I am looking forward to seeing if he changes his mind! Even if he doesn't it'll be good for me to use it on someone other than myself and get used to the feelings (though i am positive that with regular treatments at some point he will definitely feel something...he has a whole lifetime of Reiki ahead of him!)

I've been part of a lovely group of people this weekend and we've had a brilliant teacher in Torsten who I am planning on going back and doing Reiki 2 with in a couple of months. I can start a Reiki business on the side then ;-)

Any interested Londoners (or further afield...I'm planning on travelling back from Wales to do Reiki 2) I can't recommend Torsten's Reiki Academy London highly enough.

On a slightly weirder note (yes, i know i know) I got to the train station in Barnes which is a tiny little train station in a quiet little suburb and my boss was standing outside with one of the other managers from work!! How ODD. So i said hello and they'd been on a conference and were waiting for their mini bus to pick them up. The chances of bumping into someone you know in London is so low, never mind in an obscure place like that on a Sunday afternoon!