Ishara Agos­ti­ni

"You know they say when one door clos­es, ten more will open? That was Almighty God clos­ing one door and say­ing, 'Okay. Go through that door in­stead.'"That door led to long-term heal­ing for Na­dine De Leon De­onar­ine, who, af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing heart­break and bank­rupt­cy, found pure joy once more through rei­ki heal­ing.Rei­ki is a tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese tech­nique which fo­cus­es chi or life en­er­gy, and chan­nels it to heal phys­i­cal, men­tal and emo­tion­al ail­ments.For De­onar­ine, rei­ki is the one of the biggest parts of her life and came to her when she need­ed it the most. She first en­coun­tered it af­ter see­ing a non­de­script news­pa­per ad. De­spite the lack of de­tail, she found her­self drawn to it and de­cid­ed then and there that she need­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the week­end-long course in 2000."I didn't know what it was but I said, 'I go­ing and do this.' Be­cause I was re­al­ly an­gry most of the time. I say, 'I go­ing and do this. I don't know what it is but I want to do this.'"

Now De­onar­ine has been prac­tis­ing rei­ki for 14 years, and she start­ed her own prac­tice in 2010, the Rei­ki Foun­tain. Af­ter her at­tune­ment in her first ses­sion, she learned how to chan­nel the en­er­gy that char­ac­teris­es rei­ki heal­ing."At that time I didn't know what a chakra was, far less un­der­stood that every­body had it. It opens your mind," she said. "I went and I did the class and I was just blown away. That en­er­gy is so peace­ful. It is so amaz­ing."De­onar­ine has pro­gressed through the years and has mas­tered both Usui, the orig­i­nal rei­ki (named af­ter Mikao Usui, who found­ed the prac­tice); karuna rei­ki, which is re­gard­ed as more pow­er­ful and usu­al­ly done by more ad­vanced prac­ti­tion­ers; In­te­grat­ed En­er­gy Heal­ing (IET) and SPHE-RE (Sa­cred Peace Heal­ing En­er­gy). She runs a thriv­ing prac­tice from her home in Tacarigua.

She sees clients in a pri­vate room sep­a­rate from the main build­ing of the home she shares with her sec­ond hus­band, two sons, three dogs, six cats, a bird, a tur­tle and nu­mer­ous fish. The Rei­ki Foun­tain ac­tu­al­ly got its start pro­vid­ing rei­ki treat­ments for pets, but soon re­alised there was a de­mand from their own­ers as well.Her stu­dio is a cosy room with charts giv­ing de­tails on chakras and IET. On a book­shelf she keeps her heal­ing crys­tals, books re­lat­ed to the heal­ing sys­tems she prac­tis­es, stat­ues of her favourite archangels–Ariel, Raphael and Michael–and pho­tos. There are pic­tures of her own Rei­ki Mas­ter, Dr Winthrop Wilt­shire; Hawayo Taka­ta, who is cred­it­ed with bring­ing rei­ki to the west­ern world, and Dr Usui, its founder.Her jour­ney has not been easy. De­onar­ine had to deal with an un­healthy mar­riage, di­vorce and the bank­rupt­cy that fol­lowed. She and her first hus­band co-owned a busi­ness and af­ter their di­vorce in 2009, she found it hard to re-ad­just to tra­di­tion­al nine-to-five work."Hav­ing our own busi­ness at the time af­ford­ed that lux­u­ry of be­ing around when the chil­dren came home from school. It was more flex­i­ble that way. I couldn't man­age. It wasn't work­ing out for me. I was in a bind."

Then out of nowhere, it came to her."Pure joy just came in­to my be­ing. I could feel the joy com­ing in­to my be­ing and all I'm hear­ing is, 'Do rei­ki, do rei­ki.'"De­onar­ine con­sid­ers all of her tri­als a nec­es­sary part of her jour­ney."Some­times when a sit­u­a­tion is bad you ask your­self 'Why did God give this to me?'" she says, but now she con­sid­ers them tests. "That was a test from Almighty God to see what my met­tle was made of."Now, her en­tire fam­i­ly prac­tis­es rei­ki to some de­gree. Her sons both have a lev­el one cer­tifi­cate and she thinks they're ready to move on to lev­el two. Even her hus­band, a teacher, us­es rei­ki."When we go to the Peace Fes­ti­val, if you see the long line of ladies who want to get rei­ki from him!" she said with a laugh.De­spite all the hard­ship it took for her to get to where she is, De­onar­ine wouldn't change any of things that hap­pened to her."It was a jour­ney. When we're on jour­neys we can't race to the end, be­cause then we'll miss all the fun things we're sup­posed to be see­ing. So it's a process. But that's what re­al­ly got me back on my path."She feels that af­ter all it took to get her where she is to­day, she has a unique per­spec­tive that in­creas­es the em­pa­thy and un­der­stand­ing she has for clients."Why am I in­to rei­ki? To help peo­ple." Af­ter all, she says, "I got in­to rei­ki to save my­self."