Al Ram­sawack

In her soft Cana­di­an ac­cent, Lyn God­dard ex­plained: "To put it sim­ply, Rei­ki heal­ing is a form of touch ther­a­py." Pre­vi­ous to her 14 years of prac­tice in this field of Rei­ki, she was em­ployed as a qual­i­fied ra­di­ol­o­gist at a Cana­di­an hos­pi­tal. She held up her hands in a seem­ing­ly de­fen­sive at­ti­tude as she spoke. A sooth­ing sen­sa­tion of com­fort seemed to ra­di­ate from her palms. God­dard con­tin­ued: "While work­ing in the emer­gency de­part­ment of the hos­pi­tal, it was very busy there deal­ing with so many suf­fer­ing pa­tients; I would lay my hands on their fore­heads for com­fort. I nev­er knew that I had that en­er­gy for heal­ing." She be­gan to seek an­swers for her fu­ture. Some time lat­er, she went along to Eng­land with her hus­band. While there, she vis­it­ed a psy­chic for a read­ing. God­dard was then in­vit­ed to a ses­sion on "Rei­ki ther­a­py," where she dis­cov­ered that she pos­sessed the abil­i­ty to ad­min­is­ter. She said: "There is en­er­gy with­in each of us; en­er­gy which can be chan­nelled to ef­fect heal­ing ben­e­fits to self or oth­ers. Rei­ki is not harm­ful. There are no pre­scribed med­ica­tion, no neg­a­tive side ef­fects. It is calm­ing, sooth­ing and com­fort­ing."

It is akin to med­i­ta­tion, which is al­so prac­tised at God­dard's Blue Star Health and Well­ness Cen­tre, perched on a nar­row, se­clud­ed plateau of the St Mar­garet's Hill in Clax­ton Bay in a breezy, peace­ful en­vi­ron­ment. If you need to feel this body en­er­gy, clasp your hands to­geth­er as if pray­ing. Now, gen­tly pull them apart leav­ing a nar­row space of about a quar­ter-of-an-inch apart. Hold them there for a few sec­onds at which time you will feel warmth, and then a slight tin­gling sen­sa­tion. That sen­sa­tion is the en­er­gy ex­change be­tween the two palms. Sim­i­lar­ly, in the prac­tice of Rei­ki heal­ing, the prac­ti­tion­er's en­er­gies are ex­changed with the client's to di­rect a nat­ur­al flow in clear­ing en­er­gy block­ages with­in the client's en­er­gy chan­nels, which may have been blocked as a re­sult of stress­ful ex­pe­ri­ences. The re­sult is stress re­duc­tion and re­lax­ation; a bal­ance of phys­i­cal mind and spir­i­tu­al be­ing. Now we know that a hand­shake, a gen­tle touch or a hug can bring about some com­fort to some­one.

God­dard ex­plained: "In re­ceiv­ing Rei­ki, the pa­tient must be at­tuned and will­ing to ac­cept the treat­ment. It is like a ra­dio which must be tuned to a cer­tain fre­quen­cy to re­ceive the mes­sage. In the prac­tice, you just have to think and con­cen­trate and the en­er­gy flows." She con­fess­es that the en­er­gy comes from a supreme force which we some­times can­not com­pre­hend. "We are not just flesh and blood, there is the spir­i­tu­al com­po­nent which the Chi­nese and In­di­ans have prac­tised for ages. In the West we are just slow­ly com­ing back...Rei­ki does not drain my en­er­gy, it en­hances it. "En­er­gy starts from dif­fer­ent en­er­gy cen­tres in the body called chakras. We start from the heart chakra or so­laplexus; the head, the soles of the feet." She of­fered to ad­min­is­ter a short ses­sion on me which I ac­cept­ed. Stand­ing at the back of the chair on which I sat, she clasped her hands from my fore­head along my tem­ples. She sug­gest­ed an op­tion to ei­ther close my eyes or keep them opened. I opt­ed to keep them closed and en­joy the ex­pe­ri­ence. Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, I ex­pe­ri­enced a vi­sion. Seat­ed in front of me was a man of fair com­plex­ion. I got a fo­cused 3-D pro­file of the man. He had a chub­by, round­ed face, straight nose, a nar­row, grey­ing mous­tache, scant grey­ing hair and a pleas­ant coun­te­nance.

Grad­u­al­ly his im­age fad­ed and phased in­to a dark In­di­an woman; pos­si­bly in her late 20s. Again, it was a fo­cused, pro­file im­age. She ap­peared re­laxed, of smooth skin, long, dark hair cas­cad­ing at the back as she posed in a re­clin­ing po­si­tion. The im­age fad­ed grad­u­al­ly as the ses­sion end­ed. When I ex­plained my vi­sion, she lift­ed her brows in sur­prise. God­dard said: "You are a very spir­i­tu­al per­son." Stress was once con­sid­ered an ex­ec­u­tive dis­ease, but in our present ap­par­ent so­cial "rat race," stress has be­come com­mon to a wide range of peo­ple, re­gret­tably, in­clud­ing pupils of pri­ma­ry schools as well as stu­dents of sec­ondary schools, teach­ers and par­ents. Ed­u­ca­tion has be­come a pun­ish­ment rather than en­light­en­ment to this group of peo­ple. Ex­tra lessons have be­come an ex­tra bur­den on this group. It is a dis­rup­tion to hap­py fam­i­ly life. It has tak­en child­hood out of chil­dren. These are the in­gre­di­ents for stress, anx­i­ety and de­pres­sion. God­dard has been treat­ing these dis­or­ders with in­creas­ing fre­quen­cy. Oth­er caus­es may be dishar­mo­ny, emo­tion­al cir­cum­stances and anger. From these dis­or­ders spring phys­i­cal ail­ment like pains, hair loss, pim­ples, skin dis­or­ders, cir­rho­sis, black spots, in some in­stances de­pig­men­ta­tion and scaly scalps.

Rei­ki ther­a­py can up­lift the mind to dis­pel those neg­a­tive el­e­ments which block the en­er­gy chan­nels through the body to bring im­bal­ance to a healthy body. Al­ter­na­tive health so­lu­tions are at­tract­ing world pop­u­la­tion. In our is­land state of Trinidad and To­ba­go the hunt is on for all the dif­fer­ent heal­ing herbs. Some peo­ple are even en­cour­ag­ing re­lat­ed shrubs and herbs in their sur­round­ings. Grand­par­ents and coun­try folks are now iden­ti­fy­ing the black sage, man-bet­ter-man, co­zi­er ma­hoe, cod­joe root, jig­ger bush, shin­ny bush, mal­omel and oth­ers. On an­oth­er area of phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al well­ness, the women are reg­u­lars of the gym; many are on the yo­ga mats, oth­ers on spir­i­tu­al Ra­ja Yo­ga, med­i­ta­tion and mas­sages. Ap­plied ki­ne­si­ol­o­gy is a very spe­cialised mus­cle re­sponse ther­a­py in which field there are few prac­ti­tion­ers in our coun­try. There is the well known Aus­tri­an-born, Hil­da Hosier, who en­joyed a suc­cess­ful prac­tice in this field in San Fer­nan­do for over 20 years. It is hoped that we con­tact her in the fu­ture to give us an in­sight in­to that area of body ther­a­py, and for a healthy and hap­py Trinidad and To­ba­go we must main­tain our sense of hu­mour, friend­ship and har­mo­ny.