🔰Going back to the beginning...

What’s lovely about taking a break is the space it gives you to actually notice where you are. Most of the time I’m moving from one thing to the next, worn out, doing my best just to stay present (and breathe). But as I get older — and maybe a little wiser — I’m realising how often I keep doing without pausing to reflect on my day, my week, or even my month. And when I don’t pause, I don’t fully appreciate how far I’ve come, what I’ve achieved, or where I’m heading. More importantly, I don’t course‑correct when I’m drifting off track.

One of the biggest challenges for me has been marrying the two sides of my career. Back in my teens, I had an incredible GP who introduced me to complementary therapies and how they could sit beautifully alongside allopathic medicine. His guidance changed my life — small shifts in diet, sleep, and movement eased the ferocious migraines that shaped my teenage years.

So as I grew up, holistic wellbeing travelled quietly beside me through graphics, printing, localisation, project management, and product management. Every organisation I worked in had supports like yoga, massage, reflexology, and other therapies. Eventually I thought, why don’t I learn more and become a therapist myself — alongside my professional career?

Over the next few posts, I’m going to reflect on some of the training I’ve done over the years and what each modality has meant to me. I hope you find it interesting, but truthfully, this is also a practice for me — a way to remember where I am now and honour the journey I’ve travelled.

And the first therapy I’m revisiting is Reiki.

I discovered Reiki at the start of the century — which sounds wild — but yes, I completed Level 1 and 2 in 2003, and my advanced Level 3 in 2004. Reiki is often described as an energy‑healing therapy, but I was drawn to a teacher who was a nurse and incredibly practical. She opened the course with, “If you’re looking for woo‑woo, this is the wrong training and I’ll happily refund you.” One woman stood up and left. The rest of us stayed, curious and ready to learn.

If you’ve never explored Reiki, it’s a gentle complementary therapy — not an alternative to medical care. It’s a tool to support your nervous system, to rest, to relax, and to restore, guided by a trained practitioner.

I remember after my first weekend of Level 1 feeling like the colours in nature were brighter, more vibrant. Joy seemed to appear everywhere. It was as if I’d bypassed my mind’s negative bias and could finally see the positive threads that had always been there. By the time I completed my advanced level, I was sharing Reiki with family and friends and imagined I might one day teach it. That wasn’t the path I ended up taking — Reflexology came next — but that’s a story for another post.

I’m not going to write a long explanation of what Reiki is or isn’t. If you’re curious, there are plenty of resources — the Reiki Federation Ireland (https://reikifederationireland.com/) is the governing body I trained with at the time.

I have wonderful friends who practice and share Reiki with the public, and I’m happy to refer you if you’re interested. But this post is really about remembering the joy of that first training, and how I’d like to return to those basics — to reconnect with the beauty of the practice. For myself, for those around me, for pets, for sending distance Reiki to loved ones far away or passed, and for creating a protective layer of peace in my own life.