Reiki and My Healing Quest
By Lisa Ross-Walker
My name is Lisa Ross-Walker. I have worked in the Holistic Healing Arts for the last 20 years. In 1988, I began my career as a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT) and discovered that I could channel healing energy through my hands. My clients called me “Magic Hands.” I quickly learned that I was working with much more than just my client’s physical anatomy—meaning their muscles, bones, tendons, joints, skin, etc. My clients generally scheduled a treatment with me because of a physical complaint, and yet I watched and learned as their problems unfolded mentally, emotionally and spiritually. This was fascinating to me! My Healing Quest began!
I wanted to know more about these other levels of healing. I especially wanted to learn how I could assist as a healing facilitator so that I could give a more holistic treatment. I wanted to address more than just their physical pain, and somehow I knew I could if I could just find the right tools. I wanted a healing modality that could treat the whole person, a healing tool that could also work with the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of their issues.
My thirst for knowledge about healing could hardly be quenched. I signed up for all sorts of classes and many, many weekend workshops. I learned about nutrition and herbology. I became certified in Holistic Iridology which gave me a great understanding of the 4 levels of healing, (Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, and Physical). I also learned Craniosacral Therapy and Acupuncture. These modalities opened the door for energy work. I studied the energy pathways called Meridians and Nadis. I tried to memorize which parts of the body each pathway treated and where every acupressure point was located. I loved learning about these energy healing modalities. I especially loved going to my acupuncture therapist and receiving a treatment. I knew these treatments worked; I felt my energy move and heal. However, I became overwhelmed with the schooling required to take my knowledge to the next level. I had a husband and 5 children to take care of. I really needed something more simple and easy to learn that would not require so much time away from my family, and yet I still wanted something that was powerful and would really work. I wouldn’t settle for anything less.
I continued to work with my full-time massage clientele while learning how to apply my newly gained skills with the different healing tools I had acquired. I expanded my career and I began teaching massage therapy, stress-management and meditation classes. I also learned Reflexology, Auras and Chakra Anatomy in great depth, which gave me incredible insight on my clients’ subtle energy systems. Energy became my new passion. I saw everything as energy. I felt everything as energy. I read every book I could get my hands on that even mentioned the words “energy” or “aura”!
Then one day in 1996, I had a client come into my wellness clinic for a massage session. Our conversation led to the topic of energy, as did most of my conversations at that point. We talked about energy and emotions and how they can get stuck or blocked and how our bodies react physically to this. She then explained to me how she had recently learned that her energy had been stuck and had created several physical problems. She had discovered an energy healing modality that was assisting her in releasing negative emotional energy, and was actually energizing and healing her. She called it Reiki. She continued to come to my wellness clinic for massage therapy sessions. Each time she would share Reiki healing stories with me and my employees. She became lighter and healthier on all four levels of healing. It was very inspirational to watch her transformation. Then, on one of her visits, she offered to teach Reiki to myself and my massage apprentices .Of course we said yes and we set the dates for a weekend of Level 1 Reiki.
It is with much gratitude that I remember my first weekend with Reiki. My heart chakra expands with love every time I think about my client who became my first Reiki Master Teacher. I continued on with level 2 and I eventually learned how to teach Reiki after co-teaching several classes with my Reiki Master.
In 1998, a full 10 years into my career as a healing facilitator, I now had Reiki as another tool to use with my massage clients. The first three years after I learned Reiki, I would occasionally teach it to my newest employees who would come to work in my wellness clinic. I also learned how to easily incorporate it into my massage therapy treatments. After a while, I discovered the benefits of using Reiki to give Chakra-Balancing treatments as well. My clientele continued to flourish. My wellness clinic and my employees grew rapidly with success. All was well in my world.
Fast Forward to March 9, 2001, at work in my clinic on a Friday afternoon. My 3:00 client was getting on my table when I saw a police officer pull into my parking lot. My heart instantly felt heavy. I knew I was about to receive news that I did not want to hear. My 19-year-old son, Shayne, passed away that morning due to an accidental drug overdose. As one would imagine, my life drastically took a turn.
After my son’s funeral I decided to take a month off work in order to “re-group” and to be with my other four children as we explored the grieving process. I had plenty of well-meaning people who gave me books on grief and loss and I heard multiple opinions on how grief should look and what I should do. I found myself once again on a “Healing Quest”. Only this time, it was not for my clients; this time it was for me and for my children. My heart had a hole in it. I was leaking energy. My aura felt ripped. My second Chakra was experiencing physical pain and symptoms of dis-ease.
Yes, I read a lot of books on grief. I took my children to support groups and counselors. I gathered information from every source that came my way. However, I knew enough about energy to know that it was vital to my well-being to find somebody that could work with me on this level. I continued to pray, pretty much 24/7, for assistance. Two months after my son’s death, I heard about another Reiki practitioner who lived about 1 hour away from me. My spirit was immediately drawn to her.
As part of my personal healing quest, I began receiving a weekly Reiki treatment with this new practitioner. Some weeks I would even see her twice. After each Reiki treatment, I could feel the hole in my heart begin to fill up with the love that I felt for my son. During my Reiki treatments, I could see and feel the rips and tears in my auric field healing and mending.
Some weeks we simply focused on my 2nd Chakra. The healing energy of Reiki taught me alot about this energy center and how it was affecting my life. Our 2nd Chakra resonates with creativity, change and movement, sexuality, and sweetness in life. Because this energy center is located just below the belly button our reproductive organs are affected as well. This Chakra is where a mother’s womb is—where she carries and nurtures her unborn child. When my son died, I had felt my energy in this Chakra literally rip! The day of his funeral I had actually experienced severe cramping similar to that of labor pains, especially as I realized that we would be burying him six feet under the ground, and I felt his physical presence ripped away from me. At this point, these strong emotions lodged into my 2nd Chakra. This is why my Reiki practitioner needed to focus on this part of my body. Reiki is a high-frequency energy that breaks up denser frequencies. When emotions become stuck, they create dense blocks of energy—precisely where Reiki is guided to go to promote healing. My spirit, or higher self, knew to guide the healing energy of Reiki especially to my 2nd Chakra during those first weeks of treatment, in order to stop the symptoms of dis-ease and to heal this part of my body immediately.
As my Healing Quest continued, Reiki became my best friend and a great teacher. Every week I would drive for an hour to receive a Reiki treatment and every week I would learn something new about myself and my purpose in this lifetime. Reiki opened up my Heart Chakra as it healed the pain and grief from my son’s death. I also released very old pain and un-forgiveness that I hadn’t even realized was there. The healing light that Reiki brought into my heart assisted me to embrace the idea of self-love and self-acceptance. I logically understood this concept of self-love and I logically knew the benefits of having self –acceptance, however, “feeling” it was just not happening for me. Reiki is another form of un-conditional love and light. Because of this, as it entered my heart the power was so strong I was able to finally feel it!
When a parent loses a child, the self ‘beat up stick’ comes out fast. My ego mind wanted to convince me that I was not a good-enough mother; otherwise my son would not have died because of drug abuse. So the gift of self-love and acceptance that Reiki gave me pulled me through some of my darkest hours during the grieving process.
My new Reiki practitioner was also a Reiki Master Teacher. After three months of receiving weekly treatments, I decided to enroll in her Reiki classes. So once again, I became a Reiki student and I took levels 1 and 2 and the Reiki Master Class with her. Learning Reiki with my second teacher was just as powerful as it was with my first teacher, three years previously. The power of Reiki never ceases to amaze me!
After taking these classes, my passion for assisting others on their healing journey was re-awakened. I was feeling lighter and healthier so I decided to go back to work fulltime. I also decided to incorporate more Reiki into my practice and to attract more Reiki clients. This meant however that I would need to release most of my massage clients because my schedule was already so full. Wow, this was quite a challenge. I had developed a strong foundation with a steady flow of massage clients, which meant I had also created a steady flow of income. I found myself in fear of switching from fourteen years of a successful career as a Massage Therapist to a new career as a Reiki Practitioner.
I had already experienced so much change in my life because of my son’s death, I wasn’t sure I could do more. I was also very concerned about finances. I had spent a lot of money in just three months time with funeral expenses, time off work, my weekly Reiki treatments and my children’s counseling services. Yes, my ego mind was trying really hard to talk me out of making a career change. Fortunately the Spirit of Reiki was more powerful. My own spirit had already connected so strongly to the healing benefits of Reiki. I truly desired to share with people in my community the miracles that I knew were possible to create by connecting to Reiki.
My re-awakened passion for healing opened up another door on my Healing Quest. The Spirit of Reiki encouraged me and inspired me to walk through it, this time not just for my clients or just for myself. Little did I know at that time that I was about to embark upon a journey that would involve all of us on a Universal level. I had not yet realized the full power of Reiki and its ability to expand Universal consciousness and awareness. All I knew was that I had to push through my fears and continue to expand my practice of Reiki. So, I started every day with this Reiki prayer of intention “Dear Mother/Father God, thank you for giving me the opportunity through the use of Reiki to serve the Light and to share healing energy. I ask that I attract to me now all who are open and willing to receive Reiki healings. Amen.” I also blessed my wellness clinic with Reiki. Every day I filled my therapy room with the light of Reiki and I surrounded my building and parking lot with a Reiki bubble.
I continued to receive my own weekly Reiki treatments. I recognized that through my own healing I was becoming more empowered and more knowledgeable on the many uses of Reiki. I also gained a new appreciation for giving Reiki to myself on a daily basis. I began self-treatments by getting into the habit of a morning routine. This is how it went: my alarm would go off at 6am. I would lie in bed and start at my Root Chakra giving myself Reiki with the intention of cleansing and clearing negative or stuck energy. I worked my way upward through the seven main Chakras. This would usually take only 10 to 20 minutes. I then said my prayers of gratitude followed with my Reiki prayer of intention that I mentioned earlier. I was now ready to get out of bed and go about my day. I cannot stress enough the important role that this daily routine played in my life.
My career transformation was going well. The healing light of Reiki was spreading fast. My Reiki guides were very supportive. I had attracted a clientele that consisted mostly of grieving parents. This came as no surprise. Working with other parents who had lost their children was nothing less than miraculous. Every Reiki session that I facilitated with these grieving parents brought us closer to our loved ones who passed over. As Reiki healed our bleeding hearts, we cried together and we shared happy stories with each other. Reiki is such a high-frequency energy, that it is able to lift the heaviness of grief and sadness. The depression that accompanies the loss of a loved one can be so deep and so severe that it can last for years. Yet I have witnessed Reiki lift the dense vibration of depression within just a few treatments.
Reiki is spiritually-guided, life-force energy. Because of this fact, I believe that Reiki raises my own spiritual vibration to the point that I can easily and clearly communicate with my Angels, Spirit Guides, and my loved ones who have passed over. I have experienced this type of communication over and over numerous times when working with these beautiful parents and their children who are no longer present in physical form.
When I channel Reiki, I feel its powerful energy move through my 6th Chakra, also sometimes called the ‘3rd Eye’. I feel my 3rd Eye opening to the guidance coming from the spiritual realm. I had absolutely no idea when I first learned Reiki back in 1998 that it would raise my level of awareness and intuition to such a heightened level. It is at this heightened level that I became aware of my connection to ‘All That Is’. I became aware of my personal connection to Source Energy, to Mother/Father God. I now understand that it is this connection that inspires me to continue on my Healing Quest, to continue to heal myself and to assist others as they heal themselves.
Though it may sound like a cliché, the truth is: “Life is a powerful journey filled with many ups and downs.” On October 7, 2002, just 18 months after my oldest son Shayne’s death, I received news that would again bring a cloud of sadness and grief to my family. I found out that Shayne’s father had died, at the young age of 41. His name was Derek. We were married when we were still kids. I was 16, he was 18. We had two beautiful children together; our daughter Shantel and our son Shayne. Though we were no longer married at the time of his death, his passing was very painful. Puppy love, as some would call their first love, usually never dies. At least it never did for Derek and I. Again I was faced with another aspect of my Healing Quest—grieving the loss of another loved one.
It was at this point in my life that I really began studying and practicing more with the third Usui Reiki symbol, also known as the ‘Distant Healing Symbol’. This symbol bridges the gap between the past, present, and future. The use of this symbol enabled me to go into my past with Derek in order to heal un-resolved issues that were left there, but yet still affecting my current choices and actions. This specific Reiki symbol became one of my most powerful healing tools as I grieved the loss of my first husband. Not only did I use Reiki to heal my past with him, but I also used it to connect presently to his spirit as well as my son’s spirit.
When I allow Reiki to flow through me, I receive a healing that transforms my fear, anger and guilt into a pure form of love and light. I am very aware that my feelings of anger, fear and guilt deserve to be acknowledged and explored. However, it is when I get stuck in these emotions that my energy pathways become clogged. My Chakra energy centers become dense and heavy. This is where the healing power of Reiki comes in. The high frequency Reiki energy pushes through my stuck emotions and negative thoughts that have created dense blocks. My life force energy then begins to flow freely. When this happens, my spiritual connection is always the strongest and with the use of the Distant Healing Symbol my connection to the spiritual realm is limitless! This connection is quite important to me as it has become my only means of communication with my dear son Shayne and his father, Derek.
Reiki is a blessing in my life. Reiki is a powerful healing tool. It is easy to learn and simple to use. It is not a religion, nor is it limited to any specific group of people. Anybody who is on their own “Healing Quest” or who has the desire to assist others can learn Reiki.
My oldest daughter Shantel became a Reiki Master at the age of 20. My second daughter, MaryShae was only 17. She began her training at the age of 13. My youngest daughter, Rosie, is a Level II practitioner and has been “sitting in” on the Reiki classes that I teach ever since she was 8 years old. Children love Reiki! They are naturally drawn to the pure form of love and light that Reiki offers. Even my granddaughter, Angelle, learned Level I and II by the time she was 11 years old. In addition, my husband Troy eventually couldn’t beat us so he joined us and is now a Level III practitioner. He is an avid user of the Reiki Crystal Healing Grid. He has mastered the power of manifestation with the use of his Reiki Grid. (This technique is taught in the Advanced Reiki Techniques class, called ART which is level III-A) He always has at least two Reiki grids set up in our house. Being a business owner and entrepreneur, he is all about goal setting, so this technique is his favorite way of using Reiki and he has discovered that his Reiki Healing Grid makes a great business partner.
My children have also experimented and explored the many uses of Reiki. They have used it to clear up acne, to alleviate P.M.S., to get rid of bad dreams, to get through grueling dance competitions and to pass school exams. I have seen them use Reiki to help their pain ease up when they miss their brother so much that it seems unbearable. I have seen them work on each other during times of illness and stress. When we are driving in the car and pass by an accident they instantly start sending Reiki to everyone involved. I could go on and on because Reiki is so limitless and children are so creative. However, I will share just one more of my favorite stories concerning Reiki and my children. When Rosie, my youngest child, was 10 years old, she had a skiing accident and it broke her back in three places. The first 24 hours following the accident my children and I took turns sitting with her and putting our “Reiki” hands on her. Sometimes we had a few of us at the same time. We continued over the next two weeks to give her Reiki. Then it was time to see her doctor who specialized in this type of injury. The first thing he did was take an x-ray of her back. After reading the x-ray, he mentioned something about “there must be a mistake.” He wondered why I thought her back was even broken and wanted to know who had diagnosed her. He demanded to see the original x-rays that the hospital took the day she was injured, so I ran to pick up the originals. He put both past and present films up next to each other. The first one clearly showed three different breaks. The second one showed no signs of any breaks at all! I began to feel sorry for his confusion, so I admitted that we had been treating Rosie with Reiki. He said “Wow, keep doing whatever you are doing, Mom and let’s get started with her physical therapy!” He turned out to be a wonderful doctor and we worked as a team to assist my daughter in her healing and total recovery.
I sold my wellness clinic in 2004 so that I could teach Reiki on a regular basis, which is what I do now. I also teach Chakra Healing Workshops and with the assistance and power of Reiki, I have recorded and produced a Chakra Healing Workshop on a 3CD set entitled Heal Your Life One Chakra at a Time. These CDs are being distributed internationally. Wow! I am constantly amazed over what can be created and healed with the use of Reiki.
I work full-time with my Reiki clientele. But I don’t just “do” Reiki anymore. I have learned that when I allow myself to live moment-to-moment as a channel for the Reiki energy, then it is more applicable to say I “become” Reiki. This simply means I am able to radiate a pure form of God’s love and light into all aspects of my life.
My Healing Quest has been fascinating, and I am always honored to assist others as they heal themselves and move forward on their own healing quests. I know that my journey continues and I know that I will always find light within my own darkness. I trust that all is well in our world. And so it is!
Namaste,
Lisa Ross-Walker
This powerful, 3-CD program focuses on the seven major Chakras of your body, providing the key to physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.
