I am someone who loves to love people. So, when I learnt Reiki, it was the perfect modality for me because it meant that I could show people that I cared, in a way that wasn’t weird or uncomfortable.

I learnt Level 1 Reiki at a time in my life where a lot was going wrong with my bodies health system because I had come to be in an abusive relationship.

I was only 18 when my first domestic violence situation started, so I was ill-equipped to deal with the emotional turmoil that it brought.

I didn’t know what was going on or why I felt so bad all of the time. I just thought that it was because I was going out partying, as I had a new-found freedom of living out of my parents home and being of legal drinking age.

What was really taking place was scarring and my body was trying to tell me that more was going on than I knew consciously about. Symptoms of illness were brushed off as my immune system not coping with a lack of sleep and a poor diet.

I was young and naive, enjoying every moment that I had to express myself out into the world.

When I got home, there was drama almost every day due to me living with someone who was violent towards me, called me names, got physical with me, and lied relentlessly making me question my sanity and what I was picking up on intuitively.

As well as him constantly putting me down, stalking me, and accusing me of preposterous things, making me of a low vibration so that my sparkly chi-filled self couldn’t shine through.

This went on for a long time, but somewhere around the two-year mark of the relationship, I finally left this person because I had begun learning Reiki.

I had been living in Bunbury with this person, and due to all of the mystery symptoms my body was expressing, I decided to look for a cure, and that was how I stumbled across Reiki.

I went into a bookstore with the clear intention of finding something that would help me to heal myself, so that I could feel better.

Whilst in the shop, a book literally jumped off of the shelf, and when I began looking at it, I realised that this was exactly what I had been looking for!

The simple little pink and purple book said things to me that immediately got my attention, so I bought it and went home to study every word.

I then found a local practitioner and went and learnt Level 1, and within two weeks of my attunement, I had left a volatile household and moved back in with my parents.

I no longer lived in Bunbury. Instead, I was in my old bedroom in Perth, surrounded by familiar things, and this helped me to regain homeostasis energetically, so that I could go back to being me.

I didn’t know all of the damage that had been caused by this toxic relationship, because I couldn’t remember half of what had happened!

This was because all of the yelling and screaming often made me leave my body in fright, to a point where I floated above it, in a trance-like state, unable to comprehend what was going on physically as I was no longer consciously aware.

This made me take on energetic material of trauma that had no name attached to it, due to it speaking of mindless behaviour. So, when I would come back to normal again, where I was in the room experiencing reality, I didn’t know all of all of what had happened, making it impossible to process that experience out of my body.

Instead, I walked around like a balloon, full of air that told me that something bad had happened to me, and I was supposedly ignoring it like it meant nothing to me. When in actual fact, I cared a lot about what was going on (that I could remember) I just didn’t know how to get myself out of it.

So, I stayed, worried for my wellbeing until Reiki came along to save me.

A lot of people have experiences like these, and then have to deal with strange bodily malfunctions, where their organs are struggling to breathe, due to the energies surrounding them telling stories of a negative kind.

That is why I find Reiki so fascinating, because it has the power to wake someone up to the truth, even when they have no idea of what that is.

Yes, I knew of the volatile behaviour towards me, and I knew that the way he spoke to me was not kind. I knew he roughed me up, verbally slung things at me all the time, and he was the least trustworthy person I knew.

But, in the greater sense, I didn’t know who he really was to me – a violent individual who was playing small when I was consciously aware, while when I was dazed, he showed me what was inside of him that was evil.

When it came to leaving him, it seemed like an impossible task, because so many parts of my body were saying ‘don’t you dare!’

When I learnt my Reiki first degree, I was in Bunbury living with my ex as a hollow shell of a person. But something inside pushed me towards learning this modality, even if it meant breaking all of the rules that currently existed within me due to his mistreatment.

I went and learnt Level 1 with a nice lady that I had connected with, and upon leaving her home, I had a mystical experience that I couldn’t quite explain.

It was like the nature realm had brought me a message to tell me that there was something that I needed to know. So, I opened myself up to the possibility that something magical had just occurred through me learning Reiki.

I didn’t really feel much different after my attunement, because I was already a very spiritually aware person. But once I stepped out into the real world, from my Reiki teacher’s home, I saw something that was so surreal, that it made me think that something special must have happened after all.

Over to the right, outside of a neighboring property, was a tree filled with a swarm of some kind. It was completely surrounded by buzzing bugs, making a humming noise as they all moved around together.

I stared for a few moments in disbelief at what I was seeing, and I then realised it was a million dragonflies all hovering together around the bulk of the leaves and branches that made up the tree.

It was high enough that it was taller than I am, but not so tall that I couldn’t make out what insect it was.

I used Native American medicine cards, so I knew that dragonflies symbolised illusions. To see so many at once made me think to myself “what am I being fooled by?”

It is still one of the most unusual experiences that I have had in my life, and due to the unexplained nature of this event, I suddenly believed that my life would get better.

This magical encounter was like a forcefield inside of me, where I suddenly believed that I deserved better, simply because nature had reached out and shown me this spectacular view, and I knew that this kind of thing didn’t just happen on your average walk around the neighborhood.

I took it as a sign that somebody or something cared about me and what I was going through, and this drove me to finally leave the person who was harming me.

It took a combined force of will, where I now knew that I had the ability to heal myself, coupled with this magical event that I had witnessed, to get me to see through new eyes that I was worth something after all.

When I got back to the unit I shared with my ex, drama began as it always did, and for the first time, I began seeing my situation for what it was, as if from a third-person point of view. It was as if I was being protected from falling under his spell, where I would normally leave my awareness and come to be out of it in shock.

Instead, I saw how I was being treated and thought to myself “what am I doing?” because I would not normally allow this kind of treatment, nor would I stand by and let someone else go through something similar to this either.

I clearly remember thinking “surely I can do better than this” and that there had to be somebody out there that would love me properly. With that came a sense of resilience, where I finally stood up for myself.

I stuck around mentally, instead of exiting my body, so that any time he was on a rampage, I fought back, I mouthed off, I walked out, I ran, and I did all of the things that I had done in the beginning of our relationship, instead of standing down like a mute.

This is the power that Reiki 1 showed me. It gave me my voice back. It told me things about myself that I had forgotten, like, I’m not some scaredy cat who leaps into the air whenever she gets shocked.

No! I stick around, I use my words and say things back to whoever is trying to dominate me, and if need be, I will get physical and overthrow this person with my strength, because I grew up doing judo since I was 5 years old.

I’m not some weakling, incapable of defending myself. But this person convinced me that I was, due to him treating me in a certain way where I felt defenseless, which made me suppress all of my will.

That is the energy that built up inside of me, an inaction when threat is around.

It told me daily that I was incapable of standing up to this person that I lived with, when that was not the truth of my reality.

Long after these years were over, old traumas began to speak to me again, telling me that I could not be a powerful person. So, I designed workshops that would help me to get my life back on track again, by learning new information about an old love of mine, known as Reiki Healing.

If you would like to connect and / or learn my unique way of teaching Reiki, please join me on my new Facebook page Channelling With Kush.