There’s something profoundly sacred about sitting in stillness, hands gently placed, heart open, breath quiet, as the currents of energy begin to move. Ancient, intuitive, and deeply intelligent, Reiki is not just a healing technique. It is a remembering. A return to something we’ve never truly lost, only forgotten: the light of the soul.

My journey into energy healing began not with curiosity, but with heartbreak in 2009. It was after a deep emotional wound, a shattering, that I found myself drawn to Usui Reiki. Or perhaps it found me. The first-degree initiation arrived like a whisper from the universe: you are ready to begin. And I was. Slowly, quietly, the energy began to mend what felt broken beyond repair.

By the time I reached my third degree in Usui Reiki, something unexpected had happened; my path had already begun weaving with Karuna Ki Reiki. I received the first and second degrees of Karuna while still on my Usui journey, and it made perfect, soul-level sense. My heart needed both: the structure and steadiness of Usui, and the emotional depth and compassionate grace of Karuna. They intertwined effortlessly, like two rivers meeting at the ocean of my healing.

When I became a Master Teacher in Reiki, I had already received my first and second degrees in Karuna Ki, and about a year later, I became a Master Teacher in Karuna as well. They had become one thread in my work, complementing each other, not opposing, but enhancing. Karuna, with its deep embrace of shadow and trauma, taught me how to hold space not just for light, but for the places people are most afraid to go. Usui gave me the tools; Karuna gave me the heart.

And then, Shambhala Reiki appeared, quietly, almost like a breath between lifetimes.

At first, I received only the first degree, and I held it gently, like a seed not yet ready to bloom. Nearly a decade passed. Life flowed. Practice deepened. Then came something that would change everything.

I had entered a seven-day spiritual feast, a time of complete silence, with no electricity, no distractions, and no speech. I took a vow. Each day was filled with scripture study, prayer, and long hours of meditation. The outside world fell away. There was only devotion, and the sacred rhythm of breath, stillness, and the Divine.

It was during one of those meditations, held in deep silence, that my inner sight opened, and the vision came. I saw the Shambhala Castle. It was luminous and vast, shining in my third eye like a world made entirely of light. I was no longer in my body. My awareness had become something purer. The Ascended Masters appeared, not as forms, but as radiant presences, and I was invited in. Not my body, but the essence of my soul. There was no fear, only clarity. I knew I had been seen. I knew I had been called.

That moment was the true initiation.

When I returned from the retreat, I received my second degree and Master Teacher level in Shambhala Reiki. But I already carried the transmission in my soul. That vision, that sacred invitation, was the blessing that marked the next chapter of my path.

Each of these Reiki paths brings its own medicine.

Usui Reiki grounds. It anchors. It offers a strong, clear channel for life force energy to flow and restore.
Karuna Ki Reiki opens the heart. It invites emotional healing and the gentle release of deep karmic layers.
Shambhala Reiki awakens. It lifts the soul into remembrance, reconnecting us with higher wisdom, divine purpose, and the cosmic energy of light.

This is why I don’t separate them. I bring them together in each session, woven like silk threads through the fabric of healing. A session becomes a sacred progression: from grounding to releasing, from healing to awakening.

We are not one thing. We are layered beings, body, heart, spirit, and each part deserves to be held in the fullness of healing. That’s what this combined practice offers. A remembering of wholeness. A return to light. A journey back to the truth of who we are beneath the noise and pain and forgetting.

And for me, it all began with a broken heart.
Which, as it turns out, was the beginning of my real opening.