Cynthia's Lupus Journey to Healing
By the middle of 2002, I found myself in a job I I wasn’t happy in. My work situation was toxic, my boss was toxic, but the money was excellent and the hours were great. But I was unhappy. I knew there was a part of my life that always seemed to be just out reach. It was as if I was ignoring an essential part of my soul. I was always tired, overwhelmed and stuck on that same road, over and over again. I was disconnected from my heart.
Even as a young child, I always had insomnia and some mild anxiety. If I’d ever been diagnosed, I suspect it would have been ADHD.
But by the middle of 2004, everything had escalated and I started getting down on life – I had just woke up from my second wrist surgery and thought what the hell is going on? I just kept getting these ganglions in the joint of my right wrist and they were so painful. So was the recovery process, time after time. Within 3 months of my last surgery, I had somehow conjured up another very large ganglion, right in the same spot and thought oh, god I don’t want to go through this again.
It was then that I met a wonderful gal who did “Reiki” healing. At that time, I had no idea what she was talking about and actually thought she was just a little bit strange with her ideas and beliefs. One morning, I woke with a nasty headache and she insisted on a Reiki session, so I finally surrendered and allowed her to “do her thing”. When she was finished, I didn’t really know what she had done to me, but I did know that my headache was completely gone and I wanted to know more about how she did that and I felt amazing! I wanted to know more about how this “Reiki” worked.
Looking back at that time now, I know that it was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it invited me to take a closer look at what was going on in my life and the way I was living it.
I realized that it was my own anxiety, unhappiness at work and in general, my lack of self-care and disconnection from myself that was the cause of my ganglions, anxiety, sleep issues and depression. I knew it was time to connect with my heart’s desire to reshape my life and live it the way I really wanted to. And that’s what I did. I spent a lot of time taking my next Reiki levels, studying, learning about myself and what I really wanted out of my life.
Through reiki, meditation, and finally, the big one ~ letting go of the notion that I had to stay at the job I was and not follow my passion, which was now energy healing. I put my notice in at work and within one week, my ganglion was completely gone! Wow!
For the first five years following my Reiki First Degree course in 2004, I was physically and emotionally in better health than I could ever remember being— I didn’t even catch a cold in that time— my anxiety and sleep issues were settling down as I treated myself regularly and practiced Reiki friends and family.
I also took my Second Degree course in 2004, and became a Reiki Master in 2005.
I started my business, Essential Energy Healing, but clients were just not coming as fast as I wanted them to, so I ended up taking another part time job to help with support of my business. Within two years of starting that job, I got chronic bronchitis and three serious bouts of pneumonia, then my father passed away from a horrible brain and lung cancer, which spread so fast it knocked our family right off our feet. Within 2 months of my dad passing away, I was sick again. I decided right then and there to do what I was called to do, which was to heal myself and helping others do the same so they wouldn’t have to go through the same stuff as I did.
Because like everyone else I am on my own healing journey, I would describe myself as a “work in progress.” I don’t think it would have been possible to support others and teach Reiki with any real authenticity if I hadn’t experienced some of the health problems I gone through, and therefore healing needs, that I have had over the years.
As has been the case for many healers, my need for help with my own health, and life in general, is what led me to Reiki in the first place. So when I came across Reiki and experienced how wonderful and relaxed it made me feel, it seemed like the answer to a prayer.
But….Throughout that time I continued to live as frantically as I had before I started practising Reiki.
By fall of 2009, even with the help of Reiki and regular meditation, I was burned out, had adrenal exhaustion and ended up taking extended sick leave due to illness.
This experience gave me the chance to reassess my life, But did I really listen to my body or change the way I lived? Not a bit of it. Instead of slowing down, which had been my intention, I found myself continuing teaching Reiki and keeping up with my healing business.
I obviously hadn’t let go of my ways, so after my father died in the summer of 2010, my body came to a halt.
I suddenly developed chronic sinus infections and generally just not feeling very well, and of course it was painful and exhausting. Despite this, I stubbornly tried to continue on with my workaholic ways and continued on with my Reiki business, pushing through regardless weather I really felt like it or not.
Not exactly the best advertisement for a “healer,” I’ll admit, but I hate letting people down, so I did what I thought was best for those potential clients and students, rather than what I knew was best for me.
So the message from my body got louder.
In June of 2013, I had sinus surgery in the hopes of clearing my sinus issues. In July 2013, I ended up in hospital with a near fatal kidney infection and for the next 2 months my health was so bad that I was in and out of the hospital several times, unable to look after myself because I was too exhausted, full of one infection after another. All the joints in my arms, hands, legs and feet were too painful for me to do anything. At times I couldn’t even get out of bed to shower and eat breakfast. I was physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually exhausted. Anxiety and depressive states were creeping back. I was desperately searching what was wrong with me????
In October of 2013, I was diagnosed with Celiac Dis-ease and and three months later, Systemic Lupus. What the heck?
This experience certainly gave me the time to think again. At first all I could think of was to throw everything I knew at my illness to try to get rid of the symptoms— Reiki, affirmations, visualizations and just about anything else anyone suggested.
But nothing happened. I didn’t get better. And that was the scariest thing. For the previous five or six years, whatever had happened to me—an occasional headache, trapping my finger in a door, spraining my ankle —all I had needed to do was to place my hands on myself and let the Reiki flow, and within minutes, or at the most hours, the pain and swelling had gone. Why wasn’t it working now?
I became very depressed, and I asked myself this question many times , but eventually I had to acknowledge that I was seriously ill and accept that at least for the time being, my life would have to be different than it had been because I was unable to do most of the things I used to do. The simple things like going for a walk, doing housework, working my business. None of it was possible. I was continually exhausted. More than exhausted. I was in a very dark place in my life. This is when I began my real healing journey at another level!
There are four stages in the self-healing process, and in my desperation I had found two of them—acknowledgment and acceptance.
When teaching Reiki over the previous few years I had paid lip service to the idea of the underlying causes of ill health, so I knew the theories, but when it came to being ill myself I forgot all about it— or probably more honestly, I hadn’t wanted to consider it. Now I began to examine this idea, to seek an awareness of why I had become ill. By meditating on the issue and seeking guidance from my Higher Self, I began to realize that I had been abusing my body—and for that matter, my mind, emotional self and spirit— by pushing it beyond its limits of endurance. On both a physical, emotional and spiritual level, the many years of stress and not taking care of me and what I had subjected myself to had finally caught up with me, and I needed to radically alter my way of life— permanently.
There are many stages of healing. The spiritual, emotional and most of the mental I had covered. The physical. Not in the least. I did an off again-on again yoga practise, occasionally went for a walk, but that was about it.
So I took action— the final stage in the self-healing process. I took some simple, practical steps, like changing to a healthier diet and eliminating some foods known to aggravate Lupus inflammation and cutting out ALL gluten in my diets. I changed my attitude to many things, found a team of healing professionals that could support me in a physical way.
By May of 2014 I was feeling like a whole person once again— or at least, whole enough to get some walking and yoga in, meditation and self-healing with Reiki on a daily basis. I started to cook for myself once again which nourished my root chakra, and had some energy to actually do things I wanted.
Reiki had finally got through the layers of resistance, and brought to the surface the understanding of the phrase “what you resist, persists.” All the effort I had put into resisting my illness had been wasted!
All I had really needed to do was to “let go, and let flow.” I gave up trying to live my “old” life, and stopped chafing at the bit and feeling resentful because I could no longer rush around “doing” things; instead I got on with my “new” life— just being me. I don’t mean being me in one of the many roles I used to rush around playing— mother, daughter, teacher, business owner, healer, Reiki Master— because they were all masks.
Now, I am giving up the roles other people wanted me to play, and am just concentrating on myself. I am eating healthy, still sleeping a lot, giving myself lots of Reiki, doing my sound healing with my beautiful crystal bowls and drum, meditating regularly, receiving guidance from my Higher Self, reading numerous books to learn more about myself, my favorite metaphysical subjects, nutrition, relaxing and generally enjoying my more peaceful lifestyle--
My health has continued to improve: I am not yet 100 percent healthy, although I have periods when I’m almost there. I still have days that as soon as I open my eyes, I KNOW it’s going to have to be a quiet day, regardless what I have planned, or would like to do. I’ve learned if I push through, as I would have in the past, I would end up in bed for at least a week, at the least a couple of daytime naps.
As I said, I’m still on a healing journey.
But now my attitude is that that’s OK. There are still lessons to be learned, and sometimes I get a Lupus flare-up of , but it is always because there is something I’m not paying attention to, like not eating properly, getting enough sleep or because there are some deeper layers of negativity or blockage that need to be released. As soon as I seek an awareness and understanding of the problem, and take action to put it right, the symptoms die down and I’m fine again. As an analogy, it’s rather like a smoke alarm that goes off to keep you safe by warning you that there’s a fire; similarly, my body goes off (or flares up, always in my chest) to warn me that I’m going off track in some way. It’s my body’s personal safety feature .
Each of us has at least one such safety feature—one area of our body that “acts up” regularly, such as a tendency to frequent headaches, indigestion , throat infections, skin problems or a bad back.
If you take your own Reiki journey, one of the consequences of increased spiritual development is an increased ability to be aware of such messages from your body, and drawing more and more Reiki into yourself over a period of time will gradually enable you to heal not only the physical symptoms, but also the mental, emotional and spiritual causes of those symptoms.
My life now is totally different than it once was, and Reiki has brought me all those things I have already suggested it could: wholeness and harmony, personal peace and a sense of purpose, emotional balance and feelings of joy, bliss and fulfillment. I cannot imagine life without it.
Teaching Reiki has brought me so much pleasure and satisfaction, and I just love having the chance to play a part in the way that Reiki changes people. I really enjoy the amazement on their faces as they feel Reiki flowing through them for the first time. I know that a major part of my life purpose is to continue teaching and Reiki, and I am excited about the future possibilities.
What I hope I have done by my story with you is to provide you with some unique methods of using Reiki more creatively for your own healing, and for personal or spiritual development. The emphasis here is on enjoying Reiki and having fun using it to help yourself to live a healthier and more balanced life, while at the same time treating it with the respect it deserves as one of the world’s greatest gifts— a healing system for anyone and everyone that is easy to learn and easy to use….
I continue with my healing journey physically. I am now, as of January 2015 on a gut-healing adventure. I am learning how to pay attention to my body’s signals. I am including healthy options, fermented foods and homemade chicken broths into the mix.
I’ll be back with more soon! January 17th, 2015.