There’s one question that crops up fairly frequently: does Reiki work? And the answer is – if you want it to!

Reiki is like any other form of treatment – both orthodox and complementary – a lot depends on the mindset of the client. An open-minded, positive attitude is more likely to improve a person’s recovery and healing process than if they enter into treatment believing it’s not going to work.

Of course, with orthodox medicine, billions of pounds are spent by the Big Pharma companies. Years of blind testing goes into trialling a new drug – and rightly so. The majority of prescribed medications are a blend of toxins engineered to destroy the particular bacterial infection or virus that’s causing the illness. The need to thoroughly research the effects of the drugs and document the outcomes is vital. No one wants a repeat of the Thalidomide tragedy that happened in 1950s. Thalidomide is still an effective drug when used in the treatment of Multiple Myeloma but, when it was given as a mild sedative to pregnant women who were suffering with morning sickness, it caused appalling deformities in their unborn children. Medicines need to be tested – and thoroughly.

But, with Reiki – and most complementary therapies – there are no toxins going into the body; no recommended daily dosage; nothing that can possibly harm the organs. It’s simply energy. So it’s not necessary to carry out testing with the same degree of scrutiny as it is with conventional medicines. But that also means that there isn’t the same level of documented proof that a treatment has worked. The results of treatments are largely anecdotal.

Some years ago I treated a county netball player. I’ll call her Vicki. Vicki contacted me after a nasty accident on court where she’d sprained her ankle. The hospital had strapped up her foot, given her crutches and told her she would be on them for 6 – 8 weeks because of the extent of the tissue damage. She came to me for five days straight and by the end of the week she was walking without crutches. When she went back to the hospital for a check up, the doctor couldn’t believe it. Vicki told him that she’d been having Reiki and he sneered saying, `Yeah, right!’ The proof was in front of his eyes but he refused to believe it, discounting Vicki’s recovery as some sort of fluke.

That was about 10 years ago but, sadly, there are still many people who don’t believe in Reiki. And if they don’t believe in it, how can they possibly absorb it? By shutting down, they’re blocking off their own energy channels so that the healing Reiki energy doesn’t flow into them. And their disbelief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: they didn’t believe it would work – and it didn’t! Hence my response to the question at the beginning: Reiki works if you want it to.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not one of those practitioners who slags off all conventional medicine. Drugs: bad – alternatives: good! Absolutely not. We live in the C21st and medical advances have saved millions of lives. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Reiki has been around far longer than antibiotics, statins, beta blockers or chemotherapy. It’s not an alternative treatment to orthodox drugs but it does complement conventional medication. It is perfectly possible for the two to work hand in hand for the patient’s good.

Nowadays some hospitals have even introduced Reiki for cancer patients and those undergoing major surgery. And the complementary treatments are valued by both the patients and doctors. Yay!

Isn’t it about time we stopped dismissing the ancient arts and began working in harmony; with each other, within ourselves and with the Universe?

When we work in harmony – that’s when the real magic begins.

Today is Mothering Sunday – now more commonly known by the American term, Mothers’ Day. The fourth Sunday in Lent when, from as early as C16th, young servants were allowed home to visit their mothers and their `mother church’ where they’d been baptised. They would traditionally pick flowers along the way to give to their mums – or to lay at the alter of the church. Today it’s become a more secular celebration of mums by their children but flowers are still big on the agenda. Happy Mother’s Day!

But today I’d like to think about those women who, for myriad reasons, aren’t mothers. When today, a day to celebrate motherhood, must feel like rubbing salt into the wound. For many it’s a personal choice not to have kids but for others, it isn’t: their bodies (or their partners’ bodies) simply wouldn’t comply with that basic human instinct to recreate. This is not something that has affected me personally, but I know many women for whom the lack of children feels like a gaping void in their lives. I honestly don’t know how I would have been had I not been able to have kids – I think I would have been devastated. In fact, I can’t imagine a life without my children. I love them to the moon and back.

But life has given me other tragedies to cope with. I lost both my parents, my only brother and my best friend from childhood, all within a few years of each other and all at a relatively young age. At times it seemed as though my grief was bottomless. However, even in this darkest of places I had choices. I couldn’t bring back my family and friend but I could choose how I responded to these losses. I could rail at God/Life/the Universe because my roots had been severed and I felt alone in the world or I could choose to honour their memories and be grateful for everything they’d taught me while they’d been in my life. Eventually, I chose the latter. Although it took me a while to get there!

How many times do you hear people say, `I had no choice.’? What I’d like to suggest is that there is always a choice. We can choose how to be with what Life has given us. Even if there is a gun to our heads, we can still choose how to be, whether to die with dignity or whether to negotiate or whether to give in. We can choose to be scared and resentful or we can choose to forgive the person holding the Smith and Weston to our temple. We can choose to look for the silver lining rather than the rain cloud.

If we choose a career over children: it’s our choice. If we choose to stay with someone who’s not appropriate as the father of our children: it’s our choice. Holding on to resentment is a choice. Being angry is a choice. Embracing whatever Life throws at us is a choice. Being kind to others – and ourselves – is a choice. Being unable to have kids isn’t a choice, but how we deal with it is. Expressing our sadness rather than holding it inside and pretending is a choice.

Anyone who has read books by the Holocaust survivors Viktor Frankl, Primo Levi or Edith Eger will understand that even in the midst of the most appalling evil that was beyond most people’s imagining, there was choice: a choice of attitude. They couldn’t change the horrors around them but they could choose how they responded to them and their captors. Life is about choices.

But make your choices wisely – because every choice has a consequence and our lives are mapped out according to our choices and their results.

So, to mothers and non-mothers alike I say simply: have a happy day. Or not – it’s our choice!

As I sat by the lake this morning, a rat scuttled past me. Rats abound by the lake, partly because of all the food humans discard when they sit there for their snacks and lunches. It always astounds me that people can carry a picnic over there but they can’t carry the remnants home again – or even a few hundred metres to the bins in the car park.

I don’t mind rats. I’m not saying I’d welcome them into my kitchen but they have their place in nature. For one thing, rats are the biggest consumer of pigeons’ eggs. But the people who leave their rubbish for the rats to eat, crows to peck and other people to clear up? Now those I really resent.

Few people like to admit that they hold resentment. It’s not one of the more attractive traits: to be resentful. Resentment is, after all, a form of hatred – and no one likes to be a h8r. In the words of the great Jedi Master, Yoda: hate leads to suffering! What most people don’t realise, however, is that it’s ourselves who suffer when we resent others. There’s a wonderful saying, falsely attributed to Buddah but most likely from one of the 12 step programmes:

Holding on to resentment is like drinking rat poison and expecting the rat to die.

Resentment is subtle. It’s not red hot anger. It’s more like a cooly festering cancer in our soul – and it seeps out in all sorts of ways: that bitchy little remark or snide comment; raising our eyes to the skies when someone talks; talking over someone; rubbishing their opinion. Oh, the ways it seeps out of every pore are myriad.

And we can always justify it. S/he started it; they did this or that or the other to me/my family/friend; they deserve it; after everything I did and look how they treated me…. Can’t you just smell the burning martyr?

Of course, I don’t know the people who leave their polystyrene burger boxes for the birds to eat, or their plastic bags to float off into the water to suffocate the waterfowl – but I still resent them. And it affects me internally. I can feel myself go tense when I see the rubbish strewn across the water or the banks; I can almost taste how much I despise them.

And, of course, resentment isn’t reserved for strangers who do things we don’t like. The most common recipients of our resentment are those we love: partners, ex-partners (can’t you just hear the resentment as you say the term `ex’?), parents, neighbours, friends and even our children. Those little niggles – the toothpaste squeezed from the top, underwear NOT put in the laundry basket, parents telling us to wrap up warmly even though we’re adults and on and on….

And how we let them know about it, we sigh, we roll our eyes, we snap, we pointedly pick up the underwear and make a big show of putting it where it should be. Because, of course, we know how everything should be and everyone should behave! Again, listen to the self-righteousness hidden beneath the words. Eugh! Yucky!

And that’s the rat poison!

The judgements; the moral superiority; the poor-me-victim; the burning martyr; the bitchiness; colluding with others as to how dreadful X, Y or Z is and, for me one of the most insidious, the blaming of others for our actions or inaction.

I can almost guarantee 100% that my resentment of the litter droppers isn’t hurting them one iota – but it does disturb my peace, it affects my meditation and it impacts on my own self respect – because I don’t like people who hate/resent others. I judge them to be morally less than I am – so what does that say about me when I am the one resenting? Ouch!

Let go of your resentment as soon as you can. For your own sake. Resentment is a normal emotion – we’re human – but when I realise the toll it’s taking on my health, my self esteem, my spirituality and my relationships, I don’t want to hang on to it.

So, in the words of Queen Elsa in Frozen; Let it Go! And the sooner the better – for your own sake.

For one day only – my favourite poem for World Poetry Day…

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

I can never hear this poem without a tear welling in my eye. It epitomises everything I think and feel about the lake – my lake if I can say that without sounding too possessive. If I could build a small cabin there and grow beans and live in the bee loud glade, I like to think I’d be as happy as a sandgirl. Until then, I’ll continue to go there in the mornings to find my peace come dropping slowly.

Happy poetry day!

…is happiness – according to the late Ken Dodd. And today is the UN International Day of Happiness. It’s also the Vernal Equinox, the day when the hours of daylight are equal to the hours of darkness. The end of winter: first day of spring. A day of balance and renewed energy.

It’s not unusual for there to be strong winds at the time of the equinox but I think Mother Nature must have blown herself out with all the gales of late because today it was very calm by the lake. I could sit and hear birdsong from all directions. Although I can recognise a fair few birds, I’m no expert on identifying their different sounds. I could hear the geese, of course, moorhens, coots, ducks and parakeets; a variety of song birds in the treetops and the tap tap tap of a woodpecker nearby. It was like having Nature’s orchestra playing for me as I sat and meditated. Bliss!

And I was thinking about bliss – another word for happiness – and wondering why we had to have a day that’s dedicated to happiness around the globe. It was the brain child of Jayme Illien. To spread happiness all round the world on the spring equinox each year. A laudable idea but it can also create a lot of pressure for those people who might not be feeling happy. They might have just lost a loved one, or been made redundant, or had their house repossessed. Expecting everyone to be happy on a specific day of the year is a tall ask.

I remember bumping into a friend some years ago. I told her that my husband – then aged 46 – had just been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer and given 2 – 5 years to live. I was very close to tears as I stood in our local high street and blurted out my sadness. She listened, nodded then said, `But you’re happy aren’t you?’

No – I wasn’t happy. I was sad, frightened, angry that this had happened and anxious beyond words that I was about to be widowed. Happiness didn’t even feature on the top 100 emotions I was experiencing at that moment.

And how do we define happiness anyway? Does it have to be roll-on-the-floor, split-your-sides, tears-rolling-down-your-face laughter? Or will contentment suffice? That calmness that infiltrates every cell of our being when we are at peace with life as I was this morning with my ornithological choir. I would suggest that it’s whatever we want it to be – a good book, a smile from a loved one, a faithful pet staring up at us adoringly, open water swimming, scoring a goal, coffee with friends – anything at all. As long as it’s genuine. I’m not big on pretending.

What I do know is that, however we define it, happiness is fleeting. Anyone who expects to be happy day in: day out, is deluding themselves. Happiness is often referred to as: a butterfly, which when pursued, seems always just beyond our grasp, but if we sit down quietly may alight upon us. But don’t expect it to stay. The only butterfly that stays in one spot is a dead one.

It’s foolish to go chasing happiness or trying to force it where it’s not appropriate: allow it to enter your lives for however fleeting a moment. Enjoy it while you can because we are all human. Our moods can and will change on a sixpence – it’s part of being alive. Tonight is the final super full moon of 2019 so don’t be surprised if you and everyone else is out there howling at it on International Happiness Day!

And, if you’re wondering about my husband’s diagnosis – that was almost 9 years ago and today he’s defied all the odds and is in total remission.

So on this very auspicious day: Vernal Equinox, super full moon, and International Happiness Day, I say to everyone: be happy – but be real!