Writing & wisdom
The Journal
What a session involves, what the training is like, and where this practice actually comes from.
Level 2 is where Reiki training turns mysterious: symbols, an oath, a sense of stepping into something bigger. Here is what the symbols do, where the secrecy came from, and why mine come with none of it.
August 2026 · 3 min read
A look at why most of my students and clients arrive between forty five and fifty five, what a session actually offers, and why so many of them end up training instead.
August 2026 · 4 min read
I cap Reiki training at six people. A single teacher cannot watch every face during an attunement in a room of twenty, and watching is most of the job.
August 2026 · 4 min read
The five Reiki principles look simple on a card. After twenty years of practice, I still miss most of them by lunchtime, and that turns out to be closer to the point than getting them right.
August 2026 · 4 min read
Most students who train with me arrive doubtful, arms crossed, unconvinced. I've come to think that's the best possible way to start, and here's what I tell them before we begin.
August 2026 · 3 min read
What burnout actually looks like on my table, why doing nothing feels so uncomfortable at first, and why I think one honest hour of rest matters more than people expect.
August 2026 · 4 min read
Vanessa on why fifty is a good age to start Reiki training, not a late one, and what changes when a student already knows what keeping a commitment costs.
August 2026 · 4 min read
What Reiki actually is turns out to matter more once you know what it is not: not a cure, not a secret science, not an ancient tradition, and not something you need to believe in first.
August 2026 · 3 min read
My Reiki lineage is four names long: Usui, Hayashi, Takata, and the two teachers who trained me as a Master Teacher in 2019. Short, checkable, and I have not added a thing to it.
August 2026 · 4 min read
I don't quote statistics about Reiki because most of the ones I've seen have no source behind them. I'd rather tell you what people actually report, plainly, than dress a feeling up as a fact.
August 2026 · 4 min read
Reiki does not cure illness, and claiming it does is a story I have decided not to tell. Here is what I actually offer someone who arrives hoping for a miracle, and why it still matters.
August 2026 · 4 min read
I don't tell dying people or their families that Reiki gives them control over how death unfolds. What I offer instead is calm presence, and I think families deserve that honesty at the hardest possible moment.
August 2026 · 4 min read
My rooms and photos skew female, but men ask about Reiki too. Here is what I tell them, and what actually shifts for the ones who show up: less about gender, more about curiosity.
August 2026 · 4 min read
Bali's street dogs have a habit of wandering into my treatment room and falling asleep. It says nothing about Reiki and quite a lot about what a still room does to a restless creature.
August 2026 · 4 min read
Most of my Level 2 and Master students never practise again, and that is not a failure. Here is what actually separates the ones who build a practice from the ones whose manual quietly closes.
August 2026 · 4 min read
Students sometimes ask to repeat an attunement, hoping it adds something new. I explain why I don't offer that, and what I recommend instead when someone wants to go deeper.
August 2026 · 3 min read
What a Tuesday actually looks like at Playground Soul, a plain room, a school run either side, and sessions that fit into an ordinary week rather than escape one.
August 2026 · 3 min read
In the last ten minutes of a session, the overthinking in the room slows down in a way I can watch happen: the breath drops, the fidgeting stops, the loop runs out of lines.
August 2026 · 3 min read
I did not become a teacher because I had healing figured out. I teach the same permission to stop that took me thirteen years of training to find for myself.
August 2026 · 4 min read
Visitors arrive carrying something different from local clients: jet lag, a compressed trip, and whatever they'd been outrunning at home before the itinerary slowed down enough to catch up with them.
August 2026 · 4 min read
The post I hear about most says it's safe to stop. I learned that lesson properly after I had my baby, when stopping felt like the one thing I couldn't afford to do.
September 2026 · 3 min read
I do not generate what happens in a session, and I never have. This is what it means to be a channel rather than a healer, and why it changes what I actually do with my hands.
September 2026 · 4 min read
What a Reiki session actually gives you is permission to stop moving for an hour. That pause, not a hidden mechanism, is where the reported changes people describe afterwards seem to come from.
September 2026 · 4 min read
Years of treating and teaching people mid move, mid divorce and mid decision in Canggu taught me how to hold a room for someone whose story I will never hear in full.
September 2026 · 4 min read
I used to say I balance your energy because it sounded finished. Here's why I stopped, and what I tell people instead about what actually happens in a session.
September 2026 · 4 min read
Grieving clients don't need me to fix anything. What I notice, session after session, is how much effort it takes just to keep holding themselves together, and how the hour changes when they finally don't have to.
September 2026 · 4 min read
What actually happens on the day, what people commonly feel, why feeling nothing is normal, and an honest answer about attunements given online.
August 2026 · 4 min read
An honest look at prenatal Reiki: what a session involves, how it is adapted through the trimesters, what it does not do, and what to ask your midwife.
August 2026 · 3 min read
How a distance session actually runs, what people report, what it costs, and why I won't tell you the mechanism.
August 2026 · 3 min read
Four very different things get filed under healing in Bali. What each one is, what each is good for, and how to choose without wasting your money.
August 2026 · 3 min read
The seven rainbow chakras are not ancient, and they were not part of Reiki until the 1980s. The real history, and why I still teach them.
August 2026 · 3 min read
How the wellness scene here actually works, what the different areas are like, what things cost, and how to avoid wasting your time.
August 2026 · 4 min read
Not a diagnostic checklist. Just the seven things people most often say when they write to me, and what a session does about each.
August 2026 · 3 min read
One simple breathing practice, written out properly, with honest expectations about what it will and will not do.
August 2026 · 2 min read
Crystals are everywhere in Western Reiki and appear nowhere in the original practice. What that means, and how to think about them honestly.
August 2026 · 3 min read