What 'Returning to Wholeness' Actually Means to Me
October 2026 · 4 min read · By Vanessa Chugani
People in this line of work say "returning to wholeness" so often that the phrase has stopped meaning anything. It turns up on flyers next to a sunset and a singing bowl, standing in for whatever the writer could not be bothered to say plainly. I stopped using the phrase once I noticed I could no longer say what it described. I want to tell you what I mean by it now that the words are mine, because it is smaller than it sounds, and I think smaller is more honest.
A phrase that outgrew itself
Spend a week in any wellness space in Bali and you will hear it inside the first few days. A juice cleanse returns you to wholeness. So does a sound bath, apparently, in forty minutes flat. The phrase has turned into a kind of currency that gets handed around without anyone checking what it buys. I stopped using it that way once I noticed I could no longer say what it described. Wholeness as opposed to what, exactly? Nobody selling the phrase stops to ask what the person in front of them actually needs, because the phrase does that work for them, badly. A woman who comes to see me is not broken. She is usually tired, carrying more than she has had anywhere to put down.
What I actually mean by it
When the phrase is mine rather than borrowed, it means something close to this. Noticing your own breath without trying to improve it. Being spoken to gently, by someone who is not rushing you towards anything. Sitting still for an hour with nowhere else you are meant to be. None of that is mystical. It is closer to what happens on a long flight when the person beside you finally stops talking, and twenty minutes later you notice your shoulders have come down from somewhere near your ears. People often arrive saying they cannot remember the last time they sat still on purpose, awake, with nothing to perform and no one waiting on an answer. That is most of what I am offering. It is not a destination you arrive at once and keep. Some weeks it takes longer than an hour to feel it, and that is fine too. The hour itself just gives it somewhere quiet to happen.
Why I will not claim more than that
I could make this sound larger. I could tell you Reiki realigns an energy field, or clears something ancient that has been sitting blocked inside you, and some people would find that more satisfying than breath and stillness. I will not, because it is not true, and I would rather you trust the small true thing than the large invented one. Reiki here is rest and support. It is not a treatment for any medical condition, it does not diagnose anything, and it is not a substitute for seeing a doctor when that is what is needed. What it does do, reliably, is give a nervous system that has been running hot for weeks somewhere to set its weight down for an hour. People tend to come when sleep has gone missing, or grief has not found anywhere to sit, or the body simply will not settle at night no matter what else they have tried. Wholeness, if the word still has to mean something, is just what it feels like when that weight is briefly, properly put down.
What this actually looks like
If you come for a session, this is the whole of it: a quiet room, an hour, one person paying steady attention to you with no agenda beyond that. You do not need to arrive with a story ready. If you train with me, from Level 1 through to Master Teacher, I am handing over a craft, not a transformation. This training tends to speak to women at a turning point: after a career, after children, after a loss, wanting a steady craft rather than another experience to have. You learn to offer other people this same ordinary hour, steadily, on the days they need it and the days they are unsure why they booked it at all. I would rather you start with accurate expectations than romantic ones, because the accurate version is the one that still holds up on an ordinary day, when someone is not having a mystical experience either, tired and glad of an hour where nothing was asked of them.
That is the whole of what I mean by the phrase these days. Not a before and after. An hour, a breath, someone speaking gently, and somewhere to finally set the weight down.