I am a Reiki Master / Teacher, Animal communicator, dog behaviour specialist and Artist and I am passionate about all of them! Before I began practising Reiki I trained as a dog behaviour expert in the early 1990’s and ran my own successful practice for over 20 years. I use Reiki to help people and animals with a specialism in Canine Reiki and work creating art from my studio in Lincolnshire.
How I discovered Reiki Healing
When I was 13 I sustained a life changing, spinal injury that continues to affect me. Out of desperation my mother took me to a healer and the only thing I remember about the time I was with him was when he told me “You are a healer”. This frightened me, excited me and overwhelmed me. Over the following years I thought of his words on and off, but got on with my life raising children and running my dog behaviour practice.
In 2000 I needed to add a new dimension to my working life and applied for a job as a veterinary assistant, I got the job and was also tasked as being an ‘in house’ dog behaviour advisor – perfect!
I had been working at the practice for around 6 months when my boss found a little black cat on his way to work that had been badly run over. None of us thought it would pull through, it had a terrible head trauma and was fitting every 5-10 minutes. He wired its jaw, medicated it and put it on a drip, but no improvements came, it could not even urinate for itself. All this happened early in the week and the little black cat clung to life by the thinnest of threads until the weekend. Then there was a problem, suddenly no qualified on call staff were available so I volunteered to do what I could with the strictest of instructions and armed with mobile phone numbers.
The cat continued to have fits right through the Saturday and my heart bled for it. I caressed it in some futile attempt to stop the fitting; then the healer’s voice from my childhood came into my head “You are a healer”.
I must now explain that I am a very down to earth person, I have always had a faith of sorts, but do not subscribe to all the paraphernalia that is involved with organised religion – this is my personal opinion, it isn’t right for me, but perfect for some.
I placed my hands on the cat and in a very impolite way addressed GOD as I knew him: “Ok God if I can heal then bring it on, you have to help me help this poor cat! Come on then do it!” I left my hands on the cat for a while and didn’t feel a thing, disappointed, but not surprised I resigned myself to the fact that it was all ‘mumbo jumbo’. Then something strange happened I went to remove my hands, they wouldn’t move it was like 2 extra strong magnets were holding them in place and a feeling of total peace overwhelmed me. I don’t know how long I stayed like this, but eventually the magnetic feeling wore off and I removed my hands; the cat slept. I had begun my awakening!
I continued to monitor the cat through the night and the following day – to my knowledge she had no more fits and by Monday she was able to pee by herself, look around and interact with us. No one could quite believe it, least of all me!
I then decided to look into learning more about healing and through my research came across Reiki which I had never heard of, however, it sounded very interesting so I found a teacher and began my Reiki journey which I continue to travel now.
As I finish telling you how it all began let me tell you that the last 20+ years has been a roller coaster, this energy never fails to blow my mind! But the first session I had with my Reiki teacher I was deeply sceptical about. I am the sort of person who needs to experience something rather than take someone else’s word for it! She explained what was going to happen, I thought it sounded a bit weird, then I sat in a chair with my eyes closed whilst she went through my Reiki Level 1 attunement. As I walked out of the door I remember feeling highly dubious about the whole process. Little did I know! I felt poorly for 2 weeks after my first attunement as the energy got to work on me, clearing my energetic ‘junk’, and I got to know the energy, this is not an uncommon phenomenon, what it did do was prove to me that there was something in this and it was definitely worth sticking with and investigating. And so with the permission of my boss I set to work on some of the patients at the Veterinary clinic. As I said before the results were mind blowing!
How Art Was my Therapy
I was always a quiet, creative child, but my interest in art really began to grow at the age of 13 after the previously mentioned horse riding accident left me bedridden for over a year. Using an old chalk board as an easel that was positioned over me as I lay flat I began to fill my days drawing. It was my uncle who brought me my first set of oil paints and from that moment on I was hooked on the medium. The smell, the colour, the malleability had me – I was in love!
I now have paintings in many countries across the world including Europe and Australia. Winning the UK entry in the Gourney en Bray art competition in 2015 and occasionally exhibiting work in and around East Sussex.
Art can stir something deep within a person’s soul; both the making of it and the interacting with it as an observer. It is my belief that art is for everyone from any walk of life it is a case of finding the genre that touches unlocks a response from the street art of Banksy, to the Impressionists and my personal favourite Van Gogh to the masters such as Michelangelo.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” Thomas Merton
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