How Reiki Saved My Life: part I the realization that spirituality is not total bullshit

Well, well, well. Get ready, blog readers, because this one is super vulnerable.

Perhaps one day I’ll share this story in video format or somewhere a little more public, but for now, it’s just between you and me. Not many people actually read these blogs, so this feels like a safe space to finally get it off my chest.

You read the title right. Reiki saved my life.

I found Reiki during a time when I was struggling. I had people around me whom I was desperately trying to please, and they took advantage of that. The story of a people pleaser’s life, am I right?

Anywho, I did not believe in energy or any of that “woo-woo” stuff whatsoever. I believe this was sometime in 2023, or maybe 2024. I was working toward my craniosacral therapy certification and beginning to get a taste of the possibility that there might be something bigger than all of us.

I was also looking into religion and spirituality, searching for some kind of guiding light in my life.

I have always been the type of person who follows what I desire and assumes the outcome will work itself out. That can be a wonderful thing, until you hit a wall.

At the time, my business was growing, I was working full-time, and I had a horse who needed very intense medical management. He is fine now, so don’t worry. There is no tragic Perry story coming.

My sweet horse Perry, THE Spotted Horse, was regularly receiving craniosacral therapy and massage because he had begun suffering from asthma. CST is basically a blend of physical and energetic bodywork, which i didn’t totally know at the time…

Around that time, I heard about spirit guides….

*I loved Twilight as a kid and now love it somewhat ironically as an adult. I’m a #Rattie, if you know, you know. There was always something appealing about that feeling of being special, having a connection to something bigger, and being different without it feeling like the bad kind of different.

I mean, looking back, Twilight is definitely a little odd, but you get what I mean.

Maybe, for other people, it is like growing up riding horses while watching Spirit and feeling as though that special connection meant you had somehow been chosen. My childhood horses did not completely overlap with my true horse obsession, which really took off in adulthood, so some of that childhood magic had faded for me.*

But then I learned about spirit guides.

I decided to try a guided meditation that was supposed to help you meet yours. During the meditation, my spirit guide appeared as a tall, slender Native American man. I went into it with absolutely no expectations, so I still have no idea where that image came from. Although, admittedly, it could have been the Twilight fan in me.

During the meditation, your spirit guide was supposed to hand you a box. Inside the box would be something extremely important for you to know at that moment.

Inside my box was a yellow eyeball.

I thought it was incredibly weird, but I didn’t think much of it at first. Then I looked up what it might mean, which I now know you should not necessarily do after these kinds of experiences. Everything I found seemed bad. It talked about death, endings, and starting over.

That terrified me.

So, naturally, I shoved the entire experience into the back of my mind and tried not to think about it.

Later that evening, I went to the farm to work on Perry. Afterward, I helped the farm owner feed her horses.

At the time, she had recently gotten a rescue horse back after trying to place her in another home. The people who took her were extremely inexperienced and, in my opinion, did not have enough experience to know serious from not serious injuries. They did not provide her with a safe or caring home.

She was a super-cool Standardbred, but the entire situation had been a terrible series of events.

For the purpose of this story, I am going to call her Gracie.

When Gracie returned to the farm, she had a severe eye injury. The veterinarian had to sew her eyelid shut and place a tube through her upper eyelid so medication could be administered directly to the eye throughout the day.

Her eye was at the point where it might be saved, or it might eventually need to be removed. Of course, everyone wanted to give her every possible chance to keep it.

That evening, she was tied to a tree to eat her dinner. It is important for me to say that I do not agree with hard-tying horses to trees for feeding. She was not my horse, though, and it was not my place to change the setup. Even if I had tried, I could not have altered the rope safely. It was tied without a quick-release knot, and I simply did as told. (Hindsight is 20/20, they say… needless to say I never ever hard tie a horse after this….even if it’s not my place to say so, I will say something now.)

So, I tied Gracie to her usual spot and walked away. The other horses had their own places to eat. Some were tied, some ate loose, and others were taken out separately.

As it became dark, we suddenly heard an incredibly loud noise.

Somehow, Gracie had gotten herself wrapped around the lead rope. Around her neck. She panicked and pulled back. The farm owner had a knife on her, jumped up, and cut the rope.

The entire thing lasted less than ten seconds.

At first, Gracie was standing and appeared to be fine. Then she began losing control of her legs.

At that moment, despite how anxious and terrified I was, a feeling of warmth and calm rushed over me.

I knew she had broken her neck.

She eventually lay down peacefully, but her breathing became labored. We called the veterinarian to come euthanize her. The farm owner was prepared to shoot her if necessary, but the vet was only about twenty minutes away. She felt waiting for him would be less traumatic for herself and everyone else who was there.

That was her decision, and I fully respect it.

Before the veterinarian arrived, Gracie’s breathing began to slow.

She passed away peacefully while lying on the ground.

Of course, we will never truly know whether she was in pain. I can only hope the injury severed the nerves in a way that prevented her from feeling what had happened.

We called the veterinarian and told him she had passed. He said, “I hate to ask this of you, but would you please cut open her sewn-shut eyelid and see how the eye was healing? I’m very curious.”

The farm owner said, “I’m not doing that.”

Then she handed me the knife.

She lifted Gracie’s head while I opened her eyelid with the veterinarian still on the phone.

Yet again, I did as I was told.

When her eye opened, I froze.

It was the exact yellow eye I had seen inside the box during my meditation.

In that moment, I knew.

I knew there was something more to this world than what I could physically see or logically explain. I knew the warmth and calm I had felt while Gracie was passing had meant something. I knew that strange vision had not been meaningless. I knew in my soul this was always going to happen this way.

And I knew that maybe all of this “crazy woo-woo shit” was real after all.

That night did not immediately answer every question I had. It did not suddenly make me spiritual, intuitive, or confident in what I was experiencing.

But it cracked something open inside me. And one of those things terrified me.

It was the beginning of the path that eventually led me to Reiki.

And Reiki would go on to save my life. (part II coming soon)

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