I am a Traditional Teaching Master of the Usui System of Natural Healing - Reiki - practicing since April of 1985. I was initiated as the first Teaching Master in New York State in 1988, and at that time was one of approximately 500 Teaching Masters in the world. Reiki has certainly blossomed in the following years! Reiki is now taught and practiced in almost every country of the world.
My “lineage” is Mikao Usui, Chujiro Hayashi, Hawayo Takata, Ethel Lombardi and Phyllis Furumoto (my Master’s teachers), Linda Keiser Mardis (my teaching Master). Lineage means: who taught you, and who were your Master’s teachers? Most of us in the Western world are descendent of Hawayo Takata and the twenty-two Reiki Masters she taught. Hawayo Takata brought Reiki out of Japan and into Hawaii before World War II.
Since my initiation I have traveled almost all the way around the world teaching Reiki, including: New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Florida, Ohio, Canada, Texas, Alaska, Hawaii, Trinidad and Tobago, France, England, Scotland, Wales, and leper communities in Bali, Indonesia and Katmandu, Nepal. I was one of the first Masters to bring Reiki as an integrative therapy in the treatment of AIDS, working in The Living Room in Cleveland, Ohio, and The Globe Centre in London, England.
Again, the guiding thought was to bring a therapy that each person use to support their own healing, and also share that support with others.
Speaking engagements cover a lot more territory, as do continued training workshops. My Master always felt that as much time needed to be spent learning as teaching, so a portion of my work is always dedicated to attending special Master trainings and gatherings in different parts of the world. This practice has deeply enriched my life’s journey.
Along the way, I served three years on the Board of The Reiki Alliance - an elected position for a international collective of Reiki Masters dedicated to living and teaching the traditions of the Usui System.
Another wonderful part of this journey was being a founding member and ten years of service as an active Board member of The North East Reiki Gathering - an open gathering welcoming all paths of Reiki. NERG joined the faculty at the Omega Institute for a season.
I was also a founding member of energyWorks, a teaching organization dedicated to individual self-empowerment in the healing process - something to which I am still sincerely dedicated. Reiki is a very powerful tool for support and transformation of any addictive pattern.
I have always loved the practice of Reiki for that reason - the integrity of the system is that the person receiving or practicing Reiki does their own healing - nothing is done to them or for them - Reiki healing is self-actualized, and is self-empowerment at the deepest levels.
