The Reiki Dojo

As Reiki has its origins partly in Zen Buddhism, I often read books about Zen philosophy to learn more about Reiki philosophy. One of the books, on living a simple, happy life I read advised doing weeding after rain. If you are a gardener you will recognise the wisdom of this counsel: weeds come up much more easily, with more of the roots, when the earth is damp. Earlier this summer the ground was so dry it made weeding very difficult, but at least the lack of rain meant they didn’t grow quickly, but now we’ve had a lot of rain!

Recently I had what might be called a rainy day in my grieving process. There were lots of tears and I felt too exhausted to do much. Grief is exhausting because it is an embodies process, I’ve been learning. Like a day of rain it passed, but the wisdom of the advice to weed after rain was useful: I was able to accept that while it was raining (tears falling) there was nothing much I could (or should) do. Having had a pattern most of my life of pushing onward regardless, which did not lead to good health, I decided to let go and do less (or even nothing!) until the rain stopped. What I also know from experience is that on days like that I need is lots of self-compassion and to do something self-caring. This is often a spiritual practice of some kind. I am fortunate that for my spiritual practice (Reiki) all I have to do is lie down and rest my hands somewhere on my body, so it’s quite easy on days when I feel exhausted, compared to sitting meditation for example. Indeed, that’s what I did: I lay down in the afternoon and gave myself a long Reiki treat.

It helped to lift the dark clouds and I slept better that night, which always makes me feel better about life! My mental exhaustion was eased and the next day I was able to do more weeding – both literal weeding in the garden and mental weeding, exploring and changing the negative thought patterns that had caused the low mood. There was great satisfaction in pulling dandelions up with their entire roots from the soft damp earth. Similarly digging out the unconscious beliefs that caused my negative thoughts, enabling me to challenge and transform them by bringing them into the light of consciousness, bringing feelings of contentment and peace. That day I self-treated in the morning, which helped begin this process. 

I know that trying to do this in the exhausted, overwhelmed and tearful state of the day before would only have caused it to continue into the next day. So, weeding after the rain was very good advice for me as a Reiki practitioner. I am grateful to have learned, with the help of Reiki, that sometimes it’s good to do nothing, that with self-compassion the rain will pass and that the next day will be a better day for weeding.