"Healing yourself is connected with healing others." - Yoko Ono

I see everything is ready. My two new clients are on their way. I have yet to learn how to flip up my healing table by myself, but will get the hang of it soon, I'm sure. My good friend, a woman who I co-taught with in Harlem for the last two years is on her way over with her nearly grown daughter. Both have been through quite a lot for the last decade and I am honored to be the vessel to give them each a Reiki session. I have hot water ready for tea to sip as they wait their turn on the table.

I'm ready and excited to help them. This is how I feel now. Ready to help. Consider me a human Geiger counter, if you will, eager to find the areas requiring energy. I'm continuously bowled over by its unconditional love and ever streaming desire to balance and harmonize.

I hear a rap at the door and jump from the side of my bed where I've been meditating. Later, my friend will tell me, I am glowing as I open the door. The room is cleared and we all comment on the feel of the incredibly peaceful steadiness of the room, and so we begin.

My friend's daughter is first. She lies down and I scan her body, noting hot spots in her solar plexus, heart, arms, back, and feet. Ready, I begin from her Crown chakra. As I approach her back, I hear the words, "She's carrying the whole world on her back." I feel such compassion and ask Reiki to help her. My palms are heated and the work goes on and much later I cannot find another area and as I look up, I see it's been an hour. I close the healing session, and gently touch her shoulder. She opens her eyes, rises up on her knees and with outstretched arms on the table arches her body in a relaxing release, smiling and glowing herself.

"I know this," she says strongly, "I was a man in another lifetime," and we laugh as she tells us of the waves she felt, and how now she feels so much lighter. I tell her what I heard and she says "yes" feeling validated, I know now. She smiles, reaching for a banana, as her mother rises and approaches the healing table. The daughter rolls herself upon the couch.

My friend slides nervously onto the table. I know her so well. I know she is doing this out of a need and yet, also reluctant either to be better or just to give up, I feel breathing from her. I am excited to begin. I scan her body. Nothing. Nothing. Earlier, I have asked her if she is experiencing any problem areas and she says it is only her head, the back of her head where she has experienced two concussions, first as a child and most recently a year ago, another fracture. I'm alarmed to hear this and feel such a desire to help her. So I go right for her head.

At first it is only warm and I stay there, asking for Reiki to help her. I will stay as long as need be. I feel the tinglings begin, my palms meeting the imbalance of energy and going to work! Soon the heat is pointed, like a laser, and sometimes, I want to remove my hands because it is so hot! But I stay with my palms on the back of her head, cradling her, asking for her healing and help.

And then I shift for a time and move to her back, placing one palm on the middle of her frame. I close my eyes, feeling a lift and then gentleness. I stay there until I hear her breathing coming into a peaceful rhythm. So then I return to the back of her head, and only stop when I hear that her nose is sniffling, and so I ask if she needs a Kleenex? Laughing, she says, yes, and the session I know is over. She isn't crying, but rather is congested and being on her stomach for the entire hour has caused the nasal drip.

We sit and talk, the three of us. My friend tells me when I had my hand on her back, she felt a big guard dog roaring at me, only to become a whimper. I tell her I sensed how she was wanting it all to be over, and she laughed, saying, "Yes, I was thinking 'okay, time's up.'"  She says her head feels better and she rotates it, and she is softly glowing now, too. I want to help her. I ask them to please come again on a regular basis. I do not say this out of a desire for income. I say it from my heart. I want to help.

She asks me if they can come the next Sunday and I say of course! We agree on a modest fee. I would do it for free, but she won't have it. This is the same woman who helped me find employment when I was desperate and broken and I understand how important it is for the giver to receive compensation and the receiver to know their own value.

They put their coats on and we hug. "Give me one more hug," my friend says, and we embrace. As I close the door, my heart is free and sings these words for hours: "thank you."

Sheela Wolford is a Reiki I & II practitioner living in Brooklyn, NY. She can be reached at sheelawolfordreiki.com.