Reiki Training Day 1 — Diary Of A Reluctant Reiki Master

Andrea’s journey to becoming a Certified Reiki Master.

Photo by Anete Lusina

I completed Level 1 Reiki training on Saturday and it was a trip. My family uses the word “trip” as an adjective to mean, an experience or person who is wild, crazy or funny. Like, “Girl you a trip!” Similar to an acid trip where you don’t go anywhere physically but your mind or the person takes you on a journey where it feels like you really traveled. That’s how I mean the word, Level 1 Reiki was a trip.

I took the training virtually so I was in the comfort of my apartment. It was a small class, there were only 10 of us and interestingly, many of the students had ties to my old home state of Virginia which I really appreciated. The first couple hours we learned the history of Reiki.

I really like my teacher Mariia. She felt earnest, sweet and vulnerable but also youthful and bubbly. I didn’t want a hippy dippy in the cosmos teacher or someone too heavy and serious. She shared that she’d begun suffering with health issues in 2016 and that lead her to Reiki. 2016 is when my health issues began too. I appreciated the synchronicity.

Later in Day 1 was when “the trip” started. To become a practitioner of Reiki one is given an attunement. I’m no expert but in laymen’s terms, as I understand it, an attunement is when a Reiki Master passes on to another the ability to perform Reiki.

We sat quietly while she called our names individually then ceremoniously gave each of us our attunement. When she said my name and started my attunement, the trip happened. Earlier in the day she said we could call on Archangel Michael to protect and support us when performing Reiki.

I’d never heard of this Archangel but the name Michael is significant to me because my favorite Uncle is named Michael. He died on Valentines Day in 2017 from complications arising out of drug addiction. I’d always felt very close to him and his death was extremely significant to me.

I vowed to use his death as inspiration for me to go where I was unwilling to go. He’s the reason I got back into stand up comedy. With the support of my mentor, I’d been processing his impending death by writing jokes. It was hard because I was…