22 September 2026
When I first learned Reiki, more than thirteen years ago now, I think I probably thought about healing in quite a simple way. Something hurts, physically or emotionally, and healing is the thing that makes it hurt less.
I'm not sure I see it like that anymore.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, probably because I'm about to teach my first Reiki course, and I've realised that Reiki hasn't really taught me how to become a better version of myself. If anything, it's been the opposite. It's helped me remember who I was in the first place. And maybe healing isn't always about changing ourselves. Maybe sometimes it's about finding our way back to the bits of ourselves we've quietened, edited or put to one side because life needed us to be something else for a while.
Coming home to myself
I've spent years learning about people. I've trained as a counsellor, hypnotherapist and EFT practitioner as well as becoming a Reiki Master Teacher. I've learned theories and techniques, learned about emotions and behaviour and the nervous system, and I genuinely love understanding why we do the things we do.
I am, and probably always will be, someone who likes to understand things. But I also think there comes a point where we can get so busy trying to understand ourselves that we forget to actually be ourselves.
That's one of the things Reiki gives me.
Quiet.
Space.
A chance to notice what is actually going on rather than immediately trying to work out what it means. I keep coming back to the phrase coming home to myself because that's honestly the closest description I have for what this period of my life feels like. Not finding a new me. Remembering me.
Permission
This is the other word that keeps coming up for me lately.
Permission.
It's funny really, because we're adults. Nobody actually needs to hand us a permission slip. And yet so many of us are still waiting for one. Permission to rest without earning it first. Permission to say no and not provide a three-paragraph explanation afterwards. Permission to change our minds. Permission to want something different from the thing we thought we wanted ten years ago. Permission to take up a bit more space. Permission to breathe. And, actually, permission to be a bit weird. I mean that affectionately!
One of the things I've noticed in myself over the last year is how much energy I've spent editing different parts of who I am depending on where I am and who I'm with.
I'm a counsellor, so I'm supposed to be grounded and evidence-based.
I'm a Reiki Master Teacher, so apparently now we're talking about energy.
I'm practical. I'm intuitive. I'm interested in the nervous system and psychology and why our brains behave the way they do. I'm also interested in the things I can't neatly explain.
For a long time I think there was a little voice asking, but which one are you?
Increasingly my answer is: all of it.
Why do I have to choose?
Maybe healing isn't fixing
The word healing can be difficult because it can sound as though we're suggesting something is broken.
I don't think we are.
We all have parts of ourselves that hurt. We have experiences that change us and patterns we pick up along the way. We adapt. We protect ourselves. We become very good at being whatever version of ourselves gets us through that particular stage of life. And sometimes those versions of us stick around long after we need them. That doesn't mean there was anything wrong with them. They were doing their job. Perhaps healing is sometimes just noticing that. Understanding why you've been doing what you've been doing, thanking that version of yourself for getting you this far, and then asking whether you still need to do it that way. Or maybe you don't need to understand it at all.
Maybe sometimes you just need to stop for an hour and breathe.
That's allowed too.
Perfectly flawed
I think one of the biggest things I'm learning at this stage of my life is that I don't particularly want to become a perfectly healed person. I'm not entirely sure what one of those would look like anyway. I'm still going to overthink things sometimes. I'm still going to get irritated. I'm still going to have days where I'm confident and days where I question myself. I'm going to change my mind, get things wrong, laugh at inappropriate moments and occasionally wonder what on earth I'm doing.
That's me.
Healing doesn't have to polish all of that away. If anything, I think I'm becoming more interested in taking the polish off. Less editing. Less trying to fit myself into whatever version of me I think is expected in that moment. More permission to be completely, imperfectly me.
And now I get to teach it
This weekend I'll welcome the first students to the Cotswold Healing Therapies Reiki Academy.
That's still a slightly surreal sentence to write.
I completed my Reiki Master Teacher training earlier this year knowing that I wanted to teach, but thinking about teaching Reiki and actually standing in a village hall with real people who have trusted me with the beginning of their Reiki journey are two quite different things!
I know what I'm teaching them. I've prepared the manuals. I've planned the weekend. I know the traditions and practices I want to pass on. But I don't want to teach anybody what they're supposed to feel. And I definitely don't want to teach them what they're supposed to believe. I want them to be curious. To experience it for themselves. To ask questions. To notice what happens for them, even if that's completely different from what happens for somebody sitting next to them. And I want there to be room for laughter and nerves and cups of tea and getting things slightly wrong. Because perhaps that's part of it too.
Reiki hasn't given me all the answers.
What it has given me is a space where I don't always need them.
A place to breathe, listen, reconnect and remember.
And, more and more, permission to be completely me.
Perfectly flawed and still healing.
With warmth and light
Jodie