​The Road to Traveling Light

 

Seattle and the Dominican Republic

As I said on the about page, I started in Seattle, Washington, U.S., doing sports massage in a health club. I was practical, anti-woo woo, focused on charts and fixing clients' pain. I wanted to be good at anatomy and physiology. The same was true when I moved to the Dominican Republic, where I worked at a surf school. Different climate, different clients. Same sports massage mentality.

 

Glimmers of Light

I received my first reiki training because someone asked me to trade Reiki teaching for a massage. She was a nice person so I said ok. I didn't think much of it, and never used it. My water sports clients said my hands were like hot stones, though. And one said, "Ah, you have reiki!" I thought, "Whatever." But for some reason I also took a workshop called The Hollow Bone by a Native American practitioner. This was real deal burning sage and calling spirits. Visions and chanting and altered states. My heart loved it but my mind said no. It was afraid to be outside the box.  
 

Searching

After five years in the DR, I found myself back in Massachusetts, my home state, working in another health club. Those glimmers of light from outside the box were getting stronger and I couldn't ignore them. Change felt imminent.

I found myself traveling to California for a 200-hour hypnotherapy training. Around this time I also traveled to Colorado where I learned a somatic bodywork system for working with trauma. It's now hard to imagine doing healing work without this knowledge.

 

After that, I bewildered myself by completing a year-and-a-half study of something called the Lightworkers Healing Method. In this training we talked to angels and spirit guides. The bewildering part was that I was good at it. And I loved it.

 

I began to understand the lightness of doing what you love. I learned it was worth it to step out of the box.

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The "lightworker" teaching taught me about energy and spirit guides. Sadly, though, it ended with a scary lesson in how weird energy work can get. I had to take a break.
 

Reiki to the Rescue

Reiki is grounding. It teaches you how to trust yourself. It teaches you how to recognize when you're giving away your power. And to take it back. I repeated reiki level one. This time it clicked! It felt like coming home. I continued through level two and eventually master/teacher.

I began offering in-person reiki classes and circles in Boston. Those experiences finally gave expression to what I'd been trying to offer through all those other modalities. I simply wanted to hold space for others to heal. I wanted to help them trust their own personal power to do so. I wanted to promote grounding and being true to ourselves.
 

Lomi Lomi Moment

At some point I took a weekend workshop with a Hawaiian Lomi Lomi teacher. Lomi Lomi is bodywork with spirituality built in. It treats human bodies as sacred beings. It helps people remember their divinity and their humanity. And how the two are not different things. I didn't learn Lomi Lomi, but that teaching shook me to the core. We are beings of light, not slabs of meat. Healing comes when we recognize that. I had to let people know.
 

The Pandemic

Like many others, my world stopped in the spring of 2020. My work stopped. My income stopped. My Mom died. As in any healing crisis, I had two choices. I could panic or I could take a breath and face myself. I took the breath and I got real.

I spent those first scary months — then the next several years — learning every new thing my heart pulled me toward. I completed a 10-month Eft Tapping training. I worked for a year and a half with a mind-body teacher. I trained as a Qi Gong instructor. These studies helped me navigate my own dark night of the soul. I wanted to help others navigate theirs.

Traveling Light

That's why I created Traveling Light, my online platform for teaching reiki. I dove in without knowing what I was doing, so there have been many stops and starts and bumps on this road. ​One thing I've learned though is that the. idea of following your heart is nice. Taking action on it is nicer, and also messy and sometimes unsettling.

 

It's unsettling because it means setting down the burden of the opinions, judgements and rules of others. It's focusing inside, and navigating life by the light of your soul. It's Traveling Light. 💫

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Youtube video of the Lightworkers scare 😂

Traveling Light intro on Youtube, if you've ever worried about being outside the box

Traveling Light website

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