Reiki Heals Workplace PTSD

I have been privileged to have been a Reiki practitioner for 15 years and during that time have seen Reiki have a positive impact on many lives including my own and that of my family. Recently I had an emotional healing that was very unexpected and for which I am deeply grateful.

Six years ago I had a significantly unpleasant work experience with a supervisor who used harassment and bullying in an attempt to drive her staff. This was not just my personal, emotionally challenging experience; I was a union representative and spent a lot of time attempting to neutralize the supervisor’s negative influence on team morale and helping to protect the people who worked under her. Needless to say four years of that work took their toll until the time that she left the agency. Although I came out of it still functioning, my husband would sometimes say something like, “I’ll be glad when you forget her name” or “You have to just let it go.” I felt the same way but seemed to have a case of workplace post-traumatic stress disorder hanging on. I continued to have all the unpleasant stress symptoms that I had had under that supervisor: an inability to fall asleep, an inability to stay asleep, anxiety on Sunday nights before going to work on Mondays, stress eating, lethargy when I was home, lack of enjoyment with friends and family, to name a few. I credit Reiki with getting me through those days but I still really needed to get past them.

This spring my husband and I traveled to Glastonbury to take the Holy Fire Karuna Reiki® Master class with William Lee Rand. It was a wonderful healing experience—the class—being with so many people who “spoke Reiki” —going to Stonehenge—certainly enough to feel buoyant even when class was over. Plus we had another week in London ahead of us!

Then we came home. I returned to work. One day when I went into work, I suddenly realized that the story that I just related about my previous supervisor was now just that—a story. It no longer had any power in my life, and I no longer had to keep reliving those emotionally charged days. It was just gone—the anger, the fear, the frustration, the sleepless nights—now just a story that no longer needed to be told, except as an example of what Reiki can do when you aren’t looking. I am grateful every day for Holy Fire, but the day that supervisor became just a story and I became myself again was certainly a day for rejoicing. Holy Fire Karuna Reiki®, Glastonbury 2015 was literally a life-changing time for me.