Why I’m Pausing Reiki Training

Integration before expansion

Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash

I began this year with a surge of energy.

A clear drive toward deeper trauma-informed spaces.
More nervous system literacy.
More precision.
More maturity in how I teach.

I thought that would naturally mean expanding my Reiki training.

But over the past few months, something has been settling in me.

Not doubt.
Not disillusionment.
Clarity.

I wrote recently about The Hidden Side of Spirituality — how easy it is to use spiritual language to soften, reframe or rise above pain without fully moving through it.

And I had to ask myself a difficult question:

Am I willing to continue training practitioners if some are still using spirituality to avoid their own deeper nervous system work?

This isn’t criticism. It’s honesty.

Reiki is beautiful. It taught me presence. It slowed me down. It opened a doorway when my own body was inflamed, dysregulated and exhausted.

But what I see now — through years of working with chronic stress, autoimmune disease, trauma histories and identity-level imprinting — is that spirituality does not automatically equal integration.

You can be intuitive and still be chronically braced.
You can be empathic and still be over-functioning.
You can be deeply spiritual and still organised around survival.

Reiki can regulate.
It can soothe.
It can connect.

But it does not automatically resolve:

• Attachment wounds
• Identity-level shame
• Chronic hyper-responsibility
• Early survival patterns wired into the nervous system

And if someone’s identity is built around being “the strong one,” “the healer,” or “the one who holds space,” teaching them to hold more space can quietly reinforce the very pattern exhausting them.

That’s the part we don’t often speak about.

We can talk about energy and still avoid the body.
We can talk about trauma and still avoid grief.
We can talk about regulation and still avoid identity.

My own recovery from autoimmune disease demanded that I stop circling the edges. No affirmation alone shifted my physiology. No spiritual insight alone lowered inflammation. What helped was grounded, embodied, identity-level work.

Updating emotional imprints.
Reducing survival charge.
Building biological safety.

And from there — spirituality deepened.

It became steadier.
Less performative.
More embodied.

So for now, I am choosing not to run new Reiki trainings.

Not because I’ve rejected it.
Not because I’m ungrateful to my teachers.
But because my work has matured in a direction that requires deeper integration before expansion.

Right now my focus is on:

• Identity-level imprint work through IEMT
• Nervous system regulation grounded in physiology
• Slow, embodied integration

Reiki may return in the future in a form that is even more explicitly trauma-informed and nervous-system-first.

But this season is about refinement.

About responsibility.

About depth.

I am, however, fully committed to supporting my current students through their final stages — including Reiki Master Practitioner and Master Teacher level — in a grounded and trauma-informed way.

If you have been quietly considering joining the final training cycle this year, you are welcome to secure your place with a deposit online or contact me directly to explore whether it is aligned for you.

After that, my teaching narrows.

Less breadth.
More depth.
Less performance.
More truth.

Growth doesn’t erase where we began.

It simply asks us to teach from where we now stand.