Overcoming Fear & Embracing Visibility As A Reiki Practitioner.

Overcoming Fear & Embracing Visibility As A Reiki Practitioner. Mary Riposo & Samia Bano

Scared of #WhatWillPeopleSay if you tell them you're a #reikipractitioner or other #holistichealthpractitioner?

Listen now to this interview with Mary Riposo, #ReikiCoach, to learn how to #overcomefear and self-doubt so you can #beseen and #beconfident as a #reikihealer or other #holistichealer with confidence and #makemoneydoingwhatyoulove.

About Mary:

Mary Riposo found Reiki while suffering from a number of mystery illnesses that didn’t respond to Western medicine. As a #ReikiMaster teacher, Mary particularly enjoys helping Reiki practitioners get their healing work out into the world. Mary is the author of the Reiki Journals and the best-selling "Grow Your Reiki Business" book, available on Amazon.

Learn more about Mary at www.InfiniteLightCenter.com.

PLUS: Be sure to grab Mary's FREE GIFT for you!

It's Mary's 5-minute Visibility Formula Guide: https://mailchi.mp/infinitelightcenter.com/5mvf

To Book your Free HAPPINESS 101 EXPLORATION CALL with Samia, click: https://my.timetrade.com/book/JX9XJ

#EnergyWork #SpiritualGrowth #EnergyHealing #HolisticWellness #MindBodySpirit #holisticpractitioner #RemoteHealing #reikiexpert #reikimaster #overcomeselfdoubt #liveyourbestlife #mindsetshift

Here's the audio version of this episode:

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Full Video Transcript

SAMIA: Hello, Salaam, Shalom, Namaste, Sat Sri Akal, Aloha, Holah, Ciao, Bonjour, Buna, Privet, Mabuhay, and Dzień Dobry. It's so, so good to be with you again. And I know you'll be so happy you've joined us again because we have a very cool guest with us, and it's one of our very cool returning guests, and that is Mary Riposo, who is a Reiki coach. And I'm so happy you're back... Happy to have you back with us, Mary. Welcome back.

MARY: Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

SAMIA: Yes. And, Mary, for those of our audience who may have missed our last episode, can you please tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?

MARY: Sure. Well, I am a Reiki teacher, I'm a Reiki practitioner, and I also write a little bit about Reiki and mentor my students and clients. And my mentoring is a lot about opening or starting or growing a Reiki business. And if you don't know what Reiki is, it's a Japanese system that helps us with relaxation. And healing comes from Japan, but it's evolved, and lots and lots of people are practitioners nowadays.

SAMIA: Yeah. You know, when it comes to different forms of healing, especially energy healing, I find that it the Reiki is one of the most commonly known forms of energy healing. Even if people don't really understand what it is, a lot of people have kind of sort of heard of it. And I was, like, actually very interested to know that... Like, I didn't know actually know until, like, relatively recently after I started practicing Reiki myself… But after I discovered Reiki and I came home and, like, sharing what I learned with my mom and my aunt and my other people and my family… turned out that actually some of my aunts had already been exposed to Reiki. One of my aunts, she said, "Oh, yeah, I actually got my Reiki attunements". And she was like, I can do... I can practice Reiki. And she was like, I got my attunement when we were living in Pakistan. I was like, what? How did I not know this? And of all the places I would not have expected or to have been exposed to a tradition like Reiki in Pakistan for various reasons, but, you know, just that, you know, I was just like, so surprised that I learned that about her.

MARY: That's amazing. And it is in every country. It's everywhere now... It just once it spread outside of Japan, it kind of just went like wildfire. And I don't know how many Reiki trained people there are now, but lots and lots of people. And it would be... Don't you think it would be so great to have at least one Reiki practitioner and every family just to support the family members with healing?

SAMIA: Yes, yes... And I don't see why we shouldn't have everyone done how to practice Reiki. Honestly, that means so easy, and it's so just amazing in terms of, you know, just having this way of helping ourselves feel more relaxed and helping ourselves heal in so many different ways whenever we find ourselves feeling any kind of, you know... I know for me, a lot of times, like, when I'm feeling any kind of stress, agitation, those are some of the times that I love to use Reiki most. But, like, honestly, also it's helped me with, like, headaches. And I used to have such a bad time when I used to get headaches. And then, you know, it's like... And it was interesting… Like, for me, when I actually tried to do healing for myself using other methodologies, it was kind of challenging. But with Reiki, it was the easiest because I didn't actually have to do anything. I just placed my hands on myself and that's it, you know, and it's just... Yeah, so comforting for some reason.

MARY: That's the beauty of it.

SAMIA: So... Yeah.

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MARY: Yeah, yeah. To your point, I think that Reiki is something that people are starting to hear about, starting to know a little bit about. And, you know, a lot of us don't think of having a Reiki business. We think of, you know, practicing and helping ourselves and others. But I think it is becoming a little bit more... more of a thing nowadays. And I think it's because we... It's really needed… like, people that are practicing and able to teach others so that they can offer Reiki to their children and to their parents and their, you know, whoever's in their home. I think it's really important to have it as… Also have it as a legitimate form of, you know, being able to translate that to others and to train others and support others. And I never thought of that in the beginning. I thought Reiki and business don't really go together. I was like… spiritual practice, healing practice, energy practice, and then asking for money, doing it as a business, I thought they just don't go together... But when I really have kind of gone through the process and opened a business more than 20 years ago, I really see it as a really important type of service provider. To be a service provider and to be able to do it in a way that is clear to people, and it helps them access it really easily. And things like that. Yeah. So I think it maybe hopefully is getting to be more of like, seen as like a legitimate thing and a way to help people. And you could actually look people up and Google, you know, where's a Reiki practitioner near me? And then that person is going to have like, you know, maybe a part time business or maybe even a full time business, but doing it for being able to be out there and be visible and be able to, you know, support having Reiki be in every household, if that's a possibility even.

SAMIA: Yes, yes, yes… because I know, like, for me it's just really wonderful to incorporate in my practice as one of the things that I do very regularly in terms of helping my clients. And it's just… if you're really spending so much of your time engaging with that, you know, it's like goes back to that idea of making money, doing what you love. And so rather than having to spend your so much of your time and energy doing something else to make the money that you need to survive and all of that, and then finding whatever little bit of time you can spare to do something else that you love, especially something so amazing like Reiki, it's like, why not just be like, you know what I mean, as much of my time as I can to this. It just brings me so much joy and happiness to do this, you know.

MARY: Yeah, it's like a calling, right?

SAMIA: Yeah.

MARY: Yeah, I think it is for so many of us, it's like a, it's more of a calling. And you know, we don't do it for making a million dollars, right. But we can support ourselves through Reiki if we want to do sessions for people or teach classes or do it like you incorporated into coaching, right. And so many people incorporate our, you know, Reiki trained and they incorporate it into different, you know, different ways of working. I've trained lots of physicians, I trained teachers, like, school teachers and things like that. I've trained a lot of massage therapists, lots of people that already have, you know, a position, a job, a career that they could add Reiki into just to, you know, make it even better, right. It doesn't always have to be just a Reiki business. Most of the time it's not.

SAMIA: Yes, yes, I do find that really helpful, I must say. Like, example, in my practice, I can't tell you how many times it's happened that I will get someone on a session with me and, you know, they will be feeling not very relaxed and strange, stressed for various kinds of reasons. And so I'm very much, like, inclined to then want to help them relax and feel more centered and calm, and just better, before we actually jump into doing any kind of coaching or training work. And that's when I love to be able to use Reiki and even, like, you know, just a few minutes, like a Reiki session, just so helpful, you know, just to help people experience that deeper relaxation and calm and just… I think they also then just feel more open to learning and receiving whatever else that we need to learn and receive. So it's like, really, really, really, really helpful.

MARY: Yeah. And I similarly was working as a psychotherapist before I moved into doing solely a Reiki practice. And I would do the same thing. I would, you know, do a little bit of practicing, a little bit of a session, like an informal part, beginning of our session. And it was not with every client. You know, it was people who were open to it. But I noticed that when I decided to, I wanted to be really authentic. And I just loved practicing Reiki. And actually, what I was finding was the Reiki part was so much, in certain ways, it was more helpful to the people than the actual going through the psychotherapy process. So some people wanted to just practice Reiki with me, and I couldn't do it where I was working. So I started to... I moved out into my own, and I opened a practice of my own, which ended up turning into just a Reiki practice. But being in kind of that role of psychotherapist and then moving into solely Reiki practice, it was a little bit of a mindset shift for me to be able to actually come out to people and say, I'm a Reiki practitioner. It was kind of, you know, it was kind of scary because I thought people were going to judge me. I thought they were going to, you know, maybe ask me a whole bunch of questions that I couldn't answer or expect me to, like, perform some kind of... Some kind of energy work on them or something like that. It was kind of a weird, a little bit of a scary thing to be visible as a Reiki practitioner, especially when I first started. And that's what I see with a lot of people that I work with, too. Yeah.

SAMIA: Yeah.

MARY: I mean, you have to be visible in your business, because if you're not, people are not going to find you. You're not going to be able to serve anybody, right?

SAMIA: Yeah, yeah. You know, going back to, like, my aunt, who had actually learned to do Reiki in Pakistan, of all places, like, I never even would have expected that, but that she never let us know about it before, I brought it up as, like, a thing. Oh, that this is something I'm doing now. And I think she was having very similar feelings. Like, she never... I mean, even now she doesn't have it as a professional practice setup, but now she's actually a lot more open. There's, like, I think most people certainly in our friends and family circle know now that she does Reiki because she's just become a lot more open about it. But I remember she used to not be so open. She used to be a lot more guarded. And I think a lot of it did have to do with these concern about what would people say, what would people think if she did speak up and speak out and let people know more. And I think some of her concerns were legitimate because, you know, like, coming from Pakistan, I've actually lived there, you know, so I understand the mentality and mindset of our people over there. And, you know, in Pakistan, a lot of people, about 98% of the population identifies as being Muslim. And so it's like a fairly, you know, and when people say that they're Muslim, they're actually... The vast majority of the people are actually fairly religious and religious in a relatively conservative kind of way. That's just the way the culture is in general. And so that's how we also, like, tend to practice the religion in the culture, you know, and so there's like, a lot of... Oftentimes in a conservative religious context, there's oftentimes a lot of, like, talk about, "No, no," like, you, like, innovation is not allowed. Like, you know, people are like, "No, you can't..." Like, people are afraid that if you start going into some kind of other spiritual practice or other, look into other spiritual traditions, they're afraid of how that might corrupt your understanding and your practice of your faith of origin and so forth. I don't think those are valid fears, but they exist. What can I say? So I think that was partly where she was coming from in terms of her fears of being visible as a Reiki practitioner and things for her. I don't know... Maybe she just became more comfortable and confident over time, or maybe it was partly that. Now she's also living here in America with me, and here she feels a little bit more free. I don't know, like, but there's definitely people feeling challenges when it comes to visibility and claiming, you know, being a Reiki healer.

MARY: Yeah, I suspect too, that she may have just felt comfortable because, you know, you understood it and you were also trained. So she felt like, wow, you know, you're going to be accepting. And I think a lot of times that's kind of where we're at, too. We're a little bit afraid to come out and say, you know, I'm a Reiki practitioner, because of what people might judge us as. They might think it's a religion. They may think it's something that's against their religion. I know I think I said this in our previous talk, but when I first learned Reiki, my family was afraid that I had joined some kind of a cult. They were afraid for me. They thought I was, you know, in trouble or, you know, I was, like, believing a certain way that was against what I had grown up believing. And I was raised in the Catholic tradition, so the... At one point, the Catholic bishops had come out with a statement saying that Reiki was a very bad thing and you should avoid it. So... And I don't know if my family ever knew that, but they had a feeling that this might not be an okay thing. So I had to, like, tell them a little bit about it and show them. And show them that it wasn't anything that was, you know, scary or anything that was going to corrupt my thinking or their thinking... But, yeah, I remember also this time when in the kind of the very beginning of my delving into this practice and going out on my own, there was a local shop owner who said to me, "Ooh, I would love to have you come in, and maybe you can do a little bit of a talk about what Reiki is. Maybe you can do a demonstration. We'll even record you, put you on our website." But you can have people come in and do a live, and we'll do all of this stuff. We'll send out an email blast, and we'll get you more exposure. I remember her saying, we'll get you some exposure for what you do. And she... This woman was excited about it, right. And the first thing I remember, my heart started to beat really, really fast. And the only thing I thought about was, "Oh, my gosh, people can die from exposure, right?" That was like this freaking out idea of, like, I am going to come out, I'm going to put myself on a stage, basically, and talk about what I do, and I'm going to get haters. I'm going to get people who are questioning me, judging me, and all this kind of stuff. And I couldn't do it. For one thing, I was, you know, I think I talked about with you a little bit. I'm super sensitive. I'm an introvert. I would... Back in that in the day, I had trouble, like, talking in front of people. So for me to get up and do, like, a demonstration kind of in the early days of my, you know, practice, that was like, really, really scary. And I remember just, you know, luckily this came in an email to me because if she had asked me face to face, I don't know what I would have done. But I really freaked out when I saw the email, and I had to wait to respond. And I ended up, like, really putting it off and saying, maybe I can do it when I'm feeling more, like, comfortable with this. But I don't think at this point I'm ready to do something like that. But, yeah, it just felt like, you know, exposure was, like, the scary thing promoting me. But I was, I guess I was, like, really kind of keeping myself hidden in my business in the beginning, and I think it was to protect myself. But in a lot of ways, I realized after a while, it wasn't just protecting myself. It was also kind of costing me my business. Because I remember this, one of my clients coming in. And at first, you know, I had clients who were family friends, coworkers, you know, people that I knew that I felt safe with. And one of these ladies came back to me and said, "Mary, you know, I've been talking to my friends about you, and nobody seems to know who you are even they don't know that you're out there." She was like, "Do you have a business card?" And I said, no, I really don't. Do you know, are you in, you know, whatever it was, any advertising? "No..." And she said, you know, this is the best thing since sliced bread, but nobody knows about it. I think you're, like, the best kept secret in town because there really weren't a lot of Reiki practitioners. I was the only kind of one in my area. And I started to realize that I was just really keeping myself hidden because. Well, because I was afraid of certain things because I had a mindset of, like, you know, should I be doing this? Am I, you know, am I good enough to be doing this? You know, do I? I don't know... I just felt like there was a lot of imposter syndrome, and I was kind of keeping myself hidden. So I wasn't doing advertising. I wasn't... Didn't have a business card. I could have been putting flyers up back in the day, and, like, the health food store I could have been telling the chiropractor's office about it. I could have, you know, been putting, you know, things around town, even if it was just, you know, in person. But I was also being really selective about who I was seeing. I didn't... I was afraid that if I put myself out there that a whole bunch of people would come and I might feel uncomfortable with them. Being alone in a room with someone, touching somebody that I don't know, not knowing what to say, all of that kind of thing, that scared me so much. And I had to, for one thing, work through it in terms of my mindset. But then I had to really, you know, get really some skills underneath me to say, you know what? I'm going to try it. I'm going to try to see this person who I don't know. I'm going to see a stranger, somebody that's just booking with me, and then see how it goes, you know, and talk with somebody else about it, even if maybe it's not another Reiki person, because there really weren't Reiki people around too much. But, yeah, I had to really kind of work through that so that I could still help people, because that was my main goal, was it had helped me so much. I wanted to offer that to other people. And by staying kind of hidden there, I just wasn't really helping very many people, and I was at risk of not being able to do it anymore. Yeah.

SAMIA: Yes. Yeah, you know, I think, like, for me, for a long time, one of the reasons that I kept it more like the down low in terms of not talking about my being Reiki practitioners, because I definitely had that feeling of, like, I'm not good enough. Because, you know, like, I saw my teacher and I thought, like, how she was getting, like, so many amazing results for so many people, including what I experienced for myself when she did healings for me, and I was like, I'm just not good enough. And it's like, so interesting that to think that I allowed myself to fall into that mindset because, you know, like, one of the key aspects of what we learn about how Reiki even works is that, no, you're not actually doing anything and you're not supposed to do anything. You're just the only thing you are doing is actually being a channel or like the love for, you know, divine healing to just channel, be a channel for it to go through you. And you're actually, other than that, not supposed to even do anything, you know, so it's not even it's like more about just the being, you know, just having the willingness and the openness to just even be a channel, like, even beyond that. It's like the more that you try to do, you're actually just getting in the way. And so even knowing that... Right, right... And so even knowing that, it's like, I let myself fall into this thinking of, I'm not good enough. And I'm like, "Come on, Samia, this is nothing to do with you. Get over it..."

MARY: Yeah. You have to almost coach yourself through it, right?

SAMIA: Yeah.

MARY: Yeah. Coach yourself into a better mindset. It's so true. And I think so many of us have that, like, perfectionistic kind of, you know, ideas that we have to be 100% ready or we have to be really gifted. Everyone has Reiki, so, you know, we're just being kind of trained in how to work within a system, but we all have Reiki to start with. There's no way around that. But, yeah, we... It's so, it's funny how that goes. We're just... And I think that the perfectionism kind of comes back to the imposter syndrome that we kind of all fall into. Like, who am I to think I could do this? You know, this should be, you know, left for people who are just amazing. Like, you know, we think of our teachers and things like that. But, you know, one of my teachers, and this wasn't a Reiki teacher, but one of my teachers is always says for any first grader, they think that third graders are gods, right. So if you're a first grader and you look up to a third grader, they're only two steps ahead of you, right. And I always teach my students, all you have to be is one to two steps ahead of, you know, and that means, like, you're trained a little bit or something like that. All you have to do is be trained in how to support someone with Reiki, how to share Reiki with them. You don't have to have, like, unbelievable amounts of, like, powers and gifts and all kinds of, you know, metaphysical things. All you have to do is be there and want to share space with someone and create a healing space. And you're right. The less you do, the better things go. Just open your heart in a loving way, activate Reiki, and Reiki does the rest. But it's often, like, something that we have to almost decondition ourselves to, like, stop thinking about, you know, work should be hard, and spirituality shouldn't be work. And we should be 100% ready or we should be perfect at it before we even start or, you know, all the things that we tell ourselves. So that's what a lot of the work that I do is with my clients, is to really just get underneath some of that stuff and say, you know what? All you have to be is in third grade. You only have to be in third grade. And your clients will think that you're amazing because you're going to support them because they haven't been trained in Reiki and you've been trained in Reiki. So again, that's all you really need. And it's very simple. It's very pure.

SAMIA: Yeah, yeah. You know, there was this like, other aspect of, I mean, other than for sure, working on the mindset, the imposter syndrome aspect of it, the other sort of... I don't know, I guess the more practical side of the challenge that I thought I had. I mean, again, I think it was more just a mindset thing. Looking back in hindsight... But, you know, in my days of, you know, feeling very challenged to come out as a Reiki practitioner, you know, I was like, very concerned about the fact that I couldn't make any particular claims or promises about here I can get you this result if you do a session with me. You know, like, I, for some reason, I really got hung up on, on that, that, you know, because, like, when you do a healing session for someone we don't know, like, I know, I trust that the Reiki is going to do whatever needs to be done, you know, that person, insofar as they are open to receiving it, they will experience whatever healing they need the most, etc, but I have no control over what that is. A lot of times I may have zero idea what that is that they have actually received, what they have actually healed, you know, and there's like just, you know, an element of faith over here and trust that you build based on your own experience that you're like, oh, yeah, you know, like, Reiki is something that, you know, is an intelligent force in itself and it knows what it's doing and it is working, you know, and so, like, but not to be able to make specific claims and promises of this is what I can do for you. I thought that was like such a big problem in my head, and it really, you know, like, became a challenge for me in terms of how to communicate with people. Like, you know, so what, like, what I did was, you know, like my way of hiding was that I wouldn't even like, really tell people about the fact that, you know, I was, like, a Reiki practitioner or whatever. It was only once they were in my world because they wanted to come get coaching from me. And I'd be like, well, you're. You're feeling stressed out. How about, you know, we just take some time to relax and you just sit there and you do nothing, and, like, just do a little bit of guiding and, you know, I'll just help you relax and, like, sending and I would be, like, sending them Reiki on the down low, like, that kind of thing. But it's sort of like, you do really limit yourself in terms of how much you can even help people if you stay stuck in these kinds of attitudes. You know, like, I thought that was something so beautiful that you shared in your experience, Mary.

MARY: Oh, my gosh... And I love that story because I think this is something that's really, really common, right. I think that in our culture, Reiki is kind of, in certain ways, thought of as something that's almost complementary medicine or energy medicine, right. And when you practice medicine, you're diagnosing, you're treating, you're assessing, you're maybe curing or treating, at least, right. And so many times a client will come to me and say, you know, I'll say, you know, why would you like your Reiki session? Why are you coming today? Or something like that. Typically, you'll have people say that there's something physically going on with them. They have a medical condition. They have, you know, something going on physically, and they've heard that Reiki could help, and they're thinking that it could help treat their condition, right. And so you're right, you can't make claims of that. And really, that's not what Reiki is all about anyway... Reiki is more holistic, it's more subtle. It's not something that just focuses on physical to start with. And most people think that it really does. So I think there's a lot of education that we can do around helping people see it as almost more like meditation. Meditation is something that's a practice that if done regularly and can help support balance, coming into more resilience, more relaxation, so that whatever healing you need to do, whether it's mental healing, emotional healing, physical healing, whatever it is, spiritual, those things can start working on their own. But of course, you know, if you were, you know, learning to meditate, you wouldn't, you know, go to meditation just for a specific medical concern or something like that. And it's very similar I always feel so uncomfortable when a client comes to me, and then at the end of the session, you know, they want me to tell them, give them almost like a rundown of, like, a diagnosis of what I found was wrong with them. And I really do have to kind of educate them. Well, I'm not in this... This is the way that it works for me. I'm not looking for what's out of alignment with. For you, what's wrong with you, what I can kind of fix or anything like that. I'm not going in and treating anything. I'm not looking for anything that's wrong. I see you as completely whole and completely well. And when I hold the space for that and then just allow Reiki to flow, that's going to start to manifest in your world, too. And it may be very subtle, it may take a long time.  And Reiki is meant to be done on a regular basis.

SAMIA: Yeah.

MARY: And a lot of times people will come once, and they're like, "Oh, well, it didn't work because my condition's not gone." So I think that there's a lot for us to do just to help people understand what the heck it really is, because we're used to a medical approach to things, and you see Reiki in medicine now, too, but it's not there to replace medicine. It's there to help people relax so that the doctors can do what they're going to do, right. But I think it's just... There's a lot of misunderstanding around what. What it is and what it can do.

SAMIA: Yeah. And I mean, the point about, you know, coming in for a session and then expecting everything to be fixed, I mean that, you know, like, so for this was like, my sister, one day I caught her... Not caught her, like, in any bad way, but I happened to walk in on her talking to one of our mutual friends. And this particular mutual friend was going through a bit of a hard time. And my sister was basically having a conversation with her, talking through different tools that she could potentially utilize to help herself feel better. And so then she brought up my name because, you know, she was a mutual friend. So she was like, yeah, my sister, you know, has all these practices that she does, but, you know, the thing that I find a little bit challenging about my sister's approach, my Samia's approach, is that she spends, like, two or three hours every day and not, like, doing these meditations and things. And, you know, it's like, who has that kind of time, really? Come on, sister... You're my sister, you should know better than that, than to, you know, think of that as being like, a downfall of what I do or a reason that people should not do this or to expect that, you know, the... To expect results in your life without having, like, a consistent, dedicated practice to, you know, working on, you know, especially, like, you know, whatever it is that ails you, whatever it is that you want healed, like, it may need attention, you know, and so to. But daily consistent work on taking care of it. It's like, that's actually really essential.

MARY: It sure is.

SAMIA: Yeah. Right... And I'm like, yeah, like, I personally do spend two, three hours every day, but not everyone has to spend two to three hours. And you don't have to start by spending two, three hours. And especially when it comes to something like Reiki, you know, like, you can just do a few minutes a day or like, even, you know, like I was saying, just laying your hands on yourself and just let it be. And, you know, like, I have had, you know, like, teachers who were like, very, like, "No, no, no." When you're practicing, you know, you need to make sure you're in the proper posture and, you know, like, being that proper meditative mindset and so forth. And, and, you know, the way that they would at least teach or that I saw them teaching how to practice, Rieki was, you know, this, like, very formal in some ways, very formal way. Whereas, you know, like some of my other teachers learned with. From been exposed to, took a more relaxed attitude. So, like, and I'm so glad that I had this exposure to various approaches because, you know, like, I really, on the one hand, love and enjoy the time when I am able to be more proper and, you know, just be more like, okay, this is my time when I'm gonna fit and be in the proper posture and do like, a full healing for myself or someone else, etc, but then there are other times when, you know, like, just sitting there watching TV and don't want to get into the proper posture and this and that and... But to just be like, “Huh, I'm just gonna lay my hands on me, and why not? You know?"

MARY: Yeah, that's the beauty of it, too. And I totally get what you're saying about the family piece, because so many people that I work with are, as they are learning Reiki, they realize that they're not getting support from their families, the people that they live with, or they're getting negativity from the family. And I think part of it is not. Not exactly the same way that I had it, like the fear, that type of thing. But for a lot of us, a lot of my students and clients are women and I'll notice that they're saying, well, my boyfriend, my husband, my spouse, my significant other, whoever it is, is kind of giving me the idea that this isn't acceptable. And what's underneath some of that is you're taking some time away from me. You know, like there's this idea that, that person has something for themselves that's inward, an inward practice. And you know, we do need to, if we're going to practice Reiki, if we're going to do self Reiki as a practitioner, it's important to take some time to lay hands on, to do the Reiki meditations, to recite the precepts, to do whatever pieces of it that we do, right. But I'll ask these students of mine and they'll say, oh, well, because of that, I never do my practices until I lay in my bed at night and then I just place my hands over my heart. Because they're not able to be visible as a Reiki-trained person, even within their home. They don't get to have 15 minutes where if someone is calling them saying, mom, I need you, or the phone rings, they feel like they can't even take that 15 minutes for themselves. And that really says a lot about maybe the reason why they're coming to Reiki practice or to Reiki training. Because really they're always on, they're always available, and they don't have any agency, they don't have any ability within their own lives to have that a little bit of downtime, a little bit of, you know, just me time, a little bit of self-care. So we always work through that too. Because I think it's really important to be able to say, to be visible within your own family, to say, "Oh, I'm going to go practice Reiki right now." And it maybe it'll be 15 minutes or 20 minutes or a half an hour, but you could do the same thing if you are meditation person, if you were a yoga person that practiced yoga or whatever it is that you do, right. To be able to own that and say, I'm showing up as I'm trained in this, or this is something that gives me peace, or this is something that helps me in some way. I'm going to take this little bit of time. It's in the morning or it's in the afternoon, or it's, you know, whatever. But to have to hide it and to be. Not be able to even be visible, to say, this is something that helps me. I can show up for you so much more, so much better. When I do this for myself. People have a really hard time sometimes actually even being able to do that, that makes me sad, right. And I try to help. I try to help people through that so that they can, you know, show up and say, this is something that's great. It's not something that's taking me away from my life. It's something that's helping me to show up for my life. And so much more balanced, resilient way.

SAMIA: Right. And to the point of, you know, allowing ourselves to become more visible. You know, especially, like, as a practitioner, it really is about, you know, sharing the love, sharing the love that you have. Like you said, Mary, you didn't use the word love, but, like, you know, like, when you were sharing about how you received so much benefit from this practice, and that was something that you wanted to share. And the same thing with me, too, that, you know, I experienced something that I found so beautiful, so helpful, and I wanted to share that. But when we let whatever is going on in our minds stop us from being more visible, then we become less able to share the love. And it's like part of the beauty of the experience with Reiki is that actually the, it's like when you share the love... I mean, that's when people become more open to it, right. In the sense that, like, for me, I had no idea what Reiki was. I had no exposure to it before I found it or found me accidentally, so to speak. And so it was... But it was because there was someone who was willing to be open and share the love with me, you know, that I was able to have that opportunity to say yes, myself to receiving the healing in the moment, receiving that love in the moment, and then being able to go deeper with that experience over time and. And wanting to, you know, become a channel myself. So it's... Yeah... There is, like, in this kind of situation where, you know, where we're in, where we're not feeling free to be open with our friends and family, family and be like, you know, this is not just about me helping myself, but it's about how I can also support you better and love you even better. And then if you want, you know, like, how you can learn to love yourself even better, and then we can support each other even better. And it's like one of my favorite things, actually, with my aunt in our relationship is that there are times when I'm like struggling to do healings for myself or I feel like what I'm able to do for myself, I need some support in that. And so then we do healings together and like, you know, I'll just send her a text or give her a call depending on the situation, like, please send me some healing or, you know, do some healing. Let's do a healing together. And it's just, so, it's just another really amazing aspect of the practice is when you can connect with other practitioners and, you know, do healings together. And I remember the very first time I experienced like group healing where the, there's a community of Reiki practitioners actually here in LA. Very there's actually so many communities of Reiki practitioners here in LA. Turns out once I actually got into it, I started discovering them everywhere. And anyway, so one of the ways that these communities form is doing Reiki healing clinics. And so anyone who knows how to do Reiki, you volunteer your time at these Reiki healing clinics. And basically anyone who wants to experience a Reiki healing get like signs up to come. And then when I went as to receive a healing myself, they had me like lie down on this mustache and they were like, okay, there are like, I think five or six people around the massage table and five or six practitioners just sending me all the Reiki healing. They did a good like I think, 30 or 45-minute session. And it was just like, "Ah, I..." When it was done, I was like, whoa, I feel like I'm floating. It felt so light and relaxed and happy. And you know, it turns out the, the Reiki practitioners, they were like, yeah, it's not just you when we practice like, like when we give healing to someone and we feel so much better too. And when you do it in group, it's like everyone's receiving. It's not just the person who's officially receiving; but even when you're channeling, you are receiving. And when more like so many of us are channeling together, everyone's receiving more. More love…

MARY: Amplified…

SAMIA: Right, right. It's so, so wonderful.

MARY: Yeah, I love that. It's so true, right... As we are activating Reiki within us and it's really that we're remembering and we're tuning into the field of energy that's flowing through us, within us and around us, and the, and another person with is within that sphere, they're feeling the same thing. And if there are multiple people all doing it at the same time, oh, it is, it's a blissful experience. And I think having community like that, whether it's you and your sister, whether it's a bigger group, I think that's really something that's happening more and more and more. I love that I run my own community here locally, but then I also do an online Reiki circle every month that people come to. And you know, I shifted to doing online, you know, at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, but I kept going because so many people are coming from different places around the world. Then I thought, well, I can't really stop doing this and then go back to, you know, in person anymore. So we keep, we just kept going with that. And it really is a beautiful thing when you can come together with other Reiki practitioners or if it's a clinic with people who maybe are not practitioners like mine, is open to everyone. It doesn't matter if you are trained or not, because you can receive. And it's an amazing thing to just... We do it in the evening Eastern, so people come and they come in their PJs, they can have their camera off. We do it on zoom. And I just kind of, you know, demonstrate and go through a healing, and we practice self Reiki. But then we also do some distant Reiki, which we haven't even talked about distant Reiki.

SAMIA: Yeah.

MARY: But yeah, there's so much that you can do, and just to have a supportive community that makes all the difference. It helps you... Like you've just been saying, it helps with visibility too. And I do want to remember just to say that the guide that I'm offering your listeners, that's going to be for anyone who is any kind of like a service practitioner. It doesn't have to be just a Reiki person, but it's a whole bunch of different ideas, a whole list of different ideas, and how you can just gently start to become a little bit more visible in what you do, right. And so one of the simple ones is, you know, putting, if you haven't, you know, everyone uses email. You can put at the bottom of your email maybe a link to what you do, or you can just write at the bottom of your email what you do. Simple things like that. And then at the beginning of the guide it talks about like if you're super shy, all the way down to if you're a little bit more brave. And each one of the things in the guide is just like a simple five-minute thing that you can do. Nothing involved, just really simple little things. That maybe add up to helping you to get in front of people who are looking for you already. You know, somebody that really would love to have whatever you have to offer. So I'm hoping that just offering that to your, you know, listeners and your people who are watching it can really help anyone who's kind of struggling with, you know, I'm not really sure if I want to, like, be out there and be visible.

SAMIA: Yes. Oh, thank you so much for sharing that.

MARY: You're welcome.

SAMIA: ..Wonderful guide with us, Mary. It's, I am so thankful and grateful to you for that. And yes, you know what, please make sure you check our show notes because we will be dropping Mary's links in there, including the link to this wonderful five-minute visibility formula guide that Mary has put together and is so generously sharing with us. And, you know, actually I'm going to stop myself, force myself to stop asking more questions of you, Mary, now because I keep losing track of time because I'm having so much fun with you. I'm like, oh, gosh, oh gosh... But it's time to wrap up for today.

MARY: We can talk forever.

SAMIA: Yes. Oh, thanks again so much. Do you have any last thoughts you would like to share though?

MARY: I just think, you know, if you're listening and you never tried Reiki and you're kind of listening and you're curious about what it is, there are lots of things that you can do just to learn about it for free. Like on my website, @infinitelightcenter.com I have one whole page that has free things so you can read about it if you want to read about it. You can watch a video, you can learn a little bit about it, you can experience a guided session, all of these things before you ever just kind of jump into doing a little bit more like having a session with someone or learning about it for yourself. But yeah, I would say if you're curious, look into a little it a little bit more. It may be something that is surprising to you in terms of like what it has to offer.

SAMIA: And for those of you who may already have exposure to Reiki and maybe even are practicing Reiki but for yourself, but want to go bigger in the way that you use it in your life and especially if you want to do it at a more professional level, that something also that Mary is so awesome at helping and supporting people at. So wherever you're at in your journey with Reiki or, you know, becoming any kind of practitioner with different kinds of healing modalities, again, make sure you check the show notes and connect with Mary and get the help and support that you need whenever you're ready for it. And until we connect next time, I wish you lots and lots of peace and joy... :)