It was March 2019. I had just arrived at a “yoga village” near the beach in Goa, India. I had travelled to India alone with no idea what I was going to do for 2 weeks, besides attending lots of yoga classes. But I’d felt a really strong pull to go. This was the first of many life decisions that I would take quite quickly after the initial seed of an idea had taken root. I knew it was the end of the tourist season, and that accommodation would be in plentiful supply, so I had only booked the beach hut for a week. I wanted to keep my options open for the second week and see where I was drawn to be.
It had been a particularly challenging time at work in the few months before my trip. I had felt my resolve, my faith and my mental health being tested to the limit. I was emotionally “on my knees” on the plane, not knowing how I was going to continue with my role if it was always going to feel this hard. It felt like a huge relief to get away and be having an adventure, though also a little bit nerve wracking travelling alone. It was 7 months since the break-up of a 5-year relationship and during that time I had travelled only as a couple or in a group. It felt important for me to have this time on my own as I continued to explore who I was now.
When I arrived, I found the yoga village was pretty empty (aforementioned end of season), with only a handful of other guests. There was a mother and daughter, a woman around my age and a couple of guys who were about to leave. Breakfast and lunch was served communally, but evenings were free time, which meant going and getting your own dinner at one of the many nearby restaurants. I’d never eaten in a restaurant on my own before and realised I hadn’t fully thought through this part of the trip. On the first night, I hovered around the entrance to my hut trying to catch the eye of other guests, hoping they might invite me to join them for dinner.
No one did. After realising that everyone had gone and how hungry I was, I headed down to the beach to see if any of the restaurants there had a welcoming atmosphere. Amazingly, the woman who was my age was already sitting alone at the table of the first restaurant. She waved and invited me to join her. It felt like such a relief to have someone to eat with on that first night. It was wonderful to connect with her and I’m so grateful that our trips overlapped by a few days and I got to spend the next 3 days with her before she flew home.
Those first few days of the trip had an interesting feel to them. It was nice to be away from work and I wasn’t really thinking or worrying about work-related things. But I felt the socially anxious, self-conscious part of my character coming up a lot. I didn’t feel fully relaxed or at ease and found myself constantly second guessing what I was supposed to be doing. I attended most of the yoga classes that took place at the village each day and went to a handstand workshop and a sound bath (my first one). Of all the teachers in the village, there was one whose teachings really resonated, called Esther. I heard her talking at breakfast one day about offering sessions in something called “reiki,” which I’d never heard of. But I was there to try new things, and I really enjoyed being around her, so I signed up.
The reiki session was like nothing I had ever experienced before. There were points where I felt heat and sensation in my body and emotions that flowed up and through me. I laughed, I cried, I sobbed, and I went into a state of relaxation that was new to me at that time in my life. After the session, Esther told me that she felt a huge blockage around the energy centre at my throat. She said it felt like I’d lost confidence in my voice and wasn’t speaking my truth. But she said I should. She said my instincts were good and I should trust them. I was floored. She described exactly how I’d been feeling about work, which I hadn’t mentioned to anyone since arriving in India. She finished the session by telling me “You are a healer.” I assured her that I wasn’t. I worked in an office! She insisted that I was. She told me I should train in reiki while I was in India. She said it was a good place to do it, and the energy was right.
Until that day I hadn’t even heard of reiki and now I was being told I should train in it. But it had felt incredibly powerful, and I had a lot of respect of Esther, even if she did have this strange idea about me being a healer. I decided that I would look into reiki training. If it was nearby, if there was a course running and if it was within my budget for the trip (a lot of ifs!), then maybe I’d do it. There were two reiki training schools that were walking distance from the yoga village. Both had WhatsApp numbers on their websites. Both were within my budget and the websites said you could do your training any time. I text them both to ask if they were currently taking students. Within 10 minutes I received a reply from Krishna. It said, “Come tomorrow at 10am.”
So I did. At 10am the next morning I arrived at the Yoga Teacher Training School where the reiki training took place. There was one other student there too. That day Krishna taught us the history of reiki and the core principles. We were given notebooks and told to write everything down. No handouts, no videos. Just writing and drawing everything that he said and wrote on the board. At the end of the first day, we had our reiki initiation ceremonies. I felt that same heat, pulse, tingle that I had experienced during the session with Esther. It felt enlivening and wonderful. Like nothing I’d ever experienced before this trip. The second day of the training was a day of putting what we’d learned into practice. First on ourselves and then on each other.
Krishna asked if I was going to do the Reiki II training, which would be a further 3 days. My first week in Goa was almost up and I was contemplating if I was going to stay by the beach or go somewhere else. I had kept it loose so I could go where I felt called to go. It felt like I was called to stay here. I decided to stay for another week and told Krishna I would do the next level of the training. It followed a similar format to the first. Lots of things to write down in my notebook, an initiation ceremony and offering more reiki sessions. We offered sessions to lots of yoga students living in the ashram, to each other and to other guests who stopped by.
During my evenings after the training, I enjoyed walking on the beach and noticed a strange phenomenon. Almost every time I sat down on the beach, one of the many resident dogs would come and lay down in front of me. Something told me to put my hands on the part of their body they offered to me. I would feel the warmth and tingle in my hands. And after several minutes, they would stand up and walk off. I think it happened with 5 different dogs. I asked Krishna if I could speak to him about something strange that was happening to me. He said, “is it the dogs?” Apparently, I wasn’t the first of his students who had had this experience!
At the end of the training, I had a few days left in Goa, which gave me a welcome opportunity to spend time on the beach during the day. I attended a few yoga classes each day and swam in the sea. I read and wrote and felt my whole body relax and calm in a way that was still very new to me. I connected with some of the teachers and some of the last remaining guests staying by the beach and would sometimes eat with friends and sometimes enjoy time alone. I felt a sense of being at home in my body and mind that I had never experienced before. This feeling of home is something that felt so new during this trip, but has deepened over the last 6 years and now it’s actually hard to remember the feeling of self-conscious anxiety that was my default for the preceding 3 decades. I feel so lucky that I found teachers and practices that helped me make this shift. And I’m so grateful that my work now is to be a teacher for others, sharing what I’ve learned and being a guide for others on their journey home.
