In the early 1900s, a Japanese scholar, Tendai Buddhist monk, Samurai-trained martial artist and spiritual teacher named Mikao Usui developed a healing practice he called the secret method for inviting happiness.

Over a century later, I think that is still the most honest description of what it does.

Usui Reiki Ryoho - pronounced RAY-kee, translating to Universal Life Force Energy - is a gentle, safe, non-invasive energy healing method that works on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels simultaneously. It is practised all over the world, often alongside conventional medicine. It does not conflict with anything, it simply adds.

The premise is straightforward: we are energy. When that energy is blocked, depleted, or out of balance, we feel it as exhaustion, pain, anxiety, disconnection and that particular kind of stuck that sleep can't fix. Reiki works to restore the flow.

What to expect

You don't need to do anything except arrive and let go.

You lie fully clothed on the couch, pillows and blankets for your comfort, soft music playing. I work with the lightest of touch and above the body, moving through the chakra system to restore balance wherever it is needed.

What you feel will be your own. Some people experience warmth or tingling. Some release - tears, giggles, a deep sigh that seems to come from somewhere they forgot they had. Some see colours, or feel a sense of spaciousness that is hard to describe afterwards. Some simply fall asleep, more deeply relaxed than they have been in years. All of it is welcome. None of it is wrong.

I don't direct the Reiki. I trust it to go where it is needed for your greatest and highest good and in ten years of practice, it has never failed to find the right place.

At the end of the session, I sweep your aura and bring you gently back into the room. The intention is always the same: to leave you grounded, clear, and more able to move through your life with authority, courage and calm.

Afterwards

Drink plenty of water. Rest when you can. Be gentle with your system as it integrates the healing. In other words: look after yourself.

Before anything else, you get to speak.

Not to be fixed. Not to be advised. Not to have your sentences finished, your problems solved, or your thoughts redirected. Just to speak freely, without interruption, for as long as you need, while someone holds the space with complete, unhurried attention.

This is rarer than you think. Most of us have never experienced it.

My approach to holding space is shaped by Nancy Kline's Thinking Environment, a body of work built on a quietly radical idea: that the quality of a person's thinking is determined entirely by how they are treated. Give someone true attention, ease and the freedom to follow their own mind, and something remarkable tends to happen. They go deeper than they expected. They find the thing they didn't know they were looking for. They hear their own inner authority, often for the first time.

In the context of Empress Flow, this isn't a separate offering. It's simply how we begin. You arrive with a full head and a tight chest. You speak. You empty out. And only once that space has been created can the Reiki go where it needs to go.

The clearing before the opening.

It asks nothing of you except that you trust the flow of your own thinking wherever it leads, at whatever pace it moves. No agenda, no judgement, no rushing towards an answer. Just the particular kind of freedom that comes from knowing you will not be interrupted.