From Skeptic to Reiki Master

I used to be a hard-core skeptic. I believed I had to see, feel, or experience something firsthand before I could believe it was real. The first time I tried formal energy healing I didn’t have any tingles, I didn’t feel my charkas aligning, I had no big revelations. Essentially, I thought it was a hoax.

I was 22 years old, living in a small surf town in Costa Rica teaching ESL to locals. A retired woman training for her Reiki Master certification was spending a few months there to study and learn Spanish. She offered free energy healing sessions to anyone who worked at the language school. I remember being curious and excited and then so bummed when I didn’t feel anything. I basically wrote it completely off.

But life had other plans for me.

Over the next few years, I was offered small, digestible opportunities to explore energy work—just enough to fuel my curiosity, to soften my skepticism, and to deepen my understanding.

I studied Albert Einstein’s energetic theories:

“Energy is the building block of all matter. Everything is just energy vibrating at different frequencies.”

“Every living organism, including the human body, vibrates at specific frequencies, and imbalances in those frequencies can contribute to illness or discomfort.”

I came across energy quotes from many diverse teachers:

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” — Rumi

“The moment you take responsibility for the energy you bring into a space; you start healing.” — Oprah Winfrey

“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.” — Caroline Myss

I learned about mirror neurons – the part of the brain responsible for empathy and connection. Research shows we’re biologically wired to sense each other’s energy.

I discovered studies like Dr. Masaru Emoto’s work on how human emotion can affect water molecules, and others exploring the effects of energy on plant growth.

And of course, I couldn’t deny the simple truth: I always knew the energy of a room the moment I walked into it – whether the people inside had been laughing or fighting.

In my late 20s, I was given another opportunity to experience regular one-on-one sessions with an energy healer. At that point, I’d spent most of the last decade moving from job to job, city to city, and country to country. No matter how fun and “aligned” my life looked, the feeling that something was missing kept coming back.

Most people would say, I was living a pretty spiritual life – I meditated, practiced and taught yoga, received acupuncture, worked with herbs, studied Pema Chödrön and Ram Dass, spent a lot of time in nature, and had kept a journal since I was seven. So why not try energy healing again?

The thing about energy healing is that it is cumulative. Like going to the gym, you might get sore muscles after one session, but you won’t see much change in your body. Something called me to stick with it and over time I started to see the benefits (reduced stress and anxiety, pain relief, enhanced emotional well-being, improved sleep, increased creativity, and greater connection to my higher self) and yes I even started to feel the energy moving.

Now ten years later, I’ve come to see energy healing as a skill—like learning to play an instrument. Some people may have natural talent, but with the right teacher, time, and intention, anyone can learn to access, balance, and heal their own energetic system. I am now a Reiki and intuitive healing master, and I’m also trained in theta healing, frequency healing, sound healing, cranial sacral massage, and another overall energy healing modality called field dynamics. There are thousands of ways to balance and heal our energetic and emotional systems. Whether we realize it or not, we’re interacting with these systems all day long—just like we do with our physical bodies. Sometimes we’re intentional; most of the time, we’re not.

My trust and enthusiasm for this powerful modality has deepened so much that it’s now one of my life’s goals to help others experience it for themselves – even the skeptics, maybe especially the skeptics.