Take Care of Yourself

Like many kind and caring people I used to put myself last on the list of people to take care of.  However through my practice of Usui Shiki Ryoho Reiki I've learned how important it is to take care of myself if I really want to serve others. 

I received my first lesson in this when I first encountered Reiki: I had sprained my ankle but instead of taking care of it and resting, I still went and limped through a tai chi class.  My teacher noticed I was struggling  and offered me Reiki.  Although the Reiki felt nice, it was not enough to encourage me take better care of myself.

My second lesson came when my father died suddenly: Reiki was offered to me again and, overwhelmed with grief and desperate for comfort, I accepted.  This time, after receiving a deep feeling of peace from the treatment that comforted me to my very soul, I began to learn to take care of myself by receiving more Reiki treatments.  This helped me to move through my grieving process.  I now see that at that time I was not good at caring for myself - because I didn't think I deserved it - so having someone else to support me who believed I was worth caring about was just what I needed.   Having received such a wonderful experience I chose to learn Reiki, so that I could help others experience the same.

However, my third lesson in self care was that learning Reiki also gave me the gift of healing for myself.  Initially I didn't bother too much about doing this: I was more focused on helping other people than helping myself.  Gradually, however, I began to understand that if I really wanted to benefit others I needed to treat myself.   I established the habit of giving myself a Reiki treatment most days and something began to change: I began to caring enough about myself to place my hands in the various positions to treat my whole being and this enhanced my ability to look after myself in other ways.

Self treatment gives me a daily opportunity to pay attention to what is going on in my body and mind.  Like mindfulness practice it helps calm my mind, but more than that it enables me to tap into the wisdom of my body and intuition.  Our bodies are so wise!  My fourth lesson, after some time of practising self treatment, was that my body sends me messages constantly about what is needed to keep me healthy.   So it was as a result of self treatment I became aware that  sugar was a problem for my body, which led to being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

My fifth lesson in self care was that when I listen to my intuition, my body's wisdom and am open to messages coming to me from various sources, it is possible to restore my health and vitality.  As a result I have been able to reverse my diabetes and remain in remission as a result I have more energy and vitality, to offer my service in the world. 

This greater well being from my self care also resulted in greater happiness and I have found that my joy has a positive effect on those around me.  When I learned Reiki all those years ago I never anticipated that the way to truly benefit others would comes from self care.

Self Care: Mindful Preparation

For many years taking care of myself was never high on my list of priorities, but learning Reiki brought me to the understanding that self care is worth spending time on.  At first I resisted this idea, being more interested in helping other people.  However Reiki would not let me persist in this! 

Eventually I surrendered to this simple practice of daily self care and it has had ripples that have affected the rest of my life.  Recently I saw that in fact the self care I had resisted is important for preparing myself to serve others.

Beginning most days with a self Reiki treatment I remain as present as possible as I hold my hands in each of the positions  – a mindfulness practice that helps me to begin the day centred and calm.  This has led me to be more aware of other aspects of self care as I go through life.

Being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes made me look more carefully at my diet and I now know that eating regularly and with protein at every meal helps me balance my blood glucose.  To achieve this requires mindfulness, however as it’s easy to get distracted and forget to eat.  It also requires preparation and planning to ensure I have the right kind of food to hand at the time I need to eat.  I know this can seem fussy and cranky to some people, but I’ve found that through balancing my blood glucose I have more energy and vitality (not to mention loosing 2 stone!).  What this means is that I can do more to serve others and do it better (more efficiently, more joyfully). 

I was recently selected by the British Lung Foundation to run one of their singing for lung health groups, which involved training in London.  In my previous state of health I think I would have struggled to achieve this and would have worried about whether I had the stamina to run the group every week.  Now I feel positive and excited about the prospect!  So improving my health and well being was good preparation to take on this new project.

Another aspect of my self care has been to improve my sleep.  I have Reiki to help me drift off

once I am in bed, but you won’t find me answering emails late at night unless I’m breaking my self care rules!  When I was less good at self care I’ve experienced poor sleep with all the predicted outcomes: irritability, higher stress levels, lack of co-ordination, reduced immunity, increased frequency of making mistakes etc.  Now I take more care to do and not do the things that will encourage good sleep – such as being in bed by 11pm when possible, not eating or drinking anything after 9pm and limiting carbohydrates in the evening.  As a result I sleep well most nights and have more energy to give my attention to planning and balancing my life, rather than struggling through the day, just longing for my bed!

So Reiki has taught me that self care requires mindfulness and is not something that comes last on the list of priorities, but is good preparation for living my life to the full, able to answer whatever Reiki asks of me each day!

Gratitude to a tick?

Tick, image courtesy of http://www.lymediseaseaction.org.uk/

While on holiday in the Hebrides in a few years ago I discovered a large tick on my neck.  After getting some help to remove it, I gave the area of the bite Reiki as much as I could for the rest of the day.  I had none of the warning symptoms of a rash or feverishness, but I did wonder whether I might have caught Lymes Disease!

Over the next months I continued to wonder about this, especially when I experienced lack of energy and aches in my muscles and joints.  Eventually I went online and found a self diagnosis questionnaire, which told me that my symptoms were possibly caused by Lymes disease.  So as the Reiki Principles suggest not worrying, I decided to ask my doctor for a blood test to find out.

She was happy to oblige and suggested a range of other blood tests to check other possible causes for my tiredness.  Happily the test for Lymes disease was negative.  However my blood sugar levels seemed a bit high, so a fasting blood test was arranged.   As soon as this concern was raised I began to think that sugar could indeed be the problem, so immediately began to change my diet (having already cut out dairy and gluten).  My husband had bought me a book "Fat Around the Middle" by Marilyn Glenville which I now started to read with more interest!

The evening before my blood test I was giving a talk about Reiki.  I had to fast after a certain time, but thought drinking the J2O I was offered by my hosts would be OK.  I then managed to starve until after the blood test.  What I hadn't realised was how much sugar there was in that drink - not just fruit sugar but added sugar.  This ignorance was typical of what got me into trouble!

The result of that test was that my blood glucose levels were indicative of type 2 diabetes.  It was a shock and initially I did not want to believe it - I told myself that I was only borderline and if I could just change my diet for a while and loose a bit of weight I would be a non-diabetic again.  Again the Reiki Principle of not worrying came in very helpful!

A discussion with the diabetes nurse a few weeks later dispelled my illusions.  However I was determined to manage the condition without drugs.  I found the diet and advice in Dr Glenville's book very helpful and also bought another book that had just been published about reversing type 2 diabetes.

3 months later I went back for a further blood test to check on my progress.  I'd already managed to loose some weight and knew from self testing that things were improving.  However the nurse was delighted with my progress in such a short time.  My initial HbA1c result had been 66, the target was 48 and the result this time was 49.  My latest result, 17 months after initial diagnosis was 40 which is below the level indicative of diabetes!  I've managed this entirely with diet exercise and Reiki.

So the Reiki principle 'show gratitude to every living thing' applies to that tick for me: without it's bite I would not have gone for the blood tests that showed up my diabetes just in time!  Thank you tick!


I plan to share more about how I have achieved this in my new blog:

healingdiabetesnaurally.blogspot.com