While a massage can address our bodily aches and pains, and foster a sense of calm for the duration of a session, another form of lighter touch is said to promote a deeper sense of relaxation and understanding within mind, body and soul. Reiki, a combination of two Japanese words that, translated, mean ‘spiritually guided life force energy’, is administered by a practitioner who lightly lays the palms of their hands across the body from head to toe.
Auckland-based energy healer and life coach Olivia Scott is in demand for her relaxing and insightful Reiki sessions, having practiced professionally for two years. Combining her own energy healing and channelling abilities with Reiki and crystal therapy, Scott says she uses Reiki as a tool to gently prompt clients to find their own clarity.
“We do often know, deep down, what is right for us,” she says. “When we can drop out of our heads, and into our bodies, we are able to remember what we truly want. Energy healing facilitates this process because we tap out of our thinking mind and into our feeling body. Supported alongside with Reiki, we can release blockages, patterns or realign us to our true centre.”
I’ve always been intrigued by Reiki, having experienced it from my mother at various points throughout my childhood. Obviously several years have passed since then, so I was looking forward to a refresher session with Scott. The day I went to see her, I was feeling tired and burnt out, with deadlines looming and the general detritus of 2020 seeming to rest more heavily on my shoulders than usual. “It sounds like it’s an ideal time for a healing,” she said, when we sat down.
During the short consultation, Scott asked me what I wanted to get out of the day’s session, whether there was anything I needed to work through or focus on. We didn’t go super in-depth, which is why I was even more impressed with what she managed to pick up — more on that soon.
She then led me over to the therapy bed, where I lay down on my back, and she draped a weighty blanket on me which kept me feeling warm and at peace. 45 minutes then seemed to pass in about 10 as she gently placed her palms on me, starting with my head and ears, moving to my shoulders, my arms, stomach, and legs. At one point Scott placed a crystal on my sternum, and at various intervals throughout, she would pause to pen a few words in a notebook beside her, before continuing.
During this process, I let my mind wander and tried not to focus on anything in particular. Getting a little personal here, I usually consider myself to have quite a poor memory — whenever I’ve been asked to pinpoint specific memories from my childhood, for example, I can usually remember very little. However, as I was lying on the therapy bed, random yet specific past experiences kept drifting into my head. Nothing groundbreaking, but things I hadn’t thought about for a long time, like sitting on the roof of the garden shed at my childhood home, eating guavas from our tree. Scott wasn’t surprised. “We store memories in our legs, was it around the time I was working on them?” It was. Spooky.
After the lying down portion of the appointment, Scott went and got me a cup of tea, and we sat once again in the consultation area of the room where she told me what she had “channelled” from whatever higher power communicates with her, and written down while she was laying her hands on me. I was honestly a little gobsmacked at the specificity and accuracy of some of the things she was saying, things she never could have known and that I never mentioned to her. Most things were phrased as a gentle statement or a question, but as she calmly conveyed her astute observations, I was prompted to hone in on some truths that I had perhaps already known or had been sloshing around in my brain, but through this process they were clarified and brought to the surface.
Leaving the session, I felt calmer and more uplifted than when I went in. I also felt reflective, with a clarity of thought gently sparking me with purpose. Whether you believe in the supposed healing powers of Reiki or not, a session with Olivia Scott is both a relaxing and enlightening experience, thanks to her tranquil nature and surprisingly astute observations.
