When the Channel Opens

Learning to Trust What Moves Through Me as a Reiki Practitioner

Almost a year ago, I became a certified Level Two Reiki practitioner. At the time, I understood Reiki intellectually: a Japanese energy-healing practice rooted in the idea that life force energy flows through all of us, and that when this energy is supported and unobstructed, the body, mind, and spirit can move toward balance. Reiki is not something the practitioner does to someone—it is something we allow to move through us. The practitioner becomes a conduit, offering their nervous system, attention, and presence as a channel for healing energy to flow where it’s needed most.

What I didn’t fully understand yet was what it would feel like when my own intuitive gifts began to open in the process.

Locally, through Sacred Mountain Institute, we’ve been holding monthly free Reiki clinics—both for the general public and in partnership with local nonprofit organizations. These clinics have become living classrooms for me. From the very beginning, the moment I entered the Reiki energy and let it flow through me toward a recipient, I would feel things. Sensations. Emotions. Images. Words. At first, they arrived like whispers—hard to catch, even harder to name.

Early on, it was difficult to put language to what I was experiencing. Sometimes I felt a light, airy expansiveness around someone and interpreted it as a kind of spiritual support—what I privately thought of as angels surrounding them. Other times, I’d feel a heaviness or density around a particular part of the body. When I gently asked if that was an area of pain or concern, the answer was often yes. If the recipient was open to hearing feedback, I would allow the words that came to mind to enter the shared space, carefully, without attachment.

As the months passed, something shifted.

The sensations became clearer. The messages more specific. It’s hard to say whether this came from practice, trust, or simply learning not to override what arrives. Probably all three. What I do know is this: when a feeling comes now, and the person I’m working with is open to hearing it, I say it without question, judgment, or doubt. I don’t analyze it. I don’t soften it to make it more palatable. I let it move through me the same way the energy does.

And the accuracy can be startling.

Recently, I sat with a recipient whose response stayed with me long after the session ended. As my hands moved over his abdomen, I felt a sudden wave of nausea in my own body—strong enough that I almost pulled my hands away. When I shared this sensation, he told me he had been seeing doctors for two months trying to diagnose a complex stomach issue. A few moments later, as my hands hovered near his chest, I felt a tightness around my heart. Again, when I named it, he said doctors were simultaneously investigating potential heart concerns.

Then a single word kept repeating in my mind: reunion.

I asked him, gently, if he had recently reunited with someone—or if one was coming. The look on his face said everything. He told me he had just reunited with a sibling after fifteen years of separation and was planning to see them again in a few weeks.

Moments like this are humbling. They remind me that when the channel is open, I am not the source of the information. I am a conduit. I am given only what would be most helpful to the person in front of me—nothing more, nothing less.

This experience is not always comfortable. Having intuitive gifts open can be alarming. Exciting. Powerful. Intimidating. There are moments when I’ve wondered if what I’m feeling is “too much,” or questioned whether I should say anything at all. But over time, I’ve learned that discernment isn’t about withholding—it’s about consent, presence, and integrity. When someone is open, the information arrives in service of their own remembering.

I work this way not only in Reiki sessions, but also with the people I walk alongside in my transition doula work. I’ve been searching for a better word than client, because what we’re really doing together is crossing thresholds. These are people in seasons of change—grief, rebirth, identity shifts, relationship endings, new beginnings. Just as in Reiki, I don’t tell them who to be or what to choose. I listen. I feel. I name what arises when invited. I help translate the subtle signals they may already sense but haven’t yet trusted.

Whether through hands-on energy work or intuitive companionship, the essence is the same: creating a safe, grounded space where truth can surface and be met without fear.

Opening to intuition isn’t about becoming something extraordinary. It’s about remembering something ancient. And once the channel opens, it doesn’t close again—it simply asks us to meet it with humility, responsibility, and care.

If you’re standing at the edge of your own threshold—curious, uncertain, sensing that something is opening—I see you. And if you want support as you listen for what’s next, I offer transition doula sessions rooted in the same presence and discernment that guides my Reiki practice. Sometimes all we need is someone steady beside us as the energy begins to move.

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When I sit in the stillness of Reiki, I sometimes feel the quiet gravity of Ananke, the ancient Greek embodiment of necessity and inevitability. She is not a goddess who arrives with symbols or spectacle, but with pressure—the kind that cannot be reasoned away. Ananke reminds me that some truths do not come because we seek them, but because the moment requires them. The sensations, words, and images that move through me are not chosen; they arrive with a sense of rightness, of timing beyond preference. In this way, channeling feels less like intuition as a skill and more like participation in a larger order. What comes through is what must be known. Reiki, under Ananke’s watch, becomes an act of surrender—allowing necessity to speak through the body, and trusting that what arises is exactly what belongs in that moment.

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If this reflection resonated—if you felt something stir, recognize itself, or soften—I invite you to stay in this space with me. Subscribing allows you to support this work and continue exploring intuition, transition, and the subtle languages that move beneath the surface of our lives. And if you’d prefer a simpler gesture, you can also buy me a cacao as a way of saying thank you and helping sustain these offerings. However you choose to engage, your presence here matters. This work exists because it is met.

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