My Little Reiki Bastard

My latest piece published on the Reiki Animal Source web newsletter. Check it out!

I call my cream-colored stray cat, Oliver, my Little Bastard. As soon as I’m about to drift off to sleep at night, without fail, he wakes me up. On purpose. He walks across my printer, turning it on and off and on again, creating little mechanical cartridge noises. If I stay in bed, he goes next to the charger cord on my cell phone, chewing it and knocking it to the floor. If that doesn’t work, he finds my to-do list, or a magazine I left out, or a piece of important mail, and systematically shreds pieces from it until I jump out of bed and chase him from my room. He seems to get some sick pleasure out of waking me out of sleep at night. Reiki has cured none of this.

Aside from perpetually figuring out a way to slip by and escape outdoors when I leave the house (particularly on days I’m in a rush) my Little Bastard has no major ailments. His back leg used to creak on occasion when he walked. He takes a lot of heat in his hips when I give him Reiki, but now the creaking is gone.

I was Reiki attuned last May, during my final semester of college. While floating by on my student loans, a $150 attunement seemed like a manageable expense. I was fascinated by the idea of energy healing, but also very skeptical. My self-treatments dwindled many times. Disbelief and doubt from my family and others leaked into me. It’s easy to make excuses like “Oh, I’ll do it tomorrow,” or “I don’t have time just now for a Reiki treatment,” or even, “This can’t be really real.” At times, the very thing that I was using Reiki to treat—my tendency to deny myself any me-time—got in the way of treatments.

One thing kept me going, however: my Little Bastard.

The day I came home Reiki attuned, Oliver was all over me. I gave him his first treatment that night and he’s come back for it ever since. He’s a hands-on Reiki cat. He tackles me as soon as I crawl into bed. He crawls onto my chest, situating his paws between my collarbones. He rests his chin on his paws and closes his eyes. The weight of his warm, slender body seems to melt into me, and I relax, too. Usually, my hot hands last about ten minutes, and then he leaps off my belly to more of his usual antics.

This uncharacteristically bastard-free time is something I look forward to daily.
It is a rare night when Oliver does not demand Reiki. Those few peaceful moments between me and my cat are definitely fleeting. But they’re consistent. And now that I am convinced that Reiki does have a place in my personal practice, I have my Little Bastard to thank for it.

About the Author: Jessie Tierney was Level II attuned at Equilibrium Energy + Education in Chicago, IL. She graduated Columbia College Chicago with a Fiction Writing degree in May of 2008. She's 23 and lives in Aurora with her Little Bastard and two golden retrievers, Bisou and Cody. Check out her website for her photography and writing.

Coal is Not The Answer

Coal is not the answer!

Create your own slogan.

Here's mine:

A Riddle!

A riddle: What happens when you graduate from college, have loans to pay back, rent to pay, and bills bills bills?

Answer: You move home.

I've been back to the beginning for two months now and can say with honesty that now, finally, I am okay with it. For awhile ...

But I think the reason for this settled feeling stems from seeing an end to it all. For a month there, I was absolutely cluesless as to what I wanted to do. I needed a change, but felt disoriented and unable to make the first step. My body responded to this uncertainty by having panic attacks pretty regularly. I had one at work, where I was ringing a customer up and I could barely mutter the price of her book without bursting into tears. I was a mess.

Now that I've applied for some promising jobs and can actually visualize a future for myself--independent of my parents--I know it's going to be okay.

But it wasn't always like that.

There were entire days, weeks, where I couldn't stand being in my body. I berated myself continually, thinking that I was a failure for having to move home after trying to make it with a full-time job paying rent in the city. When loans kicked in, I could not. But that didn't make it okay. Moving home for me was much less painful than for most: my supportive parents gave me my own bedroom and even donated the sunroom as a space for me to practice yoga every day. They gave me space and don't pressure me.

Still, the percieved failure and my inability to foresee a future was paralyzing. I couldn't stand the thought of settling in at home. I had a life to live! Great things to accomplish! But finances strangled me.

Depression set in. There's nothing worse than a total lack of motivation. I started to forget what I loved to do. I forgot what made me happy. I forgot how to be happy.

After weeks of this desperation, trying and trying to figure out what was wrong with me, why I couldn't just be okay in stillness, I knew that I had to change my outlook. Telling myself that my living situation was not acceptible had made it unbearable. I had to get my perception back into shape.

I was not going to revert to medication this time. My anxiety and depression from the past had beome manageable for awhile on meds, but then they came back. My doctor's solution was to up my dosage. I hate the idea of medication. I needed to find the root of the problem and irradicate it from there, not cover it up with happy-pills.

I started practicing yoga every day again. My practice had dwindled and stopped over the months post-graduation. I started watching my thought patterns. Each negative self-statement ("I'm boring;" "I'm unmotivated;" "I'm freaking out...") was countered by a positive statement ("I am an engaging, thoughtful and loving person;" "I am passionate;" "I'm experiencing a little anxiety right now, but it will pass..."). The practice of countering negative statements was painfully slow, but slowly it began to work. I kept track of what I was eating, being sure to get enough fruits, vegetables, and protein. This, I assure you, was a full-time job.

So here I am now, about four weeks after the initial desperation, anxiety attacks, and depression. I've just applied for two new jobs that would allow me to supplement my bookstore income. I'm excited again, looking forward to projects and writing again. I just got a small article published on the Reiki Animal Source website. Baby steps.

I think the most important thing for me to remember is to keep my Sanity Practices going. If nothing else, yoga every day. My boundless energy tends to get me into trouble, wearing me down eventually. My Sanity Practices keep me in check.