As Asia floats down the hall, her dark hair shining under fluorescent lighting, more than one person stops for a second look at this slender and gorgeous woman. She opens the door to Nick’s hospital room and a paper taped to the door flutters. Reiki In Progress. We were not sure how the hospital staff would respond to Nick’s alternative healing therapy but everyone has been super respectful and they said no one would interrupt Nick’s sessions unless it was absolutely necessary.
She enters his room and the atmosphere shifts from stress and fear to calm and hopeful.
From his bed the smile on Nick’s face beams across the room.
“Hello little one,” she says to him.
“Hi Asia.” I swear he’s blushing.
She gently touches his hand, and he melts into a soft pool of warm syrup, his features relax and he looks 6 years old again, half his age. I should try this stuff.
“We begin.” Her voice is barely heard above the hospital hum.
She runs the palms of her warm smooth hands inches above his body, at times stopping for a minute to lay her hands on him.
Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing. It is administered by “laying on hands” and is based on the idea that an unseen “life force energy” flows through us and is what causes us to be alive. If one’s “life force energy” is low, then we are more likely to get sick or feel stress, and if it is high, we are more capable of being happy and healthy.
Asia stands next to the middle of the bed with both hands over Nick’s abdomen. Her face is turned slightly upwards. She’s asking for help, making herself a conduit. Nicholas’ kidneys have just about quit. The day after Asia first laid her hands over my son his blood work showed an improvement in his kidney function.
“When Asia is here I feel all warm inside me, nothing hurts anymore.” Nicholas slept the deep sleep of a peaceful child after the first session of Reiki.
Asia’s mother is a Master Reiki. A small woman of full Asian heritage while Asia’s father is Caucasian. She joined Asia during her first visit to oversee her daughter’s practice. If she’d been a monk in woven cloth robes inside a hand-built stone monastery on a mountainside in Tibet I could have been no more impressed. Her whole demeanor planted inside of me a faith that what was happening between my son and these women was true and good.
Asia, breathless, herself a little overwhelmed, told me, “Nicholas is the first child I’ve ever treated. His life force is so beautiful and trusting. He wants to get better. To live.” When she smiled I just about cried.
The air in the room has become heavy but not uncomfortably so, like being wrapped in a favorite blanket. My eyelids bob up and down but I won’t close them because I can’t miss this magic.
Asia & Nicholas
Never before have I so strongly felt the possibility of another side to life and death. A triangle instead of a flat surface. I suspect this to be similar to the discovery the world was round and not flat, and there ceased to be terror that there was an end at which you would fall off into an abyss. Even though I’m mired in immense grief with the thought that Nicholas may die, there is on the fringes a dim belief in something more after this life. It gives me hope and is my drug, I keep reaching for it, and this must be why instead of dissolving into a puddle of blithering idiot, instead, I manage to keep on keeping on.
Reiki is spiritual in nature, but it is not a religion. It has no dogma, and there is nothing you must believe in order to learn and use Reiki or to have it work for you. But imagine the joyful power when one does believe, as Asia and Nicholas together believe and connect to one another, and call upon the spirits who come as beckoned to this room and bring healing.
There is an exchange of energy glowing between her hands and Nick’s body. I swear I can see it. Yes! Through eyes barely open, I see an aurora borealis of blue and green, orange and red, and it makes me happier than I can say.
September 1999
The secret art of inviting happiness
The miraculous medicine of all diseases
Just for today, do not anger
Do not worry. Be filled with gratitude
Devote yourself to your work. Be kind to people.
Every morning and evening, join your hands in prayer.
Pray these words to your heart
and chant these words with your mouth.
Usui Mikao
