Brighton Reiki - Rifa Bhunnoo

I really do love my job. this time last year i could barely get out of bed and needed a nap in the afternoon. And since getting more healing, homeopathy and osteopathy I can now enjoy getting to my full-on full time job and give treatments on Saturdays and teach reiki on Sundays. I love it. this sunday was a really wonderful group. I am finding that as my own healing steps up a level, i attract people who are already quite far along the Path. Reiki One people now are so much more open and receptive to receive more energy and understand complex concepts than a few years ago. there’s a reiki revolution going on. get involved!

Panic over in the office because the work on a site had not been done overnight. I had faith it would all be alright in the end, the developer couldn’t have just NOT done the work, maybe he had trouble uploading it to the test area. I get irate phone calls on the way to work so I used my reiki magic. By the time i stroll into the office, the problem is sorted. She hadn’t cleared her cache - and lo and behold, all changes are done, client is happy and all is right in the world. *rolls eyes*

I got an email today: Six seconds would be an obsolete maximum duration for animation.

I’m reading Maverick! about a company in Brazil called Semco that has revolutionized their way of working with profit share, workers making their own decisions, open-salary policy etc. One of my favourite things they do is have a personalised peg, where instead of clocking in, in the morning you put a different coloured ribbon on your peg to let other workers know what sort of mood you are in (green means good, red means you want to be left alone).

I work in an office with 80% women. At the next company meeting I will ask about putting pegs up to indicate where you are in your moon cycle. Just to give everyone a heads up…

I’ve worked in lots of different places and it’s been fun getting back in contact with my “professional network” and seeing what people are up to now in digital media world. Onwards and upwards for most people. Which is great.

And then I get a bunch of emails from old reiki students and clients - again many people are doing well, running their own workshops and giving treatments. I love it. and what is keeping me going is looking forward to seeing my current reiki clients on Saturday and the new workshops I’ve got lined up in the coming Sundays.

But despite all the positive stuff, I’ve heard some bad news and it just reminds me how lucky I am and how grateful and how this life is so precious that even I have to get a grip, enjoy every day and not resent anyone or anything else as it’s just wasted energy. This time last year I was doing something completely different and this time next year, I’ll be used to doing something radically different again.

Embrace change, it’s the only way forward. Jim knows. But even i forget sometimes.

I got really annoyed recently because (not for the first time) I discovered someone has ripped off my reiki website. It’s ridiculous because how lazy can you be, (or stupid) not to be able to write a simple few lines in your own words? I had the misfortune of one of my own students being offended when I gently pointed out that her website content, structure and code was actually identical to mine. Obviously the person had only copied the generic pages, they drew the line at actually pretending to have had my experiences in Nepal and India. However, the reason I get so annoyed is that it’s not difficult to write but it is difficult, tedious and annoying to handcode a whole website from scratch with a book on HTML and Notepad which is what I did in 2000 when i put together my own website. So to have someone just think they can rip me off is annoying. And then denying it is just boring. Anyway, the more recent example of a plagiarism is just so inane, I am probably more annoyed at myself for getting annoyed about it in the first place. I mean, it’s not like someone didn’t give me a photo credit or ripped off my wedding day or took over my radio show.

Oh…

OOh how exciting. Today the interview I did ages ago about reiki and children has appeared in the Body and Soul section of The Times. Which is fantastic. I did the interview months ago and had pretty much given up on it ever appearing.It just goes to show things have to happen at the right time, there’s no point in forcing when things appear. And it also appears online with a link to my website so hopefully more people will hear about Brighton Reiki and come and learn or have treatments.

Rifa’s latest article: The Times

Hey that post from last week just shows how bad my fatigue was, and that I don’t really re-read or edit my rambling, I just write. that’s what I think blogging should be like, not polished.

So by the end of last week, I lost my sense of humour about work, but have now got things into perspective, thanks to a couple of nice long phone-calls with Lucy and Amelia. And my sis came down today. Whenever Chris goes away I go a bit off centre..and you really need to chat to your friends and get out of the house when you’re working full-time. I am just not used to travelling to meetings, getting 4 taxis, 2 planes and 2 trains on Monday for a 1 hour meeting in Dublin. It f*cked me up for the whole week. By Wednesday and another 6am start for a meeting in London, I was NOT HAPPY. Thursday i got thorugh the day by the sheer excitement of V day. but on friday I had lost patience with the ridiculous and unnaturalness of W.O.R.K and just thought fuck it!

So this week i have been over-tired and being ratty at home and worrying unnecessarily worrying about work. I blame lack of sleep for my paranoia. So last night, I focused on sending reiki to everyone in my office. Distant healing is all about using your imagination. i visualized sending some colleagues beautifully wrapped gifts full of golden light, and others needed a golden duvet wrapped around them. And today, valentine’s day, everyone is getting on, laughing and having a great time.

My head is spinning today, mainly because the shock of coming back to work after 10 days in LA was a bit much. LA was cool, weird, funny, big, wet, hot, green, dry and great for shopping . I mainly liked Silverlake, Pasadena, Hollywood, Joshua Tree, Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills. I mainly ate Mexican, Chinese, Vietnamese, American, Japanese, Italian, Middle Eastern, more Mexican, plenty of coffee and too many cakes. I had the best time with Stephen, Jane, Chris, Kris, Rachel, and a bunch of other people in bars and at gigs. I did A LOT of shopping, mainly at Forever 21, LuluLemon and Amoeba. If you go to LA in January, make sure you take a brolly.

I’m reading Deepak Chopra’s Book of Secrets, and it’s making me feel a bit spaced out. That could also be lack of sleep from a strange kind of jet-lag. I just finished Autobiography of a yogi before we went to LA, and stumbled across the Self-Realisation Fellowship temple on Sunset Boulevard. It was a lovely peaceful place on one of the most hectic roads in LA, and next to the Hubbard HQ. Maybe the chanting is cancelling out the gamma rays from the aliens.

Anyway, work is important to keep us Reiki Masters grounded, so stick to your day-job until you feel ready for the next level. Personally, I find it difficult at the moment to get all my job satisfaction from treating reiki clients and teaching workshops, but I think gradually that will change as I get more financially secure. I find that by working in the ‘real world’ I can reach more and more people and learn more about myself in the process. Your spiritual life is not ‘over there’ somewhere - it’s not separate from your ‘real life’. Your spiritual life is every moment of every day, take notice of it now.