Becoming a Healer : Musings on Acupuncture & Reflexology

Good Afternoon my dears,

Today I thought I'd make a post sharing what I do as my 'day job' and a bit about how I got here and my reasons for choosing the path I did. For those who may not know I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Acupuncture and am currently studying Clinical Reflexology.

When I look around and listen to people talking about their hopes and dreams I realise that a lot of people feel that they should follow their head and be logical instead of following their heart and their dreams. This seems to be especially prevalent when it comes to what jobs we take and what training and courses we do. A lot of the time, in my opinion, people push down their dreams because they simply don't know how they can take their passion and turn it into something that will support them. There is a lot of pressure as we get older about getting 'serious' and being 'realistic' and a dreams seem to fall into the category of being frivolous, silly and unworthy. 

My aim in making this post is to offer support for people out there who are trying to follow their dreams, or who really really want to but are afraid of the consequences. I absolutely believe in following your dreams, being unashamed of what you truly want and refusing to dilute yourself. 

This is not a post about being realistic because there is enough of that out there, in fact more than enough. This is about being dreamy, ambitious, determined and confident that you CAN do what you WANT to do.

(Chart of the body showing Acupuncture Points, known as Acu-points)

I want to start with a little bit of background about how I grew up because it forms the foundation of how I came to be the way I am, and how I had the courage to follow my heart. 

Support is a massive part of how we build our confidence in ourselves, having others believe in us is so important and I'm incredibly lucky that I have an endlessly supportive family network behind me, and always have. I've always been close with my parents and extended family and they have been behind me ever since I can remember.

 I want to point out here though that your support doesn't have to come from your blood family, for a lot of people I know their family is one of their biggest obstacles. Your family, your supporters, can be anybody. Your friends are your family, your lover is your family, your pets are your family! Draw strength from any and every source because I promise there are people out there who will support your dream. 

For myself I believe that I've always been on the path of a Healer. I believe I came to this planet to be a healer and to teach others and one of my biggest lessons, for myself and for others, is about loving yourself and believing in yourself. I am here to help people in many ways, many of them not yet known to me I'm sure, but one of those ways is to act as a healer through different modalities. 

I was born into a family with strong intuitive abilities. I'm really not fond of the word psychic so I don't use it, but what I mean by intuitive is that my family (especially my dad's side) all have very strong abilities in feeling and working with energy and the spirit world. My grandfather and grandmother used to travel around providing Reiki and energy healing and when they moved to England and settled down they continued to do this long distance through holding 'Circles'. Every week my grandmother, my dad and my aunt and uncle would gather together to send long distance healing and do spirit work, and I was always aware of that. When I was very little I wasn't involved, but I always knew what the point of those little meetings was. 

I've always had a connection with the spirit world, it goes back further than I can even remember. Some of the experiences I have had have been truly amazing, and some of them have been truly horrible. That is the honest truth of growing up with strong intuitive abilities and I feel that it is very important to be honest about that with people. When you're young you can be especially vulnerable to picking up energies that might be darker and sometimes things will try to communicate through you and end up giving you something very scrambled. All the same I grew up with the knowledge of spiritual guardians and the importance of shielding yourself and protecting yourself. I had difficult experiences, but I learned a lot from them.

When I reached my early teens I became very interested in divination and took a particular shine to Tarot. My dad bought me my very first Tarot Deck which is sitting on my shelf above me as we speak. Whenever I've taken an interest in something intuitively based my parents have always fully supported and encouraged that interest, I still remember sitting outside in the summer doing tarot readings for anybody that would take me up on it. 

Another big part of my life has been my health. I was born with a variety of different medical conditions that meant I spent a lot of time home from school and in hospital when I was growing up. I got used to being the 'mystery patient' which could sometimes lead to a solitary, lonely feeling and a lot of poking and prodding trying to figure me out. My mum always laughs and says "you're just wired wrong!" and I think that's the best explanation I've ever heard for it! 

I think the combination of being born with such strong intuition in my blood, coupled with my health and taking an interest in places so heavily reliant on intuition was what led me to the path of choosing to become a healer. My mum says that when I was little I used to often say things like "I know I'm here for a reason, I just don't know what it is yet" and 'I don't know why I have to suffer, but one day I'll find out", I believe that I've known my calling forever and as I grow up I simply uncover that calling. 

So, when I decided that I wanted to go to University to study Acupuncture my parents were totally behind me. I should make it clear here that one of the side effects of some of my health conditions is that I sometimes suffer from shakes in my hands, and they can get quite bad. Even knowing that my parents still supported my dream of going to Uni to learn how to heal people by inserting needles into them! That is utter, total belief and trust to me. That was what I wanted to do and that was what I did. 

I traveled to another city and began my course. It was incredibly dense and extremely hard and I have no shame in admitting that I came within an inch of quitting during my first year and enrolling on an Art course instead, but for some reason I stuck with it. 

Doing Acupuncture as a course offers you so many things. It offers you incredible struggles, a massive learning curve and a body constantly stained with marker pen after tracking meridian lines on each other. Writing the essays on Anatomy and Physiology will make you cry, Pathophysiology will make your brain feel as though it has been scrambled. The first time you put a needle into somebody your hands shake like a leaf and you get dizzy because you can't breath properly, you're so afraid. Your lecturer will constantly remind you that "you do not have a license to kill", if you have my lecturer you'll also be reminded of the importance of not injecting eggs into yourself... I had some funny ones! 

The course is hard, really hard, and sometimes you will want to give up. It will be so confusing, it will make no sense. 

However, it is also magical. It is like nothing else. You get in touch with yourself on a level you never even knew about, and you learn to connect to others in the same way. You get a patient who desperately needs your help and you help them, they come back and cry because they feel so much better and you go out of the room and cry because you're so unbelievably happy. People trust you with their deepest secrets and wildest thoughts and dreams. You're healing people, really, and it's all because of your innate abilities and the knowledge that is actually sinking into your memory. You make incredible friendships, unbreakable bonds. For all the confusion and tears it is so, so worth it.

 

(Reflexology chart showing zones of the feet)

After I graduated from University I spent a year working in two different Complementary Health clinics. That year was a struggle for me because I didn't truly fit in at either of the clinics I worked at and whilst I loved the feeling of helping people I really struggled because I didn't feel fulfilled. I knew it wasn't absolutely right for me and I knew I had to feel absolutely right in order to do my best and to really give the best to my patients.

So after a year I decided to leave the clinic I was working at and, out of the blue one day I enrolled on a Reflexology course. I have to say that it is one of the best decisions I have ever made, when I think about it I know deep inside me that it is what I am meant to be doing. I took the right path and I have total trust and peace in that.

The course is also hard, the days are grueling and you come home feeling as though you haven't slept in years. Writing up case studies still makes you want to run for the hills and never look back and sometimes you'd rather cut off a pair of feet than ever have to look at them again, but again it is nothing compared to how amazing you feel because of it. You will learn things you never knew, release a lot of rubbish and make amazing bonds with people you just know you were meant to meet.

In the short time that I've been practicing I've been able to help my friends and loved ones to really understand themselves, emotionally and physically. I've seen huge positive changes and listened to the enthusiasm my patients have for their new lifestyles, how much more connected they feel and how glad they are to be coming to see me. Getting your hands on somebodies feet seems so simple and yet it can do so much good. I get better every time I practice and learn something new constantly.

I'm able to combine what I learned as an acupuncturist with what I'm learning as a reflexologist and I'm able to use my intuition to tell me where to go, what I need to do.

 I feel totally at peace when I work on somebodies feet, I go into a zone where there is nothing else and I let my feelings guide me. We all have that pure intuition inside, telling us where to go and what to do next, and there is a perfect way for all of us to harness that and use it to live the life we truly dream of. 

I have 5 months of my course left to go before I can officially practice as a Reflexologist. There will be challenges ahead of me that feel insurmountable and mountains that seem sheer and unscaleable. Yet I know that I will climb them all, my heart tells me so. 

Your heart can and does do the same, it always talks to you and I want to reassure you that it is okay to listen. See that signpost it's pointing you at? Follow it, go down that path, see what you can see. I promise you can do it, you have the strength, the tenacity, and the world will love you for it. Believe in yourself, love yourself, trust yourself. I do.