The Science Girl Who Calls In the Divine

I write today having been hugely inspired by women’s responses to my recently published anonymous survey, as well as the new documentary-film The Story of Everything, and I wanted to let you know something about who I used to be; I used to wear a cross around my neck.

And my days it was beautiful, from Tiffany, so stunning and special to me. I still have it but now it’s tucked away somewhere safe, not holding the same meaning to me that it used to for such a long time.

It was my nan who gave me a reason to hold it, to pray, to speak with her after her leaving us. My nan was the last of my grandparents to go, and it was tough to lose 3 out of 4 of them in the same year, before bam - 2 months after my grandad passed, my nan was diagnosed with lung cancer. Who she was is ingrained through my family tree - the most caring, giving, loving woman I have ever known. She was the kind of woman who worked hard and provided for everybody in whatever ways she could, never once making a fuss about it. Truly, the kindest person in any room that she walked into.

Her battle with cancer was tough, and there are so many memories from during that time, but whilst she fought it, it came back harder.

As a family unit, we were there when she took her final breaths, holding her hands, I can still feel that room, still see it so vividly, this experience will remain with me until my own last breath.

Following her departure, and for a long time afterward, my beautiful cross was a real comfort. I'd hold onto it and talk to her, I wasn’t ready for her to have left us and so this was my only connection. I’d seek her advice, I’d ask her approval, and funnily enough, I was often worried she was watching down on me when I wasn’t on my best behaviour too!

But then the grief subsided, and as with the stages of processing grief, it turned into anger, raising the one question beneath every loss that nobody has the answer for; why her?

If God is good, why does he take the kindest ones so brutally?

So one day, I took the cross off, put it away, and my life continued without faith in anything justifiable. However, what I didn't know then was that my body had already started keeping score.

My allergies began during time period, I’m not sure when exactly, but it was most definitely alongside the losses, and despite all the testing, it just made zero sense. My symptoms had no rhyme or reason, came & went as they pleased, and I could never place my finger on a particular trigger. To the Immunologists, I was an ‘unknown cause’. To say that I was also in the middle of what would become a 7-year battle for an endometriosis diagnosis, I was fighting (along with so many women who still continue to fight) to be believed about pain that was real & present, but I was being dismissed at every turn.

I now know through my own research, investigations, tracking, and conversations with Doctors across the world, that my allergies are actually Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. MCAS is a condition where the immune system essentially overreacts to everything, where the body is in a state of chronic, low grade emergency. It perceives threats (real or not), and the body responds. So this year I’ve been looking back & the timing makes complete sense. The body doesn't separate emotional pain from physical pain - it never has - and science knows this (even if it took a while to catch up with what women have been saying forever).

Mine was carrying grief, anger, loss, and a diagnosis that was damn near impossible to get - all at the same time, and it was incomprehensible.

Then came the forced menopause AKA Zoladex - Such a delight (please sense the sarcasm).

What is Zoladex? It’s a treatment used to manage endometriosis by essentially shutting down oestrogen production, tricking your body into thinking it’s gone into menopause to give a ‘natural’ break from bleeding, in the hopes that your body will heal the lesions and the endometriosis will eliminate.

My personality changed, my desires, my needs. Hormonally, physically, and emotionally.

I was 19 and my body was already struggling, I needed something (reading that back now, I sound like an addict, but Zoladex was not something I wished to be addicted to). Before I knew it, I was catapulted into a complete change of who I was. My personality changed, my desires, my needs. Hormonally, physically, and emotionally.

This entire process was a catalyst for how life would veer for decades to come. The ability to recognise that the old tools weren't working, no longer pushing through, and not taking no for an answer, being dismissed time and time again. My body had been begging for something different for years, whispering and then screaming at me.

And that's when I found Reiki.

I wasn't looking for God, spirituality, or anything that required faith, because I’d put that straight into a drawer with the cross a long while before. Nope, I needed to soothe my nervous system first of all, relax, and then when I understood it a bit more, I was looking for answers. I needed to bridge the gaps that had been left where conventional medicine had repeatedly failed. Then it just grew, I couldn't ignore what I was encountering. Energy is real. It moves, it stagnates, it releases, it heals, and science knows this - Quantum physics knows it. The biofield, which is the measurable electromagnetic field that surrounds and runs through every-living-body, is documented, and peer reviewed. It’s real.

It was dawning on me - Reiki is a Japanese word and literally translates to Universal (Rei) Life force energy (Ki). Scientists call work with the biofield, Quantum Physicists describe it as energy, and my grandparents generation (and many many others) called upon God - and I started to think they might all be pointing at the same thing, just in different languages.

I still have the cross, and I call in the Divine at the start of each and every single treatment and attunement. I don’t do this as religion, not as doctrine or denomination, and I don’t assign myself to a specific set of beliefs. I call in the Divine as source, as creator, as the energy that moves through all living things. The piece of it that resides within every single one of us, since the beginning of time.

When a new client sits across from me for the first time and asks what Reiki actually is, I tell them the truth: It's energy, it's science, and it's ancient wisdom.

For anyone new here, I'm a science girl who works with essential oils and reads the research. I understand the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system - and I care deeply about evidence. I know firsthand what MCAS does to a body, along with what 7-years of dismissal does to a woman's relationship with trusting her own instincts, and I know what a forced menopause at a young age costs.

And I call in the divine.

Not because I had to choose between science and spirituality, rather that the longer I do this work, the more obvious it becomes that they were never separate - they are one and the same. Just like when we ground, we’re at one with Mother Earth. The energy coursing through your body, the energy that connects all living things, and the energy that healers have been working with for thousands of years are all part of the same conversation.

You don't have to call it God, you don't have to call it anything in fact, but if you've ever felt a conflict between what you can prove and what you can feel, between the test results and the thing your body has been trying to tell you, between the medicine and the something more, you're not confused, you're closer to the truth than most.

And you're exactly who I do this work for.

If this resonated, the virtual masterclass on 12th September is a good place to start, book your spot here.