Once I found my calling to serve and heal others through Reiki, I felt a new connection to my Japanese birth name and how it relates to my practice. Nori (“no-di”) is the name my great grandmother, Niiyama Bachan, gave me. Because of the way she wrote the kanji (Japanese characters), the translation for my name means “start of a new era”. Another kanji of Nori translates to “love”. Reiki IS love. And healing through restoring your natural energy flow is a journey to a new era. It certainly was for me. Nothing has been the same since I found Reiki.

My earliest childhood memories are filled with love and a fun, loud and crazy house of four daughters and hard-working, loving parents.  My earliest memories are also mixed with high anxiety and chronic depression from as early as I can remember, so much so it was my accepted “resting” state.  I now understand that I am extremely sensitive and in tune with other people’s energies but as a child, I had no way of deciphering what my feelings were from someone else’s. This brought me a lot of angst.  This continued throughout high school and then college where non-coincidentally I studied Biological Psychology because I was fascinated with how the mind and body are connected.  

At the age of 24 I was finally diagnosed with severe and recurrent, Major Depressive Disorder and Chronic Anxiety Disorder. I had been depressed and anxious since childhood, however, and accepted my identity as a depressed, anxious person managing through life the best I could. I did a ton of research on diet, exercise, I was in therapy for the most part of 15 years, I spent thousands on self-help courses…but was still silently struggling with debilitating depression.

A low point in my struggles hit when I was in my early 30s and traveling for work almost every week to different time zones, going through a divorce, depressed and suffering from chronic insomnia.  I stumbled zombie-like into a new doctor’s office, teary-eyed, and begging for help as I knew a big breakdown was right around the corner.  I knew I didn’t want to become dependent on pharmaceuticals and that a true lifestyle change/modification was absolutely mandatory. 

Through guided meditations in his office, my doctor helped me get rooted in a meditation practice, something I struggled with but wanted to do for years.  Then one day at the start of an appointment he asked me if I was open to energy healing. I didn’t know what that was nor had I ever experienced anything like it but I was open to anything holistic that he thought could help. I’ll never forget that day because my life has never been the same since.  I saw him only once a month due to my extreme travel schedule but if I were to map out the improvement in my mental health over the 16 months he treated me, it was drastically and exponentially more effective than my 15+ years in therapy and self-help courses. It has been years now since the almost monthly depressive episodes have all stopped and my depression was cured through energy healing.

Another magical healing “miracle” shifted my understanding of how truly powerful energy healing can be on the physical body.  I am an athlete and was training for a 200 mile relay race.  I was running 25-30 miles a week and was developing an incredible amount of chronic pain in my glutes and thighs. My race was getting closer and I told myself I just needed to get through the race and when I stop running my pain will go away.  Well the race came and went and my pain was still getting worse 6 months later.  It got to the point that simply walking my dog was getting very painful.  This coming from an avid runner, yoga/spin instructor and otherwise very healthy individual, I was just baffled as to what could be causing this leg pain. 

In one of my distant/remote sessions with an energy healer in Los Angeles (I didn’t mention my leg pain because it didn’t occur to me at the time that energy work could help physical pain); we were working through some unrelated goals I shared I wanted to accomplish.  During that session she told me she saw a profound blockage at the base of my spine that she opened up then moved on to other areas in my body.  I woke up the next morning in complete shock, my leg pain was gone after 9 months of crippling pain.  I called her absolutely stunned and so matter-of-factly she said, “yes, well I told you you had a big block and we opened it up, so I’m not surprised your leg pain is gone.  Enjoy the rest of your day dear”.  Just baffled, I hung up the phone and understood so profoundly in my own experience just how powerful energy healing is, even over the phone, and how important it is to continue to receive regular “tune ups”!

Now my hope here is not to promise amazing results for everyone or that your life troubles or physical pain will always magically disappear.  It has been a long road of energy healing almost 10 years with a number of different energy healing practitioners, however for me, daily self-Reiki, monthly energy healing treatments and my dedicated meditation practice have been the most effective healing modality for the biggest breakthroughs that occurred in my emotional, mental, physical and spiritual health.  

The incredible results I got in such a short span of time (compared to the decades of suffering with depression) led me to want to pay it forward. Everyone holds the capacity to perform Reiki (on yourself or for others). I teach this through my Reiki For Everyday Health class and SF community lecture series to those wanting the benefits of energy healing in their homes, everyday, and aren’t interested in starting their own practice.

I want as many people as possible to have access to this incredibly powerful yet gentle and loving holistic healing modality. The best part is Reiki is complimentary to all other types of western medicine, holistic healing modalities, medicinal treatments and surgery and has been show in clinical trials to be an excellent adjunctive therapy.

nori reiki, San Francisco, CA