The Sharer

In winter 2001, I was heading out to Boston with a colleague of mine, who was the PR Director at my startup company at the time.  As Chief Technology Officer, I was going to be a presenter in a couple of sessions at a conference on search engines.  10-15 minutes after the plane took off in Cincinnati, she put her hands to ears and it looked like she was in deep pain.  She was clearly having a tough time.  I asked her what was happening, and she told me that she had an ear infection recently but she thought she had healed.

I coiled back in horror!  Just a couple of weeks prior to that, one of my colleagues at work, returned from a trip to the west coast with a big bandage around his ear. Apparently, he had traveled with an active ear infection, and the pressure of the cabin in the flight caused serious damage to the ear drum, causing him to be treated with steroidal baths in the ear and a massive course of medications to prevent the condition from deteriorating.

So, here is my PR Director, sitting right next to me, traveling with a possibly lingering ear infection, and writhing in pain from it!  These were the early days of Reiki for me, and on the one hand, I knew what I had to do to help, and on the other hand, I did not have the guts to tell a coworker about Reiki, for fear of being ridiculed (after all, I was the logical, problem-solving, visionary Chief Technology Officer, sigh!).

When we got off the plane and were on the car ride to our downtown hotel, I mustered the courage to tell her this: “It is past 10pm and I’m not sure you can get to a doctor. If you can’t, I know of a healing method that might help.”

She asked me about what is involved. I told her “Just settle down in your own room and call me on the hotel phone in my room, and I’ll guide you on what to do”.  These words just tumbled out of my mouth.  WTF!  All I knew was so-called hands-on healing. What sort of healing was I going to do over the phone?!! I had no experience of distance healing, or even knowledge of what to do.  I guess this was my intuition driving the words in my mouth directly without any judgmental interference.

In any case, she called me on the hotel phone at about 11pm, and tells me that she is ready, but it is hurting a lot in her ears.  I guided her into a series of deep breaths to relax, and had her do a bit of visualization. And in the mean time, I start my Reiki session from my room, with the heartfelt intention that she receives healing.  She disconnected the phone in a few minutes.  I continued holding that space of stillness for a while longer and fell asleep.

8am next morning, I saw her at the elevators, all bright and cheerful, with no signs of any issues!

And here’s what she said about her experience the previous night:  “A few minutes after I got off the phone, I felt my attention spiraling until it reached a point where there seemed to be only one single dot there, and then I heard a loud pop in my ears, and then I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, there was no pain, no issue at all.”

Her big wide smile was confirmation to me that she was completely healed.  10 minutes of “distance healing” over the phone with a person, done at a time in my practice when I knew nothing about “distance healing”, and a spontaneous healing occurs.  What could have damaged her ears permanently instead became an experience in the unfolding of another healing miracle!