ARTICLE 4 - USING REIKI TO FIND PEACE AND ACCEPTANCE

One of the most common things people report when they receive reiki is to feel deep peace, calm, and relaxation.

It is clear that animals feel the same way, as they too are always very relaxed and sleepy at the end of their session.

In fact, it was my stressy TB mare Jazz who led me down the reiki path. She could get herself worked up about things that weren’t even in my awareness. In time, I recognized that Jazz was a highly sensitive horse, and reiki became a powerful tool to manage her strong emotions.

The more reiki I gave her, the quicker she responded to it. I will set out in future articles the many things it has helped her with.

In this article, I want to tell the story of how reiki helped a TB mare, Annie, accept her fate and come to terms with it. As it is quite a long story, I will just focus on this one.

STORY – FINDING ACCEPTANCE

I had just been attuned to Reiki 2, and I was looking for horses to practice on—ideally, on the same yard where I kept my own horse.

Annie, a beautiful TB bay mare, seemed ideal. At 17 years old, she had torn her stifle, and the prognosis wasn’t great. The vet had advised three months of stable rest, but even this would only give her a 50% chance of recovery.

Due to the fact that Annie was a very lively, spirited horse, she was never going to cope with being stabled, so for her Human, this just wasn’t an option.

Annie was absolutely furious with her diagnosis. She had found a woman who she had bonded deeply with and who loved her for who she was. They had been having a ball! Now, this injury had ruined everything for her.

It is generally thought that animals don’t react to bad news like people do—that they don’t go through the stages of anger, denial, depression, and acceptance like a person who has been delivered a bad health prognosis. But Annie proved to me that our thinking is misplaced, for she would move through all those stages.

When I approached her caregiver with the offer of taking her on as a case study, Annie was very much in the state of anger. She was spending a lot of time rearing, bucking, and galloping around the field, and she was becoming increasingly difficult to handle. Not great when you have an injured stifle!

Like all newly attuned Reiki graduates, I had only one thought in my mind. Come rain or shine, Annie was going to be healed, and I was going to be the one to make a difference. Boy, did I have a lot to learn!

The first reiki session with Annie was carried out in her stable. As I had anticipated, she just loved it and responded really well to it with lots of sighing, licking, and chewing.

From that day forth, she calmed down completely, and her shenanigans ceased. She was now calm to handle and quiet in her behavior.

Out of all the horses I have ever given reiki to, Annie seemed to love it the most. She was so desperate to give me something back that she would attempt to groom me. When I resisted (too busy focusing on the reiki), she would resort to sucking on the end of my boot.

There was a period of time (about three months) when I didn’t carry out any reiki. In this time, Annie had become quite depressed. There was talk about her being put to sleep. Feeling her sadness, I restarted the reiki.

Then something amazing happened. Annie would neigh to me from her field when she wished me to carry out some reiki on her. I would be walking past her field when she would call me over and ask for a reiki session. There was no way I could refuse! The sessions were always beautiful, peaceful, and comforting. It seemed to be helping Annie come to terms with her injury.

Through the reiki healing, I truly believe that Annie found acceptance. Her leg never healed, and the decision was made to euthanize her. The day of her transition found her remarkably calm, peaceful, and accepting, and she gracefully lifted out of her physical body.

Although heartbroken by what had happened, I also knew that I had been delivered a very powerful lesson in the art of reiki. A big part of working with Reiki is to let go of the outcome and to just trust that it will go where it needs to. I do believe that Annie’s soul had chosen her path, and the reiki helped her to find peace and acceptance with her soul’s decision.

I am very grateful that I was given the opportunity to form this bond with Annie and to share the beautiful reiki energy with her. It had also delivered a very powerful lesson to me. What the ego mind desires isn’t always what the soul has chosen. Sometimes we just have to accept and let go.

In future Articles, I will share many other ways where reiki can benefit our animals.

If this has interested you, then you may be interested in my book, “Walking a Soulful Path: A healing journey with animals.” You can find this on amazon. This is the link:-

WALKING A SOULFUL PATH: A healing journey with animals: Amazon.co.uk: Sutton, Fiona: 9798334905573: Books