The past month or so, I�ve been dedicating myself to yoga teacher training and reiki. It�s been draining. This past week, I�ve hardly been sleeping. This morning, I was so exhausted, there was no way I could get my butt to work, so I stayed home. I took nap. My work computer hasn�t been connecting to the internet at home, so I can�t work, just yet. Adam is on hold with the internet monsters.

A couple of days ago, I had my first professional massage, ever. It was surreal and incredible, only because I never imagined that non-sexual touch could produce that much physical pleasure.

My reiki teacher is from Italy, and she talks about how non-romantic, non-sexual touch is a part of daily life in Italy. When she goes home for a visit and she first walks into her family home, she says she feels like she�s being molested because of the tsunami of affection that crashes over her. After being there a month or so, she comes back to the US, and feels starved of physical contact for the entire first week.

Why are we so afraid of physical contact here? Even in situations where we don�t feel suspicious or threatened, we�re still uncomfortable with it. I think part of it may be our germaphobia.

With the woman giving me the massage, where she was undoubtedly, most definitely touching my skin, I started wondering about whether or not she�d ever been squeamish about any skin issue she might have encountered. Any person with any experience working with people�s bodies obviously gets over it (or stops working). I wonder if that�s something that�s ever discussed in massage therapy school.

It sort of reminded me more of yoga teacher training than reiki. In yoga teacher training, we learn assists, which means, helping people while they�re in a pose. That often means getting very close to someone who is sweating and straining. Sometimes you have to be close enough to support their weight if they fall or just be positioned awkwardly near them. I was reminded of that because of the physicality of it and because it doesn�t bother me at all. Contrarily, I usually enjoy it. The only negativity that enters my mind when I�m giving an assist is that I worry that I may be throwing them off balance or pushing too hard. I also enjoy being assisted very much.

There�s something very human about that contact. It creates a connection, not unlike the kind of connection I might feel when meditating with a group of people. Complete silence, yet, there is a real primal, deep sort of bond that happens.

Anyway, I think I am going to buy a massage package from her and indulge.

The reiki has been going well, but I want to start keeping better records of the reiki treatments that I have given, what I encountered and what those encounters might mean. The staggering amount of knowledge possessed by my teacher is a motivating me to be almost obsessively academic about it.
With all this reiki, yoga, meditation and now, massage, I can feel that my energy is still being stirred up. Things are shifting around in here a lot. This is exactly what I�ve been needing, but it�s disconcerting at times. Even upsetting.

I haven�t had a chance to do much exercise the past week or so. Maybe that�s why I haven�t been sleeping well. Now I�m too tired to exercise and I feel like I have some germ pagoda�s growing in my ear, the way it hurts.

Oh yeah, I�m supposed to be a healer, right? My healing instincts are telling me that I just need to get some sleep.

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