Healing is a creative art. I have always believed in our ability, as healers, to craft and create new ways of working that are effective and empowering, for us as practitioners and for our clients. In around 2007 or 2008 (I confess I cannot remember exact dates – somewhere back in the mists of time) I began teaching a six month programme called Intuitive Healer. It wasn’t suitable for complete beginners, everyone in attendance needed some training in an energy healing modality as a prerequisite. But the course was based on the understanding that working within the confines of a system as we advanced held the risk of us not discovering ourselves as artists on the path.

People with a natural talent for healing are all, without exception, creatives, and Intuitive Healer was a six-month long safe space to discover something of each healer’s identity and purpose. The first four classes were all about healing principles and techniques; the majority of the last two classes were taught by the students themselves as they shared their discoveries and new depths of understanding. It meant that no two intakes of the class were ever the same, and that when I embarked on each first class I had no idea what the course was going to be made of. (Yes, it was an act of trust!) By the end of each series, I witnessed methods of healing I’d never seen before – but each of them was safe, and grounded in skill and understanding, because we had all explored the principles that underpinned energy work before we started moving into freestyle, intuitive work.

I love that creativity, I love invention in the work. Look at my own Shamanic Approach to Reiki courses – a fusion of Reiki, shamanic healing, sound healing and magic. Between Reiki Block Removal, Reiki Cord Cutting and Reiki Sound Healing, I can feel in some ways the same energy as the Intuitive Healer days: a rooting down into the healing foundations while the creative work expands outwards. And even in my little Reiki Skills Lodge classes – ostensibly about grounding ourselves in the origins and skilful application of technique – I am inventing new and weird ways of working every time. I am not pretending that Mikao Usui was drumming and chanting with his students, I’m certain he wasn’t! But I’m not sure he’d disapprove…

Creativity needs a foundation; intuitive practice needs skill

What is essential for these new and advanced techniques to hold water is that they are grounded. This is true in two senses of the word – that the creative approaches are grounded in a genuine understanding of the principles and techniques that underline the work, and that the practitioners themselves are grounded in something skilled and real. We can’t just invent shiny things because they sound all mystical and fun, it must have purpose and it must be based in something we actually understand and (if we are the teachers) can articulate. If we cannot explain at least the basic principles of the energy work we are doing, then I think we need to do some learning. Certainly if we don’t understand the roots of a thing, that should give us pause before we start posting and teaching about it.

Why am I writing this, you may ask… and in truth it’s a bit of a reactionary post. I’ve recently seen a new trend of what looks to me like more ungrounded, spiritual jargon that isn’t grounded in anything real. I feel this way when I hear people talking about accessing various numbered dimensions of things, or the spurious attribution of perfectly grounded techniques to fictional historical timelines. You know the kind of thing – people who claim unbroken lineage of pagan traditions back to the stone age, rather than acknowledging how systems were influenced by many traditions and constructed in a modern age because that just doesn’t feel mystical enough. Remember: no one was celebrating all eight of the sabbats in the modern pagan wheel of the year – it is a modern invention (1950s maybe). It works, and it’s amazing, and I follow it myself – each of the sabbats has its genuine, old-timey roots – but that constructed wheel itself is relatively new. (While I’m at it, the autumn equinox is not and never was Mabon, but that is a whole other issue!)

Another is the trend of attributing Reiki, for example, to historical roots it doesn’t have. It is not from Ancient Egypt, my friends, it just isn’t. Nor – and this will shock you – is it Atlantean or Lemurian or whatever that stuff is. It is from Japan, about 100 years ago, with its roots in eastern philosophy and the principles and energy work of Shintoism, among other things. That is a perfectly acceptable history to have! It is a solid foundation.

Most recently (the real inspiration to this post) is the made up ascension portal type stuff that the spiritual community likes to latch on to and then promote as though it is ancient, when the idea is clearly very modern indeed. Last week, the 7/7 portal to Sirius appeared in my feed. Guys, not to be disrespectful, but that is not a thing. Two matching numbers have nice symmetry, but a pleasing symmetry does not a stargate make. Likewise, this “Lion’s Gate” thing that is so popular in recent years on 8/8… I have asked for the origins of this from many people who tell me it’s a real historical thing, and the most I’ve got is “Sirius” and vague references to Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian dynasties did not have an 8th August, the Gregorian calendar has been in use since the late 1500s. And I have found no reference to the Lion’s Gate idea earlier than the 1990s and it only really seems to have kicked off in the last ten years or so. It is new, my friends, it is a modern invention. Yes, there are stellar movements people are referencing at that time of year, but stellar alignments obviously cannot not fall on the same date every year. There is not an ancient tradition of manifestation work on this date. It is new.

Collective focus is real – even if it is new

Here’s the thing: our minds love patterns, and the use of symbols and numbers to focus our magical intention, especially collectively, is a common and long-standing way of approaching transformational magic and healing work. Certainly, the invention of the Lion’s Gate has taken hold in the spiritual healing community at large, which means that lots of people are doing the same work at the same time, and that is powerful in and of itself. Holding a collective focus to create change is a basic principle of magic. Think about new year: suddenly we go from the last day of a year of a particular number, into the 1st day of the 1st month of a whole new year. It’s like wiping a slate clean, and collectively we all make a decision to change something as we step forward. So in that sense, all this Sirius portal stuff could potentially end up being a good thing, if it takes hold!

It works for our collective consciousness and, after all the calendar itself is an invention (and an imprecise one at that). Our minds also love names for things, we are forever naming things and imbuing them with meaning (at some point, everything was invented, right? Mikao Usui delved into existing understanding and invented Reiki!) and we can use that shared understanding to make awesome things happen.

I’m not opposed to it in principle – the constant adaptation of spiritual work is surely essential to meet the needs of our modern society. What concerns me is a potential lack of integrity as we make these adjustments. It’s very shadowy, isn’t it, to suggest that something has ancient importance when it doesn’t when what we’re really responding to is that it speaks to our 21st century sensibilities. Pretending we are not creating, pretending instead that something is tradition so that we can blindly attribute importance (to the event and, of course, to ourselves for being involved) is terribly fragile ground for healing and magic. Far more powerful to create something real and claim it as such.

Create something real

All this is to say, if you have knowledge and skill and experience in the work: invent things. Name things, experiment with things. We are artists! I do it all the time. I am a Reiki Master Teacher (among other things) and I am committed to excellence, skill and understanding in that work. There is so much skill and technique in Reiki if you care to learn it. But it is also a jumping off point to explore a deeper perspective on energy work, trauma healing and personal exploration. Healers: go forth, explore, invent, and create art – please! Confining ourselves to the techniques we were taught instead of advancing our understand through experimentation and play seems like a waste of our collective talent, and a lost opportunity to further our understanding. And my goodness we do not want to get bored!

There is a difference between creating something from the bedrock of your talent, experience and understanding, and promoting a spiritual concept without having any understanding of where it comes from. I love new approaches and new things, but only if they work and are meaningful. No one I have asked about the Lion’s Gate has ever said to me, “Kay, I’m not sure where it comes from but there’s collective energy around it so for the last few years I’ve done these ceremonies, and these were my results”. Everyone just tells me a version of “Sirius portal to manifestation”. What does that mean? If we are teachers, leaders in our communities, can we really just say “I had a download” and then take no questions? Where are the foundations of this magical act that we are all so willing share, and teach on, and charge for classes and events on? This question is not strictly rhetorical, friends – if you have answers to this that my research has not turned up, then please share it with me and, if it holds water, I promise to post a retraction. Restore my faith – because these days the line between a healing artist and the bullshit artist can feel all too blurry.

Visionary healers must be grounded in the real work. Own your inventions, and question your teachings. If we’ve made something new we must say that it’s new. We are teaching people, and working with potentially vulnerable clients, so it is only right that we have accountability in our work. If you can’t explain the principles of your work and you don’t understand why you’ve put those techniques together, I’d suggest you shouldn’t be teaching them. Pretending we are channelling something ancient or ascending to some dimension or other belittles this incredible work, and the talent it takes to create a unique path of healing. We can create new ways to focus and to heal, and we can combine disparate ways of working through an understanding of their common principles. The greatest creativity grows from the rich ground we’ve created through experience and skill.

Having said all that… come experiment with me!

If you love creativity and invention in the work, but want to know that skill, grounding and accountability are at the forefront so that you and your clients are safe and honoured – come and experiment with me! None of the below are for beginners, but they are powerful and are based on the gifts of my incredible teachers and a couple of decades of my own experience…

Reiki Block Removal – 13 July 2024
An advanced energy healing workshop for qualified Reiki practitioners (very little space remaining).

Reiki Cord Cutting – 14 September 2024
An advanced workshop on energetic attachments (from a shamanic perspective) for qualified Reiki practitioners.

Reiki Sound Healing – 09-10 November 2024
A powerful weekend of dum and voice work, and community healings, for qualified Reiki practitioners.

Unconquerable – six months of training from September 2024
A masterclass in advanced self-healing techniques for healers and spiritual leaders.