Energy Work

What happens when grief cracks life wide open and leads you toward a completely different kind of healing?

In this episode of Wellness in Every Season, Autumn sits down with Tracy Searight—educator, yoga teacher, Reiki Master, business owner, author, and podcaster—to explore Reiki, yoga, energy work, and the many ways healing can unfold. Tracy shares the deeply personal story behind Feather Sister, how the loss of her sister shaped her path, and how that grief eventually led her into Reiki as a tool for stress relief, self-regulation, and spiritual connection.

Together, Autumn and Tracy unpack what Reiki actually is, clear up common misconceptions, and talk about how energy healing can work alongside other supportive practices like yoga, massage, acupuncture, sound healing, and breathwork. They also dive into the importance of intention, the value of trying different healing tools, and why wellness is rarely one-size-fits-all. From Beep Beep The Yoga Jeep to laughter yoga, animal Reiki, and finding the right practice for your season of life, this conversation is full of warmth, curiosity, and practical insight.

You can connect with Tracy and explore her work at readysetreiki.com and feathersister.com, and follow her on Instagram at @tracysearight.

For more wellness tips and exclusive content, join my newsletter! Sign up now at https://wellness-in-every-season.kit.com/5-days-to-mastering-mornings-and-evenings receive a free 5-day guide called "Awaken and Unwind: 5 Days to Mastering Life's Mornings and Evenings." 

Transcript

I am so excited to have Tracy with me today for this episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I am so excited to have Tracy with me today for this episode. We are going to be talking about Reiki and a little bit of yoga, basically energy work. Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And let's get started in the rest of the podcast. Let me tell you a little bit about her. She is an educator, yoga teacher, Reiki master, business owner, author, and podcaster, and owner feather sister, and we'll ask what that is in a second. The yoga jeep is also what she works in. So it looks like she does a lot of things, which means we have a lot to talk about and connect over, which is it's so exciting. Let's start with can you tell us about what's going on with these feathers that are behind you that are so pretty? Because I remember asking you about this before, and a really fun story came out of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Feather Sister came out of in 2020, very early on in the January, 21 days into it. My sister had passed. And uh, when you connect with the spirit, you may hear, oh, cardinals, right? Butterflies and feathers. The feathers were coming in magical places. Places were like, come on, there is no bird here. How can this be? Right. I was moving from Pennsylvania a few years later to Texas, and so I was looking around. My husband got this bigger house I needed to decorate. I went to a thrift shop, went into the thrift shop, and it's about five steps. One, two, three, four, five. Get in there, turn, find these two large pictures, ten dollars a piece. This is for my studio. I didn't even have a studio at the time. So took those two big pictures, put them in a grocery cart because this place used to be a grocery store, but now it was a thrift shop. So that is a part of my feather sister. I created a business in honor of my sister.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

And what is peep the yoga cheap? Is that your yoga studio?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Here in El Paso, Texas, there's not much in kind of commercial property. So it works to that property owner's advantage for that they can hike up the prices. So to find that perfect space at that particular price, yoga's not consistent, Reiki's not consistent. Then I did have a space and I parking was an issue out of all things. There was a restaurant next to me and it was taking up the space. My students and clients were parked in. And I thought, what can I do? This can't be sustainable. People want to come and relax, right? They don't want to get stressed out and have to worry and struggle getting out of their car and having to look around to see who parked behind them. So one day I was driving and I thought, what can I do? There has to be an answer. And it just connected. Use my Jeep. And I'm like, beep the yoga Jeep. And so I got a grant that I got yoga mats and I got all the supplies. And I drive around El Paso and I do events, private lessons. People can rent the materials from me, or I can go and come to you. So it's the yoga that comes to you. El Paso is interesting. You have the west, you have the Far East, you have the Upper Valley, and people just don't want to drive out to the Far East.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

And my favorite yoga space that I do yoga in is the library. Beautiful. So I do it at the library three days a week of yoga. That is so fun.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yeah, find your space, find that sacred space that you can go to. I've improvised and had the Jeep, and then I had a space. I moved into a new house and I took a window out. We put a door in. So you make use to it. We go to the park, make it work.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Yeah, I love that. And I followed yoga with Adrian. And I love her. She has such a funny personality. There's times where I'm in a pose and she says something funny, and I just I can't hold the pose because I'm laughing at her. But she's had some videos where she's done it at the park. So that's our reminder that we can do it when we travel. It doesn't take much to take a mat, or you can even, in a pinch, do it on carpet. Just don't wear socks while you're doing it, otherwise, you're gonna fall out of the pose.

Spiritual Wellness and Energy Healing

SPEAKER_00 4:31

I was in a connecting flight, and there was a woman, she just had her rolling luggage and she was doing a yoga pose, a standing, a balance pose, just because she had been sitting for so long.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Let's dive in about spiritual wellness and just the energy healing and how does that go together? What are your thoughts on that? Let's start there.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

I originally heard of Reiki in 2006. My very best friend, who was my college roommate, had come down to visit me. And she's like, You have to try this Reiki. I'm like, okay, what is it? And it just so happened there was a help fair. And I was living in Charleston, South Carolina at the time. So we went and I sat in the chair and I observed this gentleman moving along her body. And he could feel things and see things. And at the time, I'm like, I don't know if I'm there yet. But she was a big fan. She was all in. She went and she got trained and moved on in life. I thought, I'll do my yoga. It's all good. Circle back around to that January 21st, 2020, where my sister passed. That was the Jenga pace out of our family. And after that happened, I just needed something more. So I went, like everybody else who gets on this journey, reading all the books, the podcast, taking trainings, taking classes. And my friend circled back around and said, Why don't you try Reiki? And I was like, I gotta do something. I'm tired of feeling this way. Grief was just taking over. My daughter's mother, you're wallowing, you're wallowing in this grief. And I needed to do something. And so when I reached out about Reiki, it was the idea that I would help myself and my family. And I never imagined that first class that I would ever be teaching it, let alone have a podcast on it. And something shifted and changed. And through that, it really helped me. Now I did all the other things, right, that you're supposed to do exercise, journaling, seeing the doctor. But something like this really shifted and changed things for me. I had a tool to help me when the stress occurred, when the grief occurred. Like I walk into a store. My sister was a big Christmas, she loved Christmas. So seeing all the things at Christmas, and then, oh, Angel would have loved that. Here it comes again, the wave of grief. I'm going to go sit out in my car and just breathe and place my hands right on my heart and ask the Reiki to flow to help. And this is a consistent practice every day. There's the five principles that you bring in, like just for today I will not worry. Just for today, I won't get angry. And I would use a principle like, I'm not going to worry. I'm not going to stress out. And just breathe through it until that emotion passed. And with a consistent practice, I can help self-regulate myself when it comes like, oh, I feel it again. Or oh, here comes that anger. And just breathe through it. So this is how I use it. It's a wonderful stress-reducing modality.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

I never considered it as something you could use on yourself. I always considered it as something you use on somebody else. And it's making the correlation to me of tapping. Sure. How you can do that on yourself. Correct.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Level one is about you, a gift for yourself. And so you get the hand placements, you learn the history, and there's many systems out there, many systems. But we go from the foundation in 1922, Azui Sensei connected to the energy on the mountain. And we all, that's the root of our tree. And then as time went on, other masters went. So now you have Celtic Reiki, Rainbow Reiki, Animal, Crystal, you name it. There's so many out there, but they all come from him. But that idea is that you're working on yourself. And then from giving it to others, that comes when you're a level two and a level three. But even when you are that practitioner and master teacher, it's still working on yourself. We got to clear all this culturally created self out of us to get that true connection and healing. Because you certainly want someone who's grounded working on you, right? So if we're doing a Reiki session, I'm placing my hands on you, it's you that's pulling that healing. You're pulling it through me to yourself. So that's how that connection is.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

That totally makes sense. Because as a coach in all things wellness, I have to really work on myself so that my stuff isn't coming up in coaching sessions. So absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

But I use it all, the yoga, I use tapping, humming, all of those tricks in your energetic toolbox. So it's nice to grab. I originally studied with Azui Rahijo and then holy fire, and I kept going. And all of these tools I can use for various things to go a little bit deeper. You learn by each time you study with that system, you go a little deeper. Oh, okay, I'm learning about animal now. And the thing that I didn't realize with animals is you ask them permission, right? It's not forced. So if you're going to give Reiki to a bird, you're not going to Reiki the whole cage because that's going to make the bird feel trapped. You want to give that bird permission, right? And have a choice. So you would put a little Reiki bubble in there and say you can go in and out of it as you want. You wouldn't give Reiki to the whole fish tank, just a little bubble. So that the fish, if it chooses not to do this, yeah, I don't want this. It can go around it. So you learn a little bit deeper. And you may see practitioners with their eyes closed, especially online, and they're moving their hands. Animals should keep your eyes open because it's a safety issue. Even if it's your own pet, something can happen. One time I was doing a Reiki session on my very own dog and a bee buzzed by and it scared him and jolted him. And by having my eyes open, I was aware of that, so I could take care of it.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Okay, so let's back up. I was realizing I know about Reiki, but not everybody does. So let's back up explain it for those people. Because I'm sure people are listening and they're like, So explain that and explain, like I know there's energy involved, but explain that part just for somebody who knows absolutely nothing. Are we raking leaves? Like, what even is the go like that far out?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

So this is the Reiki talk that I give to people. So Reiki has what it means as you break down the word is universal energy life force. And in 1922, there was a gentleman, Michael Azui. He has the word doctor in front of it, but it's framed in a way he was probably an academic doctor. He was looking for Zen. He was going on a quest and he went up to a mountain with the idea that he was going to die. He wanted to connect with this energy. And 21 days he would pray, he would fast, he was up there on the mountain. That 21st day, he got struck by something, lost consciousness. When he awoke, he realized that he is the universe and the universe is in him. So excited, he rushed down the mountain, stubbed his toe, it started bleeding, and he placed his hands right on the toe, and there healing began to happen. So he in a way began to modify and change things and work with energy and work with people. And his claim to fame came when there was a big tsunami earthquake that happened in 1923, and all the people were injured. And so he prayed, like, what do I do? What can I do to help people? And he realized he could pass this gift on to other people. And so it is known as a hands-on healing, but it can be done distance-wise. And so he became this rock star helping thousands of people in a time when there was no cell phones, right? There was no computer, there was not social media. And through him and his teachers and a long lineage, come to where we are today, where we have different systems of Reiki. So it is known as a Japanese style of healing that is a complementary stress-reducing modality. So it's not a replacement for your doctor by no means. As a practitioner, you never tell anybody to get off their medication. Do amazing and magical things happen? Of course. But we always go by what the doctor says. Many believe Reiki has been around since the beginning of time. Some believe that Jesus, when he disappeared in the Bible from age 12 into his 30s, went off to India to study this. We know the collective and through The Healing Touch by William Rand, that there was a book in 1919 called the Reiki Rahihio. So there was Reiki prior to the Zui Sensei. So he's the one that gets credit. So this is just bringing energy in, shifting energy, placing hands on you or connecting to online. And you can give Reiki to anything, but I wouldn't, as I'm giving it to someone, I'm asking permission. So Reiki honors free will. It's never forced, demanded, or commanded. It is never anything with religion. You can make it spiritual. So if I have a background where my family was religious, I can place my hands at my heart center and I can ask God and Jesus for guidance. If you're someone that believes in source or something else, a God of your own understanding, you can bring that in as well. Archangels, you can color it really whatever you'd like. And it is moving the hands along the body to help shift that energy. So the person laying there or sitting there, they're pulling it through that practitioner's body and shifting and change. So more or less it's helping relax the body. And this can sound so weird.

Personal Experiences with Reiki

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Sure. But let me tell you my experience so that it doesn't sound as it's still gonna sound woo, but a little less woo. Is my first experience with it, and I've heard about it in different ways and everything else, was I received a massage. They also, it was a couple, and my husband and I would go on a date, and it was almost like a double date, but we were giving us some massages in the same room, but like we got to chat during anyway. I did the add-on of doing as well, and I really liked it that way because I was already relaxed, and I felt like I was more receptive at that point. So his hands were on me for the massage, and then at the end, I could feel the energy flow, and if he was hovering right above my body, and I could tell where he was sometimes because I could feel the heat from his hands just hovering above. My husband did not do it, so the wife was massaging him, and I could definitely feel a difference. That was my first time, I think that was the first time, and then the second time my husband did it too. This was years ago, and they made a comment of they could tell that there was some stuff within our marriage at that time. We had our second child, and I was still nursing and post-partum depression, figuring out myself all over again. So there was some tension within our marriage, mostly because there was tension within myself, like me figuring out myself. And it was just really interesting to discuss with my husband afterwards just how much was released and the difference in there, and just some of the stuff that they asked about while doing Ricky, like, but I feel like I've been more receptive to it because of doing yoga, and it's one of those age-old human things where you have to hear it several times and from different sources, and that's where I finally got to Ricky because going back to yoga, how I mentioned, you are still dealing with energy flow while you're balancing your body, moving the muscles and everything else. And I really liked it for my own healing journey because it's frustrating. I'm that one that likes to, well, hurry up and give me the results now, and I want this to fix everything. But realizing that healing happens in layers, and it was another layer that I needed to add on with my healing. So it makes sense that you try one thing, it works for a while, and when it doesn't, and you're ready for the next thing, then you try something else. And when it works, you keep doing it until it doesn't, then you try something else. So I hope that helps to make sense of it, but you're never really going to fully understand what Reiki is until you try it for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Many massage therapists blend that together because you want to get the body relaxed. There are different systems of Reiki, holy fire, the Yazubi holy fire energy. You have a meditation or experience to get the body relaxed. Crystal Reiki is great if somebody you need to physically touch something. Laying on the table for someone and just waiting, and you're just silent gets people a little nervous. But that's a great thing. And not all Reiki practitioners and masters pick up things. And so you had people that were intuitive that they could read the energy. And some people they don't. They're like, I like the hand placement system of Madame Takata, where they set hands right on the head and work their way down to the feet. That's why it's great to merge with massage therapists because this is how they're learning to move through the body as well.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

I think, and you almost hit on it. I thought you were going to for a second, is it really matters that you have that connection with that person? Like absolutely interview that person, make sure that you feel like you are on that same wavelength because then you're more open to it. For me, it was really interesting to hear the story of the husband because he fell into it by accident. He was going to get his massage certification, and he was doing it because his wife was already a masseuse and he wanted to be able to give her massages. He never anticipated them opening up their own practice and doing all these things. And when he was earning his certification, he was asked, Do you do Ricky? And he's like, No, what is that? Because he's already naturally doing it. So then it was one of those maybe I need to dive into this further to make sure I'm doing it right. If I'm already naturally doing this and I don't know what I'm doing, so it was it was fun to hear his story of it. And I think that's where your podcast comes in. So for those of you that aren't interested and want to hear more stories, where's your podcast? Where is that found? I just feel like this would be the perfect place to set it.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

You can find it everywhere where you can listen to podcasts, Spotify, iHeart. It's on YouTube as well. And what I do is I have the curious beginner all the way to the master PhD come on, talk about their experiences. I keep the questions in the beginning the very same because then you're hearing, wow, this amazing person who has all these accolades, they struggle too, right? They had a challenge on their spiritual journey. Wow, like they weren't convinced in the beginning. So it makes it relatable that maybe I give it a try. And if you try it, if it's not your thing, okay. Maybe it's your thing for a little while, and then you'll move on to the next thing. Many people have used Reiki to help them open up their gifts, help them relax their body to get to their true authentic nature. But it can be just a small piece or a big piece of your journey.

Energy Healing and Its Broader Implications

SPEAKER_01 20:18

I've never heard of light language, I'll have to Google that one later. That's quite fine. Yeah. For my husband, he did Reiki and he's like, Yeah, I'll take a massage. Where I'm like, Yeah, I don't want to do both. And then I moved on. I just chiropractor wasn't doing enough for me, and I could not get into doing massage often enough. And from I made the mistake, I have four children, and I held all of them on this side. I did not switch sides while carrying them, so I had this huge knot, just giant, and it was like I was weightlifting hardcore, but like only this muscle set, and then it tightened in a weird way back here. I think they said that it's actually here, but it irradiated, is the best way to explain it. As you can tell, I don't know the muscle system as well as I should with all the classes I've taken for my degree. So I then added on acupuncture, and that is an energy healing as well, which has been very interesting. How many of you get massages or have heard of it and know how amazing that benefit is? That is still energy healing. Yeah. And if you think about it, in a fundamental level, we are all energetic beings. Same with our animals. The plants outside are there is energy in there. Everything around us has energy. And we are in such a world that we only think that these little things have energy or our light sushes. No, it's so much more than that. If we get away from technology, we're spending time in nature, we are still surrounded by energy and we become disconnected. In the society where we forget that. And that's where it's going back to that. It's going back to nature. It's bringing you back to those things. Yeah.

Yoga and Religion: A Personal Journey

Adapting Yoga Practices

SPEAKER_00 22:09

I mean, energy transfer is real. That's why one phone call or a text can change your entire mood when you think about it. And always be mindful of who touches your body. When you figure a hairdresser touching your hair, the nail technician, right? That chiropractor, who's laying hands on you? What is their intention when they're touching you? Right? Are you going to be in a bad mood or oh, I don't like their energy? So it's a whole big thing, even beyond the Reiki here. So there's energy everywhere we go. Just think of that one coworker. They walk into the room, oh, they're like a drain, right? Versus that other one that comes in, you're like, yeah, I can't wait to work with her. It can change your mood just like that. And the energy helps as you bring it through the body, helps you relax as you're imagining the stress melting away. But there are a lot of misconceptions about Reiki, one of them being that it's like woo woo or it's religion because you see the word Japanese. And the same thing with yoga as well. They're like, oh, I can't do yoga. My mom gave me the hardest time about yoga because she thought it wasn't Christian. She's it's not of Christ. And I'm like, but I'm moving. That's not what it is. So as long as you do it, research it, see how it feels, and make the judgment for yourself. My mother, when I was playing sound bowl, she called them the demon bowls. When you look at yoga, the movements, that's praising the deity, right? So I even modified my yoga practice to take it out. So I started doing yin because you're not doing warrior two in yin. I was doing restorative chair. I did laughter yoga. I did Christian yoga. And when I got my certificate, my mom's like, I don't understand saying some Bible verses as you're doing a Sunday helps. So it's the way you're looking at it and how she interpreted it. Yeah. Never thought of it that way. Yeah. Is this actually a warrior post? Cutting the head off and everything if you look into the research of it, because my intention is not that as I move through it. Yeah.

The Importance of Intention in Yoga

Healing Through Yoga

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Yeah, that's what I go back to. That's a word that my husband and I use a lot within our family is what is the actual intention? Absolutely. And I think that matters for everything. If we're gonna talk about religion for a little bit, even Halloween just happened, right? Yeah, we celebrate Halloween. I did not grow up celebrating Halloween because it's sacrilegious, blah, blah, blah. And it really is what intention are you going to it? What are you bringing? What are you expecting to get out of this thing? And for me, yoga has been instrumental in my healing after a car accident. I feel a huge difference in my body. I notice I can't do weightlifting anymore. It flares up my neck too much. And I have lost some muscle maps in some areas because I am not using those muscles the same in yoga, but there's still a huge difference in the positive from practicing yoga.

Yoga Beyond Fitness

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Sure. And I mean, in the yoga sutras of Palindani, the original for yoga was ceasing the fluctuations of the mind. And now we've turned it into a billion-dollar industry of fitness. And that's not what it is. It's not a workout, it's a work-in where you're taking it off the mat. You want to do no harm to people, right? You want to move through life with intention. And that's the purpose of that. It's breaking down that ego. Okay, I'm at the mat today. Oh man, I can't get into this shape today, but I was able to last week. And then the mind starts, gosh, I'm too old, I'm too heavy, I'm moving, I'm here on the mat, I'm consistent. And you're changing that mindset.

Understanding Your Body Through Yoga

Exploring Different Yoga Styles

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Yeah, absolutely. And it's helped me to realize that my desk chair was not the right fit for my body because I've been doing yoga for a while and I dove further into it since my car accident. And realizing that there's some poses I just can't get quite right. Like downward dog, my knees are still bent and I've been doing it for years. What's going on here? Let's dive into that. And realizing from I now have a reflexologist I've been working with to help me. And it's been interesting to see my legs are loose here, but they're tight here. You know, that that whole okay, this is how my body is working, this is what I need to work on type of thing. And that's what I like about yoga, is it's really giving me that chance to focus on myself, especially as a mom. Yeah. What's going on within my body? Yeah. And then especially in balance poses, like we're not having the chatter going on. Shut up, brain. Let's focus. And my favorite is when, and I'm always sad when the teacher forgets or runs out of time, when we do ohms, because somatically that is so good for us. And I love when they have the singing bowls going, or I've been in one yoga practice where she had a gong. It's so fun. The little kid in me, and thinking of all the movies that have gongs. That was a practice when I was 17 years old. Of course, childlike. But there are things that we can bring into our daily life that maybe had a different intention originally, but they can still bring us joy, even if they are warrior poses. Yeah. We can it's about bringing in the things that better our wellness, better ourselves, and letting go of the rest and trying on different things to see what fits for right now, realizing that what fits for right now won't be forever. For some things, yoga for who I hope will be a lifelong thing for me. That doesn't mean that Reiki will always work for me. Maybe I'll need to add tapping to it. It might mean that I need to add in more meditation during this season of life or whatever. I love the idea that we have so many options out there and we can try them on to see what fits for right now.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Yeah. You want to listen to that inner teacher. We all have this inner guru. And the great thing about life, if you live long enough, life will teach you how to live. Absolutely. So you shift and change. Once upon a time, I was able to nail that downward dog. And then as I'm growing and going older, and I had an injury, and getting that injury helped me be a better teacher because then I can give people more options and variations. There are not that many variations. Let's lay down, we're in shavasna, that's it. And now it's like, oh, go to Arta Shavasana. Now you can do belly shavasana, go into crocodile. And now we're giving this acknowledgement of what does your body need, instead of let's read this book. This is how we have to get because that's how I got hurt. I was going into kind of how I anger taught, which BKS I angar, which is alignment is everything. And my body just could not get into that. We have six different types of femur bones. Male and female have different hips. And I just felt I can do this all day long. It's bone on bone. I can't. And that was just that realization, okay, I'm never gonna be able to do bopose and be okay with that. But then, oh wait, I can do it another way. I'm gonna do it on my side, I'm gonna use it with a strap, I'm gonna use it with a block. I got it, right? And that's really how life is. When things aren't working, can you stop and redirect? Is there another way? Think out of the box. And Paul Grilly, who is like the guru of Yin Yoga, he said, if you're only doing it one way, you're already doing it wrong.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Oh, I love that. And the good and bad. So the yoga class that I take it on Saturday, the one at the library, is longer than I normally do. And he goes around the room and he adjusts us, and he's always can you do this to like up-level it? I'm like, Really?

SPEAKER_00 30:11

I was just so proud of I got this pose right. Well, there's many types of teachers that are there, some that adjust and some that won't. I think with COVID happening, the adjustments stop to put the hands on. But yeah, I've been in where they're pushing on you and I cannot. And then it pops me back out into that not relaxed state anymore.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

It's he's pushing me, like, oh, okay, you know how to do this. Did you know that you can up level it? I got it. So I love that part of yoga that you can do more or you can do less, especially because one side of your body is completely different than the other, especially for me after having children. I have less balance on this side with this leg compared to my left leg. Sometimes I have to adjust a little bit before I do tree pose, which for some reason that is one of my favorite ones. Actually, I think I know why. With ADHD, I have to focus more, so it really calms my brain. Because once I'm not focusing, I feel much.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Finding your drifty. But honestly, when you look at it, are we really balanced? I'm right-handed. I find that I lead with my right foot more, right? I'm using my right hand more balanced. That's the goal.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

And that's what I like about is I've even noticed after doing Ricky is that my yoga is better because I have gotten rid of, and I don't know if any of you have noticed this, that when you are doing certain, if you do sports or even going for a walk, you can feel like maybe your muscles tight, but sometimes it feels different. Like that, that can be an energy blockage. It's not just a muscle thing. It can be deeper than that, different than that. So that's what I like about the idea of using Ricky. There's tapping, there's acupuncture, there's massage, somatics is very good.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Know that there's so many different styles of yoga, too. We have ashtanga, haka, ayangar, yin, restorative, Celtic. I do Celtic yoga, I do stick yoga, right? Laughter yoga, just as there are as many as uh the Reikis as well. So just find something that resonates with you. Light language is great, light language is where you're channeling a different language and you speak in different ways. So that's quite interesting as well. Some people resonate with that by narrow beats, taking a walk, going to take a shower. There's so many ways to bring healing to yourself. I could say find your Goldilocks, find your just right.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

I signed up for a class. Unfortunately, not enough people did. So if you want to join, you should have joined with me, everybody listening. Yeah. The idea of doing a forest bath to spend time in nature. I know that. There are so many things, but I think the real thing of all of this is you need to find a way to slow your body and your brain.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Yeah. We have yoga nidra, which is the yogic sleep. Actually, I move too much. That's helping you. So someone who does move too much, that helps you as well. And then the sound baths. And now we have floating sound baths. And I saw somebody doing watercolor and a sound bath. We have puppy yoga, you name it. There's so many more things now than ever. I think in the last 10 years, just amazing things that have popped up.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

And I think that's important, especially if you have a neurodivergency. I know so many people that I've coached, I've talked to on the podcast, and just out in the world that struggle with staying still. And yoga is not for them, but it's because there are different types of yoga. So don't go for a slower one, maybe, depending on what your needs are. But I love that we have so many different options because, like you said, be Goldilocks. Find the right five. Find your right way.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

You might need a vinyasa, which is a faster one, maybe hot yoga. Just keep give it more than one try. Keep going back. Reiki is cumulative, so you need to do it maybe a few more times. Same thing with yoga. You might hate it in the beginning, and then you'll find that sweet spot. Like, ah, here we go.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

It's like you need to find that one pose that your body just goes, finally, and then you're sold.

Laughter Yoga and Its Benefits

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Movement is medicine. You need to move your spine in all directions every day. Cat cow, even if you're standing, just doing this. I've been doing cat cow since I've been in my late 20s. And that's so important because we'll lose that mobility as we age. You want to do a little arching twist, bring that in. You know, heel rocks where you're moving up and down. So you want to move that body. I work with the veterans, ours who have served, they're in their 70s. My oldest, 100 years old, 100 years old, he turned last week. And these are people that served our country. They would hold the guns and now they can't even lift their arms up. And you can see it in their face. They're just, and they're like, I'm so sorry. So if you're sitting in a chair, move every hour, whether it's wiggling those fingers, even just touching fingertips to thumb. That's a Kriya technique here that gets our mind going, our cognitive function. The tapping helps with that too. Immunity, crossing the midline here, right? That's are just simple movements that we can bring in every day to help with our vitality, to help with our health, help with our movement, our muscles, our attitude. I do laughter yoga and it's playful. It's breathing. People look at me like, is this girl nuts? And I tell them, listen, I was a preschool kindergarten teacher. So we're gonna have fun. We're gonna breathe. And it's simply just saying like the word hello, but we laugh. So we breathe and go, hello. Tell them to laugh like Santa Claus to have a bowl full of uh belly full of jelly, and they just get a good kick out of it. But we have those mirror neurons in our brain where it's contagious, like when we yawn and they just start laughing. I'm like, great. As adults, we're not even laughing more than 15 minutes. As children, two to three hundred times a day. So think of that. Bringing that in changes your attitude as well. Like, wow, that girl came in and did you stay her? She was making us laugh while we said hello. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Yeah, it reminds me that there are some people who just have laughs where you are laughing and you're like, why every laughing? You're laughing. It's just contagious, but I don't know why we're laughing.

Engaging with the Elderly Through Yoga

SPEAKER_00 36:34

And it changes our body and our mood and stuff. Just imagine you're sitting in a retirement home all day, and then this person comes in and we're doing these activities. One of them is the milkshake, where you're like, and they're like, What is she doing? So I say it's like charades, right? Improv, we're gonna just have fun and we're gonna laugh. And you get in the belly. It's like, wow, my belly's getting a little sore here from laughing at you. I thought they're so excited when you come. We've been lately, um I go into memory care, and many of them have been hurt serving our country. And then we also they also bring in gold star mothers who had a child who served for our country and had passed, and they come in as well. And I've been bringing in drumming, and we're drumming with it, and we're tapping, and we're moving, and we're playing music and 50s and 60s and 70s music. One woman was just every time I would come, she would just stare, and I thought, I gotta switch this up. And the music, she started singing, and it was like, Oh my goodness. And another guy who had sat there for the longest time put on over the rainbow and he was mouthing the words. And so I would bring things in from my teaching, and I'm like, you know what? Let's do row row your boat. They were all remembering, and then we're singing row, row your boat. And it's here are these people, 70 years old and up, singing this. They remembered it, they remembered those things from their childhood.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

I love that.

Where to Find More from Tracy

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Oh, so it's all for to find you. All right, perfect. So you can Google my name, Teresa Seawright. You can find me at www.feathersister.com. You can find me at ready set reiki and beep the yoga G. I'm on Insight Timer. I've been doing 30 days of Reiki on Insight Timer. And it is all the 14 different systems of Reiki that I am trained to teach and practice. I'm doing little educational things from hand placement to the Reiki precepts, doing a Reiki 101 with them. You can find me on Spotify, anywhere you can listen to the podcast, Instagram, Facebook, all over. I offer in-person classes and online classes at Feather Sister. So I do like Yoga Nidra that I talked about. I do sunrise yoga and I do Reiki sessions as well. And I also do many different trainings in yoga and in Reiki. Wow. Is there anything you don't do? That looks a bit shorter. And I've written some books. You can find my manuals. I do money reiki. You can get trained in money reiki, angel Reiki, Amari Reiki. So I have manuals on that. And I even have a children's book called Detective Pancake.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

Oh, that is so fun. It sounds like you obviously love kids. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

And I have four of my own, and I have six fur babies as well. So I do dog yoga and an animal communicator, and I do card readings, and someone asked me yesterday, really cute. Do you read their paws? I'm like, that's really cute, but no. So I can't read the dog's paws.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Thank you so much for being on. This has been, I learned stuff and I knew a little bit about Reiki. So I hope all of you learn stuff. And I would love for you to tell both of us what you learned from this so we can continue the conversation off the air. But Tracy, thank you so much for being on. I'm so excited that you were willing to do this when I met you because this is something that I wanted to talk about and I needed the right person. And as soon as I met you over video, I'm like, you're the person you need to do this with me. So thank you for being on. Thank you. It was an honor. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for. This is general advice taken as such. See you in the next episode.