Well, here it is, my blog, finally! I’ve been meaning to set this up for such a long time and have been using my forum to post information in the past year, but now thanks to the marvellous efforts of the Reiki Drum web designer, Jo Phillips from Spiral Pixel, here is my long awaited blog! I’m not sure how this will evolve. You may get pure Reiki and Reiki Drum information, but I have a feeling you might receive other musings and ramblings along the way, so it will be interesting from my point of view to see what takes place in this little space.

I have just come back from such a wonderful weekend. My first residential Reiki Drum practitioner’s retreat. It was held at the beautiful Sedgebrook Hall in Northamptonshire.

The weekend was fabulous. I love teaching Reiki Drum as most of you who have studied with me will know, but to run it in such a beautiful spot and have the opportunity to really immerse ourselves in the teachings because of it being residential was a true gift. As always the group were amazing. Such high vibrational souls in one spot always lends itself to true magic taking place, and I feel we really did achieve magic and deep healing again this weekend. Thank you to all of you who attended.

Thank you also to those of you who attended the recent Reiki Share at Garden Cottage. We were an elite few (!) but it was as always a very special evening. I loved the opportunity to christen my new 22” Buffalo Drum and was amazed and excited by its power. It has a deeper more resonant sound than my 16” and is perfect for journeying, so I am sure I will be getting lots of use of it in the future.

Many of you have asked when I will be able to do a Sunday share again. I am sure they will happen at some stage, but due to current weekend teaching commitments I will be holding shares on a Thursday evening only for the foreseeable future. Due to space constraints, the Shares at Garden Cottage are only open to Reiki practitioners who have trained with me in the past.

The next Reiki Share will be held on Thursday 29th July at Garden Cottage from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. A wonderful time of year, I’m hoping we can perhaps have a fire ceremony if the evening is fine as it will be warm enough to do work outside, although considering the volume level of the new drum, I may have to use the 16” outside to keep in harmony with the neighbours!

My long awaited gong has now arrived and I am hoping to introduce those of you who attend the share to a gong bath. I recently did some introductory training for gong healing with both the inspirational Sheila Whittaker and Tim Wheater and have become completely hooked after personally receiving several gong baths last year. For those of you who have not come across the gong before, it is an incredible instrument for healing and meditational purposes. When I meet people who have received a gong bath and loved the experience, they all come out with the same phrase “I was blown away”. It truly is an incredible experience. My beautiful gong is a 38” Paiste Symphonic gong. I haven’t had much time to work with it yet, but already I am noticing it is teaching me how to play it. Working with the gong is the same as doing the Reiki Drumming, in that you are a channel for Divine energy and therefore what is meant to be played will be. I also feel very open and aligned after spending time with the gong, so the resonance must have a profound effect on the person playing as well as receiving. I will be letting everyone know when I am ready to give gong baths in my clinic, and am hoping to set up group gong bath evenings too, so watch this space.

There are lots of Reiki courses coming up in the next few months, details to follow. The next Reiki Drum Practitioner course with availability is in North Devon in July and we still have several spaces left for those of you who have completed Reiki II or above. Reiki Drum is spreading like wildfire around the UK. Everyone who comes on the course is completely taken with Reiki Drumming by the end of the weekend and many of my past students are coming up to the stage when they will be teaching it to their own students, so I am now seeing my vision coming to fruition with Reiki drumming becoming a powerful adjunct to the Reiki Practitioner’s healing toolbag.

I recently got caught up in the disruption from the Icelandic volcano. I was due to fly to Scotland to deliver a Reiki Drum workshop the Thursday all of the flights in the UK were cancelled. Thanks to the fantastic infrastructure we have here in the UK, 15 hours later I arrived in Aberdeen courtesy of British Rail. I tend to visit Scotland every couple of years or so and have always flown, but this experience has actually made me consider getting the train in the future as it was for me personally, a much nicer way to travel. The volcano disrupted many people’s lives in the past few weeks, some suffering much more than others, but something in me wonders why she felt the need to erupt and cause so much havoc. We are having so many natural earth happenings currently, I feel the Great Mother is trying to tell humanity something and it is the only way she can get her message across. If we don’t listen, she will have to continue to let her feelings known to us.

It was interesting travelling the “slow” way to Scotland. In my youth I used to travel extensively and would be happy to take buses and trains, but nowadays the quick fix by air seems to fit in with our modern fast paced life, arriving at our destination in a matter of hours. Perhaps adopting new methods of travel would be one way of helping us slow down and help the environmental problems. I have mentioned this to some who have said it’s not practical, it doesn’t fit in with the way we live. But perhaps we should make it practical, perhaps slowing down is part of the shift that is going on currently globally. Perhaps slowing down is one of the practical measures which will actually help save our planet and our species. I recently visited the Henry Moore Foundation. Henry Moore was a very successful and talented British sculptor. Part of the visit to the foundation included a tour of his home. Everything had been preserved from around the 1970 period. The energy of his house was again much “slower” than our modern day world, and we are only looking at forty years ago. It made me nostalgic to a time when our parents would achieve perhaps one major thing in a day’s work instead of five or six. When one’s life travels at a nice and easy pace, it is much easier to tap into one’s intuitive processes than when we are haring around from one thing to another. One of my clients mentioned that cars were as much a pollutant as air travel. Perhaps we will have to change the way we travel by road in the future too. With the fantastic technological advancements we have nowadays, is it really necessary for business meetings to take place in person with people travelling miles to arrive at another place to conduct such business? Advancements such as teleconferencing and Skype afford many new opportunities. Anyway, all food for thought and it will be interesting to see what developments take place over the coming decades.

I’ve even taken it as a sign I too need to slow down. Running a busy practise and holding classes and retreats throughout the UK is a joy, but I’ve noticed it has tended to be all encompassing. I have made the decision to make one day a week a family/social/Sarah day and not look at emails/take business calls etc. I did this for the first time last week and it was actually incredibly difficult for me to do, but I’m going to persevere over the coming weeks as I know it will have a positive effect.

Well my first post for this blog was a little longer than expected! I’m looking forward to using this tool in the coming months and years to share my thoughts with you.

For those of you who are interested here are dates of forthcoming Reiki Drum classes, workshops and events over the next few months.

Reiki Drum Master Teacher – May 21
Reiki One – May 22, July 3 & 4, October 30 & 31
Reiki Two – May 29 & 30, July 31 & August 1, November 20 & 21
Reiki Master Teacher – June 4 & 6
Reiki Drum Practitioner Herts June 12 & 13 (Full), Sept 4 & 5, November 6 & 7
Reiki Drum Practitioner Devon – July 10 & 11
Reiki Drum Practitioner Suffolk October 2 & 3
Reiki Drum Practitioner South Wales – November 27 & 28
Reiki Share (open to past students only) – July 29
Free workshops at Mind Body Spirit, Linton, Cambridge – September 11 & 12
Annual Reiki Retreat, Dunwich, Suffolk (four spaces remaining) – October 8-10
Karuna classes by arrangement