Competition in Spiritual Businesses

So, I had a problem with a colleague years ago and I never wrote about it - without going into the details, when I was a healing student, I had a lot of fun in class and made good friends (which was one of my main interests). The people who share your interests become your friends. When this becomes your job, as it did for me, the people who share your interests could be your friends, but they often turn into competitors. And that gets sticky. I have found myself experiencing a lot of the frictions that I used to have in the corporate world. It’s because at the end of the day, even if we run spiritual businesses, we are still all human. So let's say you're really into runes or tarot or crystals or chakra healing - and you want to teach a class on that. Other teachers and healers might not like it.

I used to address this by doing a bit of a tribute to friends who focused on themes that I wasn’t working on professionally, but that I had spent a good amount of time on, personally. So for example, if I was talking about runes, I would mention so and so. When I began posting about those themes online, or doing a class, some would respond well (most did). Eventually I realized that I didn't want to do tributes anymore, and I stopped. It wasn't the best approach as it kept me from owning my experience, and in hindsight, it was not the best friendship dynamic. I think it was a coping mechanism, after I had push back. Spirituality is a business now, and that’s ok, but it’s also a way of life.

I share so many things online. The push back did come after adverts. But in general, are visual posts there to catch people’s eyes, or just that I am interested in that topic? I still approach what I post online as sharing what I am into, what I have learned, and what I am doing at the moment. I consider the classes I teach, and energy healing sessions as my job. If it's a class, a ton of time goes into prepping it. If it's a Facebook post, it might be a thought that went through my mind. If it's a one-to-one session with clients, the energy healing technique will be one where I spent a lot of time training, to offer that service. 

I write about things I’m into - you have to let that guide you. It’s part of being authentic. There isn't a huge difference between what I research, what I study for pure enjoyment and what could turn into a business opportunity someday. Blogging is my way of getting ideas out there. Social media is different; it gets you out there, in front of people. I had push back after branching out.

Maybe it’s normal, but we do have to maintain our boundaries. If it's clear that a relationship has become strained, maybe it's best not to mention them, nor to build on what we might have learned from them. It depends on the situation, and what that was. With this in mind, I have deleted a few blog posts and content that referenced colleagues, while still exploring all of my interests. I felt like this would be the best and maybe the cleanest way forward.

Thinking out loud, 

Regina 

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Reiki hugs, Regina 

I’m the tiger from my nightmares 🔥🔥🔥

Growing up, I had a recurring nightmare where we were having lunch at my grandmother’s house. The wall came tumbling down and a roaring tiger came out from behind. Everyone went scrambling - my aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends who were there for lunch. My 8- year old self ran and hid behind a big black piano. 

It didn’t look like exactly my grandparents' house, for one, we seemed to be eating on large picnic tables. I have a clear image of one of my aunts staying put, the rest of the people were hazy. The walls were made of carton too; it didn't keep anything back. 

I would stay huddled behind that piano bench, scared that the tiger would eat me. It paced back and forth but it didn’t feel angry or hungry. My inner child was terrified, as you would be if a tiger suddenly appeared in front of you and you were stuck there. 

After a few weeks of this recurring dream, one night I was watching the tiger and I suddenly realized that it was a dream. The tiger wasn’t there. But unfortunately, someone at school had told us that if you died in a dream you would then die in real life. So I hid from that tiger for years....  

 

Decoding Dreams

Fast forward about 35 years and I asked a Jungian psychologist for recommendations on child psychology books. At the time, I wanted to enroll in a counseling masters but I wasn’t sure what style to adopt. 

He recommended an author called Donald Kalsched and I read a book on dreams, nightmares and what they have to tell us. The ebook was super expensive so I got the Kindle in Portuguese 🇧🇷: O Mundo Interior Do Trauma (The Inner World of Trauma).  

My Portuguese isn’t great but this is what I learned. The book is good, by the way: 

• According to Kalsched, the elements in the recurring dream, or nightmare in my case, are parts of your psyche that are trying to protect you, while also revealing an unconscious complex. It's all you in the dream. 

• He calls those complexes archetypal self-care systems (translating from Portuguese) and they have energy and personality in our dream state and unconscious. I imagine they influence our behavior while we are awake too, in knee-jerk reactions? 

• We can revisit the dream to decode it; as far as I can tell, this is part of counseling sessions. My approach was to send healing to that part of me with Reiki and energy healing.

Here are my insights. I read the book two years ago but I'd forgotten about it until recently, when a song made it click.   

• If you die in a dream, you don’t die in real life. Obvious, but my inner child needed to hear that. Yesterday I started there and then sent healing to the part of me that went into hiding... 

• I‘d already been connecting with Inanna, the goddess of music and war, after a meditation where Katy Perry’s Roar came up. I was trying to make friends with a tiger but my inner child was still terrified. In energy healing, that’s a fragmented part of your psyche that that has to be brought back into the fold, gently. 

• A few weeks ago I realized that the tiger represents various elements (or characters) in the family tree  - it’s a pattern and an energy that is powerful and that had the intention of standing up for us. The piano and the tiger represented two sides of the same coin, funny enough. That energy represented visibility and presence.

• But as a child, and even more recently as an adult, big displays of emotion threw me off. That energy was terrifying to me as a kid, because of the emotion and the tiger image. My adult self isn't scared; I like the idea of a tiger spirit animal. 

That tiger was always larger than life in my unconscious, but when I bring it up and integrate it into my personality, it's amazing. This is what I need to go out into the world confidently and to keep from recoiling. So yes, awesome; the antihero becomes the antidote. I'm the tiger, it's me 🔥🔥🔥

Intuitively, I've felt that tiger walking with me during meditations, and leaping out of my solar plexus chakra, into the world. Here is the song that inspired this aha moment!

Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift  

BTW -  I’m fluent in English, Spanish, so-so French and I speak a little Italian. I don’t speak Portuguese but it’s similar enough to work it out. Got through a third of the book, just enough to decipher this dream. 

For now my energy healing books are available in English and Spanish 🦁

Amazon.com/author/reginachouza

Reiki hugs,

Regina 

 

***

 

Regina Chouza is an energy healer, astrologer and author of A Personal Guide to Self-Healing, Cancer & Love and Chakra Healing & Magick. She holds a BA in Philosophy from Tufts University; Regina’s passion is bringing self-love, joy and empowerment to healing pursuits. Read her books to awaken your intuition and channel energy healing. Available on Amazon.

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> Español: @AngelMedium33

Image: canva com (updated 2025)

Imagination, Healing and Shadowscapes Tarot

The past year I have been teaching a mix of energy healing and psychic tarot in Mexico; this project wound up being a much bigger adventure than I ever imagined. There are many layers to tarot including astrology, numerology, introspection and intuition. 

I went through most of these themes independently in my student days so it has always been easy for me to see the symbolism in tarot cards. On some level, I feel like my intuition brought me back to tarot when I was ready to use the cards a learning and energy healing tool. 

Tarot Has So Much To Say!

Along the way I have picked up a few decks as each creator has his or her take on the concepts for the 78 cards. Tarot is a visual tool and we learn a lot by looking at different illustrations; the look that resonates also depends on how we feel that day. My latest find is Shadowscapes Tarot by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. It is full of fairies and nature spirits, not the least bit scary, but still accurate when it comes to conveying the meaning in the cards. Especially the sad ones, which are necessary for healing. 

For example, the Tower shows a tall structure about to crumble on top of a village, destabilizing town life. And the Devil depicts a person caught in the prison of his mind and fears. But this deck doesn't drive people away - not that there is anything wrong with Rider Waite decks (I love those too). For some of us, gentle images are easier to digest until we understand the meaning of the superficially dark cards and can put them into context. Shadowscapes Tarot is fantastic for newbies and seasoned readers alike as it doesn't shy away from the deeper meanings. 

Once we have gotten to know the cards and why difficult images are in the tarot, we can use those images to connect with our Shadow - a part of ourselves that needs to be embraced though often, we are reluctant to even look at it. The qualities that we would very much like to sweep under the rug stare back at us, and as we can be afraid of seeing them, the 'unhelpful' reaction is to panic and put the cards away, sometimes forever. 

Healing Yourself With Tarot

If instead we view our emotional reactions as a sign that we still need to heal, this is where the magic happens. Not in the Harry Potter sense of the word, but in the transform your life and kick ass way. Shadowscapes Tarot is lovely because it lays the shadow out for us in a way that isn’t confrontational, giving us a chance to feel and heal that discomfort. 

I like to heal my reaction to disconcerting cards by holding one in my hands and filling it with Energy Healing: picturing violet light as it flows through my mind, body and Aura, integrating whatever is in the card that I didn't want to look at. We don't have to force anything, just let that energy flow. Violet light is a mix of Peace (Blue) and Compassion (Pink). We can all practice Energy Healing - more on that below 😉 

Another approach can be to visualize yourself in the cards that you pulled and ask your intuition to guide you through a healing meditation where you see yourself living those scenes, and coming across victorious. This is energy healing + imagining, so we can repeat the process as often as we'd like. If we get stuck, we can use automatic writing and journaling to explore the reasons why. Tarot was designed to help us tease out our intuition and subconscious. 

Taking It Further

Chakra Healing & Magick walks us through the steps to awaken our intuition and unlock our healing abilities. The Tarot tools  are sprinkled through the Chapters 3, 4 and 7 on creativity, chakras, and how tarot cards relate to crystals, magick and Aura healing.  

Amazon USA ~ Canada ~ UK ~ India

 Ireland ~ Australia  ~ Nederland ~ Sweden 

Germany ~ Italy ~ France ~ Japan 

Mexico ~ Brasil  ~ Singapore

Emirates ~ Belgium ~ Spain

Disponible en español 🇲🇽

USA ~ Mexico ~ España

Find a deck that you love and use it to heal yourself - there are many options. Please have a look at this video by Katy Perry! I love the song, and the video is full of symbolism from the Major Arcana. 

***

Regina Chouza is an energy healer, angel medium and the author of A Personal Guide to Self-Healing, Cancer & Love and Chakra Healing & Magick. Blogging at Diary of a Psychic Healer since 2010, her passion is bringing the qualities of love, joy and empowerment to healing pursuits. Read her books to unlock your intuition. 

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> Español: @AngelMedium33

Image Source (2020): by @DollarGill on Unsplash.com 

What is Holy Fire ® Reiki ?

Hello Chickpeas! 

I want to tell you about a new Reiki class that I took this weekend. First off, when I signed up for Reiki in 2012 there were only three levels: beginners, practitioner and teacher. And if you hadn’t noticed, Reiki is one of the modalities that I enjoy most; I enjoy giving myself Reiki as much as I love teaching it =) 

To make a long story short, when people refer to Reiki they usually mean Usui Reiki - a system of natural healing that was developed in Japan by Mikao Usui about 100 years ago. Legend has it that Usui, a lifelong buddhist, embarked on a meditative retreat on Mount Kurama near Kyoto, hoping to achieve higher degrees of clarity and trust in his life (another word for enlightenment). 

As legend has it, he felt a massive ray of light come down from above. That rush of light entered his body through the top of his head and when he came to again, he decided it was time to leave. Usui was already a healer and over the next days and weeks, he noticed that healings happened spontaneously and with less effort on his part. He shared this with others by teaching a system that is now known as Usui Reiki. Fast forward 100 years, and different styles of Reiki have been taught to thousands around the world.

How Does One Teach Reiki? 

In order to teach Reiki, Usui and the Reiki Masters who followed him devised a process that is referred to as an attunement. This is a brief healing with which the teacher instills Reiki in the student's energy and body, opening the pathway so that from that moment on, the student can channel Reiki whenever they like. Once you have Reiki, it is yours for life (I LOVE THAT). The past seven years I have used it extensively with myself, with friends and with clients, many of whom were cancer patients mid-treatment (always complementary to medical care). 

In my experience the effects have been soothing and powerful. But I have also wondered how that attunement process came about. Usui received it directly from Source, and since then, everyone who has received Reiki has received it through the filter of the human body (teacher) who shared it with them. Based on my experience with energy healing in general, I have learned that human bodies can only channel a certain amount of energy; the same is true for Reiki Masters. Wouldn't it be cool if we could establish our connection to Reiki without that human filter?

Direct Attunements Are Possible 

In Holy Fire ® Reiki classes, the connection to Reiki is through a guided meditation where the teacher sets the intention, steps back and lets that Holy Fire ® energy come down from above to interact with each of the students individually. This was a Reiki Master class so we had four ignitions (as they're called) over a three day period, each stronger than the last. With the first one I felt lots of irritation as it brought to the surface everything that I had swept under the rug (reiki healing crisis). The second brought a welcome wave of peace and light. And the third a rush of compassion; the subject of my next post as the feeling was pretty much new to me. 

Each of the ignitions was unique. By the time they are over, your energy has been shifted over to a vibration that is more open and loving and also empowered when it comes to healing. Reiki was strong enough as it is, with this direct empowerment it flows a lot quicker than I was used to. That said, I believe Reiki is vibration and we are guided to the teacher and styles that are suited to help us heal at that point in our lives. The traditional style of Reiki attunements has worked well for me the past seven years =) 

Usui Reiki vs Holy Fire® Reiki

Usui was a Japanese healer and as you would expect, that healing path is largely influenced by Asian religions. In Holy Fire® we come across a healing vibration that is closer to what we see in the Bible  (think Moses, the Burning Bush and Healing Miracles). The next step after Holy Fire® is a Master Teacher class in Karuna Reiki® - which takes us back to the compassion of eastern traditions. We went through both this week; Karuna Reiki® gives us quite a few tools to work through the shadow side including fears, insecurities and unconscious patterns. Karuna Reiki® is usually studied after we have become Usui (or Holy Fire®) Reiki Teachers. 

And Some Aries Fire (In Me)

Two years ago my progressed Sun moved into Aries, astro speak for: I am a lot less patient than I used to be. Traditional Usui Reiki is fantastic and while it worked well for me for years, ever since my Progressed Sun changed signs, I want everything to happen that much faster. I think the Universe answered my prayers with this Holy Fire®  Reiki class. And as my intuition kept telling me: No Aries wants to heal slowly hahaha. I kept hearing that phrase to the tune of Ricky Martin and Cristina Aguilera.  

Please note that Holy Fire ® Reiki is complementary to medical care, not alternative. The healing referred to in this article is how quickly I have let go of things that used to bother me; the peace that follows is just priceless. That said, Reiki is a wonderful complement to medical care! Please follow this link for more on energy healing and cancer support.  

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Reiki hugs, Regina 

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*** Holy Fire ® and Karuna Reiki ® are registered trademarks of the International Center for Reiki Training. 

Image: canva.com 2024

Songs To Manifest From the Heart

The past year I have been attending a yoga class where we sing mantras and sometimes dance songs. It is called Naam Yoga; I love that it puts me in a fantastic mood. One of my favourites is a mantra called Sacred Aum, by Dr Joseph Michael Levry. Listen to the clip here. 

Some call Aum the sound of creation. This sound exists in several spiritual traditions: Amen in Christianity, OM in Hinduism and Aum in Kabbalah (one of the 72 Names of God from the Exodus). I love listening to music, but I didn't understand how it went with mantras until I came across Aum again last week while reading Wayne Dyer's book, Manifest Your Destiny. 

In the book, Dyer walks us through nine principles that shift our worldview to one that is compassionate, collaborative and loving towards the people that we encounter. From this place of respect - where we genuinely listen to understand instead of listening to reply - he recommends meditations to manifest our heart's desires with sound, specifically AUM in the mornings and then another sound at night to reflect gratitude for what we have already experienced. I won't spoil it for you, read the book to learn about his approach!

One of the things that struck a chord with me in Manifest Your Destiny was the practice of vibrating visions through the chakras, beginning at the base of the spine and working our way up to the Brow so that we can bring it into being. When I was writing Chakra Healing & Magick, I felt like it would be best to describe those Chakras (or energy centers) above the Heart as metaphysical in nature - allowing us to see, feel and hear archangels, God and all of the spiritual support that surrounds us. And that the Chakras below the Heart were more involved in manifesting - hence the classification of manifesting & metaphysical chakras. 

Dr Levry's Sacred Aum track can be found on the Rootlight website. I have been listening to the full version while doing the chakra visualizations that Wayne Dyer describes in his book. Listen to the clip first to see if you like it! =) 

Lastly, A Song For Healing

I am enjoying Dyer's Manifest Your Destiny book and how it fits in so seamlessly with the concepts that we have been covering in Naam Yoga. Especially the focus on music as a tool to heal ourselves, as the seven musical notes resonate with the chakras (details here). Below you'll find my go-to-song for energy healing sessions. Lately I've been playing it for friends and family before surgeries or other medical procedures as it helps us relax and trust the process.

Please share your experiences with music or sound healing in the comment box. And follow the links below to my books for more on energy healing and meditation. 

Reiki hugs,

Regina 

***

Regina Chouza is an energy healer, angel medium and the author of A Personal Guide to Self-Healing, Cancer & Love and Chakra Healing & Magick. Blogging at Diary of a Psychic Healer since 2010, her passion is bringing the qualities of love, joy and empowerment to healing pursuits. Read her books to unlock your intuition. 

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> Español: @AngelMedium33