The Sacred Pause: Using Reiki to Navigate Deep Personal Transitions

How often do we have the opportunity to truly pause? More often than not, we don’t take the time unless it is forced upon us.

I’m not sure if the pause I just took for myself was forced on me or by me. Right as spring began, I found myself in the process of selling my home and moving across the country from Alabama to California. I had been downsizing, selling off, pulling apart, and donating for several months. My daughter had bought a home in California and had just given birth to my first grandchild. I was starting a completely new chapter.

And, oh my, it meant moving my private practice as well.

In the middle of all that chaos, I made a decision: I was going to take a pause, and I was going to let Reiki be my guide through the move.

It started as a 21-day practice of Reiki breathing, meditating on the symbols, relying on Reiki intuition, and committing to self-Reiki. As everything around me was coming apart, Reiki kept me centered and grounded. I sent energy out into where I was going, using Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen to bridge the distance and connect with my new destination before I even arrived. I Reiki’d my moving pods, surrounded them with Cho Ku Rei for protection, and used Sei He Ki to clear any energetic or physical obstacles from their path.

I even blessed my car. Reiki and my car already had an intimate connection, as I use it constantly while driving. But for this cross-country journey, I washed it, gave it a shine, and blessed it with Reiki, a little sage, a full tank of gas, and lots of Cho Ku Rei.

And now, here I am. Everything made it.

My 21-day pause turned into a full month due to timing and circumstances. And as I emerge from it, I am noticing what I have learned. I am noticing how much Reiki helped me remain calm, stay grounded, and not get caught in the panic of the transition.

When the Pause Gets Loud

As Reiki practitioners, we know the value of stillness. We know how to hold space. But what happens when you are standing in that sacred, liminal space between who you were and who you are becoming, and suddenly, the alarm bells start ringing?

When we are in transition, our energy system is wide open. But the ego does not like being wide open; the ego likes certainty. And when the ego senses uncertainty, it reaches for its favorite weapon: manufactured urgency.

You know the feeling. You are trying to hold space for a new direction in your practice, your healing journey, or your personal life. You are trying to be still. But then you look around and see everyone else seemingly moving forward. Suddenly, the pause doesn’t feel like a spiritual practice anymore. It feels like you are falling behind.

That manufactured urgency triggers the Root chakra and floods the body with cortisol. Your brain screams, “Do something! Anything! If you don’t act right now, the opportunity will vanish!”

In this state of panic, our vision narrows. Our channels close. Instead of staying open to the flow of Universal Life Energy, it becomes dangerously easy to fall back into old habits. We abandon the new path because the old path, no matter how broken or painful, is a path we already know how to walk. We reach for old coping mechanisms: emotional eating, people-pleasing, overworking, or simply hiding our light.

But here is the truth we must remember: the urgency is a lie.

The panic is just the ego throwing a tantrum because it cannot control the outcome. When we feel the panic rising, when we feel the magnetic pull of those old, comfortable habits, that is the exact moment we need to drop our hands to our hearts and invite Reiki in. Call in the Dai Ko Myo to align the Higher Self with the Soul. Feel the centering, and remember — we don’t have to sprint to catch up. True, aligned inspiration does not come from the sprint; it arises out of the pause.

The Shamanic Death of the Protector

When we begin our healing journeys, we often think we just want to change our habits. We want to stop the cycle of emotional eating, the people-pleasing, the self-sabotage. We think healing is simply a matter of swapping out bad behaviors for better ones.

But what the ego desperately tries to hide from us is that those “bad habits” are not just behaviors. They are identities. We adopt them to keep ourselves safe. And to truly heal, that protective identity must be allowed to die.

In shamanic traditions, shapeshifting is the profound spiritual practice of transformation. It is the understanding that to step into a new form, the old form must perish. True transformation requires a death before a rebirth.

When we look closely at the habits we are trying to break, we realize they were never our enemies. They were our protectors. They were the armor our ego forged to carry us through the fire when we didn’t know how else to survive.
But you cannot carry your armor into the new room. It is too heavy. It will block the flow of your energy.

When we finally decide to lay the armor down, we expect to feel immediate relief. Instead, we often feel an overwhelming wave of grief. We grieve because we are losing a part of ourselves. And if we try to spiritual-bypass our way past that grief — if we try to Reiki it away without honoring it first — we will inevitably pick the armor right back up.

You have to honor the protector before you can release it. A little Cho Ku Rei is very empowering here. Send it into your aura and feel the energy surrounding you, protecting you, as you walk into your new room.

Reiki, Resistance, and Rewiring the Nervous System

As I moved into this new season, my spirit felt completely ready to move forward, but my physical body refused to come along.

I had done the mindset work. I had grieved the old identities. But my body felt like it was encased in concrete. My chest was tight. My breathing was shallow. I couldn’t understand why I was still struggling. If my spirit was ready to move, why did my body feel so heavy?

And then, right in the middle of pushing forward, my body made the decision for me. I came down with a cold. My throat was raw, my eyes were streaming, and I had no choice but to stop and rest even more.

As I lay still, I began to understand something profound: the illness was not an interruption of the shapeshifting process. It was the shapeshifting process.

In many healing traditions, a physical flare-up during a major transition is understood as the body’s way of releasing what the mind cannot. The congestion, the tears, the rawness, these are the body purging the old energy, clearing the pathways so that the new life force can move in.

The truth is, you cannot positive-think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. When we spend years living in survival mode, our bodies adapt to run on cortisol. And eventually, the nervous system becomes addicted to the stress of the struggle. It associates peace with vulnerability. So, when you finally try to pause, your body throws up a wall of physical resistance.

Your Chi hits that wall of fear, and it stops flowing.

This is exactly why Reiki is so vital during times of transition. Reiki energy bypasses the frantic chatter of the conscious mind and speaks directly to the nervous system. It gently guides the body out of the sympathetic “fight or flight” state and into the parasympathetic “rest and digest” state. In that state, the body finally realizes it is safe. The cortisol addiction begins to break. Reiki untangles the deep-rooted physical resistance that words alone cannot reach.

A Practitioner’s Practice for the Pause

If you are in a season of transition right now, whether you are physically moving to a new place or emotionally stepping into a new version of yourself, and you are feeling the chaos of everything coming apart, I invite you to stop fighting it. If your body has come down with a cold, or you are feeling heavy physical resistance right now, honor it. Your body is not betraying you; it is releasing for you.

• Even though everything around me is coming apart, I trust the process of this transition, and I deeply and completely love and accept myself.
• Even though the pause is getting loud and my brain is screaming at me to go back to what is safe, I invite Reiki to ground me, and I deeply and completely love and accept myself.
• Even though I am grieving the part of me that is dying, I honor her service, and I deeply and completely love and accept myself.
• Even though my body is addicted to the stress of the struggle, I give my nervous system permission to rest, and I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

This simple EFT tapping sequence works beautifully alongside Reiki to support the release. Your spirit has already done the heavy lifting. It is time to let your body catch up.

Article by Rev. Terri Ann Heiman

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Terri Ann Heiman, Interfaith Minister of Spiritual Counseling, Reiki Master Teacher of the Usui Shiki Rhyo Lineage, and Midwife of the Soul has worked in the Healing Arts for over twenty-five years. Her influence extends beyond her teachings—she has been interviewed on ABC and the Reiki Rays Healing Summit. She has been published in Reiki News Magazine, as well as writing for Reiki Rays. Her book, Confessions of a Shower Tapper – The Ultimate Guide to Living Your Purpose with EFT, is on Amazon. She is a contributing author alongside best-selling author Freddy Silva in the book Portals: Energetic Doorways to Mystical Experiences Between Worlds. Terri also created The Empowered Spirit Tarot Deck, which can be found on her website. She hosts the podcast The Empowered Spirit Show and offers online classes and private mentoring through her website at TerriAnnHeiman.com

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