I booked a session of reiki at a place I thought was in Troy, but when the woman emailed to confirm, she gave an Albany address and added that she was located "behind Starbucks."
The Starbucks was in a strip mall in the middle of one of those newer suburbs built on wetlands, shorn yards ending in long grass. It was next to a Beer Bones bottlo, Lollipop Children's Shop, and Cell Phone Fix-Er, a cornucopia of shopping options for after a healing session.
I had to fill and sign four separate forms before my appointment, which seems like a lot for a service in which the practitioner maybe doesn't even touch you, but also like pretty thin red tape if you consider they are manipulating ENERGY outside of a secure compound. I had checked the "hands-on" box on one of the forms, since it seemed like it might give her more of a shot at moving said energy about.
The practitioner looked like a marriage celebrant — cardigan, blonde hair, late-middle-aged, clipboard — and said she had been performing and teaching reiki for 17 years. To get to her room, I had to walk through a shared office space that like an American bank does; corporate but trying to be homey. She talked a little about how the session would work and what it would do. She would focus on my energy centers, emptying bad energy and filling the space with love, a bit like an oil change, sometimes hovering above, sometimes with "hand positions."
She had to close her Troy location early in the pandemic because of social distancing, though she did continue to offer "remote healing." Now that everyone was getting back to normal, lots of people were coming in to deal with all the hardships of COVID, she said, it had been hard on everyone. I explained where the anxiety usually sat in my body, and about the homesickness, and she nodded and said, "mmm, some sadness there," like she knew what to do.
I hung my coat on a hook and climbed under a sheet and white hospital blanket on a massage table. When Brené Brown talks about vulnerability, I think this is what she means: lying on a table in an empty shared office space behind a Starbucks, a cluster of crystals pointing up at your body from the carpet.
In the beginning, she was doing hands-off work, and my body was under the blanket on high alert for prickles or heat or other sensations, but I felt only myself in my body. I was relieved when she moved to some hand positions, tracing lines on my face, then putting her hands in some key spots and sort of shaking them softly like she was trying to start a whirlpool. It was kind of yoga adjustments without the yoga, or how it feels when you stand in a doorway pushing your hands into the frame for 60 seconds, then step out and feel your arms float upward. When she put her hands over my belly, it felt like a hot water bottle. I sensed the most when she cupped my heels for a bit. I know that touch in itself can be healing, whether or not it's a placebo or the simple effect of someone showing care to your body. I have long thought that someone should open a hair salon where they just give you a champagne, play with your hair for half an hour, then send you home.
I tried some of the moves on Scout later on, tracing half moons from her temples to her chin, hovering over her third eye, and doing the Magneto helmet face grip with my hands. "Are you just making that up?" she said.
When it was over, the practitioner told me to drink a lot of fluids after all this "work." She had put a lot of love into me, particularly into the throat and heart chakras (cost: $111). Nature helps ground us, she said, so keep up with walking and spending time outside, also in the sun. "You need the D," she said gravely.
I thanked her, walked into the D feeling good, then got myself a croissant and a jumbo iced tea from Starbucks and drove home with the windows down.
How it happened
Eating at the mall in Albany, but want to check the menu first:
Goodies
Against “happiness studies” in Ivy League universities, thank you Maria Bustillos:
If you want to learn whether life has meaning, unfortunately the smell of good coffee won’t take you far. Or to put this another way, it might make you feel really good, in an animal way—and I’m not about to knock that, per se—but there is no ethics in the scent of coffee, no compassion, no learning, no history, no humor, no human feeling or connection. Raw animal pleasure is great, and we are animals for sure, but that is only a minutely small part of all we are. Coffee 100% cannot address existential anxiety of the kind Santos describes her students to be feeling (“If everything you said is true, and I’m not just working for grades and trying to get into college, then what’s the purpose of life?”)
“dogs go on with their doggy life”!!!! This art analysis, ty Margaret
88-year-old sheep farmer competes in the Hall sheepdog trials
great (old) story about what happens when you realize your wife is a Tetris champion
When Kafka tries to buy a tuxedo, everything conspires against him – he must refer to it as ‘the future tuxedo’, eternally receding from him. He wants a tuxedo lined and trimmed with silk, but the tailor has never heard of such a thing. He can only write, in despair: ‘Everything happens to me forever.’
Advice on dealing with (climate) overwhelm from Sarah Wilson
Treat yourself:
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So much to love about this but Giant Herbed Glazed Salmon Salad was a delightful surprise!