A reiki home sanctuary offers serenity
Elyssa Matthews fashioned a south-facing room in her apartment for teaching
Contradictions abound on the way to Elyssa Matthews’ oasis.
Architecturally, her highrise apartment appears to be pretty standard 1970s modernism: grey, solid, tall, stark even.
Even the simple, light-filled apartment that Matthews, a reiki teacher, calls home has its surprises — like the montage of orthodox icons from her native Romania hanging in the entryway, set against a decor scheme of white walls, white furniture, and honey-coloured parquet floors. There’s a pleasing whiff of incense, and it is absolutely quiet.
As clichéd as this sounds, there’s a feeling of serenity.
Possibly the source is the room where she meditates and practices reiki, which radiates outward to influence every area of life, she says: from the way she teaches troubled high school students, to the decor of her apartment.
Before becoming a reiki teacher over a decade ago, Matthews had done transcendental meditation, but it was only after returning to Toronto from a three-year hiatus in France that she began an exploration of the practice.
“I had become depressed and started looking for something else. I knew I needed to organize my life differently and make it more meaningful.”
Various people suggested reiki, so she took classes, loved it, moved up the various levels and by 2003, friends nudged her to consider teaching.
The next year she travelled to Japan and then started hosting international events and classes taught by reputable Japanese masters while continuing to learn from them herself.
Teaching wouldn’t have been possible in the one-bedroom apartment she shared with her husband, so they looked for a bigger space. When they found a three-bedroom apartment, Matthews felt it was too much room (“I was still thinking in Parisian terms”), but her husband lobbied for its advantages: walking distance to her high school teaching position, a dedicated reiki room and an onsite pool and gym.
When they took the apartment, Matthews chose a south-facing bedroom for the reiki room. “It’s my oasis, my sanctuary; it’s where I med- itate, where I hold lessons and have meaningful conversations with my students and friends.”
Reiki is a conceptual practice — “not something you learn from books,” Matthews says. Essentially, you lie on a massage table, fully clothed, while the reiki practitioner starts with hands hovering over, and sometimes on, a part of your body. (The receiver must give permission for contact.)
At times during the session, the sensation is warm hands on the forehead, shoulders and hip. It can become a deep and penetrating tingle, almost a buzz of electricity, and Matthews’ hands will shake.
Some reiki practitioners say this is the energy that flows from a higher power through the reiki teacher’s hands and into the subject. But Matthews finds this definition too restricting: “That implies a subject-object relationship, and to me reiki is a practice of unification.”
Both practitioner and receiver have to be open to this transmission and share the experience, Matthews says. “The deeper sensations are usually experienced when something in the body’s system is out of balance, and that could be physical, or not.”
When Matthews started practicing reiki, she says she “started to open up. I could feel things shifting inside: that’s when I realize that something deep happens in this practice.”
It has affected the way she approaches her high school students. “The practice makes us more present to what is happening at the moment. These kids are from not a very nice neighbourhood and they would sometimes tell me the most horrible stories about their lives. These are someone’s forgotten children. Reiki helped me to love these kids and stay calm.”
DIY reiki Matthews teaches Gendai Reiki Ho and Komyo Reiki Kai, both of which have four levels. Most other reiki systems have three levels. The highest level is known as master, or teacher, which in Japanese is “shihan.”
A beginner can set up a room for the meditative part of reiki — the inner practice — or as a hands-on practice on themselves or others. Matthews strongly recommends attending reiki circles because it’s a “practice of mutuality.”
Matthews’ room has a massage table draped in white cotton for the practice of reiki on others. For lessons, she has arranged floor cushions and back jacks in a circle. A tray table in one corner holds a small Buddha and incense burners.
Sheer cotton window drapes were made by an appreciative student, and a small Asian step stool was the gift of another.
Each reiki space reflects the person. “I love white walls and furniture, hardwood floors, lots of sunlight and uncluttered space. I’ve always been minimalistic, and appreciated simplicity, and was probably drawn to this practice for those qualities,” says Williams.