One morning I was catching up on paperwork at home and I started to feel a lot of tension in my abdomen and a mild ache in my heart. I checked in with myself: Was it something I ate at breakfast that didn’t agree with me? Was I feeling heartsore about a recent conversation with a client? The answers to my questions were “maybe” and “no.”
So I continued to work and tried to ignore the discomfort, which seemed to lessen after a while. By lunchtime, however, I felt bloated, and there was a tightness in my diaphragm. Yet I still had an appetite, so I ate a small but tasty meal. Then I went for a walk, which helped relieve some of my symptoms.
I was still feeling off at the end of the day, so I lay on the couch and did a Reiki self-treatment. After a few minutes, it occurred to me that perhaps I wasn’t the source of the problem, and I was tuning into someone else’s stress.
I went through the list of family and friends in my mind, muscle testing (applied kinesiology) with each person, until I got a “yes” for a particular friend. I knew she was on a retreat — about 60 miles away — so I thought it was unlikely to be her, but I sent her a text message anyway.
An hour later she replied: “Much was good and lovely. Yet there was also grief, animosity and drama. I too have had a stomachache on and off all day. Amazing!”
The grief my friend was referring to related to the recent passing of a longtime resident at the retreat center and the memorial service that was held for her. So not only had I picked up on my friend’s feelings but also the collective mourning by the community.
I did more Reiki – and sent some to my friend, too – and by the end of the evening all of the symptoms had disappeared for both of us.
It wasn’t the first time I had picked up on someone else’s distress, and it won’t be the last. The experience was a great reminder of how connected we are as human beings regardless of any physical distance between us – and that our intuition is working even when we think it isn’t.
If you’d like to learn more about how to access your intuition, click here to schedule a free, half-hour Discovery call with me.