Zappa Reiki
How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?
I will never forget that Frank Zappa line (and maybe my kids won’t either).
I don’t remember the album at all. In fact I never heard the album. I just heard friends singing that one line. Over and over, like a vaudeville moment endlessly looping.
Its comical warning has played in my head for decades. As a college student, the words made me smile even as they spoke my greatest fear.
Healing the disconnect
I was already a holistic medicine gal and knew the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone, but there were times when the most important part of me didn’t feel connected to any of them bones. Maybe you know what I mean.
Back then, I was still young enough to imagine I was the only one living as Disconnection Incarnate.
I longed to live connected — to myself, to others, to the world around me — but had no clue how. Each stab-in-the-dark attempt at wholeness left me feeling more like a tattered patchwork quilt than a flowing bolt of silk.
So I went to India and dove into intensive spiritual practice. It was hard, and at the same time I never felt so at home. My plane ticket was for three months. That first trip lasted a year and a half.
Investing in self (care)
I sold my car to finance the extension and came home financially broke, but spiritually whole, or at least actively engaged. Cars can be replaced, but the time immersed in practice was my blue chip stock, a spiritual investment that’s still paying dividends.
When I experienced Reiki healing many years later, my continuing spiritual practice understood Reiki is also a spiritual practice, even though Reiki wasn’t presented to me that way.
I immediately added Reiki to my daily practice, and slowly, over time, practice has revealed from within the meaning of words that have no counterpart in English.
Just do it
Hawayo Takata’s* response to students’ questions was often, “Do it. Just do it and you will know.” The late yoga master Pattabi Jois advised his students, “Practice and all is forthcoming.”
I’m not telling anyone how to practice, nor have I created a new practice style.
I simply encourage you to actually practice, and practice consistently, to take a class that is a good fit for you, and then get your hands on your body. Every day.
When I place my Reiki hands, I don’t Zappa Reiki. I just practice.
I put myself in the position for good things to happen, for each piece to experience its connection with all the other pieces, so I’m not scattered in two (or more) places at once, so I can just
BE. HERE. NOW.
IRONIC POSTSCRIPT: Thinking I might link to the song I didn’t remember, I scouted the internet and discovered it wasn’t Frank Zappa at all, and there wasn’t even a song, just a line from the Firesign Theatre album of the same name.
*Hawayo Takata and her Reiki master Chujiro Hayashi, a direct student of Reiki practice founder Mikao Usui, brought Reiki practice to Hawaii from Japan in the late 1930s.
RELATED READING:
My Reiki Practice
A Platform for Change
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Are you still struggling to explain Reiki? MAINSTREAMING REIKI: How to Explain It? recorded webinar is now available.
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The “How can you be in two places” tune is indeed from the comedy group The Firesign Theatre and was penned by the late Peter Bergman. Ironically, today, March 9th is the first anniversary of his passing. Peter was a man in love with life and humanity (and he loved the Urantia Book, where he got this one).
Charlie, I love that you knew that.
Pamela, “now” seems to be my recurring theme, and its been particularly dominant the past couple days. Even Seth Godin addressed it in his blog today, with the question, “What’s now?”
When I read that quote, remote Reiki practice (along with other remote services I provide) came to mind. It seems, to me, to be “a most ingenious paradox.”
Giving myself Reiki puts me in “the zone” where time and space seem to fall away. This sense of timelessness takes all of the stress away and keeps me healthy.