ACT OF HEALING ~ Reiki with Sister Eileen

Inspired through guidance from within, Sister Eileen Curteis continues her remarkable journey. Sister Eileen is a woman of the church. Although she is not in the habit of many other nuns, she is inspired by teachings both inside and outside the Catholic Faith. “I believe God is using me in profound ways,” says the Victoria-born woman who entered the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Ann in 1961, lives at Queenswood and has become a Reiki master with a reputation as a healer and teacher of healers. “I am honoring this gift within the unique heritage of Christian healing”, explains the nun.

And the most extraordinary thing is that she has healed herself with the help of God and others who are open to Christian healing. “You know the story of the wounded healer? Well I’ve received healing through this ancient door,” says the woman who passed through the church door at age 19.

Her outlook is Catholic - in the Oxford Dictionary sense that it is all embracing, of wide sympathy. “I was raised in the Catholic Church and retain a strong Christian heritage. But there is so much more richness.“

Reiki healing originated in Buddhism and is an ancient Tibetan art. But I see no conflict. The laying on of hands has long been part of the Christian tradition” says the Sister, who knows plenty about pain, having been walled in by it all her life. “I have a chronic spinal condition that made walking and sitting very difficult. I was hospitalized at 15 and told nothing could be done.”

She entered religious life after her first year at university and taught school for 27 years. Suddenly, ten years ago, she felt led along the path of a healing ministry and asked for a year away from teaching to explore the idea. “I felt apprehensive at first, because it was an unknown space to be in, but then I discovered Reiki through another sister and was astonished by its simplicity.

I began an amazing journey of the soul.” Reiki is a Japanese word meaning universal life energy and Sister Eileen stresses it is not a religion or belief system. It is about focusing and directing energy to accelerate a body’s own “super natural’ ability to heal itself physically and emotionally. “Reiki invites one to truly surrender to the energy of God, to release tension and repressed feelings. “I began to understand that the body is an actual spiritual body and as I entered into that mystery everything good started coming toward me.

A divine interchange happens when there is surrender. Anxiety goes. You are no longer attached. You open to the mysteries of God.” “I had prayed for healing all my life but the medical world said nothing could be done. Now to my astonishment, my whole spine is untrapping itself. My limbs are becoming freer. My heart is freer. I feel younger every day.” She now instructs classes in reiki, runs support groups, gives healing treatments and readings from her books of poetry and art called Sojourner: Know Yourself, Wind Daughter, Moving On, Dance of the Mystic Healer (with CD) and Soul Travel: A Roadway to Healing (with CD).

“Reiki is a powerful tool for self healing. I began to meditate with my body, doing the hand positions over my own chakras and I could feel healing come into me, peace and calm...” she explains. She took a course in reiki - “I asked God to allow me to be a channel of divine healing energy and people began coming to me. Actually I didn’t feel a lot, but people receiving it did. They talked about wonderful healings.”

Her own major healing started a year later, when she took the level two course. “It involved ancient healing symbols and I struggled with that, but I found a tremendous deepening, something stronger happening, and I realized the Christian tradition has a symbol, too: the cross, and Jesus was a great healer.” In her teaching she shows how this ancient healing art enhances what a Christian has in their tradition.

After taking the masters level of reiki she became convinced that sickness - arthritis, chronic pain, chronic fatigue - is often rooted in emotional trauma. She tells the story of the woman whose body was numb from the waist down. “During her treatment she got in touch with her grief and the feeling started to come back. Buried grief can cripple us. I know. I did not begin to heal until I uncovered my own repressed feelings.

My buried grief was immense and I had to face it without shame. My body remembered and once I relinquished control, it reveled what had happened. Pain killers couldn’t touch the pain once she started to heal. When I had my breakthrough, the pain was intolerable. I couldn’t bear to be in my body and I realize now I had to face that pain with honesty. Then came the release, the unlocking, the unfreezing. I know as a certainty now that we must unlock what is repressed if we are to heal.” Negative thoughts are very damaging, too. “The messages we give ourselves influence our ability to heal. At 15, I was told in hospital: Live with your pain. Nothing can be done. When you are small you are vulnerable. You believe that.”

Today she says her pain was a marvelous gift that led her to her destiny. “I am now inviting my body to release all the past, all the trauma, and my healing gift is stronger because I have embarked on my own journey. Complete surrender takes courage, but the rewards are enormous. I live in the mystery of God, in continual revelation. I believe in the infinite power of healing and that it is guiding my life. I feel filled with love and light and joy. I always wanted a quick fix, but the beauty of a slow pace is I am learning so much. We become co-creators.”

During treatments people may sob softly, giggle, see coloured lights, shake or feel heat. Some fall into deep sleep. “Anything can happen. The point is not to resist.” Treatments can also ease depression, prompt sudden insights, or trigger peace. Once she treated a six-year-old girl who had lost her voice and was afraid of her parents who were always fighting. “She lay on the massage table like a beautiful doll and just kept smiling at me. When I was finished she asked me if she could come every day because she felt so cozy and warm.”

Wayne Peterson, a Victoria consultant, also felt warm during a treatment Sister Eileen gave him. He saw her because of chronic head and back pain and because his pain medication was starting to cause kidney damage and his body was “no longer a joy to live within”. “Sister Eileen is small in stature but big in soul,” he said simply, adding the treatment suffused him with calm, tolerance and patience, both with himself and others. And it reduced his need for pain pills.

Beverly Marley saw reiki in action when she had a sick pony. The vet had been working on my pony for six months and nothing was helping,” but 10 days of reiki cured the animal. She wanted to take a course but “nervousness about cults” held her back until she talked to Sister Eileen and learned of courses at Queenswood. “I felt completely comfortable then and had a wonderful experience.

Another Victoria woman, Claudette Kruger, said the treatments were very helpful. “Sister Eileen is a marvelous master, a wonderful teacher. For weeks I’d had pain from my waist to my neck, front and back - like shingles - that was so painful I couldn’t take a shower. By the end of one treatment the pain was gone and it never came back. I believe it is a divine energy that encourages an incredible natural healing. It gives you the feeling: Mother is home.”

Sister Eileen’s Books and CD's are available at: www.queenswoodcentre.com

You may also wish to read: Books by Sister Eileen Curteis, SSA at Queenswood, Victoria at: http://www.thehealingjournal.com/node/979