The Long Way Back

Why Recommitment Is the Most Devotional Act of All

If you’ve been following along, welcome back.

If you haven’t, that’s okay too. A quick skim of last week’s post will catch you up. Besides, if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that sustained attention is a radical act. Hence why I broke this story up. Vine was truly ahead of its time. I digress.

When I last left you, I had returned to Arizona and, against my better judgment and original plans, found myself once again in the quiet, familiar arms of Reiki. I didn’t go into much detail then, intentionally so. Some stories need to be told in pieces. Not because they’re unfinished, but because taking them all in at once can feel overwhelming, and because the body, unlike the mind, needs time to integrate meaning.

And also because, if I’m being honest, recommitment stories are rarely neat.

I Wasn’t Here to Stay

When I moved back to Arizona, I was not there to build a life.

I was there to pause. To recalibrate. To fix my finances, spend some time with my family, and then get the hell out. Nashville was the plan. Arizona was the layover.

Like all good reality show contestants, I wasn’t there to make friends.

Instead, I found myself thirty-two going on thirty-three, living in my childhood bedroom, sleeping on a twin mattress, and once again telling my parents where I was going and when I’d be back. Not because I had a curfew, but because there was an unspoken group text happening around dinner logistics.

Humility has many faces. This was one of them.

Still, I did what I always do when I don’t know what’s next: I moved my body. I joined ClassPass. I went back to fitness. And almost immediately, I landed at a beautiful studio in Old Town Scottsdale where I was introduced to VXN (formerly Vixen), MixxedFit, and Turn Up.

Roughly six months later, I was certified in all three. Teaching at the studio. Signing a lease. Taking a full-time job.

And, because life has impeccable comedic timing, meeting a new boy.

Spoiler alert: I married him three years later and moved into a house less than a mile from where I’d signed my first Phoenix apartment lease years before.

The joke, apparently, was always on me.

When Certification Isn’t Initiation

As I settled into teaching group fitness, something else began tugging at me; an old, familiar pull toward yoga. Not just the practice, but the lineage, the discipline, the depth. So I signed up for a 200-hour teacher training.

I didn’t do much research. I didn’t find a studio that felt like home the way my Brooklyn space once had. But there was one teacher whose sequencing and hands-on adjustments cracked something open in me, and when I learned he’d be leading the next cohort, I jumped.

And once again, history repeated itself.

I completed the training.

I received the certification.

And I had absolutely no desire to teach.

In fact, I didn’t want to practice at all.

My body ached in ways it hadn’t even when I broke my back, dislocated my shoulder, or tore my hamstring; injuries I still carry. This pain was different. This pain felt like misalignment. Like I had moved through something without being met. Like I had earned a title without earning understanding.

I felt hollowed out.

Disembodied.

Disconnected from the very thing that had drawn me in.

It was during this unraveling that a woman entered my orbit.

The Woman in White
and the Long Yes

I first met her at a poster show at a local gallery. She was dressed entirely in white. A fitted long-sleeve crop top, flowing pants, the sweetest pair of heels.

I complimented her outfit and joked that she was brave for wearing all white since I live exclusively in black. We exchanged Instagrams, as protocol demands, and I didn’t think much of it.

Until I ran into her again during my YTT.

She was taking classes at the same studio. We talked. Promised coffee. Drifted apart again.

Eventually, I attended her group sound healings, booked a private session, and in 2022, she launched her spiritual mentorship program.

It was the most expensive thing I had ever invested in.(Grad school aside.)

I had never had a mentor; certainly not a spiritual one. If I’m honest, I wasn’t even sure I believed I belonged in spiritual spaces. Religion and spirituality had always felt conditional, exclusive, like rooms I wasn’t quite invited into as I was.

And yet something in me said yes.

When she asked what I wanted to get out of the program, I didn’t have an answer. I paused searching my brain for something truly profound, and then I said the truest thing I could find:

“I just want to meet myself again.”

Re-Meeting Reiki Through Level I

Through that mentorship, I was introduced not just to tools and frameworks, but to people. And one of those people was Danielle, founder of Modern Reiki and owner of Casa Luna.

Danielle and I began our Reiki journeys around the same time, though our paths looked different. I booked private sessions with her and returned to Reiki not as a practitioner, not as someone holding space, but as a participant.

I received.

Sound baths.

Reiki circles.

Meditation.

Hapé.

Sanaga.

Full and New Moon Ceremonies.

Cacao Ceremonies.

Then she opened enrollment for her Level I Reiki training.

Something inside me said: do it again.

Not because my certification had expired. That’s not a thing.

But because I needed integration.

Danielle’s approach was different from anything I had experienced before. The training wasn’t compressed into a single weekend. It was spread out. Followed by a ceremonial attunement day, and then, crucially, weekly support throughout the 21-day integration period.

The 21 days I had never understood.

The 21 days no one had explained.

The 21 days where Reiki actually lands in the body.

This is what Level I really is.

It’s not about learning how to work on others.

It’s about learning how to stay with yourself.

It’s about nervous system literacy.

Energetic boundaries.

Self-trust.

It’s about becoming intimate with your own field before you ever attempt to touch someone else’s.

Why Level I Is Everything

I continued recommitting through Level II and my Master’s, but it was Level I done slowly, intentionally, reverently that changed everything.

Coming out of those containers, I finally understood Reiki not as something I do, but as something I live.

Today, it shows up everywhere.

In my morning cacao.

In how I boop my fifteen-year-old doggo.

In the way I tend my plants when they’re on the brink.

In Feral Experiences.

In Goodnight Reiki.

In my life.

Reiki isn’t a modality anymore.

It’s a relationship.

This is why I will always say: if all you ever do is Level I, that is enough.

Danielle and I often joke that if every family had one person who had gone through Level I, the world would be a different place. Though, if we had our way, there’d be at least one Reiki Master in every family, but that feels greedy.

Level I alone teaches you how to be with yourself.

And honestly?

That’s everything.