Part of an ongoing series, Reiki, Yoga, & Therapy: Where these healings intersect.

What I needed after my yoga training was something different: a way to work with everything that had surfaced on the mat but couldn’t really be processed there.

I finished my teacher training in May 2015, and that same month, I booked a session with Mary Sotelo. My closest friend had recommended her after some incredibly moving sessions of her own.

Mary had trained and worked as a clinical therapist for years before burning out, because the work wasn’t having the impact she wanted. She had reached the edge of her first tool, just as I had reached the edge of mine, and she went looking for the missing piece. She found it in Reiki.

Reiki wasn’t entirely new to me, though. I’d had my first session around age 24, and honestly, it hadn’t left much of an impression. It was quiet and relaxing, and I remember seeing colors with my eyes closed. That’s about it.

Sessions with Mary turned out to be nothing like that.

Her sessions weren’t silent. I talked throughout while she guided my breath and used Reiki to move energy through my body. I was active, not just receiving. She would help me go back to a moment from childhood, freeze it like a photograph, and bring up the emotions from that time. If there was an unresolved feeling toward a person or an event, we would bring light to it. It gave me room to explore my experiences and emotions, some of them very old, with a guide beside me instead of alone.

The Reiki room, in her home, was a dedicated space filled with light and soft music. The energy felt clean, almost angelic, like an embrace. It felt sacred and safe without being religious. It was a santuary for me. Her therapy background showed in her poise and groundedness. She could hear whatever came up and hold it, and nothing I said was too much for her. She was gentle, but also firm. If I was dodging something, she would point it out, never harshly, but with just enough directness to help me own it. I can’t remember a single session where I left feeling like I hadn’t moved something. 

She often sent me home with a reminder to connect with my spirit guides and my angels, and to invite them to support me, because they were there and they loved me.

This was the piece I had been journaling about at the end of my training, the space between inertia and movement. Yoga had shown me what was there. Mary’s room gave me somewhere to take it. With someone holding the space, I felt strong enough and accompanied enough to go back into difficult memories, and I began to notice how things happening in my life at the time connected to experiences from childhood. Patterns I had only been able to observe on the mat, I could now trace back to where they began, and start to move through them. Insight finally had somewhere to go.

Reiki was never the only thing I did, though. My personal growth has been a blend of talk therapy with licensed MFTs, hypnotherapy, EMDR, craniosacral work, and Reiki, each supporting something different, some the mind, some the energy. My hypnotherapist helped me work at the subconscious level, and in my experience that brought more clarity, more confidence, and more ability to shift old patterns. That combination is a big part of how I think about this work today.

I was Mary’s client for about four years before I decided to train as a practitioner. In 2019, I completed my Reiki 1 and 2 training with her, and her influence is still in my sessions today. Clients talk throughout, breath guides the work, and they participate rather than simply receive.

My own work adds a few things. Psychology is what I studied in university, and it became the path I dedicated myself to: understanding people and helping them work through limiting beliefs and behaviors. After graduating, I went on to work in mental health, learning under experienced supervision and through many further trainings. Along the way, I became fascinated by the power of the subconscious, which led me to NLP, which is something I’m still studying.

Mary wasn’t the only one who showed up in those years. Around age 30, in the time leading up to my training, I started finding Kuan Yin everywhere: in my acupuncturist’s office, in Mary’s oracle deck, in places I wasn’t even looking. But she’s a story for another day ;)

I should also share something personal. When I was a child, my mother and I were survivors of domestic violence, and we moved a lot because of it. So I’m not unfamiliar with some of the trauma stories my clients share with me. I’ve survived, and today I would even say I thrive. What I lived through, and have actively worked through, is a big part of how I became the support I am for others now.

Yoga showed me what was there, and Reiki gave me somewhere to take it. Next time, I’ll share how these practices, along with therapy, started to work together.

In health and happiness,
Leilany 🌻