Reiki Parenting

[Charlene Lester]

To be a Reiki parent means you can start caring for your baby long
before the little one is born.
Here's what Bronwen and Frans Stiene will tell their daughter about
life as a Reiki parent ... and a Reiki child.
For our daughter....
After living together for many years, your father and I married with
the intention of one day extending our family. When, and exactly how
extended, we didn't know - but it was a part of our unwritten
contract.
From that date on we discussed you. You were a lovely figment of our
imagination, a lolly that we felt we could suck on forever without it
ever having to finish.
At our first wedding anniversary in the Indian Himalaya that lovely
figment struggled in my mind to become more than just a fantasy.
I would love to tell you that I knew the exact moment you were
conceived, but I didn't. Perhaps it was that very first moment when we
decided it was now or never. Is that physical act not quite as
important as we might like to think?
Not long after conception we both used Reiki on my womb to support the
process that would one day become you. It all came together
beautifully and within the month I was pregnant.
After having lived in Darjeeling for a year in the house on the hill
with our Reiki centre, we were packing up to leave and by the time the
pregnancy test gave me two straight blue lines we had just two weeks
left. There were many friends to say goodbye to and a great deal of
delicious food yet to be shared.
It was hard to imagine that you were growing inside of me, a part of
Frans and a part of me but with your own mysterious spirit. "Who are
you?" we wondered as we laid our hands on my flat stomach, connecting
with you.
It was just two days after the test confirmed I was pregnant that
something strange began to happen.
Frans and I were sitting in our lounge room and I said, "Look outside
- there's a crow in the tree." The tree was opposite the bedroom
window and normally I would never have commented on seeing a crow -
during the monsoon there must have been at least 20 in the trees
surrounding our house. Yet monsoon was long gone and there was
something odd about this crow that I couldn't put my finger on as it
observed me with its beady black eyes.
Frans left to go down to the village and I wandered around our now
half empty house. On entering our bedroom, I gasped, stepping back
into the hall again. There, flat against the large bay window with its
chequered glass panes, was this enormous black figure. It was a bird -
stretched out to its full length from wing tip to wing tip pressed
against the glass with one half of its face peering at me.
Not daring to enter in case it became aggressive, I spied on it
through a chink in the door as it balanced precariously on one of the
many wooden slats that held the square glass panels in place. It was
that same odd crow from this morning, I was sure.
I retreated and paced the house until Frans returned.
When we re-entered the bedroom, we found the crow sitting watching us
from the nearby tree. Frans fearlessly opened the window wide and
called out to the bird, "You can come in if you want to." The bird
didn't respond to the invitation, yet continued to follow our
movements from its tree post for the rest of the day. It began to dawn
on us that its mission was not a dangerous one.
Early the following morning as the jingly-jangly Hindi music from the
Darjeeling marketplace wafted up the hill and the sun crept along our
orange curtains, a loud "tak, tak" noise jarred us awake.
Sleepily, we searched out the foreign sound with our eyes. Against the
sunlit curtains could be seen the black silhouette of a fully grown
crow, wings extended. He was back. "Tak, tak" - his beak pecked
forcefully at the glass. Loosing balance on the thin wooden slat, his
wings beat furiously to regain their position until he could resume
his "tak, tak, taking".
We lay quietly in bed pondering what it all meant until we drifted
back to sleep to his rhythmic language. Once the morning sun had risen
our two-legged friend returned to his perch on the tree, chattering
away, perhaps recounting a tale intended to subliminally enter our
consciousnesses.
The next morning the "tak, tak, tak" at the window was less of a shock
and more of a thrill. We realised that this was to become a ritual.
In some way we knew this crow was connected to you. Was the crow your
protector, your teacher, or merely a sign from nature that you were on
your way?
The next day I made my way to the Tibetan doctor whom I had been
seeing to purify my blood with herbal tablets, preparing me for
motherhood.
"I think I'm pregnant." I announced. I still couldn't quite believe
it."Do you feel sick, heavy in your uterus?""No.""Then you're not
pregnant.""But the pregnancy test says I am." I protested.She shrugged
disinterestedly. Suddenly, I started to doubt the truth myself.She
felt my wrist pulse, a Tibetan diagnostic method, and didn't look
impressed."You'll know for certain when you're 5 or 6 months
pregnant." She advised.
Disconcerted and a little disappointed, I changed the subject. "Tell
me, what does a crow symbolise in Tibetan mythology?""It depends upon
what the crow is doing." She replied."How about a crow attaching
itself to a window and knocking at the pane with its beak?""That
signifies pregnancy." She stated incuriously and added, "Well, that's
what the old Tibetans say.""THAT has been happening to me for the last
three days."With unexpected enthousisam, the Tibetan doctor began
pounding my hand up and down in her own - "Congratulations!" And her
gold tooth glinted in the light of my happiness.
Every morning our friend came to our window, balanced himself fully
extended on a thin wooden slat and knocked with his beak, "tak, tak,
tak". He would then sit patiently in the tree, warbling and chuckling
his ancient tale.
We could only hope, on the day that we sadly left Darjeeling almost
two weeks later, that his tale had been fully told.
Your story doesn't finish there my little one.
Later that week in the plane from Calcutta, the inflight magazine
wrote of the Dalai Lama's early life before entering the monastery.
His mother told how she knew that she was about to give birth to an
auspicious being when 2 crows came knocking at her window. We read
this news with delight, letting our imaginations fly along the Tibetan
plains where magic and mystery reside.
Each day that you grew inside of me, I lay down and placed my hands on
my head to recite: 'My baby is going to have a have a quick, smooth
and easy birth". I would place my hands on you, to reassure you too
with words and energy: "You are going to have a quick, smooth and easy
birth".
At 37 weeks, you woke me at 2 am with the news that you were on the
way. At 3 am I woke your father - get yourself together Dad! At ten
minutes past 6 that morning you were born at our local hospital, too
early for the planned birthing centre. Your earliness necessitated a
hospital birth but we never saw a doctor just a midwife and she, along
with my rescue remedy, gave us the clarity and focus to bring you with
ease into this world. As you took your first gasp of air, I already
knew of your beauty - it was mirrored in the look on your father's
face.
At the end of her shift, the midwife dropped by to see this family of
three who had been Blessed with the Initiation of Birth. It wasn't
until she left that we read her name on our daughter's birth
certificate - Julie Crowe.
Your father tore himself away from you on that first day to drive home
to have a shower and pick up some extra things. As he walked up our
front steps an eggshell, one half shell resting inside the other, lay
at the centre of the top step.
Nature is not in this world to simply be used to satisfy human needs
and wants. If we can understand the magnitude and sheer relevance of
nature's gifts for us, we will know that we must in return nurture
nature, treasure its preciousness.
In this way humanity and nature will continue to co-evolve, creating
existence, together.
If we no longer learn from, listen or watch for nature's signs, will
nature become redundant?
In its redundancy, will humanity be able to continue its journey?
To take from this world is what we do as humans but at the same time
we must give back and care for that which mothers us - even if that
giving back is simply a nod of acknowledgment.
If we no longer notice the crow, the magazine article, the midwife and
the sign of a miracle will they all gradually fade from our existence?
And once they vanish, will we gradually fade into the distance too?
We have kept that shell for you. It is a reminder of the mysterious
ways of this world that we must never take for granted nor be required
to seek to decipher. Not everything needs an answer, but it does need
to be.
These are some of the things we slowly begin to understand as Reiki
parents.
Enjoy this world and always give back in order that you can continue
to grow and be blessed with a hand to hold on your journey - whether
that hand be human, or a special gift from nature.