Finding My Way in Philly

After completing both my masters in Reiki and in counseling, I moved to the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. This was the fall of 1997. I was 27.

I found employment as a counselor with organizations that shaped how I have helped clients and students grow throughout the years.

I worked in a domestic violence shelter, assisting women and children to begin new lives and learn how to break limiting patterns.

I remember watching the transformation of many women work on themselves, for the first time in their lives. I taught some stress management techniques in breathwork and meditation. I learned there to honor the amazing and simple power that self care can bring. As the women learned to nurture themselves, rather than their abusers, they were able to radically shift their and their children’s futures.

Another job I had helped developmentally disabled adults in finding mainstream employment in big chain stores and government work. I was especially proud of helping a young man in his twenties get sustainable work at the IRS. I will never forget how grateful his mother, his primary caregiver was that I cared enough to make that happen for him. She confided that since he was a teenager, teachers had told her her son would always need to be taken care of and unable to financially support himself. His mother had accepted that fate. I had advocated for her son to get the government job. Now he was on his path of becoming financially sustained.

That vision of the disabled having mainstream employment is now an everyday reality, but 20 years ago it was the beginning of a movement. I saw how powerful holding a vision could manifest social change.

The last year before I left Philly, I took on the role as a career counselor at a large non profit located in a high rise office building downtown on Rittenhouse square.

I felt like a hippie in disguise in that role, the address and attitudes of some staff where I worked was pretentious.

But what kept me there was the ability to effect change through helping adults find meaningful work and meaning in their lives. I also taught a lot of workshops. They were career focused (resume building, interviewing, networking, etc) but they honed my skills in facilitation.

I also got to pitch the importance of stress management in dealing with the job search to my boss and ended up leading a series of classes on guided meditation, breathwork, and yes, Reiki!

Philly was the first place where I saw the importance of bringing Reiki into the mainstream.

My Philly Reiki journey was running parallel to my counseling employment journey.

The Reiki Training I did there continues in the next blog.

Copyright 2018 Eileen Dey Wurst

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