0:00
Well I think the first ….again
0:11
I feel that the largest sort of betrayal or injustice in my life was definitely not understanding the point of my going on this trip with my grandmother 1979. And that.. I mean people laugh and I think the think I’m joking, you know, the difference between, you know, a person who decided to quit everything and become a ski bum, because skiing really transformed my life on a physical level as well as lots of other levels . And then I went off in the summer to travel with my grandmother, a person that I didn’t really like, and I was really uncomfortable, we’ve had a really painful relationship with and at the same time I feel that somehow underneath it, Reiki was calling me, but I could only say that 20 years later, I couldn’t have said that at the time.
01:29
And I really did think that I was going with her to carry her suitcases, make sure she didn’t get robbed or carry the money anyway and make sure she ate well. So… much to my surprise it ended up to be the initiation as a master and my first teaching on how to teach classes and so on. And my first understanding about what Reiki was for her. So, I felt betrayed by my mother who encouraged me to go on this trip, never saying “Well you know, if you go, you’re going to, you know, working with your grandmother and so on”. And then, when my grandmother initiated me, you know, and I heard this kind of funny like clapping-hand-noise, and she says “And now you can work with me”, you know, I really did have this picture of carrying suitcases, counting money and I never.. I never imagined teaching Reiki, because up to that time I didn’t even know what Reiki was. So….
02:50

00:00
ähm.. OK. 0006 When I was 25 or so I was taken up to the mountains of Colorado by some friends of mine who wanted to go skiing but it was a very bad snow year. So, we all decided to go cross country skiing. And I could do that, no problem. So I was really happy to go and so on. So we went up and we went to the condo and it started snowing and it snowed all night and the next morning all of my friends said «see you later, we’re going to go down-hill».  So, I went, well, crap, what am I doing here? So I had maybe 50 Dollars in my bank account and I decided that I was going to learn how to down-hill ski since I was stuck there by myself.
00:52
So I took lessons, private lessons because I didn’t want to be in a class full of little kids. And the instructor said, «I don’t wanna teach you today. It’s the worst time to learn how to ski because there is so much powder on the beginners slope that you’ll just always fall down.» I said, «listen, this is my only day, this is my last 50 Dollars, I’m going to learn how to ski!» And somehow, even though it was pretty upsetting sometimes, just falling and getting up and just falling and getting up, it kind of captured me. And luckily for me they had friends in other ski areas that could get us free tickets. So I started downhill skiing and it freed me, it freed my body so that I could actually move effortlessly and that freed my spirit somehow. It was really an amazing transformation. Very touching.
02:01
And I ran into this guy, Hall O’Leary, who had been presented with a challenge. He was a ski instructor at this place where I was going and… There is a huge children’s hospital in Denver and they were going to bring up like 30 kids to learn how to ski who were, this is not politically correct, who were mentally retarded (mumbles ‚kind of time‘?). And they asked this group of ski instructors, «who would like to take this on?» and nobody raised their hand. And Hal thought, «this is an opportunity to do something really different. I’d like to do this».  So, he started it and out of that started the, well, at first it was called «the handicapped ski program», now it is called «the disabled ski program». It’s the largest of its kind in the world and he went around the world during the time that .. in the 1980ies and 1990ies. And started a lot of the disabled ski programs all over the world. He is amazing and from the engineers who were parents of the kids and stuff, they invented all… a lot of the ski equipment, the special ski equipment for these kids and for the adults.
03:34

03:34
So that was at the time the Vietnam Vets were really having a hard time. And there were a lot of amputations and so on. So they found out how they could ski and (cough), I mean he just took off. So somehow he had a really amazing gift for this. I mean, he was very irreverent. So, he would just say “come on, you gimp, let’s go skiing!” And they would go skiing and he treated them not special! But just like everybody else. He would just say, “ are you gonna be a gimp all your life or are you gonna be a skier?” Right, and it was just this amazing place where he had the way with people to just be there for them.
04:31
So, he told me, «you’re perceptually handicapped.» And I said, «well, what does that mean?» Here I am 28 or something and he goes, «well, you know, unfortunately because you’re perceptually handicapped, even if I told you what it was you wouldn’t get it.» And I went, “well, thanks Hal, good friend!” y’know.  ‚Cause he and I became very, very close. So, after I left skiing at Winner Park, for Reiki, about… I, I brought back people after a couple o‘ years I started to bring pepple to Winner Park to participate in the handicapped ski program, the same old ski program, and to practice Reiki there. I wanted them – my Master candidates especially – to have this experience of learning how to ski and being on a mountain where they saw blind skiers and amputated… amputees skiing and little kids skiing. And, so they couldn’t say: I can’t do it.
05:40

00:00
As I was enjoying my skiing and my wonderful life as a ski bum, I turned 30 and … when I was having my birthday party I realized that I needed to find something to do with my life, a  vocation. And I went through all the jobs that I could think of and nothing actually fit. Little did I know that my mother calling me later on that fall and asking me to travel with my grandmother next summer, the summer of 1979, did I know that that would be the answer to my question, you know, about my own vocation and what I would do with the rest of my life.
01:04
And after I was starting practicing Reiki I would bring students back to Winner Park to the ski hill and experience what it was like to ski, or learn how to ski, with all these people who were not «able bodied» we said at the time. And the other intriguing question that happened for me was this question of when we gave them Reiki, what were we expecting? What was healing? That was the big question back in those days because it was like 1985, 86, 87 and I had had, you know, 6 or 7 years to think about what is healing.
01:54-01:57 (coughing)

01:57
But because I was raised the way I was with my father as a doctor I just thought this was kind of strange why would we give these people Reiki? We’re not going to give them back sight, we’re are not going to grow another arm or a leg, we are nto going to make them smarter, I mean, y’know, not to be irreverent… So how are we going to change their lifes and what was the purpose of giving them Reiki anyway? Finally, after having had some very intense conversations with some of these people who were my age, I realized that healing was all encompassing, it wasn’t something that was what I might call now ‘curing’. It wasn’t in a like… what I realize in my idea of a whole person was that a whole person would have their sight, would have 2 arms, 2 legs, 0307-0311 (coughing) would have all their faculties and it was obviously not true.
03:18
So I had a lot of confusion in these days  and it took me another few years to really understand the concept of healing and also of wounds. It’s like … I realized that in treating people with amputations it’s really obvious where their wound is, but where you have a person who has an emotional wound, that’s not so obvious. And that everyone is amputated somewhere and that we just …  put all of our pity, and all of our superiority sometimes into taking care of physically disabled people when in fact we are also disabled, it’s just not physical. So these are some of the insights that I had during this period of time.
04:17

0:00
So as well during this time is when I was just finding my legs as a master, so to speak, and working out my own personal issues, as I said before. And the skiing process really helped me to manage some of these processes in a way that was very humanistic. That I… that I found out then what Hal had meant by being perceptually handicapped. And that was that my perception of myself was so skewed, so distorted that it distorted the rest of the world. And it was a handicap because it was so distorted that it.. it actually didn’t match the real world very much at all.
1:10
As I came into this realization I understood that my practice of Reiki had brought me back into myself and given me the gift of knowing… my strength, my chara.. part of my character, understanding beauty and understanding that we make our own world, really, and my world was pretty tortured and …. really painful. And I have come out the other side, I don’t fell like I’m really much different but my viewpoint on the world is that it’s a friendly place, which is very different than when I started out….
2:13

0:00
My burning question at the age of 30 was “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”. I knew that I couldn’t continue to do what I did for the rest of my life, which was to work in a ski-area and basically have fun. It didn’t feel like this was my contribution to the world. Although I didn’t have very lofty ideas at that time, I just wanted to have the best ski-run ever. So I don’t know where this thought came from, except my father, who said “Phyllis, you really know how to have fun, now what about working?” (laugh).
0:51
And I really got that he wasn’t talking about working like… working to make a living and to put bread on the table, it was about really contributing. So I wondered about this and in my wondering my mother called, who was usually the provocateur in my life. And she said “Your grandmother is going on a Reiki tour in the summer” and this was in like October or November. And she said “You’re going with her because she needs a companion”. And I said “Why me?”. And she said “Because you don’t really have a job”. I said “Mom, I really have a job. I mean, you know, I can’t just take off for four months”. And she said “Well, you can and you will”.
1:42

3:11
So I went… I finished the summer with my grandmother, I went back to the ski-area and worked, but it was mixed with Reiki already. And the next summer I decided to take a journey by myself and my one job during this summer was to introduce myself as a Reiki master, because in the US and Canada when you meet someone, the first thing they say is “What do you do?”, meaning what do you do for living. And I would always say “A Reiki master”. And then they would ask the question “Well, what’s that?”. But this is a little bit like saying hello in a foreign language and not knowing any other word in a foreign language. You know, you go “Bonjour” and then they start rattling off in French and you’re going “Wait, wait, wait, I can’t understand you” (laugh). Well, that’s kind of what I felt like when they asked me “well what’s that? What’s a Reiki master?”.
4:17
And that winter, when I came back, I knew that I had to follow the path of Reiki. So… and it wasn’t winter, it was fall. So, I’m sorry. So I ended up back in British Colombia with my grandmother in October, in November, and just before she died in 1980. And then, when she did die and I was a Reiki master and I had figured out that I was going to live the rest of my life as a Reiki master, I had no grounding as an individual, as a personality or even as a Reiki student. I hadn’t practiced that long. So I took it on, as a good Japanese woman would do, as family duty. And….
5:17