In this fascinating episode, Jill – the host – interviews Karen Kirchman, an intuitive and integrative healer with a focus on Reiki and energy healing. . She primarily works with feelers, healers, creatives, and pattern interrupters who are seeking to live an authentic life and explore beyond societal norms.
Discover more about Karen Kirchman’s teachings at Real Genius Life
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Transcript
Hi and welcome to You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we are speaking with Karen Kirchman. Karen is a Reiki practitioner for feminists, empaths and humans who care.
I love that.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself, your story, how you got into doing what you're doing?
And I kind of got the feeling.
Before the before we actually started recording.
That you were.
Transitioning, you're in a period of transition and change and that's always really exciting.
So we're gonna want to hear all about.
Yes, thank you so much.
I just wanted to say it's such a pleasure and a joy to be here.
So thank you for having.
I am.
My name is Karen.
I'm an intuitive and integrative healer, and there's a lot of tools in the toolbox, but predominantly I really use Reiki and intuitive energy healing as kind of a portal.
Into what?
Our systems are holding underneath the surface and being able to tend at a deeper.
And then there's often a lot of body wisdom, intuition.
And then we use all of that as a springboard for coaching.
So I primarily do one-on-one healing sessions with individuals. I work a lot with feelers, healers, creatives, and pattern interrupters, so these are often people who care.
Very deeply about living an authentic life, about exploring beyond the bounds of what they've seen modeled in the world.
So these are kind of disruptors.
They're often have also been sort of othered a lot in their lives, whether that's like the black sheep of the family, whether.
Or that's actually just struggling to be an authentic human in a world that isn't supportive to that, or whether that's someone with either neurodivergence or chronic illness.
There's a lot.
Of common threads among all of that.
I really work with a lot.
Of, like I said, feelers, healers, creatives and pattern interrupters.
To create more safety and resource to be a human with needs in the world, and we do that a lot in one-on-one sessions. I also teach, as you shared earlier, Reiki for.
Feminists, empaths and humans, who care which is my real liberatory program, for I think the way that we care for ourselves, the way that we care for the world and our communities, our practices and liberation at depth.
And I love to be able to teach Reiki through that frame.
It's a very open and supportive and very morally and ethical ethically sustainable frame.
So I love teaching ranking.
I love teaching, empowering people and their healing both in their individual lives and offering things outside the traditional norms of Western healthcare.
In lots of different ways, whether that's pain in the body or pain in our lives, there's a really beautiful open-ended space to land.
So you did talk about, sorry, you did talk about transition.
And so I did want to share to my program and in and of itself is in a place of transition.
So traditionally, and a lot of the way that Reiki has been taught over the last probably couple of decades has really been modeled.
In more of a kind of all day intensive process.
So it helps people one and that it's a one day commitment and also that if people are traveling from out of town.
You can sort of go all in, get it all done, but what I find increasingly is that it's a lot for the nervous system to take in.
The expectation is certainly that people don't remember everything, but that format really, it doesn't really support who we are as humans moving through an already.
Very noisy world.
And so I'm transitioning that program from the all day intensive format to a space where people can have an online and community based resource for doing the educational component of it.
And then there will still be a live component options in central IN for anybody who wants to go in person.
But there's also options.
Virtually for clients all over the world, it's a quantum practice, so we get to be independent of location.
And then the live component will be much more the experiential.
So we'll go through.
Attunements which are unique to Reiki.
We will do much more of the human to human heart to heart, wisdom, sharing practice, having safe space to explore and start to build out, a practice that is unique to each individual.
That's really interesting. I.
I've known a lot of people who practice Reiki and I've known some Reiki.
Teachers, I guess.
Careers, whatever you call.
Is there a name for them?
Typically, Ricky Master is the title.
Rachel masters.
OK, so they and they feel very strongly they're generally older women who feel really strongly about Reiki, should only be taught in person that the whole quantum aspect to this is interesting to me because I believe that energy is energy and it doesn't.
It doesn't really matter its location because it's not location specific.
What are what are?
Your thoughts on that is that what you were trying to get at with the quantum?
It is and I would say it is a very controversial piece and I am someone who deeply appreciates that kind of heart to heart, student to teach.
There's a lineage in Reiki and there are lots of different kinds of Reiki.
I am personally trained and.
And I teach in the Usui linny.
Sorry Usui Reiki lineage, which is sort of the OG original lineage.
And so there is this.
I think things grow and evolve in lots of ways.
When Reiki was sort of originally shared and practiced, it was done so in a community of practice over many years.
Now you can go to a weekend training or even get a training online.
And I have lots of personal thoughts and feelings about the formats.
But you can go to a weekend intensive and get multiple Reiki attunements and kind of move up and for some people that works and for other people that can kind of blow out their systems or not give them a solid foundation to land on.
And it just kind of depends on the teacher and depends on where the person is in their capacity.
For moving into.
Growth so Wiki is a quantum practice, so it really gets into kind of quantum physics and very deep science, but it also feels a lot like magic.
I say that as a former scientist and engineer and.
Science is just magic explained.
It is, it's.
It's so magical.
And there's very specific things that are happening, but it also goes beyond this very tangible Newtonian physics model, which is this very like, cause and effect, tangible material.
What can I touch, taste see that sort of thing?
And so the beautiful thing about that is that I get to work with people all over the world, and the pandemic really changed things before the pandemic.
I would have said I only teach in person and For these reasons, and when the pandemic hit it was really a crystallization of an awareness that we need healing.
And support more than ever, and we're not limited by the bounds of location in this way.
A lot of people really love being able to do honestly.
The majority of my sessions are on site because people like to come into intentional healing space and really have the full experience of being held.
But in terms of the power and impact of the work, it doesn't change whether it's virtual or whether all we need is a pathway of communication.
And so with the Ricky training, I'm able to do it in a way that honors what is so beautiful and necessary about that human to human heart, to heart, student to teacher peace.
There is like live space together to practice, to be in the work, to allow a lot of that wisdom sharing to happen.
Then, but it also doesn't limit us if we don't live in the same space.
And so I kind of take a little both.
Hands with that.
I very much understand and appreciate how important that can be and historically, especially I would say in the last 50 years of the practice.
Having that space to be in person and learn in that way has been a really deep, pivotal piece of it all and also our healing landscape has changed dramatically.
And so we get to kind of meet ourselves and the practice where we are and.
Is what I love about Ricky is how supportive it is that it can meet us there and without a loss of things, if you if it's done with intention, I think creating an intentional container is really necessary in all of that.
There's a lot of frames out there that I don't personally agree with, mostly in that it really comes down to.
How we're holding the seat of the teacher and the container that we're holding for our students to be in.
And it's not just like crossing a training off the list. It's not a series of checklists that you can just get through. And so there's lots of self-paced online kind of open source spaces.
And that's fine. If that's people's first entree into it, and if that meets them where they are financially and for other reasons that are going on.
But it's also a really sacred practice, and so I really like to create a lot of intentionality in the containers that I work with.
Intentionality is such an interesting concept.
And I was part of an intention group for a while.
I, Lynn Montagnard has a forum, and I know the power of intentions.
Oh yeah.
So you can and I know the power of psychic healing and just.
The way that it works.
And I've seen it first hand.
My own experiences with it are nothing short.
Of dramatic.
So I get the whole quantum.
Thing and the attention part of it, because they're kind of.
They're almost one and the same energy doesn't behave the same way as a particle or a wave.
If you're looking at it, it's going to behave totally different than if you're not looking at it.
That's just science and everything in life is kind of.
That way, because we're.
All made of.
All of those particles.
So what?
What happens physically, what we perceive as physically?
Can be.
It can happen here where I am, but it can also happen where you are.
Across the country or the screen or wherever it's like I'm not explaining it.
Very well.
You want to give it a shot.
I'm actually, I'm actually right there with you.
I'm right there with you.
What I'm really hearing and what you're sharing is like, actually, there's this, this thing underneath the matter and the material and the experiential world around us.
And it is this energy.
Energy underlies our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual experience.
And that's one of the things that makes energy healing so powerful, because we can, you know, we often spend a lot of energy and resource and investment of ourselves in trying to change at the level of behavior.
So trying to change the world around us or establishing new habits or breaking limiting beliefs or those sorts of things.
So we're really working at this like tip of the iceberg sort of space, but energy gets to the root of it all.
And so you can actually, there's a lot less effort.
To make change at this deeper level, which puts us in a big place of power, I would also say there's so many reasons why tension holds, whether that's in our physical bodies or in our lives and energy is the place that.
Is the roots.
Of all of that, so with energy healing, I mean it's sort of this wild landscape that goes well beyond.
What we've been socialized to know and have a direct experience.
Of and yet there's so much capacity and possibility that that gets deeply intimate and vulnerable to.
Who we are.
Like the sessions I have with clients, we walk so deeply and beautifully and powerfully through these very human heart filled moments, like the deepest.
Part of our humanity, and I really like to think of our chakras, which are our energy centers in our body.
These, as well as a thinner resource.
So when we get into sort of energy field, a lot of people talk about well, where is there a block, how do I open my heart?
How do I do?
What do I need to do to open my throat chakra and or I get a lot of clients are like I'm pretty sure I have a block here and I just take that all in with a whole lot of love because what I hear in.
That is a real desire.
For freedom, for healing, for something deeper and more authentic to them, to express in their lives, and that they're seeking for the way to move towards.
That, and the energy centres as much as it's really powerful to sort of look at effectively what's in the way.
What we're really getting down to are much deeper needs and pathways of care than we've ever seen.
Models in the world.
So it's such a human experience.
It's so powerful to go to that source of.
Everything and what we find is like 1.
A lot less effort to bring about change and in a way that's really embracing and receptive.
There's a lot of compassionate healing that happens.
The other thing I notice is that because it is at this sort of invisible foundational layer that we can't see with our eyes, but we're also talking about our subconscious and a lot of the things that our body is holding, whether that's our energy body or our physical body.
And so there's often just a lot more going on than we even consciously realize.
Whenever we're up against a challenge, whether that's physical or in any sphere of life, we often get very self critical and self judgmental.
Like, why can't I just figure this thing out?
Or again, we're just expanding, we're just ran running against that cement wall again and again and again.
Then when actually we just need deeper resource and support to access a deeper level of understanding and the body and the energy they know they know everything, they know our history, they know our dreams and desires and our needs and our values and they know our future, they know what's unfolding for us so.
With energy healing and what I call body wisdom intuition, I can really hear and understand that deeper story and when we have that information, all that judgment and criticism dissolve, but also the pathway forward becomes so much easier and clearer in that process.
Yeah. And you've just like.
Unpacked a whole bunch of stuff, yeah.
It?
Really does come down to trying to.
Adjust the energy.
Energy is vibrations.
Everybody vibrates at a certain frequency.
Everything around us vibrates at a certain frequency.
Different frequencies and this, there's the old saying.
You're the sum of the friends.
That you're around.
Well, you're the.
Vibration of the friends that you're around.
You will all vibrate at the same level.
And if you want to change, you do need other communities that are vibrating at a different level.
Your level you want to experience.
And I think that it.
Different people vibrate in different ways that there's like this, this frequency that's normal to them and they get comfortable in that frequency.
And the idea of changing frequencies is a little intimidating.
Or maybe they hold the belief that it's.
Not even possible.
But it is.
Possible and it's not hard.
It's a simple.
Understanding the simplicity of the tools that are.
Available to them.
And almost always, it involves having somebody who's gone before.
To show you.
The way you know, we talked about Reiki Masters.
Well, a Reiki master is just somebody who's experience is.
A lot further along than their students, so they're able to kind of guide you like karate. He's the same way. My daughter's a karate master.
She's like a third degree black belt.
She's 19.
It's amazing.
And it's an.
Adult black belt it's not the.
Pass them along really fast.
And you were talking about?
Karate has genealogy.
The Lydia? Yep.
The lineage?
They have the same thing.
And it's really interesting to listen to or talk about.
Got it.
But even some of those practices have.
To do with.
Things like Reiki, energy movement, it and karate is really about managing energy and using energy and pushing energy at someone more than it is about the strikes.
It's absolutely.
It's.
There I was just going to share like there are lots of wisdom traditions and whether that's physical practices or kind of the art and science of being in direct relationship with our energy and there are lots I've trained in multiple forms of energy healing.
I'm kind of a super nerd.
All of this.
But Reiki is the one I prefer to teach, mainly for its sustainable foundations and for the boundaries and permissions around.
And what we're doing in the seat of the healer and what we're doing in relationship with the client and who we're helping and that can get very muddled in.
A lot of ways.
But I like to in the in the words of one of my favorite humans, one of my aunts she talks about.
I feel like we're all kind of digging to the same aquifer, and I feel that.
Like that's true with a lot of the different energy healing modalities with.
You know you'll have Ayurveda and yoga as sister sciences.
You have martial arts and Chinese medicine.
You have all of these elements that are really like Chenggong.
All these elements that are creating a practice and a direct experience of being in a relationship with our energy and key.
And so in Chong Key and the same in Reiki.
Is life force, energy and so it's just this inherent fundamental life force energy and we're being in relationship with it and there's a lot of things that are possible in that and it can help move a lot of things through the body.
You can see in martial arts that it can also have a tremendous effect on the world around us or in giving us possibility in any given situation.
I have practiced Qigong from time to time and I'm always amazed at how much energy you can feel I.
You know, I started.
It it's just like but you can feel the.
Energy and it's tangible which is.
It.
When the first time.
I did it.
I was really surprised.
It's wild.
It is so wild.
Really it it's like magic, but it's not it.
It's just science.
It's, it's the world that we live in.
And looking at it from a different perspective than.
Reality says everything is tangible or not, and we are just beings that.
I wouldn't even call them beings.
We're just people who are.
Are supposed to fulfill a.
Certain role that we've been trained to fulfill and.
That doesn't in.
My experience lead to a very fulfilling life.
You get trapped in in situations that are really.
Not comfortable and it and it causes a lot of disconnect in your personal energy and it it's, I think what causes people to become angry.
Or depressed or.
Or the more anxious, all the mere.
It of diseases that we suffer from as a society because people don't take the time to explore the energy factor and try to live in alignment with who they are and who they were created to be, because we all came here for a purpose.
And it's just like.
When I see people like you out there helping others just really get an alignment and find their energy source and really tap into it so that they can live their best life.
It just that lights me up.
So exciting.
Well, and back to your point about kind of this vibrational invitation and everything, it's really hard to live at the level of reality like and a lot.
There's many reasons for.
That but a.
Lot of that is you're just in very.
Direct causation to a lot of systems of oppression and challenge, like our culture and society are not set up to be super supportive.
They're very extractive and oppressive in lots of ways, and so we're not taught this skill set.
We're not taught how to listen to our body or our intuition.
We're not taught the language.
That's happening well below the surface of this sort of material reality, and there's a lot of systems working to keep us ignorance of all of those things to keep us stuck in these systems.
And so there's coming back to the vibrational piece.
There's a lot of reasons why our bodies and systems can hold tension.
And I get to be so curious and sort of explore this with a lot of people. But anytime we have that challenge or limitation again, whether that's in the physical body, I work a lot with people with complex and chronic illness, and yet there's a lot of correlation even there with people who have had a quote UN quote difficult.
And this element of like when we don't have the ability to say no, the body says no and that there's a lot of the body is actually really brilliant.
We really start to have a relationship with the body if we're, if we're really just looking at the traditional models of Western medicine of.
Science that we learned in traditional schooling, which is a very Newtonian model.
If we're looking at, we don't have a ton of powers of agency, especially as children.
So we sort of get groomed into this place where we don't feel like we have choice where we don't see how we can make change of any kind.
And so there's a lot of things that imprint in our nervous system that keep us really held in place.
We get very stuck and change of any kind feels super challenging to the nervous system, and yet it's the thing that we also crave.
We crave uncertainty as much as we crave certainty.
But so many of our survival strategies and our striving strategies are really focused on trying to strategize our way out of our situation.
And because we're so under resourced, 2 things happen.
We one internalize a lot of the failures of our environment grow.
And two, we get very caught up in that under resource translates to a very intense relationship with responsibility.
So we often inherently put the responsibility on our own shoulders and just keep trying to strategize.
Our way out.
Of it, my whole life changed.
The moment I heard, you don't need a better strategy.
You need to feel safer.
And that is such a hallmark of this work of there's so many reasons why our systems can hold tension, and why that translates to challenge, whether in our physical health or whether in the world around us.
And it's not a question of how do we get out of this.
It's a.
Question of what?
Resource and support creates deeper access to the authentic parts.
Of us like.
All of those dreams and wishes, those things that we really want for ourselves, those things that we keep reaching for and trying to maneuver outside of us.
They live and breathe and are at home in US.
And so it's a much more interesting and also a much easier orientation rather than trying to figure out how to make it happen to rather look at being very curious around how do I create accessibility to these parts of myself.
And a lot of that.
Comes down to.
Needs boundaries and values that are operating under the surface that we just need a deeper resource for.
So with Reiki.
I mean, there is no replacement for relationship to self and how we're doing self-care, how we're doing our own personal growth. There is no replacement for.
But if we are spinning in certain areas that we often need a deeper level of resource which is safety and witness and a healing container like the right container to let it out of our systems.
And so oftentimes, by the time people land with me, they've already been doing work for a long time.
And they're ready, and they just need the right end.
Environment and so much of the way that our systems process in young years of life is that we go through, we live very human lives.
We have many moments of survival, and in those moments of survival, those parts of us that just can't deal with whatever is going on, they tuck away inside of us and they keep all of that information.
From us it becomes a whole self protective mechanism to keep that suppressed and so when?
The full split personalities thing.
100% yeah.
Usually you don't manifest them unless you're like so critically.
Overstressed that those pieces do start coming out as different individuals but they.
Are part of us.
We're all.
Split personalities.
Well, and there's trauma from not having our needs met from not being in supportive spaces, even sometimes very directly because of limitations in our from our caregivers and our family or culture of.
Origin, but also sometimes it's a very innocent thing because we do have all of these systems and we can't innately know another human.
We're not.
You know, we're not superhuman.
We're not.
We we're not psychic.
We need people that, like, understand needs.
But children don't have that language, so there's so many reasons.
But that trauma of not having our needs met.
And that the pain and limitation that we live with becomes decontextualized over time, and that just becomes this sort of, like, limiting space.
But when we have the right safety and resource and the right container, and I love energy healing for this capacity because it's totally different from any other models of care, I mean certainly other there's other energy healing modalities and other holistic modalities that I think are more, much more akin to this work.
But it's so different from any of the traditional models of care out there.
When people come into healing space, they actually get to land and be held physically, mentally, emotionally, spirit.
Actually, and they don't have to know what they need.
They don't have to language it.
They don't have to process through it.
They don't have to strategize through it.
They actually get to embody receiving, and I get to hold the space and walk with them.
And in that, there's, you know, there's only so much space we can hold for ourselves when we're also trying to do the work.
So it kind of splits us a little bit.
And so when you have the right care and the right help in the right moments, it removes that limitation.
And when you have safety and resource and a container that can really let all of you, including your physical body and your energy, come through, there's a lot that's ready to go.
We're just tending to that, but also we're getting into often very tender territory of needs going unmet or where we've had to split between authenticity and connection.
In the world.
And so we get into these really tender parts of us that are ready to come forward and heal.
But yet it's scary to do that.
It's really hard to hold ourselves in enough safety to bring that form.
The other really big key to that is a lot of that pane and wiring happened in the context of relationship.
Whether that was with our caregivers or our peers and so some of that healing must happen also in the context of relationship, we were never meant to heal alone, but we really get very wiry.
About that, we get very strapped and scrappy, this very bootstrapping method.
And so again we don't need a better strategy.
We need to feel safer in our bodies and also find the right people and spaces that can really hold us in a way that allows for what needs to happen.
Well, vibrational thing again, it's just being.
Being in community in.
Community with others who are vibrating at the frequency you wish to vibrate at, and it you find connection that way.
Because when everybody is.
At this in the same harmonics.
We can get a Symphony.
When people are in discord.
Sounds terrible.
Kind of like the world.
Right now, that's why I.
When deep?
Love doing what I do because it's like.
I really believe.
Now is the.
Best time ever to be alive.
There's so much opportunity and people are really just coming into their own and figuring out where they fit in the Symphony.
It's so special.
I love that frame.
Yes, there's so much harmony and I love being witnessed to people.
Finding like the tune the instrument, the music that.
Is uniquely the.
Them everybody has a unique energy like I can feel the difference between each client.
Some of them are very sensitive or some there's unique elements to them.
And the thing that really makes it flow through the whole system and into the world like that's also our creative energy, it's also our connection to curiosity and wonder and these.
Very innate parts of us.
And it's really connection to safety and resource.
The chakras really build on each other.
It very much mirrors like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where if we don't have the safety and security of the root chakra, it's hard to then be creative or in relationship with, which brings us to the sacral.
Chakra, which is then hard to continue to build into deeper areas of personal expression and personal power of love, of care, of contribution into the world.
If we don't have that access to safety, and that is the thing I see probably the most universal among all people is that that's hard a sense of security being safe and who you are in the world and not just knowing we're safe but feeling we're safe.
We try and figure out everything, but we absolutely try and figure out safety.
So I can just get this thing done, or that relationship tended to or this job problem fixed. Then everything's going to be OK.
Way, but actually safety and security trust belonging.
These really innate capacities of who we are as humans live and breathe and move deeper in the body, and we can create direct relationship to them.
They also hold that capacity for us.
It's a well of inner resource that's available.
And so that is the piece that really starts to open that up and let all of that brilliance and expression and choice.
Of it like.
Let letting that out into the world.
And then eventually it comes out and it's creating.
It's the creative.
Thing that actually causes change.
To happen in the world around you.
We call it manifesting a lot of times, but it starts.
You're right in the root chakra and it just like it builds on each other until you've got this beautiful thing that you created.
From within it, yeah.
So what's the one thing I know we've covered?
So much today, and it's been such.
Such a great experience getting.
To talk about all these various aspects.
But what's the one thing that you really.
Hope the audience will take away from this conversation.
My hope and invitation is to be gentle with yourself, whether you're a coach growing your own deeply personal and intimate and vulnerable expression in the world, or whether you're someone who's just trying to find a way to bring a more authentic and full version of you and life into the world.
Again, I find that we often go into those patterns of self criticism and self judgment when we're particularly when there's either chronic pain, whether that's physical or chronic tension and limitation in bringing something forward in our lives or making change in a particular area.
Area, but underneath that is a much deeper and more necessary story unfolding that really has to do with who we are as humans and how.
Like what?
What are the deeper needs that we have?
And also what is the right container of safety for either letting things out of the body?
Or letting things come forward into integration.
I call them sole integration.
It's very much it.
It mirrors a lot of.
Kind of shamanic healing in that.
These parts of us.
Who have been orphaned can come back together and reintegrate and.
You're gonna get.
Where you're going, you're there.
You cannot miss it.
But I think it's a much more inviting process rather than feeling so responsible and feelings like the failure in the situation.
To perhaps invite a little perspective shift and get curious about what resource might else might be available to really invite something forward in you.
It's usually that we aren't meant to do it by ourselves, but also not everybody can hold the right space.
That we need and so really looking for the people and the practices and the tools that invite a release of tension in our body that invite us to feel more.
Connected to who we.
Are and to explore.
And so we're really going back to this element of curiosity and wonder.
These are connected to the most innocent and authentic parts of who we are.
And so, rather than feeling like we need the 27 point strategy plan to perfect success with no missteps and no failure and no vulnerability. Thank you very much.
All that does is get us to begin.
And so I think it's a really beautiful invitation to notice what you're curious about, whether that's internal or whether that's in potential resource to help support you and be really gentle with you.
We love that.
So how do people work with you?
Where can they go to get?
More information about what you do.
Absolutely. My business and brand is called Real Genius life. So you can go to realgeniuslife.com.
I'm on most of the main socials the Instagrams, the face box.
All of those things, and so you can find me there and I work with people virtually all over the world and I also work with people in central IN in some on site.
Places as well, if that speaks to you.
And so I look forward to connecting.
Thanks for joining me today, Karen.
Thanks so much for having me.
I appreciate it.