04/09/2026
❤️🩹 Friday Focus – Meet Our Healing Team
(Scroll to the 🌟s to skip the intro)
A few Fridays ago, we completed our series introducing the members of the Deal Spiritual Centre committee.
If you missed any of them, you can scroll back to 5th June, when we began with Anne, and follow our Friday posts from there.
But there are many more people who quietly give their time to the Centre, and so we began a new series… as promised each Friday we will introduce one of our Healing Team.
Our Healing Journeys ❤️🩹
Rather than simply telling you who our healers are and listing their qualifications, we asked them to tell us something much more personal:
What led you to healing?
This week we continue with Wendy, in her own words…
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❤️ Wendy — My Healing Journey
“There Is Always Something We Can Do”
I had been involved with The Centre for many years, yet until I became pregnant, I had never really thought about healing.
During my pregnancy I was in considerable discomfort and, understandably, didn’t want to take painkillers. Someone suggested that I go to The Centre and try healing.
I didn’t know what to expect and was a little nervous when I presented myself the following Tuesday.
An elderly lady was in charge at the time and informed me that, because I was pregnant, I wasn’t permitted to receive healing energy.
I left in floods of tears — emotional, in pain and thoroughly confused. It simply made no sense to me.
So I wrote to the Healing Association to ask whether what I’d been told was correct. They confirmed that it wasn’t.
That experience stayed with me. I felt that healers needed not only good intentions, but knowledge, training and an understanding of the people they were working with. Mum, Anne, was already enjoying being part of The Healing Team and shared many of my thoughts.
Thankfully, Spiritual Healing was beginning to develop a structured training programme and, over time, the Healing Clinic became much more professionally organised.
Meanwhile, Mum had started looking into something called REIKI.
I wasn’t particularly interested! 😂
I did, however, look through the manual she’d been given following her first weekend training course. I thought the information was rather sparse and it certainly didn’t ignite an immediate desire to learn more.
Being a scientist by nature, I wanted the how, what, why and when of everything.
As I began researching Reiki myself, I discovered there was no standard formal training programme. I was particularly uncomfortable with the idea that someone could undertake only a couple of days’ training and then consider themselves fully prepared to practise on members of the public.
But I was becoming curious.
When Sean, a friend of Mum and I who had completed his Reiki training alongside her, offered to teach a Reiki 1 workshop at The Centre, I joined them.
This time something clicked.
I soaked up the information and knew there was something in it that I wanted to understand.
I continued learning through to Level 4 — Reiki Teacher.
Around the same time, Mum — by then a Spiritual Healing Tutor and Assessor — had been asked by Kent International Healing Association to help rewrite its training manuals.
I eagerly offered to help.
That project taught me an enormous amount, not only about healing but about working responsibly with patients. The Association was pleased with my contribution and offered me a free Spiritual Healing training course, which I gladly accepted.
Later, Mum and I incorporated much of what we had learned about good practice and working with patients into the Reiki training programme we were developing ourselves.
So there I was — a Reiki Master and Teacher as well as a Spiritual Healer, with a much better understanding of healing and how to work with people.
I finally felt ready to put it all to good use.
There was just one problem.
Because of my own health and physical limitations, joining the Tuesday Healing Team as a regular practising healer wasn’t realistic.
So I found other ways.
I treated family and friends when I was able. Occasionally during healing I would experience what felt to me like being able to “see” into someone’s body — an impression of where I needed to concentrate my attention. At first, I assumed everybody experienced healing that way!
People told me they enjoyed receiving my healing, and I certainly enjoyed sharing it.
But teaching became my first love.
Mum and I opened our Reiki School in 2004. Our aim then — and still today — was to teach Reiki simply but thoroughly, producing confident and competent practitioners who understood the energy they were working with and had a range of techniques available to them.
Yet I still felt there was more I could contribute.
So I invited qualified healers I knew, including former and current students, to join me in a Messenger healing group.
The idea was simple.
If one of us knew someone who needed healing, they could let me know. I would consider that individual’s circumstances and suggest an appropriate approach, then share their name and the healing instructions with the group.
Whenever individual healers had the opportunity, they could tune in and send distance healing.
What started as a simple idea grew and grew, and the group continues today.
I also keep The Centre’s Healing List updated so that names can be included before our Healing Clinics and during Sunday Services.
Sometimes we hear about somebody going through a particularly difficult time. On those occasions, I may organise what we call a Healing Link.
As many healers as possible agree to join together at 9pm on a particular evening and send distance healing to that person. We often arrange these when someone is approaching major surgery or is particularly unwell.
Whatever an individual believes about healing, knowing that a whole group of people are thinking of them and wishing them well can itself mean an enormous amount. People have told us how supported and cared for they felt knowing that they had an “army of healers” rooting for them.
Where appropriate, I can also help arrange home visits when somebody is unable to attend The Centre. On a small number of occasions, such as before major surgery, I have brought a team together to offer what we know as a Tibetan Healing Attunement.
For many years, Anne and Iola ran our Tuesday Healing Clinic together. When Mum eventually needed to step back to care for Dad during his final years, Kelly became Deputy Leader.
Although I’m not physically part of the Tuesday team, Mum and I continue to support Iola and Kelly, discussing the clinic with them, helping when issues arise and participating in Healing Team meetings.
So perhaps my healing journey hasn’t followed the route I once imagined.
But healing is still very much part of my life.
Because teaching became such an important part of that life, I trained as an Adult Education Teacher at Canterbury Christ Church University. I also undertook basic counselling training at The University of Kent, so that I was better equipped to support both students and patients.
Despite my own limitations, I live, breathe and practise Reiki every day, using what I have learned to help others in whatever way I’m able.
And it isn’t entirely about other people.
I have always believed:
“As I give, so I receive.”
At a recent consultant appointment, I was asked how I still manage to do everything I do when she has patients living with similar, significant illness that are so much more restricted.
I smiled.
For me, Reiki gives me focus, purpose and a reason to keep doing what I love. It is part of the way I look after myself as well as others.
And I intend to continue for as long as I possibly can.
Perhaps that’s one of the greatest things my healing journey has taught me:
There are many ways to help another person.
Age, health or physical ability may change how we do it, but they don’t necessarily take away what we have to give.
I don’t know what my future holds, so I am grateful for what I am able to do today.
And I try to live by the words with which each Reiki Principle begins:
“Just for today…” 🙏
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Next Friday, we’ll meet another member of our Healing Team and discover the story behind their own journey into healing. ❤️🩹
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For details of The Centres Events and how to book, see our Wednesday posts
