Today we’d like to introduce you to Karen Riviere.
Hi Karen, I’m so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work lifework life, how can you bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
First, thank you for this opportunity to share my work with Voyage Austin. My story with Reiki and the seeds of my Reiki energy-healing business began in 2017. I received my Reiki Master attunement 11 days before my husband of 27 years gave up his struggle with mental illness to suicide. Our children were 11 and 13 years old then. While I had been a CPA/Financial Auditor for 10 years during the exciting dot com era here in Austin, I had been a stay-at-home mom since our kids were born, volunteering with their schools and scout troops.
There is a Reiki proverb that says, “Reiki finds you when you need it and gives you what you need.” In my case, the timing of Reiki’s arrival in my life was a gift from God/Universe in many ways. It came to support me through the grief and trauma of my loss as an energetic healing tool. It arrived in the gift of my Reiki Master Teacher, Michael Abedin. He was my Angel, my heart link soul mate, and a soul I shared many past lives with, if you believe in that. And it arrived to guide me to my soul’s purpose and path – to share Reiki with others.
During the 27 months I shared with Michael, I studied and practiced Reiki daily with his guidance and example. I attended nearly every Reiki class he taught. Eventually, I helped him rewrite his teaching manual, and we developed a co-teaching style. In August 2019, Michael was hospitalized with cancer and near the end of his life journey. We had a large Reiki class scheduled. Michael said, “Karen, we can’t cancel the class. You have to teach it by yourself.” With his support and that of a Reiki Teacher friend as a co-facilitator, I overcame my insecurity and fear and did just that. I taught and was attuned to my first students.
In March 2020, five months after Michael passed away, I received another gift. I got the very first strain of Covid. This was before masks, before shutdowns, before anyone knew anything about Covid. COVID took me down hard, and I’m still healing from COVID Long Haul 3 ½ years later. It is no surprise, given how physically depleted I was after caregiving for Michael through his illness over the prior year, in addition to my mental and emotional state at the time. I was still drowning in the immense ocean of grief and trauma related to losing my husband, and now I was swept further out to sea after losing the love of my life, Michael. That was on top of new solo parenting struggles and the unhealed traumas and stuffed emotions from my childhood. I was born in the “stop crying, or I will give you something to cry about” parenting era. We weren’t taught to process or allowed to express emotions, so they got stuffed away, carried as baggage into adulthood. Covid shutdowns and Long Haul were a gift- forcing me to stop everything and plunge into the proverbial “dark night of the soul.” I was literally in bed for months and much of the next couple of years. It was a time of healing from all of these things- physically from COVID-19, mentally and emotionally from my grief, and a lifetime of unhealed “stuff.” Through it all, my Reiki practice was a life raft. It supported me physically, mentally, and emotionally every day.
In 2021, post-Covid shutdowns, it was time to start my in-person Reiki practice again. Since then, I have taught attunement and certification classes, offering private sessions, monthly Reiki Share Group Healing Circles, coaching, and recently added monthly continuing education workshops.
In spring of 2023, I made a life-changing, 21-day Reiki pilgrimage to Japan, the birthplace of Reiki, including climbing Mt Kurama and learning with Reiki practitioners and teachers worldwide. Since I returned, my Reiki practice has been stronger and more intuitive.
Volunteer work has been one of my core personal values since childhood. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to begin volunteering regularly as a Reiki practitioner with Vet TRIIP, Inc. (www.vettriip.org), a non-profit organization in San Antonio that serves military veterans living with chronic pain and post-traumatic stress. My understanding of healing and the body has increased tremendously from working with the other volunteer practitioners and sharing Reiki with many people. The results in reducing pain and stress are impressive. I am grateful to serve.
Can you tell us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth?
Every experience, even the obstacles and challenges in life, contains gifts. Long Haul Covid symptoms like fatigue and brain fog remind me to be gentle and honest with myself about what I can do every day and what I can’t. The symptoms help me be present, use my physical and mental energy wisely, and be grateful for what I can do at any moment.
From my experience, healing is not linear. It is a messy spiral of cycling back over the same things. It can be challenging, but knowing that everything has a cycle, that “this too shall pass,” gives hope. Having tools like Reiki during these cycles is how we get to the other side and find the gifts in the challenges.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
My business, “Austin Reiki Master,” is the Love, wisdom, and knowledge I share from my heart. It comes from my life experience, healing journey, personal spiritual practice, and various books and classes assimilated. It has come together like puzzle pieces in this beautiful picture of my current life and work.
My approach is sharing from a place of authenticity and integrity, acknowledging that I am not a guru. I am a fellow traveler and a facilitator, sharing what I have learned. I hope it will inspire and empower others on their healing journeys inward to find the healing power and wisdom within their bodies and hearts. As we heal ourselves, we heal others.
I offer the simple tool of Reiki, a hands-on energetic healing tool that teaches a way to connect through our hearts with the vibration of Love, Universal Life Force Energy, Source, Universe, God, Holy Spirit, or whatever you choose to call it. Our bodies use this frequency through energetic entrainment to support healing, harmonizing, and balancing our physical, mental, and emotional bodies. It can reduce stress, allowing the body to heal itself. It can facilitate the release of the mental and emotional baggage we have been holding onto in our bodies.
I am honored to offer this healing love vibration of Reiki to people through private sessions, thereby “giving a person a fish.” However, my starseed mission is to “teach people to fish” by attuning and teaching them how to do Reiki for themselves and providing ongoing support through community, Reiki Shares, continuing education workshops, and coaching.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
Having lived in the Austin area for 26 years, I most love our hill country beauty and its opportunities to be outdoors and grounded in nature. ATX has a diverse holistic and metaphysical community that isn’t found in many cities. We are doing our part to “Keep Austin Weird” as Weird Austin rapidly gets replaced with concrete and high-rise condos.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.austinreikimaster.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/austinreikimaster/
- Facebook: facebook.com/austinreikimaster
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AustinReikiMaster
- Yelp: https://m.yelp.com/biz/austin-reiki-master-leander
