DIVE INTO REIKI: Today I have a wonderful guest, Bill Stevens. Bill Stevens is a member of the Congregation of Christian Brothers and he taught 25 years in schools, before training to become a hospital chaplain. He served as a chaplain for ten years at three different hospitals in NY and NJ. While at St. Peter’s Medical Center in New Jersey he began to experience people with HIV/AIDS coming into the hospital in the 80’s, which led him to establish a nonprofit organization, Chrysalis Ministry, to reach out to those who experienced this disease as a death sentence at that time. It was during this twelve-year period of time that Bill incorporated Reiki into his ministry. After that, Bill worked with the visiting nurse supporting people at the end of life.  Bill has studied with teachers such as Khandro Kunzang Dechen Chodron, Gilbert Gallego, Hyakuten Inamoto, Frans Stiene and Kathleen Prasad. He still teaches at 88 from his home in New Rochelle, New York.  Bill, thank you so much for saying yes to the interview!
BILL STEVENS: You're welcome. Delighted to be with you, Nathalie.

DIR: I met you first at a play day with Frans Stiene, and then we had the retreat together in Lancaster. It was such a pleasure to practice together.
BS: Absolutely. Yeah, I remember that. That was a great weekend retreat.

DIR: I always start with the same question: when was the first time you came in contact with Reiki? What was your first experience?
BS: Well, it was with my teacher, Penny Nissen. As I started my ministry to people with Aids, I heard of a chaplain in San Francisco working in the hospitals out there. He was doing Reiki and I said, “What is Reiki?” I didn't know what it was. But he gave me the inspiration to find out. And I found the only Reiki master at the time in New Jersey—that was back in 1991—that I knew of anyway, there may have been others.

DIR: There was also no internet to look for them!
BS: Exactly. I made an arrangement to do a weekend course. I brought somebody who was living with HIV with me, and a woman, a social worker who was working with the community. The three of us went out and we did a weekend with this person, Penny Nissen. And we learned level 1 Reiki. I used that one class for the next seven, eight years, doing my work.

DIR: Wow. I love that because we rush so much from Reiki 1 to Reiki 2 and Reiki 3. We go as fast as we can. And yet you did amazing work just with your Reiki level 1.
BS: Oh yeah, yeah. It was surprising to me. I didn't necessarily have any experience or was I able to talk with other people who were offering Reiki. I kept doing Reiki mainly because people were having such a positive experience. I wasn't feeling any big amounts of energy myself, but I just went into my meditation, followed the instructions that my teacher gave me for level 1 and just trusted [laughs]. And people just had some good experiences. I just was marveled by what they shared with me. I used to offer Reiki in various settings. I would go into a support group and while they were having their support group if someone wanted to have a Reiki session, I would be in another room. They could just slip out of the group, and come, and go back into the group.

I remember one person; he was really fighting an addiction and he had some mental issues as well. He came in for a session. At the end of the session, he just told me, “Wow.” He had a great experience, the most spiritual experience he ever experienced in his life. And I just said, “Wow” with him [laughs].

I would visit people in the hospital. I remember going into one particular person who had a lot of pain. I offered him Reiki and it helped his pain. It surprised both of us that the pain went away. And I visited him a few times, and he would just shout out, “Oh, here comes my pain medication” [Laughs.] I was afraid that the nurses would think I was bringing him some additional drugs!

DIR: That you were like the secret dealer of painkillers!
BS: But it was because of those experiences and similar ones, that I just persevered. I knew that it was making a difference for people

DIR: I appreciate you so much saying this. I have a lot of my students or people who approach me because of the podcast. They're so concerned about not feeling all those very strong sensations that some people feel. And when you say that you practice just trusting. And it works! I think it's going make them feel very much like, “I'm okay. I'm not doing anything wrong.”
BS: Yes. I think Frans Stiene, in his class, he taught me that. To let go of all [of that.] If you feel it, great. It's a gift. But don’t focus your attention on that, because it's not the essential part of what we're doing.

DIR: You sent me a lot of beautiful texts written by you. There was one where you were talking about taking your chaplain collar off and focused on holding the space. Could you elaborate a little bit on that experience that you had?
BS: Oh, yes. I was teaching for 25 years in our schools. I was in a very structured community life. You wear the black robes and the collar, and you tend to hide behind that. I mean, this is who you present to the world. That's all they see, whatever, whatever that means to them.

When I began my hospital chaplaincy, it was kind of like a clinical pastor education program. It's a very formal, structured training. We had three different sections of about 12 weeks each. We went through the first section of 12-week training and my counselor, the one running the program for our particular group of six people, she gave me the challenge to wear a suit the next time, without any collar. No black robes.

I was 45-50 years old at the time, and I said, “Oh, that's a challenge for me!” It was a big deal for me. I went into the hospital the first day, and I'd hear, “Hi brother. Hi brother.” No one made any remarks at all. But when I went in the room [without my collar], it was more of a challenge. But again, sometimes people threw me out of the room because of the collar! This time I had to go in as Bill Stevens, and that was a different experience. There's no agenda that people had put on me as I entered the room, you know? That was it was very growthful experience.

 DIR: Like you couldn't hide or protect behind anything. A little like our practice: you just place your hand and there is nothing to hide, nothing to do beyond trusting and being present.
BS: Yes, just going into your own meditation, and that’s all.

DIR: After many years of practicing Reiki Level 1 , what made you feel you needed or wanted to go further?
BS: I began to hear people speak about another level, and the opportunity arose. A teacher appeared. That always happens, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.  I did go to Leslie Mondou. She was offering a Level 2 class in the same lineage. And so I did take that. It was in that class that I heard of a teacher in in Maryland, Kunzang Dechen Chodron. She was an amazing woman. She was a nurse up in Vermont who was exposed to Reiki, but she had a transformative experience and was led to a Buddhist teacher who was giving a presentation. She became drawn to do to join by the Buddhist community in Maryland. And she was in Vermont. She left her profession, her friends, [and] her family. I think she was divorced at the time. but she did have a son. She made arrangements for him to be taken care of. I think he was going into college at the time. She went into this Buddhist community in Maryland and had incredible experience just for her own personal growth. She became involved with the Reiki Jin Kei Do lineage.

Seiji Takamori was one of the prominent people in that lineage. And he was a monk in Japan who got permission to go study over in Nepal and India. He went up into the mountains and studied with yogis for 20 years. He got deep into the Buddhist meditation practices and deep into the chakra work, energy work, and Qigong. That got all thrown into the teachings of the Reiki Jin Kei Do. And that's what my teacher experienced. She used to go over to Nepal maybe once or twice a year and spend a month in meditation with her teachers over there.

I did about 300 hours of study with her. I did the Reiki Jin Kei Do level 1, 2, 3, and two deeper teachings with what they called the Buddho EnerSense, which were a very deep Buddhist practices. It was challenging for me. I probably didn't understand it all [laughs], but I was very much exposed to it. I developed a deeper meditation practice, and I did do the master level with one of her students. That’s when I began to teach Reiki. Because the whole Aids development shifted at some point when people didn't have the medications, they needed to extend their life. And I was able to begin to teach some of the people that I used to serve with Reiki, so they could incorporate that into their lives and make that part of their recovery.

 DIR: We often practice Reiki with the expectation of becoming better, of enjoying a better life. But with end-of-life, it's a completely different perspective of what Reiki can offer. What did your practice offer them?
BS: The biggest part of the Chrysalis Ministry was to create a safe space for people. We had a wonderful nun who opened up a retreat house to us, and we did four-day retreat programs there. That was a time when people were afraid to come out of their houses, or even afraid to tell their family that they had Aids. There was such a stigma attached to it. Something very similar to COVID, the pandemic, that fear around it. So, they came together then at this retreat house. For 10 years, we did about four retreats a year, with about 50-60 people at a time. Some came back certainly more than once. Sometimes they would meet relatives there. They each had kept their secret from each other. It was people from all walks of [life], people who were homeless, people who were in shelters, people from Wall Street, gay men, straight men and women, people who picked up Aids from drug addiction. It was just a women and men together. It was just a great thing for them to come together and be safe. Then we broke them up into groups and they had all sorts of different programs going on. A big part of that [was that] every day we offered them a massage, and Reiki. Whichever they decided to choose and made that part of the day. We got massage practitioners volunteering their time to come at that time to offer this to them. It was really a wonderful experience for us and for them as well.

DIR: That is beautiful because they were not being touched a lot at the time. People were really scared of contagion. For them to receive touch it must have been very special.
BS: I became a massage practitioner as well for that purpose. Because [there were treated] almost like the leper, the untouchable, so they really appreciated that.

DIR: Reiki makes me feel safe in your body. The fact that you created a safe community where they could be safe, I find it a beautiful expression of the Reiki.
BS: Absolutely.

DIR: And from then you went to work with end-of-life services, right?
BS: Towards the end of the Chrysalis Ministry, I had open heart surgery, like an emergency. I took some time off. During that sabbatical year so to speak , I heard of end-of-life program that was being authored up in San Francisco by a Frank Ostaseski. I was kind of drawn to do that, probably because of my own experience around my open-heart surgery and my experience with the AIDS community. They’re very much end-of-life-issues. This was an opportunity to go deeper into that, to jump in and learn more about the end of life and how I could be with other people. And also just for myself personally. It was a great program and there's about 25 of us there. There were doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains, volunteers. It was a great group of people.

We came together four days a month. And then we would go back to where our home was and do some field work. That threw us right into the situation so that we could come back with our experiences each month and talk about them. And also have that experience of being with someone at the end of life. There was a hospice, the Visiting Nurse association, in New Jersey. I asked them if I could volunteer there to do my field work. And so that's how that all started. That was a full year program. We went out there four days, each month and I learned so much. The teachers there were just incredible.

DIR: And can you share a little bit of some of your experience with of end-of-life care and Reiki practice?
BS: I asked the Visiting Nurses if I could get a job there as a chaplain. They said yes. I guess I was 70-years-old at the time. I think I said I would come in three days a week. I gave myself a little break [laughs]. No sooner I got into the work, I said, “Well, you know, I would like to offer Reiki to my patients. And they had a little problem with it, so they said, “Well, we have to go up before the board of directors and ask them about it.” So I had to leave my case before the board of directors and they put me on probation [laughs].

What I did first of all, I taught a group of nurses. I threw it out there, “Would anyone like to take a Reiki class?” Which they did and they enjoyed it. I would have someone send me patients, since they knew what it was and how they profited by it. Then I also asked the director. I said, “Whenever you have a real bad day, just give me a call, I'll come by, and I'll give you a session.” That happened pretty quickly; those days for her came up very often! So, she called me. I went in and gave her about a half hour Reiki session. She was convinced. I didn't have to I hide in my corner after that.

DIR: I love how you keep it so simple: when you have a bad day, come, and try this. That’s it.
BS: Right? Yeah. [Giving] an experience, right? Not to give a big spiel about it [laughs].

 DIR: What tip would you give someone who is working on an end-of-life program or in palliative services end of life?
BS: Well, yeah. I had to learn all that, you know, by making mistakes. When I called people, seeing if they wanted to visit, I got into the habit of saying Reiki is a spiritual, healing practice, which people find very relaxing and comforting. That's all the information I gave them on the phone. I had about less than a minute to ask them if they would like me to drop by. So, I couldn't go into a big history of Reiki. I felt that if a person was interested in spirituality or interested in healing, then they would be open to it. And if those words turned them off, then they would then they would say, “Thanks very much but no.” But that was okay. At least the door was open for people who were familiar with those words and wanted me to come and visit.

My only equipment was I had a little music box and my stool. When I came into the house, or the hospital room, I would decide where I wanted to sit. If I came into the house and the person was sitting in the chair, then I brought my stool over to the chair. If they're lying on the couch, I brought my stool right next to the couch. If they're lying in their bedroom, I brought my stool right there. And if I went into a hospital room instead of dragging chairs around, I could just bring my stool close to wherever the patient was in the bed.

It's amazing what little space you had there, but you could fit your stool right in there and set yourself down right beside them. And then that was where I would start offering Reiki to them. I wasn't doing a lot of hand positions. It was just placing your hands off the body or sometimes just being in your meditation. But the responses [were] very powerful in the sense of people being relieved of their pain or going into a very peaceful and relaxed place.

You never knew what kind of a situation you would go into. I remember once of just going into this room [and it] was almost totally dark. The whole room was lined with people in the chairs, and this bed was in the middle. The woman was in the bed, moaning very loudly. I had two of her children on the bed with her, and the husband on the side of the bed. I just went in and opened up my stool. I was at the end of the bed and began to offer Reiki without saying anything. At one point her husband had to leave the room and he signaled me to come closer. I was there about 45 minutes to an hour when finally the woman seemed to stop moaning and she seemed to be more peaceful. I stayed there another half hour, and then I left. Maybe a couple of hours after I left, she passed, and the husband told the social worker that she had been in this kind of condition, moaning and being very anxious, for a couple of weeks. And that was the most peaceful that he had seen her. And she died very peacefully at that time.

I always ask myself, what is Reiki? I don't know [laughs]. It's something very profound. It's not, not anything magical that you do because I know myself, [and] it's not anything coming from me. There's no magical thing that you're doing. You're kind of just becoming one with the energy. I love the way that Kathleen Prasad teaches Reiki: just becoming one with the animals. Just offering that space to them, but not pushing it on them. And Frans [Stiene] letting me know that this is a spiritual practice. The more you do your practice, paying attention to the precepts, opening up your heart, practicing your meditation and holding that space… the more you can do that, then healing is a possibility. But you don't have any expectations. You’re not to figure things out. You're not promising people anything. What is Reiki? A lot of times Frans used to tell us, “Just be Reiki.” Just be love, just, just be that. I think healing is like a side effect of your practice. The more you practice, the more possibilities there are.

 DIR: I love the way you expressed that, “The more you practice, the more possibilities, right?” Often new students try to understand what Reiki is with their head. But you can only understand through practice. What is your daily practice Bill? Like, because I know you also practice Tai Chi and Qigong.
BS: Well, each morning, I go for a walk. Then I come back home, and I'll do a half hour to 45 minutes of Tai Chi, and Qigong. That kind of quiets my mind. And then I will do a half hour to 45-minute meditation. I make sure I do that every day. But then I get to offer myself Reiki at night when I'm going to sleep [for] probably close to 45 minutes. When I wake up in the morning, I'll give myself Reiki as well. That's really my spiritual practice, you know?

DIR: I love your saying your spiritual practice being a chaplain. I often get emails from people who are worried about religion and Reiki. For those people who are a bit concerned about mixing religion and Reiki, could you share your point of view?
BS: Well, yes, I could. [Laughs]. At the hospice, I would be asked to do part of the volunteer training, talking about chaplaincy, talking about Reiki as well. When I mentioned Reiki as a spiritual practice, sometimes there would be a clergy person present, and they'd be kind of shocked that I would put Reiki as a spiritual practice, you know. Sometimes we would get into a little back and forth on it, but sometimes they would just be visibly upset with that. At one point, there was another chaplain at the VNA and he, very specifically, went into a discussion with me about Reiki being a spiritual practice. I think it's because of its Buddhist background. I think it's because like the church is the only one who has that authority, you know. That no one else can do healing but the person ordained.  That's very much there, you know?

There was a period of time, maybe in the nineties, that a group of bishops in the Catholic church came out very strongly against Reiki. After I left the hospital as a chaplain at St. Peter's they, they said the Bishop said it would be forbidden for anyone to do Reiki at the hospital. But how can they tell whatever you're doing in the hospital?

DIR: That's true, especially when you're in your meditation state.
BS: That there's nothing that they we’re doing [they can see]. But it went to that extent. I never let it interfere with my work in the hospital.  I think it's a matter of authority. But Jesus sent out his disciples to heal people in the village. He didn't grasp this as something that was only his. It was very spiritual thing. And the disciples went out into the villages and healed the people. So, it did come up for me, but I didn't allow it to interfere with anything I taught or anything I did personally. I think that the brothers never questioned anything, which was very helpful for me. They allowed me to do the things that I felt that I needed to do. They were supportive then in that way, so that was helpful

DIR: That was great. Thank you for sharing that. I always refer people who ask me about this to the Reiki principles of precepts, and I'm like, this is the embodiment of Reiki practice: Do not anger, do not worry. That is not evil. Thank you so much Bill for sharing you story. Is there anything you would like to add?
BS: Towards the end of my hospice work, I began to become more aware of Kathleen Prasad’s work. And during these last few years I've been becoming more involved in the shelters. She taught me so much. She and she has created the Let Animals Lead technique, where you just are there, and the animals come and take what they want instead of chasing after them. [Laugh].

DIR: She's wonderful. I think we should take the same approach to human treatments.
BS: Absolutely. That's why when you talk about distance healing, that's all you're doing, you're just holding that space for people. She was a great influence on me as well, and I really enjoy working with her.

DIR: And I love that you keep on training and keep on deepening your practice all the time. I find that so beautiful and inspiring as well.
BS: Well, thanks. Yeah. I have to do that. [Laughs.]

DIR: And you still teach, right?
BS: I was 40 years on my own in New Jersey and I'm 88 years old now. And so the community asked me to come back closer. So, I'm in one of our communities in New Rochelle, but I kept my contacts and I have zoom and I teach my Tai Chi classes on it. I'm teaching my Reiki classes on zoom. I'm doing a Reiki class this Saturday, and I do my healing circle once a month on zoom. So that's great. I keep in touch with a lot of people in New Jersey. I'm not pushing for anything here in New Rochelle. I just say whatever the universe sends me I'm here, but I don't go out and knock on doors anymore. [Laughs].

DIR: No it's, but I'll be sharing your website and all your details so people can reach out to you, especially if they're in new Rochelle—they're lucky people to be around you!
BS: Thank you very much.

DIR: Thank you so, so much for your time. And I'm looking forward to the Lancaster retreat in 2022. We're kidnapping you. I'm driving you down there. It's one year away but start packing. Okay?
BS: [Laughs].