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Recent Reiki Master/Teacher course

Recently a friend of mine arrived from the UK to complete her training as a Reiki Master Teacher with me. We had begun the course a while ago via email.

I normally offer Reiki Master courses in 2 parts. The first part is a qualification as a Reiki Master using Advanced Reiki Techniques. The second part is the Teacher element which allows the Reiki Master to pass on the knowledge to others and enable them to begin their own Reiki path.

My friend chose the full course giving her the Reiki Master/Teacher qualification.

As she is in the UK and I am in Luxor, Egypt much of the preliminary work was done via email. Predominately, we worked on the teaching side of Mastership, preparation of manuals for all 3 levels and some lesson preparation.
She was only here in Luxor for one week, so most of that week would be taken up with practical work for the Advanced Reiki techniques.

By the time she arrived, manuals had been prepared and reviewed, a student had been lined up so that she could take her first class here under supervision, and a lineup of guinea pigs had been reserved!!

Her first evening in Luxor saw the auspicious Full Moon Lunar Eclipse and we watched the whole thing from the balcony. The moon rose over Luxor Temple and we never moved until the Eclipse was completely over. Dinner was courtesy of Tutankhamun Restaurant...... take away!! A great start to a fantastic week!

Our first day was taken up with her own attunement to Reiki Master and a substantial amount of time using the new energies and the new symbol she now has at her disposal. I got lucky here as I was the guinea pig myself and we spent a wonderful afternoon, overlooking the River Nile while I got my chakras well and truly balanced, amongst other things.

The second day was all about the teaching side of things. Manuals were reviewed, lesson plans created and she was shown how to attune a student to Reiki.  I am afraid I pushed her very hard that day as the next day was her very own class to teach and I wanted her to be confident and comfortable with what she was doing.

Day three saw the arrival of a mutual friend who wanted to be attuned to Reiki Level 1. What a day! Everything went exactly as I hoped. Rainbows and Unicorns were much in evidence! The new Master did an excellent job and the new Reiki 1 lady had some amazing experiences and I hope, learned a lot.
It was a lot for the new Master to pack in to one day, but time was on our side, no limits to how much time we could take, and she did everything that she was supposed to do, and more! Wonderful!

The fourth day was a day off for us both! A much needed rest for us both. My friend took herself off to Karnak Temple for some "me time" before meeting up with friends in the afternoon. Sunset saw us both out on the River Nile in Felucca Spirit with a magical sunset before heading back for dinner.



By the fifth day Medinet Habu (Mortuary temple of Ramses 3) was calling strongly. An early wake up so that we could avoid the heat of the day, a walk along the riverbank to find a taxi, and we were at Medinet Habu bright and early.

We had planned an attunement here and we were disappointed to see so many tourists there. Well, happy for Luxor but too many for us. So we had a wander around, and found ourselves in the Hypostyle Hall looking for the perfect location.  We found it. A foot over the threshold of a small room saw my friend in floods of tears and very emotional. This was it! And there........ on the walls........ her favourite Egyptian goddess, Sekhmet. Perfect. Exactly what she wanted.

The attunement itself was very emotional for her. I realise that is was a second attunement, I would have preferred it to be the only one, but because of the class she had to teach, she needed attuning before that. So we did it all over again, and it was a perfect moment.
Afterwards, a wander back through the temple, heading for the coffee shop over the road for a cold drink, and then back home for a shower, a cuppa and a bit of a rest.

That afternoon, we started more Advanced Reiki Techniques and worked until early evening, when souvenier shopping began to shout loudly!

The final full day in Luxor was a "guinea pig" day.
But before we began, we were up and out at 4.30am to board a motor boat to watch the sunrise on Solstice!  It was beautiful and I have already shared that with you.

That was followed by breakfast, a snooze and then a good 5 hours of solid practical work with our "guinea pig".  Practical work, discussions and lots more meant we had a great day!

A final dinner out to celebrate gave us the chance to have some fun and laughs as the following day was a flight back to the UK.

I would like to thank H for being the best "guinea pig" ever. I hope you enjoyed it all.


D....... thank you for being L's first student! I hope now that you are on the Reiki path you will continue to grow and flourish.


And finally, I want to thank L for choosing me as her Master and doing me the honour of training her to Reiki Master/Teacher.  Thank you

We are all blessed

Love and light

Solstice in Luxor, Egypt

During the last week, I have had the great pleasure of completing the Reiki Master training of a friend of mine, here in sunny Luxor, Egypt.  More of that later.

Our week started auspiciously, with the full moon lunar eclipse on the evening of her arrival. We watched the whole thing, from start to finish from the balcony and it was absolutely magical. I am sorry I have no photographs, but my camera is not good enough to capture such a special moment. However, to sit and watch as the moon rose over Luxor Temple across the River Nile from my home was amazing!

My friend's last full day here was also auspicious.  It was the Summer Solstice.  Normally in the UK, this is celebrated at Stonehenge when many, many people make the journey south to witness the rise of the sun over the ancient monument.

In Luxor we have many ancient monuments where we can watch the sun rise.

4.30am waiting for our boat

My friend and I chose to watch from the River Nile with a good view of Luxor Temple.

4am saw 2 very bleary eyed ladies, sloshing tea in an attempt to wake up before heading out to board our small motor boat at 4.30am.

The sky was already starting to lighten as we boarded the boat and we puttered off southwards upriver towards a quiet area away from the buildings.  We sat comfortably on the roof of the boat as we found a quiet spot to moor up. The birds were singing, the ducks were heading for the river and the sky was lightening by the minute.

A welcome cup of tea in hand, cushions to sit on, fresh air to breathe......... we waited.

Then at last, a red light behind some trees, becoming bigger and bigger by the second.                                        

The sun rose spectacularly just to the side of Luxor Temple before shining its Solstice light directly onto the temple.  I have not seen such a red sunrise as this one before. A truly magical moment to bring in the Solstice.
Who needs Stonehenge??

To our left, the mountains of the West Bank slowly lit up, the rays of the sun highlighting the Qurn overlooking the Valley of the Kings.

And we sat, happy, comfortable and peaceful as we drank in this amazing sight.

The tourists on the balloons were treated to a spectacular flight, how lucky were they?

I am so lucky to be living here, I count my blessings every day. Even when things are not going as I want, when plans are disrupted, when life in general gets me down......  this land, this river, this magic is all I need.

Tuesday, Summer Solstice, was just such a day.  Magical.

Great Blog I follow

An interesting blog post by Paul Barford. I always read his blog and enjoy his comments.

This one is about the recent news that an egyptian is planning to "fight a lion". An event which was confirmed, then not confirmed and has been confirmed yet again. Not good publicity at all, whether it goes ahead or not.

Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues: Bloodshed the Way to Get Tourists Back to Egypt?

Luxor testing times

I have no pictures to show but I thought to share a few things with you with regard to my move to the West Bank.

Apart from the flying carpet that is no longer gracing my floor, I have still not found my passport or my marriage contract, both of which were "shoved in a bag" by a friend.  But which bag? She cannot remember lol. I guess they will turn up when I am least expecting it.

I am now slowly getting sorted out. As this is a fairly temporary move, I had already boxed up some of my things  and marked the boxes "not needed".  They are now safely stacked away, but the pile of other stuff that is not needed is growing by the day. Well, its not that we don't need them, we just don't need them over the summer, or they are just ornamental stuff that can be stored until later.

The new flat is a furnished flat, but as we already have a lot of our own furniture, most of it was not needed. Both bedrooms had both a double and a single bed in them. I do not need that amount of beds, so I asked that the double in the second bedroom be removed, and the single in the master bedroom be taken into the second bedroom, leaving us with a master bedroom and a twin room. Nice yes?  Make sense.... yes?
Not to some Egyptians!  The double bed was removed from the "twin" room and the 2 workers disappeared into the master bedroom to move the single to the "twin" room.  All going well so far.  Not! After about 20 minutes, I decided to see what the hold up was as we were waiting to move things out of the main living area.
The double bed in the master bedroom was in pieces and was about to be moved to join the single in the "twin" room.  Ok, so does it make sense to you, that I should want a double bed taking out of the "twin" room to be replaced by the double bed from the master bedroom, leaving the master bedroom with a single bed only?  Yes? No? Hmmmmmm  Anyway, the problem was eventually resolved and we now have a master bedroom and a twin room.

Then there is the fridge.  A nice fridge, decent size with a separate freezer at the top.  But!! No shelves! Just a huge empty space! Ok, so the landlord says he will find the shelves....... or we could change the fridge for one that is in an empty flat. No problem said I....... just get the shelves, no need to change the fridges over.
Nearly 2 weeks later, and numerous visits from "a man with shelves" and I still have a fridge with no shelves.  The first couple of visits came with shelves that were too small, the third and fourth visits had shelves that were too wide, 5 and 6 saw shelves that fit widthways, but were too deep...... and 3 days ago there was the promise to be back tomorrow to bring yet more shelves.  The "man with shelves" has not been seen since. It's amazing how adaptable a person can become when trying to use a fridge with no shelves!

The aircon in the second bedroom, nice split a/c unit worked for a brief time, but then kept cutting out and just didn't sound right. Investigation found a birds nest in the outside unit.  Sparrows. The young were fledgling though and were already hopping around, so we waited a couple of days before removing the nest.  Job done!  No! Overnight a new nest was built, and removed the next morning. This has now gone on, night and day, for over a week now, and we still have a nest there. So we have decided to leave it and hope our first visitor does not mind sharing her airconditioning with a nest of sparrows! Or hopefully the sparrows will leave the nest and not build again by the time she arrives. They have 3 weeks!

On that note, I will end this as it can get boring without pictures and I keep forgetting to get batteries for my camera!

Moving House in Luxor!

Apologies in advance if this is a bit long winded, it was hard to leave things out! Sorry!

I had to move from my flat and it all happened very quickly.  Search parties were sent out to look for something I would like and I ended up temporarily (well, for the summer anyway) in a lovely flat on the West Bank with a view of my favourite river, the River Nile in Luxor,Egypt.

We found the flat on Monday of this week, and moved out on Wednesday.  I had one day to pack completely. What a nightmare!  I had started to organise myself a few days prior to that, and had a couple of suitcases and some boxes of stuff that I knew I would not be needing over the summer months, and stuff that I knew I could live without for the time being.

However, I had no idea how much “stuff” I have accumulated over the last 4 years!  And then a well-meaning “other half” decided to get involved in the packing procedures.  After all, “it’s easy”!

Following that statement, at 3pm on Tuesday, I was told that the “car”would be coming in an hour for the first run to the new flat! What???????  Mania took over and the packing frenzy increased. Anything and everything began to be thrown into boxes! But we had enough for the first run and off they went. At this point, I had no idea anymore what I had in the old flat and what had already gone to the new flat.

Eventually, by 4pm on Wednesday we were ready to go!  A good friend of mine and her husband brought us over the river in his taxi, with the roof rack full and every inch of the taxi packed to the hilt!  My friends and I squashed in, and our task was to clean the flat before the bulk of our stuff arrived.

We opened the door to be greeted by a living room that had disappeared under the boxes delivered here on Tuesday.  My requests that everything be placed in the second bedroom had been totally ignored and things had just been dumped inside the door, spreading out over the floor.  So we dug in, moved them to clear some space and off we went!

Hmmmmmmmmm  now where was the cleaning stuff bag??  Oh oh......... still in the old flat! So off to the shops I went to get enough cleaning materials to tide us over. While I was gone, my friends decided to make tea.  Now where is the kettle that I purposely left out, so that I could make endless cups of tea for the workers????  Yes, you guessed it. Still in the old flat!

And no gas bottle either, so we couldn’t even boil water on the gas stove!

Oh well, a quick phone call meant I could at least bring cola and sprite back from the shops!

So the cleaning started, a second taxi load arrived. You guessed it, still no cleaning materials and still no kettle. But we did find a small travel kettle. Not exactly conducive to “mashing” tea for the 5000, but better than nothing.

Oh and my nice rug flew off the top of the taxi somewhere between East and West Banks!  If you see it anywhere...........

Then we began the wait for the main load coming.  Due at 7pm at the East Bank flat, the car failed to turn up until 9pm, then it had to be loaded with the sofas, and my big wall cabinet as well as other bigger stuff.

Eventually, the car arrived.......  and the whole load was dumped downstairs.  The “carrying” men had gone for tea, and had not returned. The driver was already reversing away from the building and my “other half” was complaining how tired he was. So we took a decision to leave it where it was, it was safe and locked inside the building, and we hoped no-one would want to steal one of my sofas.

Then he got bored and decided to bring in the wall unit. So he rang a friend, got him round and they carried it upstairs, put it together and then expected me to fill it.  No way, it needed a good clean  by this time, and I had no idea where anything was!

So that was the end of the move...... or so I thought.....   more about that soon.

“Time for bed” said Zebedee, eventually.   Hmmmmmmm great idea, but where is the mattress??  My Habitat mattress that cost me a fortune?  Downstairs, buried behind sofas and big chairs!   A quick “throw everything on the floor” session in the second bedroom cleared the big single bed, and we spent the night trying desperately to sleep.  

The mosque called the early morning prayer, and I was still awake.  I gave up trying to sleep, got up, made tea and toast, and sat on the balcony watching the sun come up.  It was magical and serene and I knew in that instance that there was a reason I had to leave the flat I was in, and move back to the West Bank.

I still do not know that reason, but whatever it is, it was time to move. 

Back online

Following my recent move from the East Bank of Luxor to the West Bank of Luxor, I am now the proud owner of a dongle!  I miss my usual adsl connection though! But needs must and I need to be online.
I will be back blogging as usual in the next few days....... beginning with the fun, stress and trauma of moving house in Luxor, Egypt!

See you all soon