Daily Inspiration: Meet Katy Council

Today we’d like to introduce you to Katy Council. 

Katy, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve been involved in spiritual practices since 2007 when I joined a community in California. I moved to Colorado in 2013. From my spiritual community in California, I learned about the community in Westminster which holds sweat lodges on weekends and a Sun Dance annually. I’ve always been aware of the energy in myself and others around me. I guess you could call me an empath, but it took me a long time to understand what that meant and how it affected me. Through my personal spiritual growth, I learned how to work with energy and better understand how to control the energy I was sending out and protect myself from energy from others. I was first introduced to Reiki when I was living in California and working as a 5th-grade teacher at a private school in Ojai, California. Ojai Valley School was a private school with a focus on outdoor education. We would take the kids on week-long camping trips in the fall and spring. On one such trip, we had been helping the kids unload their camping equipment from the buses. I had strained my back. During dinner, I complained of the pain to my coworker who was also a reiki master. She said, “I can help you with that.” She stood behind me and placed her hand on my lower back, and within seconds I could feel a warmth radiating from her palm. After just a few minutes, the pain was gone. I was amazed and asked more about reiki. 

It wasn’t until many years later that I pursued the knowledge of practicing reiki for myself. I was in the process of deciding that I didn’t want to be a teacher any longer around 2016. I was kind of stuck in my decision to leave this profession in which I had been a teacher for over ten years. I wanted to choose something that was more in line with my personal goals. One time after returning home from drumming at the Sun Dance ceremony, my hands were feeling warm and tingly, which reminded me of my experience at the campground. Reiki popped into my head repeatedly until I looked up reiki classes in Denver. I took reiki levels one and two at first. I really enjoyed it and decided to come back to finish the master’s course a year later. I started my business in 2017 by building a website. 

The business is growing slowly but surely. I’m at a place now where I wish I could just be available every day for bookings, but I also have jobs in catering that keep me busy. Once I have a predictable income from reiki sessions, I would like to open a practice at an office where I can see clients on a regular basis. 

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I enjoy reiki immensely. I like meeting people who are aware of reiki or are drawn to it. I’ve always wanted to help people. I majored in psychology in college because I enjoy talking to people and I’ve always been intuitive about what to say and how to help someone get through a tough time. My purpose is to help to raise the vibration of the planet, and doing reiki helps with that in so many ways. The toughest part is knowing that I could grow my business by placing ads or investing in a marketing firm to help get my business’s name out there but not really having the capital to do so. Before the pandemic, I was starting to go to music festivals or events where there is a healing village so I could get my name out there and educate people about reiki. Another limitation is that reiki hasn’t quite made it to the mainstream of knowledge out there as much as massage or even acupuncture. Reiki is now being used in many hospitals around the country, but many people I meet have never heard of it. 

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
When I was young, everyone always asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I never really had an answer. As an adult now, I think I just don’t fit into the traditional view of having a job where one sits at a desk and stares at a computer screen. I get bored doing the same things over and over. I think I got into teaching because I loved kids and people and I wanted to make a difference in the world. In the early days of teaching, coming up with creative ways to teach children was something that intrigued me and allowed me to do something different every day even though I was in the same room with the same people for nine months. But something that has always been a part of my spare time has been art. I have so many ideas and wish I could just spend the entire day making my visions become real. Currently, I have been working on a project I call the aspen window. It’s got quartz crystals for the trunks, green kyanite as the grass, and yellow fire pit glass as the leaves, all glued onto a large window that I found in the alley. Another project that took me years to complete was a white deer hide dress that I designed myself, cut, and sewed by hand with artificial sinew. I made the fringe myself. The beading I didn’t do it because I haven’t mastered that skill yet, but I sewed the bead strips onto the dress. This is the piece that I am the proudest of. I also enjoy costuming and coming up with ideas that I can make out of fabric. I think what sets me apart from others is my ability to problem-solve. Sometimes in art, you have to think outside the box to make a dream become reality, and being able to find a way to do something that hasn’t been done before is challenging and fun. 

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I was an outgoing child and a good student. I tested for the Gifted and Talented program but chose not to participate in it, although now I wish I had. I had no siblings to play with but there were a few kids in the neighborhood. I walked to school or rode my bike. I had a set of Breyer horses in my room that I played with constantly. I was never really into Barbie or dolls but rather liked to play with Star Wars figurines and the X-Wing fighter. I remember playing with toy trucks and cars and building dirt roads in my mom’s rose garden outside. We always had dogs and I would take them for walks and train and play with them. I went to YMCA summer camp and eventually became a camp counselor. My parents would take me camping in the nearby San Bernardino mountains of Upland, California. I loved swimming and was on the swim team and track team or cross country in high school. Every summer for vacation, we would go visit my grandparents in Heavener, Oklahoma, or Pensacola, Florida, both very rich experiences for a kid from California. Heavener was a small town in which going to “swimming holes”, collecting blackberries, riding in the back of Pa’s (my grandfather) 1969 Ford truck, or sitting on the back porch during muggy summer nights was the highlight. In Pensacola, we would rent a beach house and I would spend the entire day in the water, snorkeling and playing with my “fishy friends”, looking for sand dollars and shark’s teeth. I could walk down the street from my grandparents’ house and cut through the neighbor’s yard to a private beach. I would take a raft or swim across a small channel to a little uninhabited island and play Gilligan’s Island. We would go crabbing and shelling. I feel very blessed to have loving parents who supported me and encouraged me to follow my dreams. 

Pricing:

• Reiki sessions $75 an hour
• Remote Reiki session $60
• Sound bath $60
• Crystal Harmonizing $60
• Home blessing $50

Contact Info:

• Email: honuhula617@gmail.com
• Website: twinhawkreiki.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/klcouncil/