Reiki + Akashic Reading | Erin Somerset
I met Erin a couple years back at a pop-up in West Hollywood. She was offering 15 minute Akashic Reading sessions for Place8Healing. A friend and I had made it to the small crystal shop a few days before it was scheduled to disappear, which felt magical in and of itself. But when we heard about this Akashic Reading offering, my whole body shouted, “YES.” And, because I was still living very much in a lack mindset, that yes was immediately shuttered by a voice that said, “but should you?”
So my friend and I decided we’d wander around a bit—and if we still felt called to do it after grabbing lunch, we’d go for it.
Needless to say we went for it. And it opened my world to the Akashic Records.
What are the Akashic Records?
I’ll quote the Starchild Tarot deck I own, because my attempt at paraphrasing won’t do it much justice.
The “Akasha” or Akashic Records is an infinite resource of information that can be accessed to help learn more about our divine blueprints. Also known as “The Great Library” or “Hall of Records,” it is a representation of the primordial life force energies that exist in all things, the collective consciousness, as well as every thought, action, word or emotion that has ever existed. As so much is stored within its database, it is constantly changing and updating with new information—much like a living energy (which can also be described as divine Source, or the mind of the Universe).
Accessing the Akashic Records can be done in various ways—through meditation, visualization, dreaming, or even tarot. Very often, this access will come in energetic downloads that may be described as strong intuitive insights as your frequency elevates over time. That is not to say that these are the only methods for learning: how you access your own Akashic Records will be specific to you, so trusting your intuition will be very helpful as you learn to navigate this Universal tool.
In other words—or as I would have paraphrased—the Akashic Records = Universal Consciousness. We are all connected to this consciousness whether we like it or not. It is all-knowing and extraordinarily ‘neutral’ in that it doesn’t communicate through the lens of ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Things simply ‘are.’ And this Great Library or Hall of Records, if you will, tells it like it is.
So.
Within this 15 span, Erin told me things about myself no one else could have keyed in on without any prompts. To be clear, getting an Akashic Record reading is very different from a Psychic reading. In an Akashic reading, the reader calls forth your guides, the energies that are surrounding you at the time, and essentially acts as a translator. ‘Your guides are wanting you to find alignment with yourself, so here’s how to do it’—it’s that kind of thing.
Cut to: a couple years later.
My experience
I’d gifted my partner with a one-hour Reiki + 15-minute Akashic Record reading (Erin calls this combo an Intuitive Session) for his birthday and his experience was so positive, we each decided it would be a great way to start the new year.
It’s January 22, 2019. Erin opens the door. She is warm, vibrant, and covered in tattoos. I’ve always paid special attention to her eyes, which feel so very familiar—large and bright and radiating with the kind of kindness that can only be mastered by someone who has journeyed through the dark ever trusting in the light. This is the kind of person I feel comfortable letting inside my head.
If you’re lucky, you’ll get to meet her toothless Chihuahua, Radar—the happiest pup I’ve ever met—on the way to her studio.
The first thing she’ll do after inviting you in is sit down to chat about whatever you’d like to work on specifically, if anything. For me: I had some low back pain I wanted to work out. Otherwise, a few career questions that I’d been spinning from and could use some clarity around.
When you’re done airing your grievances, Erin will recite a prayer to open your Akashic Records and then you’ll move to the table.
The Reiki Session (1 hr)
The table is essentially a massage table. I’m not sure what kind of mat she had on it, but I remember it was warm. You’re laying on your back for the whole hour, so there’s no rolling over onto your stomach half-way through or anything like that.
Because Erin was trained in Jikiden Reiki—a style of reiki developed in Japan, where she was taught—she refrains from skin-on-skin contact, so she drapes a light towel over your forehead and begins there. I felt a buzzing around my head when she initially started and fell into a deep meditation-like state for the rest of the session. I didn’t fall asleep, but that can happen.
Erin walks around your body and does her thing—which is to say: she places her hands over various parts of your body, acting as a channel to radiate ‘source’ energy into you. The idea here is to clear any ‘stuck’ energy in the body and to invite cleaner, lighter energy in. It’s an excellent tool to help balance our chakras, or energy centers.
Often times, a reiki healer’s hands will get very hot to the touch as they work. A lot of clients feel a warmth radiating onto them and sometimes they can feel the energy move around in their body, too. In my case, I would feel occasional tingling (a good-feeling kind) depending on where Erin was working. I also noticed my stomach rumbling a TON as soon as she started, which is a great sign, actually. It means your digestive system is engaged and working on integrating this clean energy you’re receiving. Your micro-biome is basically your second brain, so this is a really good thing. Clear out all that inflammation!
That’s pretty much that! Because you’re so meditative, the hour flies by. You will want to lay there forever.
Like most post-healing rules, you want to make sure you drink a lot of water after your session.
The Akashic Reading (15 mins)
Sitting down together, Erin relays what she picked up from your Akashic Records as she connected with the energy in your body.
For me, she began by telling me that she saw me morph from Crow to Eagle. It is symbolic, she tells me, of a transformation I’m going through where I have been living in the shadows for a while and I’m ready to be seen more, out in the open, in the light of day. She says she doesn’t always see animals as a metaphor for this kind of thing, but it came through clear as day for me. (I like this because I do lean into animal symbolism a lot. So it feels appropriate that she went there for me).
She went on to say that this Eagle energy also suggests that I am coming to a point in my life where I am learning to stand my ground more (true)—and I need to continue to learn to take up space in a way that I haven’t been taking up space before.
The next message that came through from “them,” as she calls them—who are my guides that appear in the Akashic Record space—is that I need to learn to be ‘less watchful.’ She asserted that the more I wait for ‘the other shoe to drop,’ the more stuck I’ll feel, because it takes too much of my energy to live from that place.
Erin described my energy blocks in my throat+neck and low back. She explained that those are both our creation centers (chakras). The guides told her that passion and creativity and creation are wanting to come through these centers, but are a bit stuck. She tells me, “There’s a part of you that sees things different… and that’s where the gold is.” She encouraged me to approach my creative ventures from a position of, “this is how I see it. This is how it is. It needs to be seen and owned, even if you suspect other people won’t understand it.” She told me that I can go to places that other people don’t necessarily go, and it’s only when I let perfectionism get in the way of creativity where the wheels come off. I need to “feel into the brilliance of what I’ve gone through in my life” in order to move forward.
(Interesting side note: I started to do more ‘dropping into the body’ work after this session, completely forgetting this note. But as soon as I started to get the hang of it, my creativity started to flow. Life really is about FEELING into what we do.)
We talked more about creativity and shifting perspective. And then she said that I was being guided to seek out the things that light me up as a way of getting out of a ‘stuck’ place. Following these momentary bursts of excitement, even if it only lasts for half a second, is how we reconnect to the passion that drives us. “Follow your joy.” (Her use of the word joy really sparked something in me because I’d been receiving a lot of signals in the weeks leading up to this session that essentially said the same thing: follow what brings you joy. So it became clear that I couldn’t ignore this suggestion.)
When Erin is done talking about what she saw, she asks if you have any questions.
I ask her a few about my career path and she gave me some insights into where I could take it.
“Small groups,” she says, describing that I’ll be expanding on my gratitude calendars (she had pre-knowledge about them) into more of a space where I’d be teaching people how to do more of that kind of work, but for themselves. She mentions that creating a physical space where people can go to do the work will allow that work to go deeper.
I ask which guides came through for me. The guides are usually archetypes from various mythologies—saints, gods, goddesses, etc—and really just represent the energetic bodies that are surrounding you at the time.
She told me Archangel Gabriel, the messenger, came through. (He came through for me during our first reading, too. When I told her, she laughed, saying she hadn’t seen him for a while). Gabriel helps solve problems, offers guidance for the future, sends you messages in dreams, and can help you hone your communication.
The Goddess Isis also came through. She is a fierce, intense, maternal, nurturing figure. She’s a phoenix rising from the ashes. With origins in Ancient Egypt, she also became a ‘mother of magic’ figure for some modern Wiccan groups. She is an archetype of a woman who “did it all.” She was a ruler, lover, and mother—a symbol for balance between worlds and for the notion that we are all an amalgamation of so many different aspects of self. They all belong. They can all coexist. She is about embracing your wholeness—a lesson that definitely resonates with me.
Erin also mentions that while he didn’t show up for me, I could ask Archangel Uriel for guidance if I’m confronting writer’s block. He helps spark ideas and offers confidence. Reaching out to these specific entities (vs. praying to ‘the universe’ as a whole) can be helpful because it creates more energetic specificity around what you’re trying to call in, or what you need help with. This is a practice I don’t do often, aside from when I travel (Raphael, the Patron Saint of Travel, is my homeboy on a turbulent flights).
Takeaways
I absolutely love these sessions. They are equal parts relaxing and thought provoking. But I have to admit: I love them even more when I listen back to them a month or so later. So if you’re ever doing a reading like this: RECORD, RECORD, RECORD! Most practitioners encourage this—and if they don’t, that would be a red flag for me. Like, why don’t you want me to revisit this convo?
So much of what Erin told me in the Akashic session makes SO MUCH SENSE in hindsight.
On the day I left Erin’s place I really zeroed-in to trying to find what sparked joy, and to believing that I may see things differently from other people, but that it’s my superpower, not my flaw.
At first it was hard. I wasn’t sure what joy felt like for me—and that was kind of depressing. And I’d oscillate between phases of feeling really good about my unique perspective on life, and then feeling really insecure and down about it. So… it took some time to really wrap my head around this.
But then, almost serendipitously, I was in a class that taught me how to really ‘drop into my body’ to feel joy. And everything just CLICKED. After practicing from this place, everything Erin suggested to me just SNOWBALLED into reality: I started to feel more confident about my perspective (my sense of worthiness grew). I also became more comfortable with being seen. I let go of ‘waiting for the shoe to drop,’ which gave me such a sense of freedom. I EVEN started to design THIS website, where I’m trying to create a space for people to learn to RISE into their self-worth on their own (an extension of a gratitude practice).
What’s crazy about all of it is that these things started happening kind of naturally. I wasn’t always associating my progress to Erin’s reading. But in hindsight, she was on-point with a lot of what I would inevitably learn, simply by learning to tap into joy.
I suppose one could wonder if I would have ended up walking down this path anyway, even without the reading. And if so, was the reading really worth it?
My answer: yes, it was so worth it. I do believe I may have ended up walking this path naturally, regardless of the reading. BUT. I also believe that I have gotten to where I am, right now, much faster than I would have if I’d done it without Erin’s guidance and advice. For example, I would still have learned to drop into my body to discover what joy felt like for me—but I wouldn’t have understood why that was so important for me. Erin’s reading helped me connect the dots, to lean into the impact of that practice. In that sense, I think it would have taken me much longer to have the series of ‘ah ha’ moments that transpired after.
Final verdict: highly recommend
For clarity into what your soul is needing in the moment, this Intuitive Session is fantastic.
I like that it isn’t a ‘psychic’ reading that delves into what ‘definitely will or won’t happen’ for you in the future—it’s meant to guide you toward the energies and practices that will support you now, for your highest good. And, of course, the Reiki leaves you feeling so incredible—both energized and relaxed. Just make sure to drink lots of water afterward! Much like a physical massage, you’ve just massaged all your energy centers, so your body will be craving hydration to rejuvenate.
To learn more about Erin Somerset, visit Diamond Mind Reiki or check her out on Instagram at @diamondmindreiki
I signed up for her Intuitive Session, a combo Reiki + Akashic session, but she also offers these services separate of each other.