A House Built on Love

June 2022

Last night I dreamed our house was being torn down.

I was sitting in a chair looking out the window and marveling at all the rubble that accumulated. (I know in real life if our house were being torn down, I wouldn’t be sitting in a chair looking out the window. But remember, this is a dream!) 

Then it hit me.  

My dream was symbolic of what’s happening in my life right now. I’ve been a yoga teacher since 2006. That’s a long time of telling someone, “I teach yoga,” when they ask what I do.  A lot of my identity is wrapped up in it. In this small town, I’ll see someone out, and they’ll be like, “Hey, you’re the yoga teacher. I took your class.” 

So it felt funny when I began offering Reiki and someone asked what I did. I’d say, “I’m a yoga teacher. And I also do Reiki.” Whenever I gave that response, it felt so yucky to me. It felt like Reiki was an aside I was sure no one had heard of, or found credible, so I tagged it onto the end and focused on yoga instead. But thanks to a brilliant business coach, I had the realization that Reiki is not really my side hustle, it’s actually my main squeeze. No wonder it landed so wrong in my own ears (heart and mind) when I always put it a distant second. 

This dream was telling me I’m tearing down the house I built singlehandedly and have lived in for so long. To me, especially because I’m a radical homebody, a house - my house - brings, comfort, safety, stability, refuge, and is where I’m most comfortable, creative and “at home.”  In real life we recently moved from my childhood home, which was my grandparents’ house, to where we are now. Before we moved, I never dreamed I’d be anywhere else. I called it our forever home, and meant it. In fact, in this dream, and in all my house dreams - which are many - it was THAT house that I saw. But move we did. It was meant to be for many, many reasons. One being, it’s here in our new home that my intuitive senses have skyrocketed, where I discovered Reiki and began seeing clients. It’s here where I now have my Reiki studio. 

Tearing down my metaphorical home doesn’t mean I’ll no longer teach yoga. But what I see clearly now is that my house isn’t built on yoga alone. The foundation of my house is built on love and service. It’s appropriate then, that Michelle Whelan Yoga is reemerging now as Love & Reiki. It’s a house built on love and service, and includes my special ways of offering both. And the doors are open.