“Sensei, You’re Not Going to Make Much Money Like That”

Today, a woman in her seventies visited my salon for the first time.

She told me that she had tried a wide range of health devices and wellness products. She had, of course, also been seeing doctors.

As I listened to her, I began to see not only what was happening with her body, but also how she spent her days.

She is a full-time homemaker and has a fair amount of time at her disposal.

When she has time on her hands, she tends to keep searching online for information about her body and health. The more she searches, the more new information she finds, and each discovery gives her something else to worry about.

She also cannot stop worrying about her recently born grandchild.

Before doing anything more for her body, I thought it might be better to create a structure that would prevent worry from taking over her entire day.

So I suggested making a simple daily schedule.

Reading, cleaning, laundry, cooking, walking.

It did not have to include anything special.

She could divide her day into 30-minute or one-hour blocks and decide in advance what to do during each one.

The purpose was not to fill every moment of her day.

It was to reduce the time she spent automatically reaching for her phone, endlessly researching her health, and worrying about things that had not even happened.

When our attention is constantly directed inward toward the body, even a small sensation can begin to feel much larger than it really is.

I believe we also need time to direct our attention outward.

In the middle of our conversation, she suddenly said,

“I can see your aura very clearly.”

She said it appeared to be blue.

“I normally can’t see anything like that. It has been such a long time.”

She was not the first person to tell me that they could see my aura.

At the Meguro salon in particular, some people have described it as being so strong that it was almost dazzling.

I cannot see auras myself.

For that reason, I have no way of verifying whether they are truly seeing something. Nor do I know whether it is a good thing or what it might mean.

“Perhaps it’s because my energy is strong,” I replied.

During more than half of that first one-hour session, we were not doing hands-on treatment. We were talking about her daily life.

How she spent her day.

How to breathe when she remained tense.

How much distance to keep from her smartphone.

And how to direct her attention toward other people and the world outside herself.

After the treatment, I suggested that she might benefit from joining a volunteer group or becoming involved in her local community.

A hobby group would be fine.

So would a service organization such as Rotary or Lions Clubs.

She could find a place where she enjoyed herself, met people she liked, and spent some of her time doing something for others.

In her case, I felt that spending her time and money in that direction would bring a more positive change to her life as a whole than searching for yet another health remedy.

She smiled and said,

“Sensei, you’re not going to make much money like that.”

Then she asked,

“Does that mean I don’t need to come back here?”

I told her to begin by trying what we had discussed that day.

For now, going outside, meeting people, and spending time on something other than herself seemed more important than making another appointment.

“Sensei, you’re not going to make much money like that.”

Perhaps she was right.