Finding her way and healing others

When Christine Connell talks about what lead her to create The White Space, a Reiki healing, training and meditation centre she set up in the lower level of her home in Portland Estates last year, she describes her journey through the language of a traveller. But it wasn't always an easy passage.

It was 10 years ago when the young Swiss-born woman first encountered Reiki, on a trip to England, during a time when Connell says she was "just like a little train trying to find its rails."

Connell was drawn by the simplicity of Reiki as a natural self-healing technique. As a trained psychiatric nurse, Connell says she has always been drawn to the healing arts.

"I love being able to help guide someone to their own true path. It is there for all of us to find, but sometimes we can't find it because of all the heaviness ... the luggage we all carry," she said.

Following her move to Nova Scotia seven years ago, Connell continued to practice Reiki, as well as teach classes to others who wanted to become Reiki practitioners. Unable to work as a nurse here in Nova Scotia, she continued her Reiki practice, but relied on other jobs - including a stint as a mortgage broker - to help pay the bills.

Last year, after the break up of her marriage, Connell sunk into a deep depression like nothing she had ever experienced before. During those dark days she rekindled her love of working with clay, creating a small sculpture she called "Free Spirit." At some point in the making of that piece, Connell says she realized she was ready to make some big changes in her life and The White Space was born.

"I felt like I was finally letting go. It was like jumping out of an airplane. I didn't know where I was going to land. I still don't," Connell said.

The White Space is a few things. It's a teaching space. It's a meditation centre. It's a growing hotspot for workshops on a variety of different topics, such as understanding the chakra system and learning how to use crystals for health benefits. And it's a welcoming space for other people involved in alternative healing therapies to come together every Sunday night to recharge and learn from one another.

It's also, of course, where Connell herself practices Reiki, as well as hypnotherapy - a type of therapy she discovered when she was struggling to overcome her own depression.

Connell knows there are many who would scoff at much of what she does. With a slight shrug she says to the skeptics: "Don't believe, don't disbelieve. Experience."

"It's hard to explain much of what I do so even in the classes I teach, I tell people to take what I say with a pinch of salt," she said. "The most important thing is to allow yourself to experience something for yourself. Then take what works and leave the rest."

For more information on The White Space and the work that Christine Connell does, go to www.thewhitespace.ca.

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