Mother and Baby Clinic history

Having experienced the benefits of Reiki for myself and my family, especially with my children, I had wanted to specialise in working with mothers and babies for a long time.

In March 2004, I was away with my colleagues Lucy Patterson and Caroline Macaulay for the first ever Practitioner Support Programme residential workshop organised by the Reiki Association. There I discovered that we have our teacher, Tripuri Dunne's blessings to start a clinic for mother and babies. Being away from home, surrounded by wonderful Reiki energy, the idea took a firm hold that weekend and I started to plan the project. In fact I could not stop thinking about it. Lucy and Caroline both agreed to help set it up.

Without Tripuri's continual guidance and support, I do not know if I would have ever had the courage and confidence to start this clinic. As a mother herself, supporting mothers is a subject close to her own heart. She has set up a fantastic Reiki community in South London, where people are very supportive of each other. I got a lot of support from some of her other students also.

Lucy did a brilliant job in designing all the artwork, the poster and the leaflets. She was involved right from the beginning, helping me to plan the clinic, set it up etc. Her contribution in setting up the clinic has been invaluable.

We started the clinic in June 2004 in a community Hall in Balham, SW London. Caroline Gray became the third regular member of our team giving a lot of her time to come and help at the clinic. Margaret Shaw, Grainne Warner and Caroline Macaulay also helped out. It was a very slow start and we were struggling to spread the word about the clinic to the pregnant women and mothers who could benefit from Reiki.

In September 2004, I met Sharon Baylis at Reiki Association's Annual gathering at Buckland Hall in Wales. I asked her for help in spreading the word about the clinic. I cannot ever thank Sharon enough for all the help. She helped me write to various organisations and publications. She wrote brilliant articles about Reiki and the Mother & Baby clinic. She helped me polish endless documents that I sent to her, making them more structured, readable, and eye catching. She has been very inspiring, helping me raise the profile of the clinic. Reiki Association has a real treasure in her.

Families SouthWest magazine, a local publication, was very supportive and mentioned the clinic quite a few times. It is doing wonderful work in informing local mothers about complementary therapies. I have had very good response at the clinic from being mentioned in it.

In January 2005, Tripuri introduced me to Philippa Decker at Balham Therapy Rooms and I was able to move the clinic there. It made my life much easier. Instead of having to take a car load of things to setup the clinic at the community hall, I could just go to the Therapy Rooms and it was all beautifully setup. The clinic got a better location that was more easily accessible. Philippa and her team provided excellent support.

The website was setup in March 2005 with the help of Rajeev Agarwal. He not only designed it, implemented it and hosts it, he was patient enough to teach me how to maintain it.

Thank you everyone for all your tremendous support and help. Thank you for helping me make a difference in people's lives.