MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — A woman shared her journey toward a holistic lifestyle and what it’s like to be one of the only Black business owners practicing Reiki in Milwaukee.
“It’s every day I do Reiki, every day; I did it this morning trying to clear my head,” said Angela Smith.
Smith is a holistic life coach, which she says for some people, means being a spiritual doula, a Reiki master/teacher, and/or a yogi.
She owns The Zen Dragonfly and conducts a variety of holistic therapies.
“I do shamanic drumming sessions where people go on journeys, I do full out crystal sessions, I do spiritual baths where people actually come and take a physical bath, I read tarot,” Smith added.
She also practices a Japanese form of alternative medicine known as Reiki, aimed to reduce stress and promote relaxation through energy healing.
“It mainly goes through the hands, through the breath or through the eyes, you can just beam the Reiki to a person,” she said. “Reiki, also, is that it’s all in the chakra system, so the seven chakras that start from the crown, the third eye, the throat, the heart, the solar plexus, the sacral and the root chakra.”
Smith said it all started in 2005 when she bought a house in Milwaukee.
“I hurt my back when we first got this house, lifting a window, and I went to a Reiki practitioner,” she explained. “I didn’t even know what Reiki was…and so, I had a session, and I felt a relief in my back, and I was like ‘oh, I gotta find out what this is.'”
Smith said after her first experience, she searched for someone she could identify with.
“I started looking for other people of color, practitioners, and didn’t see them, and I’ve always been this ‘if I don’t see it, then maybe I can create space to bring more people in,'” Smith said.
The entrepreneur trained for four years to officially become a Reiki master, often practicing behind closed doors until she said she felt a shift.
“When I turned 40, I had this moment…I went, what is this about? And I could feel it,” she explained. “Also, cause I can hear my ancestors –my grandmother and my aunt — I hear them, and they were like, ‘you can’t be the way you are anymore, you have to let people know, they need you.'”
Smith officially opened her full-time shop in Milwaukee in July 2022.
“It’s not my job to say, ‘you’re healed,’ it’s not my job,” she concluded. “But my job is to assist you on your journey to find the clarity, and the movement, and get out of the stagnation that you need to move forward in it.”
Aligning a blend of life coaching and spiritual guidance to live a happy and healthy life.
