What makes me tick...

Janice Pappas

Janice is a certified Reiki Energy Healer based in San Diego, CA. She specializes in deep one-on-one intuitive healing. The same creative force that she channels in her Reiki sessions, she also uses to fuel the fire for her acrylic paintings, yoga & meditation classes, and published spiritual articles.

My Intention

My intention is to maintain the highest vibration in my everyday life, so I can serve as the best possible channel for facilitating deep healing. I believe that quality is more valuable than quantity. My intent is to build a truly authentic connection with you and serve as a powerful healing guide in your life. Through a long-term relationship, I wish to show you how to maintain an optimum level of health, creativity, and passion. I also aim to create a strong foundation of mutual trust and respect. I honor the healer and teacher that already exists in you.

My Story

For a long time I believed that my spiritual journey began in the lush jungles of the Big Island of Hawaii. However, if I look really deeply, the journey actually began much earlier than my stay in Hawaii; it began outside an everyday Starbucks on Park Avenue in Manhattan. As is typical of many spiritual journeys, it was sparked by a deep and overwhelming dissatisfaction with the world. Oftentimes, it's only through deep dissatisfaction that we go on a desperate search for something better.

I was incredibly disillusioned by life (could not see the point of it), and I was unhappy with my profession and my busy, stressful environment. I had spent 3 years of my early adulthood working in New York for a large multi-national bank. I found the work and clientele exciting, but the stress, greed, and materialism of Wall St. became too much.

During this time, something in my psyche was speaking to me: "There must be another way. This can't be it." But instead of listening to that inner voice, I covered it up with extra projects at work and exciting vacations. If I had any free time at all, I would disengage my mind with T.V. shows, Netflix, and an endless stream of social engagements and new excursions around the city. But one day it all came to halt.

It was a regular 15-hour work day like all the others, and I was finishing up my projects around 10pm. My team was excitedly planning a happy hour together. Spending more time with co-workers was literally the last thing I felt like doing, but I knew I was expected to attend or it would be deeply frowned upon. One hour and a couple drinks later I was walking home along Park Avenue and experienced a terrifying panic attack for the first time in my life. There was a tiny piece of greenery outside of the local Starbucks, and I fell on the ground crying and gasping for breath. That was the exact moment that I decided to change my life. Anything was better than this. I had ignored my inner voice for long enough.

Fast forward to a year later, and I found myself at an exquisitely beautiful retreat center on the Big Island of Hawaii. I was a volunteering my time by assisting in the kitchen, but mainly I was there to re-group and discover what it was like to experience the sun again after years of artificial lighting. All the classes at the center were free to volunteers, so during my first week there, I decided to be extra adventurous (as we all tend to be in new tropical environments): I signed up for my very first yoga class.

Keep in mind that at this point I was about as far removed from spiritual matters as one can imagine. I was very immersed in a material mindset and skeptical of all the "hocus pocus" manifesting chatter that I was hearing around the center. I didn't know anyone personally who had done yoga before, and I had no idea what on earth a "chakra" was. Fortunately for me, I was about to get a bold awakening into the power of life force energy.

The first class I decided to attend was something called "Kundalini Yoga." Of course I had absolutely no clue what that funny looking word meant, but the class was at a convenient time. This "Kundalini" teacher guided us into a lot of arm-flapping, spine twisting, belly crunching, and neck turning. The experience would not have been complete without the bizarre chanting that was to accompany these strange, repetitive movements. At the end of the class everyone laid down onto their backs for deep relaxation.

After all that vigorous movement, I was expecting to experience a nice, peaceful state of half-consciousness, where I might even drift off to sleep. That's not what happened. Instead I experienced an intense expression of life force energy, the same force channeled in reiki and other healing modalities. It felt like electricity was coursing up and down my whole body for at least 10 minutes. I found the experience to be absolutely exhilarating, more powerful than anything I had ever felt in my body. From that moment on, I was officially hooked on yoga, and I continue to practice regularly to this day.

So what does this have to do with Reiki? Well about 3 years after this experience, I began to feel intense tingling sensations and electrical-like sparks in my hands, arms, and the crown of my head. Because of my experience in Hawaii, I instantly recognized that these sensations were of a spiritual nature and in no way indicative of a severe physical illness. The sparks mostly appeared during yoga and meditation practices at first, but suddenly they were present throughout the day. I happily discovered that if I just focused on them, they would come!

After doing some research (I love to research), I read that these sensations are often indicative of healing energy that wants to be expressed. As fate would have it, that same year I received a Facebook message from a friend that wanted to host a Reiki training at my house. You can't ask the universe for a louder sign than that! And that is how I became a Reiki Energy Healer. I have since worked on many people and have been in complete awe of this practice many times over. In all honesty, I don't entirely understand how it works (it's beyond what science can currently explain), but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Reiki is very powerful. How do I know this? Because I've experienced it myself, and I've seen amazing transformations in others. One day I hope to have the opportunity to guide you on the path of energy healing and witness your experience!