Nora Nouidjem wanted a change and jumped to the unknown without having a clue what she was going to do. She quit her job, sold her belongings and left her life in France to start a big trip to travel the world. Something would come up, she thought, and through some peculiar events she ended up becoming a Reiki healer in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
I met Nora when I was visiting my friend in Playa del Carmen, also known as “Playa” by the locals. She is a next-door neighbor of my friend and by the number of people coming and going it looked like she had something good going on in there, and I was curious to learn more about what she was doing. I had never tried Reiki before, but it felt like the right time and place to try.
Reiki is about balancing and releasing energy. According to Chopra Center, the human body is a complete energy system, and any kind of imbalance in the body can create blocks in the flow of energy, which can cause negative thoughts and feelings or even make you sick. Energy healing is a method that helps the energy flow within your body to move without blockages.
The purpose of Nora’s treatments is to clean energy and help her patients to get more deeper vision of life through the process. Everything is energy and so are we, but often we don’t necessarily understand how it works. Nora explains that through Reiki we can experience and understand more about life.
“I love Reiki because it’s a really powerful system of health, it can help people physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually – it’s like magic! I’ve never had patients who said that they don’t feel anything after the treatment. Some might say that they don’t understand what happened, but they feel different anyway”, Nora tells.
And I was not an exception. I don’t know what happened or how she did it, but I experienced a clear mental shift, I felt peaceful and more connected with myself after the session. Also, the physical implications were visible, my body reacted like I had been in a deep tissue massage even though Nora’s touch was very light, and massage is not part of Reiki. However, my metabolism got wild after the session and my bladder got some extra work to do.
After the session, we ended up talking for a while. I was intrigued by her and her work. I could see that she knew what she was doing, and she was passionate about it. When connecting with her, I felt like she was radiating love, wisdom, and kindness. I got so inspired and curious about her thoughts that I knew right away I wanted to interview her.
Just start, even if the vision is not ready yet
Nora has lived in Playa for seven years. Before she left France, she didn’t have a clue what she wanted to do. But she knew that she was done with the busy lifestyle and it was time for something new.
“I was travelling for a longer time and thinking of what I want to do next. I wanted to do something that makes me happy, I was fed up working only for money or social position. At that point I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do, so first I decided to stay here in Playa”, Nora explains in her terrace a few days after the treatment.
She didn’t stay in Playa by coincidence. On her third day in the town, something weird happened to her. She was walking with her friend, when suddenly in the middle of the street she got a vision. She describes it as some kind of an out of body experience, where she lost the sense of time and place while cars were passing by. During that experience, she got a strong feeling that she should stay in Playa, that this town is her place to be.
When she returned into this world, her friend was panicking about what had gone into her. Nora didn’t even remember stopping in the middle of the street. However, she remembered what she had just experienced and decided to listen to the message and act accordingly. The big trip around the world had come to an end, resulting in her finding a new home in Playa.
When talking to Nora, it becomes clear that we don’t need to have a clear vision of our dreams and goals if we want a change.
After jumping into the unknown, it took her for a while to find her mission and accept it. At first, she was only experimenting with Reiki by herself. She resisted the idea of taking it any further because she was afraid of the responsibility. Resistance is always some form of fear.
Dead cockroaches guiding the way forward
There was a turning point that made her convinced that she has some capabilities and skills in the field of energies and cleansing. One day a friend of hers asked if she could come and do an energetic cleaning at their house. She was resistant at first but then decided to give it a go. She did her thing at the house in the evening and the results appeared the next morning. Her friend had found piles of dead cockroaches after waking up in the morning.
“There were no signs of cockroaches when I did the cleaning, and the next morning there was a dustpan pouring over of dead cockroaches when I went over. It was amazing, I think they were a symbol of bad energy and it was the result of the cleaning”, Nora thinks.
After that incident, she got convinced that she was supposed to work with Reiki. She started step by step, exploring the topic and writing a book about energies. Then she started studying and got her degrees in both Reiki healing and teaching. It took her about a year to accept that this was her mission.
At first, it was difficult to make a living only by Reiki as people in Playa don’t have that much money for treatments. Luckily Nora was also a trained French teacher, so she started with two jobs. Teaching French was the safety net while Reiki was the calling. With Reiki, she was very conscious of her intentions. To serve, was her main motivator, not making a big buck.
“It was really important for me to be careful with my mind. I didn’t want to do Reiki treatments and only think about money. I give Reiki to help people, not for the money”, Nora clarifies her intentions.
When working with Reiki Nora’s goal is to make her clients understand that they can heal themselves and all the solutions they need are already inside of them.
Part of her work is to help her clients to expand their minds. This means becoming more conscious and aware of the mind’s tricks and understanding that we all have the capability to calm the mind.
This approach means that her clients don’t need to see her every week, but they can do a lot of the work themselves. A sign of a true service mind-set.
“I’m happy when people send messages and tell me things like: ‘I feel really good, I’ve been observing myself and when I see that I’m about to repeat a pattern I just don’t do it. Because I know it’s an illusion’”, Nora shares some of her client feedback.
The purpose of life is to be happy
When talking with Nora about the purpose of life her answer comes without any hesitation. She is confident that the purpose of life is to be happy – and it’s not only her purpose but all of ours. As her current mission with Reiki makes her happy, she has both her mission and purpose in place.
“My purpose is to be happy, and that’s your purpose too, I understood that a long time ago. And helping people is what makes me happy. If tomorrow something else makes me happy, I’m going to start doing that”, Nora explains firmly.
I like that, why should we overcomplicate it. I don’t think we came into this planet to suffer. So why not trying to find ways to be happy and spread high vibes around us?
How to find happiness then? Nora’s recommendation is to start with figuring out what makes you happy. Start by asking what you do when you feel happy? What do you want from life? Sometimes knowing what you don’t want can get you started. Then have the courage to start. Take steps towards your desired life, have faith and the rest will follow.
The intention is the key. She explains that if we start building our dreams from the state of gratitude, we put the right energy into our desires. It doesn’t matter what the current situation is but finding things to be grateful in the moment is an important building block. Then having the faith and positive anticipation to go forward is the next step.
I believe that being happy is an inside job. Every morning we can choose whether to see the glass half empty or half full, sometimes it might require a cup of coffee to be able to do that decision. But it’s good to take the decision and not let random events in life to do that for you, and become a victim.
