Throughout the globe, our pre-Gregorian calendar ancestors used the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, to mark the timing of their harvest cycles and to gather in ceremony and celebration.

Lately it feels like, as a culture, we’ve gotten further and further away from our hearts.

Let’s be real. This year has been an emotional rollercoaster.

Not only did studying reiki give me strong foundational understanding of energy healing, but also it opened a portal to deepen my intuitive gifts.

For many of us, 2025 has been somewhat of a rough ride. No matter how resourced and energetically aware you’ve been, the chaos of this time has the potential to frazzle the nervous system and stimulate discomfort in the mind-body, which in turn can put a strain on relationships and increase overall stress.

I’ve had the honor of doing intuitive readings for over five years and, while every session is unique, there’s a core question that keeps coming up over and over:

When I tuned into the energy of May, what came through was: sun star

Reiki is one of the core practices, along with the akashic records and sound, that I weave into all of my healing and creative work.

The more I’ve leaned into a healing vocation, the more I see that wellness is a remembering that we, too, are nature.

The word “beauty” may evoke a lot of things… You might think of a complex industry—things to buy that can alter the appearance or even impossible standards that abhor uniqueness. But what if we remembered that beauty is simply a frequency?

The thing about lightning is that what we see is just a tiny fraction of a culmination of a whole set of conditions.

At the beginning of this year, I channeled the energetic themes for each month, and the word that came through for April is:

Lightning

I used to be a current events and news junkie but, in recent years, I’ve been more selective about how much media I consume in order to conserve and protect my energy.

Despite being so conscientious about where I place my attention, one day last week, I was really feeling the intensity of the collective suffering under the current political regime.

What I didn’t realize pre-spiritual awakening, was how I’d been unknowingly holding myself back from fully feeling true joy, passion, and peace.

People often describe me as “grounded.” I like the sound of that—especially because, for many years, I worked as a business analyst on the 59th floor of a landmark building in midtown Manhattan. I think of that time spent hovering in the skyline and then I think of the immense gratitude that emerges whenever I have bare feet on the ground…

When I tuned into the energetic theme for February, Awakening is the word that came through.

At first, I thought, “that’s pretty basic.”

But now I see how truly relevant awakening is particularly right now, in this historical moment.

Sobbing at Newark airport.

Massive flight delays in Manila.

My aunt passing away days after I bought my ticket to see her.

At first glance, you could easily throw all of these into the “bad things” bucket.

I’ve been called to the land of my ancestors from my maternal lineage. Next week I’ll take an epic journey to facilitate group healing sessions at a wellness summit in the Philippines.

This is a time when nature, post-Winter Solstice, remains in a potent portal of dormancy and wintry slumber.

While the days slowly begin to lighten, the still darker days bid you to go inward and to simply be present. Perhaps asking you to witness the wisdom within yourself.

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jo-Anne Suriel