A Bunny-Sized Hole: What a 4-Year-Old Taught Me About the Power of Energy Work
My son was four years old when he started telling me his heart hurt.
He kept pressing his little hand to his chest and saying it felt heavy. As a parent, that’s not a report you take lightly. We went through the responsible steps — reviewed his diet with his pediatrician, ruled out reflux, made sure nothing was physically wrong.
Everything checked out. But the heavy feeling remained.
A reiki practitioner at my personal trainer’s studio came highly recommended, so I made an appointment. She worked with children often and was genuinely delighted when we walked in. My son, being four and endlessly curious, immediately wanted to know what she was doing with her hands.
She explained that she could sense energy — that it showed up to her as warm or cool tingles. She let him practice alongside her, sensing the energy field himself. He was completely smitten.
As he relaxed into the table and she moved through his field, she paused.
She described an empty space in his chest. About the size, she said, of a stuffed animal. Or a cat.
I felt my breath catch.
His eyes flew open. “It’s a bunny-sized hole, isn’t it?”
Victor — his beloved gray Angora rabbit — had crossed the Rainbow Bridge one month before.
I knew they had been close. I did not know that my four-year-old was still carrying that grief as a physical weight in his chest, unable to name what was wrong because he didn’t yet have the words for that kind of loss.
She did. She acknowledged it fully, told him about her own beloved cat who had passed, and talked with him gently about animal friends crossing over. Then she filled his field with golden light and we went home.
That afternoon, my son was full of life. Bubbly. Himself again.
And I understood something that no book had ever quite managed to teach me: energy work isn’t waving hands over another person. It’s facilitating their healing. The healing doesn’t come from the practitioner — it comes through them. Like a guide on a mountain, pointing out the blocks a person can remove themselves, and showing the way toward the light.
The Moment I Knew I Had to Learn This Myself
That session planted a seed. But it wasn’t until I found the Good Knight Network — and saw that Reiki training was part of what they offered — that the seed finally cracked open.
I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t agonize over whether I was “ready” or whether I had any natural ability. I just knew, with a clarity that bypassed all of that, exactly why I needed to be in that room.
My kids. My students. My animals.
The people I loved most were sometimes hurting in ways I couldn’t fix with words or logic or the right snack. I had watched what one session did for my four-year-old and his bunny-sized hole. I wanted to be able to offer that. Not as a substitute for professional care, but as something I could bring — with my own hands, in my own home, in the everyday moments that don’t come with an appointment.
That’s not an abstract calling. That’s a mother’s instinct meeting a healing modality and recognizing each other.
What Training Actually Gave Me
Before my formal training, I thought of Reiki as something that happened to me — something I received passively on a table. I didn’t think of it as something I could do.
That’s the most common misconception I encounter. People assume this kind of healing belongs to someone else. That there’s a special category of person who can channel energy, and they’re probably not it.
Here’s what I know now: the attunement changes that.
Reiki training isn’t a lecture or a memorization exercise. It’s an energetic transmission from teacher to student — one that opens and calibrates your channel. You don’t manufacture the energy. You become a clearer conduit for it.
There is a scaffold — hand positions and protocols that give you a place to start. But the real work begins after the scaffold is in place. You learn to listen. To feel where your hands are drawn. To follow the guidance of Source rather than just execute a technique.
The scaffold holds you. Your intuition leads you.
And you feel it working immediately.
The first time I offered Reiki to one of my own children, I felt heat moving through my palms before I even made contact. She relaxed in a way that had nothing to do with anything I consciously did. Something bigger was moving through the space — and I was simply the willing vessel.
That’s when I understood what I’d been missing all those years of receiving sessions without training. I had been watching something that was always meant to flow through me too.
Why an Intensive Is Different
The traditional path to Reiki certification asks you to wait — months between each level, sitting with each attunement before moving to the next. For some students, that pacing is exactly right.
But for others, it creates unnecessary distance between the calling and the answer.
If you’ve been feeling a pull toward healing work — not casual curiosity, but a pull — waiting doesn’t serve you. It gives you more time to talk yourself out of something your hands already know.
Sophia West’s 5-day Reiki Intensive is built for exactly this. In one focused, immersive container, you move through Reiki Level 1, 2, and Master, plus animal Reiki certification. Not as a shortcut — as an intensive. The transformation is real, the attunements are deep, and you leave not just certified but genuinely changed.
And because Sophia understands that sending someone home after that kind of opening would be irresponsible, you don’t leave alone. You’re welcomed into our Circle community of practitioners, invited to our monthly Reiki Share (always free), and Sophia remains your teacher long after the five days end.
Who This Is For
You might be ready if you’ve sat in a room where healing was happening and felt something move through your hands, even though you weren’t the one practicing.
If you’ve ever pressed your hands onto someone you love who was hurting and felt heat, or a pull, or just a deep knowing that something was flowing.
If you’re drawn to children, animals, or anyone carrying invisible weight — and you sense that what you have to offer goes beyond words or strategy.
If you’ve been saying “someday” long enough that someday is starting to feel like an excuse.
A four-year-old boy once walked into a treatment room carrying a bunny-sized hole in his chest that no one could see. A practitioner who trusted her own hands found it, named it, and held space for him to let it go.
That’s what this work does. That’s what you’re being trained to do.
You don’t need more time to decide. You need the right teacher, the right container, and five days to say yes to what you already know.
The April Reiki Intensive with Sophia West is forming now.
Learn more and register here →
Questions? Reach out at thegoodknightnetwork@gmail.com — we read every message.
Amy Marotz, M.Ed., is Vice President of the Good Knight Network and a Reiki Master who has been studying Ancient Wisdom under Sophia West since 2018. She guides others on their spiritual journeys through the School of Noetic Alchemy in Stillwater, Minnesota.
