Ready Set Reiki
Welcome to ReadySetReiki®
A podcast about Reiki and Energy work. From the curious beginning to the seasoned Master Teacher. Welcoming all those who work with energy.
Join Reiki Master Tracy Searight as she guides you on a journey through this landscape of energy work. Each guest offers an in-depth unique perspective sharing their journey, which had 'a profound effect on their healing and development as a person. Come along on this journey and explore all the possibilities of working with energy.
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Tracy Searight is an Educator, Yoga Teacher, Reiki Master, Grandmaster, Sound Practitioner, Author, and Podcaster.
Find her on Feather Sister with Wellness living
offering training in 10 different systems of Reiki
Training in Chair Yoga, Yin Yoga, and Restorative
Ready Set Reiki
Episode #136 Katharine Giovanni's Healing Journey: From Turbulent Childhood to Forgiveness Coach – Embracing Intuition, Spiritual Growth, and Transformative Forgiveness Practices
Award-winning author and forgiveness coach Katharine Giovanni joins us to share her incredible story of resilience and empowerment. From overcoming a turbulent childhood to surviving stage three breast cancer, Catherine's journey has been nothing short of transformative. She reveals the remarkable ways in which forgiveness and intuition have shaped her life, offering listeners valuable strategies for personal and professional growth. Catherine's insights into managing anger and enhancing interpersonal relationships through forgiveness are a testament to her groundbreaking method, making her an essential voice in personal empowerment.
Katharine Giovanni recounts life-saving moments where listening to her inner voice made all the difference, alongside the societal shifts that have empowered women to trust their instincts over the decades. We delve into her spiritual journey, which includes connecting with angels and spirit guides, and the importance of unlearning outdated paradigms to embrace a broader understanding of spirituality. These conversations are enriched by Katharine Giovanni personal anecdotes, underscoring the healing power of forgiveness and intuition in both personal and professional arenas.
We also explore the profound impact of forgiveness on the forgiver and the forgiven, with Katharine Giovanni sharing touching stories of reconnections and emotional relief. The discussion highlights intuitive practices like Reiki and their role in facilitating healing in complex relationships. Catherine's wisdom is complemented by her encouragement for listeners to cultivate a supportive network of intuitive friends and coaches. Throughout the episode, she emphasizes the importance of recognizing one's worth and trusting one's inner voice, inspiring listeners to embark on their journey toward forgiveness and healing.
Katharine Giovanni is a three-time award-winning best-selling author, international speaker, and Transformation Coach | Empowerment & Forgiveness Guide. She has written twelve books, including her latest, The Ultimate Path to Forgiveness: Unlocking Your Power. Drawing on her extensive experience as a pioneer in the independent concierge industry, Katharine offers profound insights into forgiveness and personal empowerment. She helps individuals break free from life’s challenges and unlock their true potential through compassionate guidance and transformative coaching.
(For those interested, Katharine’s formal business bio can be found at the bottom of this page.)
Who is Katharine?
Katharine Giovanni is dedicated to unlocking human potential through the transformative power of forgiveness, intuition, and resilience. Her latest book, The Ultimate Path to Forgiveness: Unlocking Your Power, offers profound insights into forgiveness and personal empowerment, drawn from her journey through significant challenges, including surviving stage 3 breast cancer and overcoming a turbulent childhood.
Katharine’s journey as a Transformation Coach is deeply intertwined with her extraordinary intuitive abilities. Guided by the past-life insights revealed to her, she helps individuals uncover hidden patterns and emotional blocks that transcend time, guiding them toward healing and empowerment. Her unique approach blends intuitive insight with transformative forgiveness techniques, allowing clients to release the past and step into their most authentic selves. Through this work, Katharine illuminates the path to deeper self-awareness and personal growth, helping oth
Ready Set Reiki is a journey
From the curious beginner to the Season Master Teacher
All Energy workers of all systems and all levels.
This is Ready Set Reiki, a podcast about Reiki, the universal energy life force, from the curious beginner to the seasoned master teacher, welcoming all systems, all lineages and all levels. Reiki is a journey and not a destination, and on this Ready Set Reiki journey, I refer to myself as a guide, as I am traveling, supporting others and learning on this Reiki journey as well. And, with that said, I am your guide, tracy C Wright, and joining me on my journey today is Catherine Giovanni. Now she is a three time award-winning bestselling author, dynamic speaker, advisor and forgiveness coach. She is recognized as one of the founders of the independent concierge industry, with over a dozen published books to her name, including her popular title the Ultimate Path to Forgiveness Unlocking your Power.
Speaker 1:She dives deep into the transformation art of forgiveness. Unlike conventional wisdom that simply urges you to forgive, she provides a groundbreaking step-by-step process in her latest work. Now her journey is inspiring as it is enlightening and surviving stage three breast cancer to overcoming a turbulent childhood marked by a suicide attempt, she has emerged with profound insight into resilience and forgiveness. Having kept her intuitive gifts hidden for years, she now empowers others to embrace and harness their innate sense. Now she is dedicated to helping individuals and organizations tap into their full potential, and her approach is refreshingly practical and deeply transformating, making her a sought-after voice in forgiveness, intuition, personal empowerment and concierge and hospitality industry. Catherine, welcome to Ready Set Reiki. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it Wonderful. So let's begin this journey together. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:I have been in the business world for most of my life, since I was in my early 20s. I've written a bunch of books, written a bunch of business books, and I've always been intuitive, since I was a kid and I used to, as a little girl, I used to talk to myself and then I'd answer myself and it sounded just like my own voice. So imagine my surprise when I discovered everybody wasn't doing it. It was just me. And because I was bullied, I didn't want them to stuff me in a locker. So I decided to keep my gift quiet and I was raised.
Speaker 2:Remember this was like the 1960s and 70s. I am that old. But you know, if you hear voices in your head, they were going to put you in the psych ward and give you medicine. So I didn't even tell my family. I kept it a secret. For years. I'd still give people information, but I'd mask what I would say. You know I would. I would kind of give them the information, but they didn't know where I was getting it and I just sloughed off. You know if they called me out on it and say, ah, just experience been doing this a while, yeah, no, it wasn't experience, I heard it. So you know it's. It's along the way. I also figured out that about forgiveness because of all these crazy things that have happened to me and that brings me. We recently my my partners and I recently figured out the real trick to forgiveness about two years ago. That's. That's the happy version of my story. I can go into the sad version of my story with all the crazy things that have happened to me, if you want me to.
Speaker 1:Well, you share what you feel called to share, so it's perfectly fine. So you've kept these intuitive gifts hidden for years. What inspired you to share your gift with the world?
Speaker 2:Well, when you've been through so many crazy things as I have, I've always thought I've always been a writer. Writing is my happy place. In fact, it got me through college. It was awful if there was not an essay question on that test, because I always pulled out the grade from the essay. If there wasn't an essay, yeah, I was sunk. Yeah, I was sunk, but I've always, always loved to write and I've always thought if my story just helps one person, then it's worth writing about. So I wrote about the time I almost committed suicide in the eighth grade and my dysfunctional family. I've been clean and sober for 34 years, so that's a journey. You know. I've survived stage three breast cancer. We had money problems and this crazy person you're talking to writes about all of it.
Speaker 2:Because I figured out that gratitude, positivity and forgiveness really helped to forgive people with the, a friend of mine said you know you got to forgive and I don't mind forgiving people. How Nobody teaches you, how Nobody. They just say you have to forgive. Then they say forgive and forget. No, I'm from New York City. There's no forgetting here. Now there might be some unicorn person on the planet that can forgive. I am not your girl.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to come up with a method of teaching people how to forgive, and when I was in my 30s, I started to forgive people, and I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur for years and the more people I forgave, the more money I got for my business. I'm a college-educated girl. This was like 20, 30 years. Was it really that long? Well, all right, 30 years. It was 30 years ago. And why? Forgiving something in my personal life doesn't directly affect my bottom line. Yet it did. So I did something really crazy In the 1990s.
Speaker 2:You didn't introduce soft topics into your workshops. Well, I did, because I was teaching people how to be a concierge and offer five-star customer service. I could teach you the words. I could teach you what to dress and what to say and all that kind of stuff. I could teach you body language. It's not going to matter a lick if you're angry, because your anger is going to bleed through your body language, whether you want it to or not. So I started to teach forgiveness and that's kind of how it all moved from there, because I wanted I didn't want them to just forgive, I wanted them to forgive all of it, and that's how it started.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, and people you know don't understand that this is vibrational energy.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is.
Speaker 1:you know, don't understand that this is vibrational energy and dealing with that emotion of holding on to that anger or whatever that is and letting that go is going to just be like that hot air balloon that starts soaring up with your energy, raising your vibration, letting go of those things. So forgiveness is such a powerful tool to have to offer not only to yourself but to the world. So wonderful.
Speaker 2:Let me give you a visual and for those listening, I'm about to hold a very opaque coffee cup in front of my face. I'm holding the coffee cup to the right hand side of my body, right? So let's pretend this coffee cup is anger and bitterness and intergenerational trauma, which is a huge buzzword right now, right? Well, look at my body language, tracy. I can hold it off to the side real easy, super easy. We can have a conversation. I can go out to dinner with you, I can go to work Super easy. But the longer I hold on to this little bag of grumbles, the more it's going to hurt. So now, look at my body language. I've got both hands engaged and holding up the cup. I could still conduct my life, but the anger is starting to enter my brain and it's starting to control me a little bit because I'm paying more attention to it. Now I'm holding the cup in front of my face, everything's engaged. My life is basically stopped. I can't go. I can't.
Speaker 2:All I'm talking about is anger. All I'm thinking about is the anger. Even if I spin the stories funny, I'm still. It's all I'm talking about. My friend circle has gone down to maybe one or two. Why? Who wants to be around? A negative Nelly who's angry all the time? I'm also probably getting sick because anger is toxic.
Speaker 2:And I have science to back all of this up some fun science studies if you want me to go into it. But there's a science chapter in the book. But the trick is forgiveness will allow you to put the anger down. So you're going to start to feel better. You'll start to pay attention. Why is money going to increase? Because you're paying attention. Now You're going to see your dream business partner walk into the room. You're going to see your perfect relationship. You're going to see the perfect way to lose weight and you'll be motivated to do it because you're feeling better. There's a reason to buy the book. You might lose some weight there you go, but it's going to allow you to be the person you were always meant to be when you were born. The anger kind of threw you off your path and by releasing that anger and that energy, it's going to get you back onto the path.
Speaker 1:Very good. I mean, even neuroscientists explain how you can hold a thought for 17 seconds and it will start to manifest. So imagine holding that anger for that long. You know minutes, hours, days, weeks, years. You're going to keep attracting more anger and filling up your cup. So you have to let that go and bring in another. Higher frequency vibration, joy, happiness, right, enlightenment.
Speaker 2:Higher frequency vibration, joy, happiness, right, enlightenment. Einstein proved very, very, very clearly that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just transforms into something else. So when you get angry, everybody on the planet thinks it leaves your mouth and dissipates into the universe and goes away. No, it does not dissipate, it stays in your energy field. So you're literally, the more angry you are, the more your energy field is going to get darker. Your vibration, as your body is vibrating. So your vibration is going to get very dark and you're going to start to attract like-minded people, not necessarily the kind of people you want to attract. You want to attract the loving, fun and light ones. Well, no, you're kind of repelling them because it doesn't feel good to be next to you, because your vibration is so low. So, to raise your vibration you know there are all these books on how to raise your vibration, but you could just start with forgiving people.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying yeah, so intuitive, since you were a little girl and you've been on this journey now for decades. So what is a common misconception about being intuitive?
Speaker 2:The world has this really nasty habit of slapping the you're crazy as a bedbug sticker on your forehead the minute you show a smidge of intuition, especially in the corporate world. They call it hoodoo voodoo, which I think is very entertaining. But everybody on the planet is intuitive Everybody. Even if you don't think you are, you're intuitive. It's just part of the gifts we were all given as kids. I just figured it out at a very young age.
Speaker 2:The Little Bird on my Shoulder, which is another book that I wrote, because I'm an overachiever, because, of course, I did right, but the little bird on your shoulder is always chirping at you. It's whether you pay attention or not. The little bird saved my life three times not that I'm counting particularly In 2011,. The little bird said you really need to start to run jog. I've been allergic to exercise my entire life. When you see the word exercise in the dictionary, my name is not next to it. So everybody in my family were laughing at me. My two sons were hysterical, laughing. They were teenagers at the time, you know, and so, but I couldn't get it out of my head. You need to run, you need to run, you need to run. The angels and my spirit guides and it was in my head like I couldn't get away from it and anybody who's intuitive as I am it says if you don't do what they say, it's gonna. It's gonna stay in your head because it does. So I took up the couch to 5k running program. That's online. It's a brilliant program, it actually works, and I eventually ran a 5k and then I went from a size 14 down to an eight Tracy. I knew the weight was coming off too fast. I just knew it and it was coming off too fast and I found the lump myself. I'm a big fan of self breast exams for the women and the men. Men can get breast cancer. So for everybody, you should check. Everybody on the planet should check at least once a year, twice a year. I did it on my birthday and on the day before my birthday I found a lump and it was stage three breast cancer and the surgeon said that if I hadn't taken up running I'd be dead. You and I wouldn't be talking because it was in a very, very, very strange place.
Speaker 2:Now people have heard and seen angels. They've hear things in life-threatening situations. A friend of mine was driving down a car, was driving home and she was really tired at the time and she fell asleep at the wheel and just before she was going to hit the cement whatever it was bridge somebody woke her up and said wake up. And she woke up and she turned the wheel and she lived. So the trick is we're all we either hear it, see it, know it or just feel it. Everybody can do it. Everybody has one of those four ways of being intuitive and everybody is drawn to it. So this is not hoodoo voodoo, this is reality. Imagine if every Fortune 500 company allowed their staff to be intuitive and use their gifts. Can you imagine what would happen to the vibration of that company and how much money they? I'll talk their language how much money you would make? There you go.
Speaker 1:There you go, wonderful. So what is a forgiveness coach?
Speaker 2:Some people. All right, let me back up. When you hear the word forgiveness everybody listening and watching to this program right now on a 10 scale, with 10 being unforgivable and one being a real easy person or situation to forgive y'all are thinking of your number 10 person. Everybody, 10 out of 10 people, including you. Everybody thinks about that one person that really hurt them, the boyfriend that ditched them. It's usually 10s have a tendency to be family, so it could be a sibling or a mother or father, grandfather, something like that. I'm here to tell you that you should forgive your number 10, but please don't start with the number 10s. I want you to start with the ones. The person who cuts you off in aisle five of the grocery store you can forgive that person. The person who got to the gas pump a second before you and you wanted that spot because your gas is on that side of the car. Now you got to drive all the way around to the other side and there's a line. You can forgive that person. The person who stole your sandwich in the fridge in the office you can forgive that person. I hope you can forgive that person. These are the things I want you to start with. I want you to start with the easy ones and as you get into the hard ones you're going to start to feel better, and the special sauce to it is always I want you to forgive the person and I want you because we're on ready set Reiki, I can't pronounce it. I want you to forgive the energy around the person because, at the end of the day, that's why people don't stay forgiven is because you forgot to forgive the energy around that person and you forget. You can forgive anything.
Speaker 2:People places things. If you've got a memory, here's an example. Let's say you're driving to work every day. Stop at a red light. On the corner is your grammar school and they didn't treat you very well. Maybe you were bullied. So you turn your head to the left and you see the school and the memories flood your brain. So by the time you get to work, you're in a bad mood. What do you do? Okay, you forgive the school, the energy around the school. You forgive the desk, the table, the chair, the bullies, the energy around these things. So when you go to that and there's worksheets and there's a mantra it's all in the book, and I have an audio book too, for those of you who don't like to read, but it's going to take the emotional charge out of that memory.
Speaker 1:So when you go to that red light, it's not going to bother you as much, Right? And this is just a wonderful thing to think about for Reiki practitioners as we're coming in and working with the energy to invite that forgiveness. What a difference that client could have if they forgive that energy around them. So that's just a beautiful and the Reiki master forgiving the energy.
Speaker 2:If the client is kind of squirrely and were nasty or whatever, you know when they leave, or even when they're right there, you could silently forgive them and their energy, right there on the spot. Now, remember forgiveness doesn't mean that the person you're forgiving was correct. They're not. Forgiveness is selfish. You do it for you, you never do it for them. And they're conducting their life. They're not even thinking about you, which is irritating in and of itself. You want them to be miserable, don't you? Everybody does, but they're not. They're not even thinking about you. Okay, that makes you even more mad. So it's, and it also doesn't it's. I've been sober for 34 years and when I first got sober, everybody goes through a program and you're supposed to make amends and go through your fourth step and all that kind of thing, and they all want you to reach out to the person. Yeah, no, I was, I am, I was born shy and I am an extroverted introvert because I've taught myself to be that way and my knee jerk reaction because deep down I'm actually very shy is not to reach out and call somebody that I'm angry at. Not gonna happen.
Speaker 2:World. This is very private. You don't have to tell anybody. You can be in the privacy of your own home and nobody has to know. You do it for you. You do it, you forgive people because, basically, you want them out of your head. That's it. You want them out of your head. You want to stop thinking about them. Now. You're not going to forget them. You're not going to forget the memory, because humans aren't capable of that. But the emotional charge will go to neutral. You can go on Facebook and look at that person and you won't care. You'll look at the name and nothing, nothing. And that's exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for neutrality. I want the nothing. That's what I'm looking for. That's when you know you've forgiven them, because you really don't give a blank.
Speaker 1:Right, right. I had an experience within this last year that I got very frustrated with someone and we met up and I gave the apology. That person did not give the apology back to me, but I was okay with that.
Speaker 1:But I'm know, look at that person online now and not feel that I'm like okay, and I'm able to follow her and support her and things like that, so it really changes it. It does for your body, but it's not, you know, erasing anything or I'll still be cautious around that person, but I'm not, as I'm not angry anymore. So, yeah, so it's a gift you give yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, just because I forgive you doesn't mean I want a relationship with you Absolutely I probably don't. But I'm not going to bite you when I see you casually at a party. Sure, you know. If you do want to bite them verbally, okay, may I suggest you do another round. Forgiveness is like an onion and you're not going to get a number 10 person down to a one and one sitting. It's going to take. It's going to take a couple rounds to do. You're going to have to say my mantra a couple times.
Speaker 1:Right. So helping others through coaching, advising what has been the biggest challenge, or rather struggle, you have faced in your own healing journey.
Speaker 2:I think it's a matter of getting people to take what I do seriously. I've always looked younger than I really was, so when I was 18, I looked like I was 12. Both my sons are the same way, but they can grow a beard. My oldest son's in federal law enforcement and he can grow a beard when he doesn't have Nobody. Nobody takes him seriously, but you know I'm a girl, couldn't do it, so nobody really started to take me seriously until I was like 35 or 40. And you know, so it it.
Speaker 2:That always kind of bothered me, and you know it's having to hide a gift I was born with also bothered me. So I think the biggest struggle I've had most of my life is to hear people poke fun at the hoodoo voodoo. And in my head I'm going but it's real. Y'all don't know what you're talking about, but it was the 70s and the 80s and you just you didn't speak out, you just did. Now it's 2024 and the young people are listening to me. Well, you should have spoken up, yeah, in 2024, I would never let anybody get away with that.
Speaker 2:Today it's a completely different world. I also wouldn't be speaking to a podcaster about this. I'd be talking about concierge work. 20 years ago was a different world, but I think back then that's what bothered me. Women really were not taken seriously at all. You had to use a microphone for people to take you seriously, and even then they wanted to pat you on the head. So I'm very much a fan of where society has gone. Now. You know, young women can now actually be believed, and that makes me very happy.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean there was such the oppression. I mean I was a child of growing up in the 70s and 80s and you know you were guided into oh well, you'll make a nice wife. You know you're going to grow up and you're going to be a great wife. And you're in school and you'll make a great teacher, a great secretary, a great nurse. Those were the choices right.
Speaker 2:Those are the choices I was given too. Well, you've got to find a husband and kids.
Speaker 1:I'm a career girl. Right, you had to go to school, then you had to go get married and then you're like a senior and you're not engaged in college.
Speaker 2:And what do I do? You're an old maid. Oh my God. You're 21 and not married. You're an old maid, what the hell.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then even as a child, when you have dreams and you knew things and it's shush, shush. We don't talk like that. And it's. Then you add on if you grew up in a religious family on top of that. No, we don't talk of things like that, that's not of God, that's not the word of God, so you're always made to feel small small, less than For the women listening.
Speaker 2:This is usually.
Speaker 2:This is kind of a male thing, this is a woman thing. Men don't usually have this problem. I'm not I still not sure why, but they don't. I think it's just because the world raises men and women differently. But let me speak to every woman out there by saying you are worthy, we do believe you and you can do this. That little bird in your shoulder has been chirping at you and you do listen to it occasionally. But if you get to a stoplight and you feel you have to go right instead of left, go right. I'm going to give you a real recent example. Might turn your hair white, but this is a true story.
Speaker 2:We lived in Wake Forest for 18 years in North Carolina, north Carolina, and we finally decided we wanted to downsize, but we didn't know where we wanted to move, decided we wanted to be in North Carolina because I've taken so many state driving tests, because I've lived in a lot of places. I was going to have the Guinness Book of World Records of most state driver's tests taken. So I put my foot down and said I'm North Carolina, there's mountains, there's beach, we can find something. So we were very, very close to moving to Asheville. Asheville just got destroyed by a huge hurricane, I mean. And I mean destroyed, yeah, and I kept going and I loved it. It was beautiful and we looked at several neighborhoods, but it just it felt wrong to me and I couldn't put. I couldn't put my finger on it, the energy was just wrong and I wanted to like it and I do did like Asheville and I could see myself living in the mountains. But it felt wrong. And my husband of 34 years has learned to listen to me and so we decided he loves the beach, so we decided to go look at the beach and we eventually moved to Wilmington. Now I know why it felt wrong when we were going to build, a house was destroyed and flooded and we would have lost everything.
Speaker 2:So when you have that feeling, you could either feel it, you might just know it, you might hear words, or you might see it in your mind. If every one of you can vision your childhood bedroom in your mind, can you see the bed and the color of the walls? That's. Clairvoyance Doesn't mean a Stephen King novel. You're not going to start seeing ghosties. Oh hello, you might. It doesn't mean a Stephen King novel, you're not going to start seeing ghosties. Oh hello, you might. It merely means that you are clear seeing and it merely means that you see the answer. You see it online, you see it in a movie, you'll see it on a sign. You, just when you ask a question, you literally see the answer and I hear the answer. Over the years, I've learned to do all the Claire's. But this is a method. Intuition is real and it will save your life if you let it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. So what do you wish your younger self knew about being intuitive?
Speaker 2:I actually wish my younger self knew how to forgive. I spent many years being angry. I spent 20 years being that teenager. You know the teenagers I'm talking about. You know it's angry. You have one friend. You listen to all this hard music. You're draped in black. But I lived in New York City and everybody wore black. So I'm not sure that's a thing because we all wore black. But you know, and I was angry at my family and they were dysfunctional alcoholics. So that's fair, I should have been mad at them. But I spent a long time, entirely too long, living that story of survivor. I've survived suicide. I've survived the anger. This is my story. This is who are you? That's very scary. Yeah, who are you? I may not have any friends. Well, you don't have any friends now. So what do you have to lose? Right, it's a 63 year old me talking to 20 something, catherine, saying you know, stand up, you know. But I wish I had known about this power of forgiveness because it would have prevented a lot of self-imposed problems that I had along the way and I would have. I might've had a longer, I might've had some more time.
Speaker 2:My mother finally did get sober, I'm happy to say. Both my parents did. My mother got sober. She fell down a flight of stairs, broke her hip, ended up in the hospital and even my mother couldn't get a gin and tonic in the hospital. So she dried out. We sent her to dry out and you know, we had three brilliant years. We forgave each other, we became closer than sisters and she died of breast cancer.
Speaker 2:So I spent the next you know little while in deep darkness, depression, and I wish I had known about forgiveness, because I could have forgiven her. I could have forgiven death, I could have forgiven. You can forgive anything. I forgave 1974. Why did I forgive 1974? You ask? Okay, overlooking, the dinosaurs were roaming back then.
Speaker 2:That's the year I tried to commit suicide and I also. I was in the eighth grade and I forgave the bullies, I forgave myself, I forgave all the players in that year, but then I forgave the year and the energy around the year because I wanted to stop thinking about it. Now I can dredge up those memories if you want me to, but now when I look back at my childhood, I can look back and see the love. I can look back and see the love. I can look back and see the laughter. I can look back and it's not that I had. It was a different childhood. But I'm now paying attention to different things than I was, let's say, 20 years ago, when I looked back and saw dysfunction and I saw anger and I saw all these horrible things. Now I look back and I see the love that was actually there all the time. So it's not that I've forgotten, it's just that now I'm remembering different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's what Dr Wayne Dyer always said change the way you look at things and the things you look at. Change. And what a powerful tool for now. I mean, you see more, so much more, I guess, just because social media and where it's thrown in our face about. You know these, you know young children who you know take their own lives because they're being bullied. And when I were in school we would go to school and we would go home and we would have that quiet, but to have that being followed on social media and you just don't get that moment of break.
Speaker 2:Oh Lord, if we'd had social media back then, I think that would have been worse. I just can't imagine. I probably would have gone through with the suicide. I just can't imagine.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine Like you would go into school and say you wore the wrong color on Thursday or the wrong color socks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, been there, done that, yeah. But today you can forgive anything, if you know. Let's say you're mad at your pastor, you can forgive the pastor. Let's say you're mad at your politician, your governor, you can forgive your governor. You can forgive your state, you can forgive.
Speaker 2:I'm mad about the war in the Middle East. Well, forgive. The war in the Middle East and the energy around it is, you know, just this big thing. Is it going to help the Middle East? Probably not, but it's going to really help you because your energy is going to get better. Let me tell you, let me throw a little science in there for the naysayers who are saying you know she's out of her mind. I got science to back me up.
Speaker 2:There was a study done by a Japanese researcher named Masumoto. I'm pretty sure that's how you pronounce it and it's right. On Google you can Google Japanese water study Masumoto. You'll see the pictures and I'm going to dumb this down real far. In short, he took several containers of water. One container of water he spoke beautiful, brilliant, loving things. To the other container of water he said nasty, hateful, horrible things. Then he put it under a microscope. The water he said nasty things to had this brown and black sludgy formations. The water that he spoke love to had these beautiful crystal formations. And why am I telling you that your body is almost 98% water? So if your self-talk is awful and you're angry and bitter, what do you think's happening to the water molecules inside your body? That's why anger is toxic. You're literally turning your water molecules into sludge, which is affecting your organs. So by forgiving this, it's going to actually cause you to be healthier and feel lighter.
Speaker 2:Now, when I first discovered this method, I like to tell people to do this before bed. Unless you do know a Reiki master who you can do your forgiveness and then go pay a visit to this person. It'll help a lot. But if you don't do it before bed, because your body is going to heal itself while it sleeps Well, I'm an overachiever and I thought I'm going to get a list of people, and I got a list of like 50 people and I said this is going to be great. I'm going to do it all at once. I'm going to feel better tomorrow. I'm going to be like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon and look out world. I'm going to forgive everybody. Didn't work out the way I planned because I spent the next three days in bed with what everybody thought was a stomach flu, because my body needed to clear those sludgy cells out of my body and because I had forgiven too many, it did the only thing that it knew to do. So when you do this process and you read the system in my book, please limit yourself to 10 to 12 people at a time. Unless you know a Reiki master, please limit yourself to 10 to 12 at a time and even if you do know the master, limit yourself to 10 anyways, and do start with the easy ones and work your way up to the hard ones. Don't make yourself sick. This is powerful, powerful energy.
Speaker 2:I forgave a level one friend from high school and it was easy. I said my little prayer and I'd forgiven her because it was like 20, 30 years ago. We hadn't spoken in 20 to 30 years either, but I thought this is easy. I can toss this.
Speaker 2:One Couldn't even remember what we were mad at, right, hadn't spoken to her in decades. Two hours later, she calls me up on the phone and we did. We made all the right noises and did all the right things. Yada, yada, yada. And I but I'm a curious little bear. And I said, after all these decades, why did you choose to call me today? She said, you know it was the damnedest thing. A figurine you gave me back in school two hours ago, which was when I was forgiving her, flew off my shelf and landed in the middle of my floor. And I saw it and figured I should give you a call. So if the forgiveness energy for a level one person can literally move something off a shelf 700 miles away, can you imagine what it's going to do to your body for a higher, for a level four, five, six or even a higher number? That's why this is so powerful.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. And for the listeners out there that are doing Reiki, depending on what your lineage is, what system you study, level one tends to be the one of self-gift to yourself. Touching Level two, let's just say, whatever system that you're in, that you have your symbols. When you use your symbols, you can use this, you know your book as a tool to go back. Use that distance symbol, use the mental, emotional symbol to go back.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I had done when my father was dying he was in the ICU and I used the Reiki symbols and to go back to that time when I was five years old, to bring forgiveness to my dad, to my mother, to myself, because you know, I made was made aware of a particular kind of violent event that happened in that time frame and the information had come out to me as my dad was dying. So I only had so much time with my dad on the planet that I could choose Do I be angry with him and not visit him anymore, or do I choose to do something where I can shift the energy? I didn't have time to go to counseling, right? I didn't have time to do some other things, but I thought this could help. This can help me and it really shifted things. So I was able to that very next day show up at that hospital room for him and be there for him. So it really.
Speaker 1:I really was life changing to do that, to forgive him, because it was something he probably shouldn't have been forgiven for. But just think of when he passed, if I didn't have that closure right, I would have to be left with. So, yeah, it really shifted something in me so that I could walk there and be with him, and what a gift it was that I was able to be there with his last breath. You know, he was there with his first breath and you know, and I was there for his last breath. So, you know, forgiveness is a wonderful thing to bring in and I've talked to students that I've trained and they're like, but I'm not there, and I says, well, remember, my dad was dying. I might not have been there, you know, 10 years before I wasn't there to in that place to forgive him, but because he was dying and he only had so much time, I needed to do something, you know, for myself to get through that experience.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and for anybody listening whose father has already passed and you feel you need to forgive them you can forgive dead people. You forgive for you, so it doesn't matter where they are or are not and, as a forgiveness coach, if you're having a real hard time forgiving somebody, a private session with me and I will lead you through my forgiveness system, and we might even touch on a past life that's tripping you up, so I'll lead you through the entire process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you may not get that, I'm sorry. And after you may not, no, you may not. My dad passed several weeks, it was probably several weeks later. I had a reading with someone and she said your dad's coming through and he wants to let you know he's sorry. And she said your dad's coming through and he wants to let you know he's sorry. Oh, how beautiful is that? Yeah, I'm sorry, and I think just you know whatever he was dealing with on the other side, he finally saw it because he was so sick he wasn't aware that I was showing up every day and everything I had to get through. I mean, I was living about 25 minutes out from Pittsburgh, but it was a challenge to get every obstacle, construction, all these things to get to him, up to his room. You know there to see him every day. So, yeah, so you, you, you may get it. You may get it in this life, or you may hear it from beyond.
Speaker 2:So you might, you might and you might see the sign. I mean, remember, you're going to either see it, hear it, feel it or know it, and it's just a matter of you paying attention and waking up, as people will say. But losing the anger is going to help you hear those messages or feel them, whatever gift you have.
Speaker 1:So, when it is time for you to seek guidance, what qualities do you look for in a spiritual coach, or forgiveness coach, or someone who's intuitive?
Speaker 2:I am blessed with to have an inner circle of intuitive besties. So when I need help, I usually go to Katie or Paula and the three of us will work on the problem and because they're both as intuitive as I am, we'll kind of just work it out and we've created a little neighborhood and we will do these webinars People we're going to be launching. You'll be able to join them, as we are. But I really have always gone to like-minded people. I'm not very religious. I never could figure out why God really. I mean, I'm not trying to offend anybody, but I just didn't think he cared what I ate on Fridays, that's just. I just didn't think he particularly cared. So religion, I just never really understood it because I thought, if he's God, why can't he have a conversation with me? How hard could that be? And I, in those days I hadn't figured out that the person I was talking to actually wasn't me. It was my angels, it was my spirit guides, it was God. You can call it anything you want. It's your higher self. You can call it anything you want. I don't really care. And I didn't figure it out until I think I was in my 30s and I turned my head and I saw an angel in the living room. It's the first and last time I ever actually saw something, which makes me sad. But she was right there, standing like in the flesh, smiled at me and then she was gone. I thought, okay, I'm crazy seeing things now. So I thought, okay, well, maybe I should start thanking God. I mean, something's obviously happened to me. And I started saying thank you God. Maybe I should start thanking God. I mean, something's obviously happened to me. And I started saying thank you God for this and thank you God for that. And in my head I answered myself you're welcome. Every time I said it, I thought, okay, I'm thanking myself and saying you're welcome to myself.
Speaker 2:I still hadn't put it together because I still trusted my inner voice, but I just thought it was me. I really did, and I finally decided I'm a college educated girl, so remember, this was before the internet. Thank you, that's how old I am. And so I decided to go to Barnes and Noble and somebody's written a book about this. So I'm and because crazy things happen to me on a regular basis, might I add I went into the bookstore and I'm wandering around and all of a sudden, this book flies off the shelf and lands at my feet Okay, books don't usually do that.
Speaker 2:So I walked to the other side to see who was there. Nobody was there. The book literally fell off the shelf at me and there was no wind in the store, obviously. I looked down it was Conversations with God by Neil Donald Walsh, book one, and it had just come out. So I finally I put two and two together and came up with five, and I finally knew exactly what I had been doing all my life. And I stood there and remembered giving messages to people and giving telling you know, a childhood friend, where you see their angels all around you, but thinking it was just me trying to make them feel better. I finally realized the ability that I had. So that's really what started it all.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. So what advice would you give someone who's just entering this intuitive forgiveness work? Believe.
Speaker 2:Everything you've been taught. With all due respect, um, you're gonna have to relearn. Yeah, because the world is stuck in a 1950s, 60s paradigm and it's a patriarchy. I'm not bashing it, it just it is what it is. I'm just a fact. And even business is still stuck in this kind of 1950s patriarchal thing. And school in the 1960s and 70s, when I was in school they're teaching everybody the same. It's 2024. They're still teaching the same things, with the desks in the same row and the same classes. It's nuts. I'm in my 60s. We shouldn't be doing it like this.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot more to life than what you've been taught. There's a whole nother world out there beyond the veil, and they've been trying to reach you. Your angels have been trying to reach you. Everybody is born with two angels, one on their left and their right hand side, and it's like the law of gravity. The law of gravity is going to work, whether you believe in it or not. We can call the law of keeping Tracy on the planet. It doesn't care, it's still going to work. Okay, I don't believe in the law of gravity. It still doesn't care, it's still going to work. So you don't believe in angels, but there's one on the right side and the left side of your body and they will be there to the day you die at, whether you believe it in or and they want to help you and they can't unless you say it out loud Angels, please help me. If you're in a public place, I usually whisper it because people think you're crazy. But you know all this help is available to you.
Speaker 2:So if you're just at the beginning of your journey, I suggest you try doing some guided writing. Get a pen and a piece of paper, and I want you try doing some guided writing. Get a pen and a piece of paper and I want you to turn off all your technology. Did you know that phones have an off button? Crazy, right, they have an off button. They also have a mute button. You can mute it. I want you to either turn it off. I actually said this to somebody a few weeks back. The color drained from her face. She said oh no, I could never turn it off. I mean she, she literally started shaking in front of me, so it was actually very entertaining. Yeah, so yeah, no, you can mute it or make it vibrate.
Speaker 1:I don't care. Yeah, you tell your kids disturb. And my kids figured out that if you call it twice you can do the do not disturb. And my kids figured out there you go, if you call it twice, it'll bypass the do not disturb.
Speaker 2:Oh, smart kids. Yeah, you got some smart ones.
Speaker 1:I got some smart ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I want you to ask a question and then, whatever forms in your mind, I want you to write it down. It could be a vision. You could be seeing something. Write down what you see. It could be a color. You could hear something. Maybe you'll hear some words. Maybe you'll hear the words of a song. Write down the lyrics. Write down the words. Maybe you'll just feel something All of a sudden. You'll feel happiness or joy, or you'll feel something in your body. Write it down and before you know it, you'll be having a conversation. You'll be talking to that little bird on your shoulder.
Speaker 1:Very good, so what books do you recommend?
Speaker 2:I actually you can buy. I have all sorts of books on Amazon the Little Bird on your Shoulder, my book, the Ultimate Path to Forgiveness. But I also suggest you go out and purchase Shower Blessings by Dr Katie Nall, because if you are one of those people that doesn't know how to meditate and it's a tiny, tiny little book I mean it's a tiny little book, but Shower Blessings if you don't know how to meditate, that's the book to get. I recommend it to everybody and it's a quick read, beautiful.
Speaker 1:So what other services and modalities do you offer? Do you offer trainings, classes, events?
Speaker 2:Well, I am a forgiveness coach and what that means is if you're having trouble forgiving you've read the book and you just can't forgive your number 10s or something you do a session with me and I'm going to pick at it and I'll get you going. I'm also a medium and a past life healer. So the angels show me what life is tripping you up the most in this lifetime. And I tell you a quick story. My oldest son called me up at 3 o'clock in the morning and he was really upset. He said, mom, I can't sleep. I've tried everything, I've tried medication, I've tried all the sleep apps. He said he tried everything. He couldn't sleep and it had been going on for like a week or two. And he said I understand suicide and depression now because I'm at the end of my rope. He was really upset so I didn't know I could do this.
Speaker 2:It was a bunch of years ago. So all of a sudden I got this vision of a sheriff of a town who was lying in bed and he was next to his wife and it was the day before Easter. She was stepping out on him having an affair with somebody in the town and she smothered him with his pillow in the town and she smothered him with his pillow Wow, and he died. And as soon as I revealed that life to him and we talked about it and then we forgave all the players Johnny on the spot, because I can do it verbally as well as I can write it, so I've heard we verbally forgave everything. He started to sleep through the night and he started to go out with people because he didn't trust women. Can you blame him? So I can.
Speaker 2:I'm usually revealing the life that's tripping you up the most. Maybe you're scared of heights, maybe you're having trouble with relationships, maybe it could be anything, but they will always reveal the life that's tripping you up the most intergenerational trauma. There's a buzzword everybody's talking about we will forgive everybody in that lifetime, because energy is neither created nor destroyed. So the energy that you had in that past life that was so traumatic follows you into this life and that's where forgiveness takes an entirely different. It's like a different breed of cat at this point, isn't it? That's where the energy is so, so, so critical.
Speaker 1:Well, where can we?
Speaker 2:find you. You can go to CatherineGiovannicom and Catherine, thanks to my mother is spelled a little bit odd. Thanks, mom, k-a-t-h-a-r-i-n-e Giovannicom. You can also go to Amazon for all my books and the Little Bird on your Shoulder and my Forgiveness book Both have audio books because, I do understand, not everybody likes to read, so the audio book is also available. If you join Audible, I think it's free. I saw it free on Audible a while back, so you might want to check that out. You might be able to get it for free.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. All right, that ends our first part of our journey together, and I'm going to continue on as your guide into the next part, which is questions from social media and our listeners. So here we go. Number one what inspired you to write the Ultimate Path to Forgiveness, unlocking your Power?
Speaker 2:I wanted to help people find the peace that I had found, and I understood that this method of forgiveness is new and nobody had ever heard of it before, and our world is in such a state of hate and negativity right now. Any tiny little path I can carve out for people, it's my honor to help. It's my honor to help, so I couldn't have kept this quiet if you paid me to do it, and I love to write, it's my happy place. This is the first book of three, so there are, if I can get to my computer, there are two more coming after this.
Speaker 1:Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Number two I am currently dealing with breast cancer as a surviving stage three breast cancer survivor. What advice can you give me as I move forward in my healing journey?
Speaker 2:The mind is a powerful instrument. When I got cancer I don't think they do it today, but when I came down with cancer, they send you to chemo class and I was in this airless little room and the nurse ratchet at the front. She was awful. She started telling me everything bad was going to happen, all the side effects from chemo and radiation and how sick I was going to get and the infections I was going to get. She didn't tell me anything positive. She didn't tell me what to eat, what to think, what to do. My brain snapped. So I walked to the front of the room when the class was over and I said I'm not going to get as sick as everybody else. She looked at me and I live in the South. She said oh honey, you're going to get all these things. I said no, I'm not Fast forward a year. She comes up to me in the hallway. She says Mrs Giovanni, what are you doing? Walking down the hall I had no idea what she was talking about. She said what are you eating and doing? Because you didn't get as sick as we expected you to. And I looked at her and I said remember a year ago when I told you I wasn't going to.
Speaker 2:The mind is a powerful thing. Now I'm a clean eater, I changed my diet, started to exercise, but I kept a positive attitude. And positivity is like taking a shower you have to do it every day and sometimes when you're that sick and that much pain I mean I was in a lot of pain. It's a minute by minute choice, but I kind of thought the cancer was a terrorist and I was going to be damned if I was going to let the cancer win. So I kept a positive attitude and I just kind of kept my. I forgave everything as much as I could and I just kind of kept myself in that positive mind space and when somebody tried to bring it down, I literally ignored them. And your mind is so powerful, it's a real healing vessel. So keep your mind really really, really straight and stay positive, because it's going to help a lot.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Thank you for that advice. So, as a three-time award-winning bestselling author with over a dozen published books, what advice would you give someone who wants to write a book?
Speaker 2:Ah, that's a fun. That's a fun topic. Everybody thinks you have to come up with the title of the book and then you have to start with chapter one and go to chapter two and go to chapter three. Poppycock, I want you to just sit down and write and you just. I wrote, I wrote.
Speaker 2:I wrote a book called Rainbows and Banana Peels about my cancer journey and I wrote it on my cell phone because of thought would come into my head and I'd email myself my thought and then, after I got a bunch of thoughts, it turned into a book. So just start writing and the thought that you're writing could end up in the middle of the book. It could end up at the end of the book, it doesn't matter at the end of the day, because when you think you're finished, then you can put all your thoughts and all your pages into the order it needs to be. So just start writing and if people try and say you can't write or anything like that, literally turn your brain off. Don't listen to them. Everybody could write a book and don't worry about who's going to print the book.
Speaker 2:All my books are self-published, believe it or not. We formed our own publishing company because we are that stupid and we have a high tolerance to pain. Yeah, that had when I started the association. I try and talk people out of doing that too. That's, that's really painful. But you know, I I think that if you want to write a book, just start writing and everything is just going to kind of flow and then when you think you're finished, then you figure out how you're going to get it published. But for now don't even think about it, just start writing.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, beautiful. Well, that was our last question, and, as we've been talking, is there something that you may have forgotten to share or something you feel called to share with our listeners?
Speaker 2:You can take that time now. The floor is yours. I think I just want people to know that they can do this. They can live a life of joy. I ask a lot of people what brings you joy? And it would make you very sad if I told you. Only eight out of 10 people answer the question. Most people can't answer the question. They'll look at me and say, well, I enjoy reading or I enjoy going on vacation. Okay, that's fine. But what if you want to go on vacation 24-7? That feeling brings you joy. What is you doing in your life that's not bringing you joy? We'll have to work from nine to five.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's talk about that. What could you do that would bring you more joy? You can live a life of joy and still make money. You can live a joy of happiness and it's a question of joy and still make money. You can live a joy of happiness and it's a question of listening to that little bird on your shoulder. If you get to a stoplight and it says go right instead of left, go right. You may never know why you were supposed to go right, but you probably avoided an accident or something horrible or a hurricane going through Asheville like I did, true story, but it's a question of really trusting your gut. You can live the life that you want, so forgive what you can. I'm not meaning to bash any coaches out there, but a lot of us used to talk about that wall. It's time to break through that wall. Here are the tools I'm going to give you tools to help you break through that wall. Are the tools I'm going to give you tools to help you break through that wall? Okay, let's stop that right now. Pull out a few bricks out of the wall, walk around the thing, keep going, circle back when you can. If you can't circle back, it's okay, keep going.
Speaker 2:You know the person that yourself is often the hardest person to forgive, and I forgave myself, and my 20-year-old Catherine is different than 60-year-old Catherine and she created a persona that she needed to in order to survive. Right, and I can forgive that person. In the Bible, I am not religious by any means, but there is one passage that gets me there. It's how I forgave my parents. Jesus is up on the cross and he says forgive them, father. They know not what they do. So that says, if you're in the fifth grade and you don't know calculus, I can't get mad at you because you haven't learned it yet. So my parents did the best they could with the tools they could they had. Was it good enough? Of course not. They could with the tools they could they had. Was it good enough? Of course not. But they did their best and that, combined with some Simone Biles level mental gymnastics, gets me to forgiveness.
Speaker 2:And you can do the same thing for yourself. Be kind to yourself, because you had to be that person. But you're not that person today and even if you're surrounded by people who think you're still that person, you're not that person. We believe you, we know you can do this, so just start. Tomorrow's a brand new day. Start. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Speaker 1:Very good, all right, catherine. That ends our journey together. So thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule to come on this Ready Set Reiki journey with me.
Speaker 2:Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and thank you for sharing your intuitive gifts, being so brave and bold, with the world, and congratulations on your sobriety. That's wonderful oh thank you. Wonderful and with your being a breast cancer survivor Wonderful and with your being a breast cancer survivor and you know, here you are everything that you've been through and you're still helping and being a service to others. So thank you for that.
Speaker 2:My pleasure.
Speaker 1:All right, my wonderful listeners, if you would like your question featured on the show, reach out wwwreadysetrickycom. Also, check out Feather Sister that offers a variety of Reiki trainings and yoga classes in person, el Paso, texas, or online. I'm Tracy Seawright and this has been Ready Set Reiki you.
