Interview with Jeri Mills 

1) You have a unique background for a medical doctor -- childhood spent traveling with a circus, veterinary work, then becoming an M.D.  How has this background affected you practice as physician and healer?

Having my childhood divided between the rich, colorful life of the circus and the cold, mundane existence at my aunt’s house forced me to learn at an early age how to function in two very different environments without being an outsider in either. I’m sure that experience helped to set the stage for my present work, walking between the two worlds of Eastern and Western medicine.

Practicing veterinary medicine taught me to rely on all my senses to diagnose and treat non-verbal patients. I believe that experience ultimately made me a more sensitive and perceptive physician, and probably made the transition into energy work feel easy and natural.

 2) At what point did you start to seek more tools besides those provided by your medical training in the healing of others?

Western medicine has made incredible strides in our ability to prevent and treat disease. Still, when practicing medicine, one quickly becomes aware of all the things Western medicine cannot do.

When someone is hit by a car of falls off a building, our ability to “put back the pieces” and help the victim to regain normal function is nothing short of miraculous. Our ability to treat chronic conditions remains more limited. We “manage’ symptoms, often with drugs that cause as many side affects as they prevent. I always wished for a better way.

3.) How did you first become aware of your ability to channel energy?

Reaching out to touch someone in pain has always been as natural a reflex for me as breathing. Thinking back to the days before I became aware of my ability to channel energy, I recall patients occasionally saying things like; “When you touched me, I could feel the healing in your hands.” At the time, I laughed off those comments in embarrassment. Looking back, I suspect I have been doing some form of energy healing most of my life.

My first conscious awareness that I was able to channel energy for healing came as I was caring for a terrified and hysterical young woman on the labor floor. I held the young woman’s hand and taught her relaxation breathing techniques.  As we continued to hold hands, I spontaneously lapsed into an exercise I often did during my morning mediations, an exercise that helped to increase the flow of healing energy through my own body. Suddenly and with no conscious effort on my own part, I began to channel that healing energy into my patient.  As has happened so many times since that day, when the need was great I seemed to naturally know what to do to make things better.

 4.) How did you become so involved with Reiki? What was it about the practice or the energy that drew you in and changed so much for you?

After becoming aware that I could channel healing energy, I began using that ability on a regular basis. For almost a year, I did the work without discussing it with anyone at the hospital. Frankly, I was afraid people would think I was crazy and that I would lose my job.  Only a few of my close, trusted friends were aware of what I was doing.

Then one day a woman I had never met before walked into my office for a Gyn appointment. As she leaned forward to shake my hand, I noticed a necklace with some strange symbols engraved on it hanging around her neck. I said, “My that looks powerful.

The woman got this secret little smile. “I do hands on healing work.”

On hearing her words, it was as if a huge dam was opened inside of me. I spent the next half hour telling this woman, this, patient, a virtual stranger about my experiences performing hands on healing. When I finished, she smiled again and told me, “What I do will make what you’re already doing work better.”

Theresa was a Reiki Master Teacher.  Until that moment, I had never even heard of Reiki, but some inner voice told me that this woman was important to me. Theresa became my teacher and, indeed, when I became a Reiki practitioner the work I had already been doing became much more effortless and infinitely more powerful.

5.) What makes Reiki different from other modalities of energy healing?

Unlike many other healing modalities that require years of study, Reiki is taught using an attunement process. When the attunement is administered by a Reiki Master Teacher, the student immediately develops the ability to channel this gentle healing energy. With Reiki, one is also able to perform self-healing.

6.) What were some of the driving forces behind your decision to write Tapestry of Healing?  

Like my father, I have always been a storyteller. When some wonderful healing experience happened with one of my patients, I joyfully related that experience to friends and co-workers at the first opportunity. Everyone came to look forward to “Jeri’s latest Reiki story”. When I began teaching, the stories became my major teaching tool. As I began to realize in both small classes and large public lectures just how much those stories seemed to touch people’s hearts, I decided they needed to be written down in a more formal way than the entries in my journal.

My goal in writing the second half of Tapestry, the introduction to energy medicine, was to provide simple explanations and also to relate all the little pearls and pitfalls that I had become aware of over the years in my own practice of energy medicine. I wanted everyone to be able to understand this process that had become so important to me.

7.) What do you think would happen for patients, doctors and the direction of healing in this country if doctors and nurses empowered themselves en masse and became Reiki practitioners?

I believe that the common use of Reiki, or any form of energy healing, would dramatically improve our ability to help our patients. It would provide much more balanced and complete care than we are able to offer with either modality alone.

8.) What do you feel the relationship between the personal touch and medicine must be, as you look at the general state of  health in this country?

I have been sorely dismayed by the changes I have seen in the American medical system even in my own relatively brief (27 years) career. HMO’s have limited the amount of time a physician is able to spend with her patients. Hospital care has become high tech and impersonal. Science has often replaced humanity.  I believe we need to treat the entire individual. This means addressing the needs of body, mind, and spirit. Medicine is an art, not a cut and dried process that can be practiced by a computer.  The physical and emotional intertwine to create states of disease or wellness. By combining Eastern and Western medicine, we treat the whole person and are able to reach the very source of most problems. Perhaps even more important, we are able to bring humanity back into medicine. 

9.) Where does storytelling fit into the healing process and the state of  being healthy, in your opinion?

Storytelling is a way of presenting information that not only informs the mind, but touches the heart.

10.) Since Tapestry came out, you've done signings, TV interviews and lectures that explore the relationship between Reiki and modern medicine. What are some of the major points you've made in these appearances?

My goal is help people open their minds and their hearts to all the possibilities the universe has to offer. I want people to realize that there is never just one way to provide care. The tools that are unavailable in one healing system may exist in another. There are as many forms of healing as there are cultures on this planet. If we tap into the richness of our vast history and combine the best of all the methods available, there is nothing we won’t be able to do.

11.) How has the practice of energy medicine changed you as a woman?

Going through the system of Western medical training, I had to become very tough in order to survive.  Stepping into energy medicine has allowed me to regain the softer, more feminine side of my nature without sacrificing the strength or the power.

 12.) How has the writing of Tapestry and the experiences you've had after its publication affected your life?

The release of Tapestry of Healing was the catalyst that has transformed my entire life. Many new and very dear friends from all over the world have come into my life because of the book. I believe Tapestry is the portal that will allow me to fulfill my purpose on this planet, to serve as a bridge between the worlds of Eastern and Western medicine.

13.) If you could gaze into a crystal ball and see medicine in the year 2025, what  would you hope to see?

I would like to see a world where the best of science and energy medicine are combined in every medical center, where doctors are no longer afraid to be healers and all healers may work together in a unified community.

14.) What are some of your future projects?

Besides my public appearances and writing articles for journals and magazines, I have been asked to contribute a chapter on Energy Medicine for an integrative medicine manual for cancer patients, and I am working on a sequel to Tapestry of Healing.

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