Bonnie Lee Strange of Williamstown is an educator by profession and brings the same kind of sensitivity and passion to treating clients with Reiki and other alternative therapies as she does to teaching elementary school students.
“Basically, what I do is do healing energy work,†she said. “I don’t use every healing option with every client, of course. After reading people’s energy, or from their requests, they decide which direction the session will go.â€
She mostly practices Reiki, but she’s also an empath or an intuitive healer.
“So when I’m in a person’s energy field I can kind of feel things that are going on with them physically, emotionally sometimes,†Strange said. “And I just sit with them for a while and give them feedback of what I’m feeling and base my work on the table with what it is I find in their energy.â€
She’s trained in both Usui Reiki and Karuna® Reiki.
“The Usui Reiki is an ancient Japanese laying-on of hands,†she said. “It’s just a gentle laying on of hands in which the person who has been attuned supplies energy for the person that’s on the table. And it can go to their physical, their mental, emotional, or their spiritual needs.â€
“The energy of Reiki goes to the root cause of the problem. Often I tune into old trauma, fears, memories, events, accidents that happened in the person’s childhood or youth,†she said.
Reiki and other alternative or complimentary therapies are gaining in acceptance, and North Adams Regional Hospital recently opened a Wellness Center where Reiki is one of the therapies practiced.
Strange is part of a CAM (Complimentary Alternative Medicines) group of practitioners affiliated with North Adams Regional Hospital. The group meets monthly to find ways to support the community and each other.
She has taken classes for all levels of Reiki, and discovered empathic abilities through it — she found she might get an ache, pain, feeling, or emotion that would give her a clue of what was bothering the client and help her provide feedback to the client.
A Reiki session lasts from an hour to an hour and a half. The client is fully dressed. The practitioner will lay her hands on or near the client’s head, stomach, legs, feet, and back.
“People either fall right asleep or they’re so fascinated by what they feel that they’ve never felt before that they want to stay right with it,†Strange said. “Some people feel nothing.â€
“And some people feel so much they just are overwhelmed with the sensations that are new to them, so it depends on the individual,†she said.
People seeing her might have very minor complaints such as not feeling up to snuff to very serious conditions such as arthritis or cancer.
“I used to think it was after they’ve tried everything else that they would come to something like this,†Strange said. “But I’m beginning to find more and more that people are starting with this kind of work.â€
If she feels people need more help than she can give them, she will refer people to other health professionals.
Strange is an educator with a master’s degree in administration. She teaches sixth grade at Pownal Elementary School, where she is also an administrator.
She has been involved in alternative therapies for about seven years.
“It’s not something that I would have sought. I never even had heard of it, but about that many years ago, I had some symptoms, very painful,†she said. “I was in bed. I couldn’t lay flat on my back in bed and didn’t understand what it came from. Doctors were checking me for various illnesses. Everything came out negative, and it went on for way too long for me.â€
Finally she began to investigate in bookstores and found books about energy healing with the hands. This was also the same time a family member was very seriously ill.
“So I began to pick up books that had to do with healing of the hands, and I put my hands in various places,†she said. “And I would do more healing in a few days than it seemed I was doing in a long time in physical therapy.â€
She noted that she is skeptical about a lot of it and it has to prove itself to her, so to speak.
“But as I began to heal, and as I began to feel so much happening with the energy, then I began to be very interested in it,†Strange said.
She finds people in this area becoming more and more open to these therapies and finds much greater acceptance of such energy work by local people in the medical field.
During the school year she sees up to two clients a night and also on weekends. Not surprisingly, she has more open times during the summer when school is out.
In addition to treating clients in private sessions, she teaches various levels of both forms of Reiki.
“With children in a classroom, the thing that really drives me is being able to help them find their talents, help them find who they are and what they have to offer this world,†she said. “And when I work with my [Reiki] students, when I attune them, and when I sit with them and train them I somehow am able to tune in with their spiritual gifts and in what ways that they’re intuitive or what ways they are healers, or what their special abilities might be.
“I don’t know why that happens, but that excites me as much as having a sixth grader find out he’s an artist,†she said.
Strange works in a spacious room at her family’s home on Hancock Road.
She also practices dream healing, angel meditations, works with crystals and, with a lifelong strong connection with nature and animals, she does healing work with animals. She specializes in doing distance intuitive readings and healing work. She has had training in therapeutic touch.
“It just is so very interesting to me all the ways that people use the Reiki energy, and ... the types and varieties of things that I’ve provided for people, and the feedback that I’ve gotten has been very, very rewarding,†Strange said. “It’s interesting, it’s fun, it’s enlightening. I’ve developed spiritually so much more since I’ve been doing this work than I ever had in my past.
“And it’s just such a joy watching people heal and allowing them the energy to perhaps do that,†she added.
She can be reached at 458-3076.
Strange will be giving a free talk and demonstration of Reiki and intuitive healing at the Williamstown Public Library on Feb. 28 from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
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RFP Ready for North County High School Study
By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The working group for the Northern Berkshire Educational Collaborative last week approved a request for proposals to study secondary education regional models.
The members on Tuesday fine-tuned the RFP and set a date of Tuesday, Jan. 20, at 4 p.m. to submit bids. The bids must be paper documents and will be accepted at the Northern Berkshire School Union offices on Union Street.
Some members had penned in the first week of January but Timothy Callahan, superintendent for the North Adams schools, thought that wasn't enough time, especially over the holidays.
"I think that's too short of a window if you really want bids," he said. "This is a pretty substantial topic."
That topic is to look at the high school education models in North County and make recommendations to a collaboration between Hoosac Valley Regional and Mount Greylock Regional School Districts, the North Adams Public Schools and the town school districts making up the Northern Berkshire School Union.
The study is being driven by rising costs and dropping enrollment among the three high schools. NBSU's elementary schools go up to Grade 6 or 8 and tuition their students into the local high schools.
The feasibility study of a possible consolidation or collaboration in Grades 7 through 12 is being funded through a $100,000 earmark from the Fair Share Act and is expected to look at academics, faculty, transportation, legal and governance issues, and finances, among other areas.
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The Water Department has been responding to multiple water line breaks throughout the city since Friday, causing temporary loss of water in some areas. click for more
Nearly a year of study and community input about the deteriorating Veterans Memorial Bridge has resulted in one recommendation: Take it down. click for more
