Dr. Laurie Nadel, a renowned psychotherapist and author, has a fascinating journey from journalism to holistic health and Reiki. In this MysticMag interview, she shares her experiences and insights on integrating mind-body medicine, meditation, and alternative healing practices into her work to help others find resilience and inner peace.
Who is Dr. Laurie Nadel? What is your story and what did your professional beginnings look like?
I started off as a journalist after finishing university in London. My first job was with a news agency that is now Reuters Television, where I began as a secretary—one of the few roles available to women at the time. The men I worked for even felt sorry for me because I didn’t have a husband to stay home and cook for, so I needed to work. Eventually, I was promoted to a writer’s position, scripting news films that went out globally.
After a couple of years in England, I returned to the States and continued my journalism career for a total of 20 years, primarily in TV news. I was also a reporter for Newsweek and United Press International in South America, where I worked in Chile after the military coup that installed the dictatorship there. My journalism career was extensive and colorful.
However, after 20 years, I developed chronic fatigue syndrome from overworking and burned out. I spent a few years recovering, during which I learned about mind-body medicine, meditation, and alternative healing. This opened up a new world for me as I wasn’t physically well enough to continue my previous work.
During this period, I wrote a book called Sixth Sense: Unlocking Your Ultimate Mind Power, which became a bestseller and is still in print after 34 years. The book discusses intuition as a natural mental ability that everyone possesses to some degree, much like mathematical or artistic ability.
This experience led me to go back to school, and 34 years ago, I began my second career as a psychotherapist specializing in issues of stress and health. I focused on how stress affects our health, Reiki, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which was not widely recognized at the time but is now understood to be very common. This shift allowed me to help people in new and meaningful ways, expanding my work from journalism to holistic health and psychotherapy.
What is SoulCollage® and how does it work?
SoulCollage® is a magical process that allows your soul and inner wisdom to communicate with you about a question or issue that may be bothering you. The process involves creating a collage on a 5 by 8 piece of mat board, like the kind used for framing artwork.
Carl Jung said that sometimes our hands can solve a mystery that the mind has struggled with in vain. As you make the collage, feeling the texture of the papers and looking at the colors, it opens up the world of intuition. This process enables you to have a dialogue with the images on the collage, allowing you to get answers to your questions through the creative process.
I’ve conducted this workshop in various settings, and it is often used for people dealing with burnout, compassion fatigue, and similar issues. For instance, it has been utilized in large workshops for a New York City hospital organization. The process is not only therapeutic but also fun, providing bursts of insight from the images you create.
You also offer animal Reiki services. What can you tell me about that part of your work?
Reiki is a hands-on type of healing where the practitioner places their hands on certain parts of your body to transmit energy. Reiki stands for universal life energy. As you study Reiki, you learn about traditional Japanese symbols, one of which is a sacred symbol that dissolves the distance between time and space, enabling us to connect with animals in distress, no matter where they are in the world.
When working with animals, we enter a deep meditative state to offer them unconditional kindness and gentleness. Animals that are wounded or sick are often scared, and sometimes the medication they receive from the vet doesn’t help immediately. Reiki can provide comfort and healing in such cases.
I’ve helped dozens of animals across the country and even a cat in Turkey with liver disease. The cat’s vet had declared it to be at the end of life, but through a conversation with the cat’s spirit, I learned that the cat was very strong and also had a strong will to survive. Remarkably, the cat lived for another year and a half after that session.
Reiki is a force field in the universe, encompassing love, compassion, and kindness. It’s something greater than we are, existing beyond time and in all dimensions. Over the years, I’ve studied with some of the most amazing animal communicators and animal Reiki teachers around the world, and now I can sit and meditate in the Reiki space to offer unconditional kindness to animals in need.
For more information, you can visit animalreikiplanet.com. The website explains the ancient Japanese system of Reiki and how working with animals differs from working with people. If you’d like, you can reach out to me through the website or via text to +1 305 778 1772. Just send me a picture with a description of your animal, and I’ll conduct a Reiki ceremony to see if your animal would like to receive Reiki. If I receive any messages or information, I’ll communicate that to you. There’s no charge for the first couple of sessions—I’m happy to offer this service as a gift. Animals are our teachers, sometimes more so than people.
What is Sleeping Tiger Meditation and what makes it unique?
The Sleeping Tiger Meditation was inspired by my experiences volunteering and training at a wild animal refuge in Florida. I had the great fortune to get very close to a tiger and a panther. During these encounters, I connected with the animals’ breathing and helped them slow it down through a very basic form of meditation and energy work. Although I wasn’t close enough to touch the tiger or the Florida panther, both animals relaxed and went to sleep. It was wonderful to see these majestic creatures curl up and rest, with the tiger even flexing his paws like a kitten.
This experience gave me the idea to create the Sleeping Tiger Meditation, which I recorded and made available on my website. This meditation allows anyone to experience what Reiki meditation is like and to feel the tranquility and peacefulness that the tiger experienced during our encounter. It’s a very sweet and unique meditation that brings a sense of calm and relaxation.
As an author, what books have you written and what are they about?
I’ve written seven or eight books, but the three that stand out as the most important are Sixth Sense: Unlocking Your Ultimate Mind Power, Dancing with the Wind: A True Story of Zen in the Art of Windsurfing, and The Five Gifts: Discovering Hope, Healing, and Strength When Disaster Strikes.
Sixth Sense: Unlocking Your Ultimate Mind Power explores how to tap into your natural mental ability of knowing without knowing how you know. It includes interviews with scientists, astronauts, and celebrities, discussing how intuition works in both business and science.
Dancing with the Wind: A True Story of Zen in the Art of Windsurfing is based on my journals and tells how windsurfing became a form of meditation for me while working in the news business. It chronicles the discipline, weight training, and mental training involved in windsurfing, leading me to meet a Zen master who invited me to join a Buddhist community.
The Five Gifts: Discovering Hope, Healing, and Strength When Disaster Strikes emerged after I lost my home to Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It highlights the importance of learning from other cultures and spiritual traditions, focusing on five gifts: humility, patience, empathy, forgiveness, and growth. These gifts were inspired by my travels through South America and interactions with wise and kind people living under challenging conditions.
These books reflect my journey into understanding intuition, the meditative aspects of physical activities like windsurfing, and the resilience and wisdom gained through adversity.
Is there anything else about your work that you’d like to share that we haven’t covered?
I would like to say that Reiki, which is really about unconditional kindness, is especially important right now. With so much turmoil in the world, we need to find opportunities to express, share, and show unconditional kindness whenever we can. The world is in a dark cycle, and as humans, we need kindness more than ever. This is something I also experience with SoulCollage®, but even more so with Reiki. So that would be my message: let’s focus on kindness.
To learn more about Laurie and her work, you can visit www.laurienadel.com and www.animalreikiplanet.com
